Ron Paul Issues Dire Warning: U.S. ‘On the Verge of 1989’s Soviet System Collapse’

“Anybody who thinks we’re not doing too badly has not been flying on an airplane lately. That’s about as authoritarian-fascism as you can get,” Ron Paul said.

PodCast: Dear Betrayed Citizens, Angry Moderates, and Frustrated Voters

If you are  a libertarian, a gold person, a blockchain/ bitcoin person, a middle  class  person who feels betrayed by his government, a tea-party person how sees that his ideals have been co-opted by the GOP for votes and then cast aside, then you may want to give this a listen. If you do, I thank you in advance

This verbal post is something that had to be gotten out of my system before I prepare for a 3pm interview on Gold with Daniela Cambone on Kitco. Otherwise, the visceral feeling in my gut will not permit me to focus on the more erudite Daniela"s questions. There are enough loons with tinfoil hats out there. I do not seek to be one, or worse, one pretending to be a Libertarian hawking survivalist products to scared and frustrated Americans who have been sold out by their government. Or some carpetbagger riding a wave of crypto mania (prices, not ideas) which will end badly for many people soon. I"d like  people to wake up, not unlike the message  of fight club, but not in a nihilistic way. We don"t have  to blow up  the credit data centers to level  the playing field as they did. We just have to wake up, myself included.

Pictured: One opiate of the masses.

People should be spoken it as if they had brains, and not sold with dumbed down rhetoric and hot button nonsense. There is no angry moderate voice. An infuriated voice of reason, if you will. There should be. Some wars are just. Who am I? I am no-one of consequence who"d like to give voice to the people too busy working subsidizing others" prosperity and blindly hoping things will be ok. They won"t be in this generation.  Not when Paul Ryan claims he is a fan of  anarcho-communist bands  like Rage Against the Machine to get votes and then sells those voters out. Losing misplaced hope that someone will save you in this earthly realm is the first step in obtaining the freedom to help yourself.

Over the last few days, I"ve been lucky enough to have met some brilliant people in banking, technology, the military, and entrepreneurs who are acting to make the USA and the world a place where the pursuit of success and  happiness is a inalienable right. 

This search for knowledge was rooted in understanding better the guts of Blockchain tech and what it can do. But it ended where I started; believing again that change is coming. Try as globalist monetary incumbents  might to stop it, the zeitgeist has changed. 

The tech is merely a tool to make scalable what our founding fathers intended. I am not saying you are entitled to success. Like our fathers, I am saying  you are entitled  to pursue that success unimpeded. But we are now very impeded by the incumbency of those  who are "above us"

For me, this is about a better society and government fulfilling its duty properly to protect  its citizenry. That means no power abuse. And  that means decentralization in the monetary system, our circulatory system in business, will bring those  changes  to bear. I am no marketer, no salesman, and rarely a  self promoter for money. Money is easy to make if  that is all you want to do with your life. I have seen the middle class destroyed including my grandfather"s business as the  pursuit of money became  the first priority, replacing the providing of a valuable service in our society. I have been on bot  hsides of every situation spoken of in these issues of asymetry, unfair market structure and unethical practices. And I"m telling you capitalism as originally created  and in the democratic republic our  founding fathers  created, is dead. It is a husk of an idea., an empty shell of its former glory.

But something new is coming. in fact, it is already here. And it cannot be stopped. It can be slowed by incumbent, status quo, unelected globalist leaders; but it cannot  be stopped. It is the revolutionary event that is always a part of our evolution. And G-d willing, it will be a bloodless one this time. 

Power must be used and self-obviating. Not perpetual when nothing needs to be done. Decentralization helps make this happen.  If you have the patience to listen to this, these points will be made more clear.  

If you are  a libertarian, a gold person, a blockchain/ bitcoin person, a middle  class  person who feels betrayed by his government, a teaparty person how sees that his ideals have been co-opted by the GOP for votes adnthen cast aside, then you may want to give this a listen.

Good Luck

vbl

About the author:Vince Lanci has 27 years’ experience trading Commodity Derivatives. Retired from active trading in 2008 after netting $90MM in an Energy arbitrage strategy he devised for a NY hedge fund; Vince now manages personal investments through his Echobay entity and advises natural resource firms on market risk. Over the years, his expertise and testimony have been requested in energy, precious metals, and derivative fraud cases. Lanci is known for his passion in identifying unfairness in market structure and uneven playing fields going back to his first anonymous Zerohedge post on Silver. He remains a contributor to Kitco, Zerohedge, and Marketslant on such topics. Vince contributes to Bloomberg and Reuters finance articles as well. He continues to lead the Soren K. Group of writers on Marketslant. 

Ron Paul: Good News, Young Americans Want A New Political Party

Authored by Ron Paul via The Ron Paul Institute for Peace & Prosperity,

Do we need a third major political party?

I often joke that I’d be happy if we actually had a second party, as when it comes to the big issues – war, monetary policy, civil liberties – the Republicans and Democrats are more alike than different.

Perhaps that’s why a recent NBC News poll has found that nearly two-thirds of young people surveyed do not believe either the Republicans or Democrats are doing a good job and that a third major political party is needed.

I think this is an encouraging sign. I suspect the NBC News poll result reflects the fact that young people are not as easily hoodwinked by the mainstream media and by the two-party duopoly charade in Washington. This generation has grown up with the Internet and the abundance of alternative media that challenges what really is a one-party system in the United States. They have been exposed to many new ideas, including good ones like libertarianism and non-interventionism.

Currently, mainstream politics in the US is all about power – how to get it and how to keep it – and not at all about philosophy or ideology. It is about selling out principles at every turn in order to chalk up another point in the “win” column. On issues like war and spending, it’s incredible how easily the two major parties are able to “compromise.”

A serious effort to create a new political party could be very exciting, but only if that new party is based on real ideas rather than simply the desire for power. Creating a viable third party will not be easy. While there is plenty written in the media about foreign collusion in US elections, the real collusion is between the Republican and Democratic Parties to prevent new parties from joining them on the national stage and the ballot.

Unfortunately the Libertarian Party has failed to live up to what should have been its role as an ideological alternative to Washington’s one-party system. As was quite obvious in the 2016 presidential election, the Libertarians yielded to prevailing attitudes on war, welfare, the Federal Reserve, and more. In believing that winning was more important than standing for something, they ended up achieving neither.

I would still like to have some hope for the Libertarian Party, but to really fill its role as a challenger to our two party system (that is actually a one party system) it would need a major overhaul. It would need to actually embrace the core libertarian principles of non-aggression and non-intervention in the affairs of others.

At the end of my 2008 presidential campaign, I brought together the candidates of the “minor” political parties and proposed that we agree on some basic principles regardless of whether we are libertarians, conservatives, progressives, or greens. Among those was the idea that we should never go to war unless we were directly attacked or threatened, that the Federal Reserve should not be allowed to benefit the rich by creating money out of thin air, and that we should not endorse deficit spending. 

If a new party could come together and agree on these basic principles while agreeing to disagree on other, less important priorities, we could begin a formidable movement toward peace and prosperity. 

Let us hope that this NBC News survey provides the inspiration to a real pro-peace, pro-prosperity movement in the United States. I have much confidence in the youth of our country!

Ron Paul: Here's The Truth About The War Between The Alt Right And Cultural Marxists

Despite recently being demonetized by YouTube, possibly for his anti-establishment views and slamming President Trump’s decision to increase troop levels in Afghanistan, former Texas Congressman Ron Paul is back with a video addressing the widening left-right political divide in the US – and the role that the “immoral use” of government force has played in fomenting the US’s present political crisis.

Claiming that the US is "witnessing a battle between authoritarian groups in America", the prominent libertarian and former politician says that the "Alt-Right" and Cultural Marxists are fighting to control a government that is bankrupt, doesn"t follow the Constitution, and controls a foreign empire that is running on fumes.  Ron Paul describes our dilemma.

“Most Americans agree the violent confrontation between the alt-right and the cultural Marxist is serious, dangerous and getting worse. Understanding economics, cultural differences and the acceptance of authoritarianism is required to find the answer to the crisis.

Rejecting a society based on personal liberty led to the conflict we are now witnessing: replacing authoritarianism with volunteerism must be our goal. The immoral use of government force caused this crisis and expanding it will only increase the hatred between the two sides.

Though there are leaders on both sides promoting violence, large numbers are attracted to the raging culture war for emotional reasons in response to the lies and the incitement by those whose ulterior motive is seeking power, wealth and promoting a dangerous new world order.”

The biggest problem that Paul sees is that neither the left or the right have made liberty – both economic and political – a priority. In fact, just the opposite is happening. Both the left and the right are moving in a more authoritarian direction.

Meanwhile, the left’s penchant for labeling all of their ideological opponents as Nazis and racists is helping to sow chaos and division, Paul says.

“One side has been labeled the alt-right, the other cultural Marxism. The right would like to reduce the debate to the differences between Communism and a populist government that emphasizes caring for Americans over foreigners. The Left would have us believe it"s merely a conflict with supporters of racism and injustice and cultural Marxism. Neither side speaks of Liberty. The alt-right is made up of conservatives, populists, and pro white enthusiasts, but all are labeled Nazis and fascists by the left.”

“Some are just fed up with the false charges and the penalties toward whites by leftist racists and the extremism of political correctness. The vicious labeling of all those who are frustrated and who join with those who are angry as Nazis and racist is only for the purpose of creating chaos. The left demands that all Trump supporters fit into this category. This is the strategy for fomenting race riots and civil war. No doubt Trump makes himself vulnerable to these inaccurate and wild charges by his enemies. The left promotes cultural Marxism and class warfare yet there are fellow travelers who represent typical liberal activists progressives and white haters. Many on the Left generally despise any minority who chooses to be a conservative or libertarian.”

Leftists, Paul says, are far more cynical than their idealistic proclamations would suggest. White leftists only see minorities as important within the context of their votes, and are quick to treat minorities who identify as conservative or libertarian as traitors to the cause. Meanwhile, neither side understands how liberty leads to economic prosperity for the largest number of citizens.

“Too many on the left see minorities as only important when their votes can be corralled. From their viewpoint as minorities, well-being success must come only from benefiting from doctrines promoted by forced wealth redistribution by the liberal left it"s all about control it"s cynical racism.”

“The philosophic issues that divide us are what matters. Both sides accept the principle of government aggression as a proper tool of government. Neither side understands how true freedom leads to the prosperity that both sides pay lip service to. Neither side understands the shortcomings of deceptive, short-lived prosperity that comes with government deficits and monetary inflation which always ends badly, especially for the people who are supposed to be benefiting by government welfare spending. The ending of such a period of artificial wealth is now apparent and since it"s not understood by either side of the current raging conflict, both are proposing different government solutions with sharp disagreements in the blame game.”

Both the left and the right claim to be the torchbearers of the American experiment. But neither side cares about what the Constitution says, Paul said. Furthermore, both sides banded together to support the Bush doctrine, a willingness to countenance foreign interventionism that persists across the modern political spectrum. Leftists and conservatives take advantage of superficial differences to divide people – the left via identity politics and the right via their racist views.  

“Both sides claim patriotic loyalty and ownership of the American tradition. Neither group cares about what the Constitution says both sides support America"s world Empire its militarism the military industrial complex and horribly dangerous Bush doctrine of pre-emptive war. Neither side condemns our aggression or foreign interventionism. There is extensive support by both for economic planning by government though in different degrees and for different purposes.”

“This means no complaints about protectionism, Federal Reserve power or subsidies to the special interest groups. For our bipartisan leaders, it is only who gets to distribute the loot that matters. Identity politics has taken over in forming alliances. This encourages lying, race preferences demagoguery and inciting hatred since the concept of Liberty is something that applies to individuals rather than special interest groups it is therefore rejected.”

“Liberty is not something that can be distributed according to the various groups that claim victimization and a right to other people"s earnings. The tool used especially by the far left is extreme political correctness that regulates speech by claiming hateful motivation by anyone with whom they disagree. These charges are inevitably spread with a broad brush by a complicit media advocating both types of authoritarianism. Left and right purposely divide people by natural and acceptable differences. Pursuing the cause of Liberty unites all those who honestly seek peace and prosperity in distinction from those who resort to authoritarianism. Divisiveness will cause both sides to fail with their half-hearted efforts to force an escalation of violence and the destruction of the middle class.”

Unfortunately, neither the left or the right has expressed concern with the “deeply flawed” US monetary system, Paul said. The Federal Reserve has been allowed to debase the US dollar through the complicity of both left- and right-leaning politicians. And now, as Paul notes, the bills are all coming due.

“Neither side will face up to the economic reality of a deeply flawed economic system and the pending collapse of the American Empire. Sadly neither side complains about the danger of the Bush Doctrine of preemptive strikes and decisions being made to go to war without congressional approval, the dependency on deficit spending, and the monetary mischief of the Fed. The bills are now coming due and the political chatter associated with the current social strife serves to distract from the philosophical impurities from which we have been infected for many decades. The number of enemies that we have generated by our foreign policy is ignored and the problem made worse by our economic and military meddling around the world our inability to pay our bills and meet our unfunded liabilities will be the limiting factor.”

In short, the US’s economic and military meddling around the world have led to a reliance on unsustainable deficit spending. This, Paul contends, is the greatest threat facing American society - and neither side is talking about a solution.

His full video is below.

The Alternative Currency of a 19th Century Abolitionist

Via The Daily Bell

Have you ever had the dream of starting your own society? What about introducing a new currency? Turns out Bitcoin was far from the first private currency.

Josiah Warren didn’t like the political system, and he didn’t like the economic system, so he started his own little alternative community, with a unique medium of exchange. Warren actually started multiple “anarchist” micro-societies, with varying levels of success. Although he never called himself an anarchist, he believed in individual freedom to the point that he argued government was inherently a violation of rights.

Warren said that when laying out laws and constitutions, governments always present the problem of interpretation. The power of the interpreter of laws becomes unlimited power. Because of this, attempts to fit everyone under one unified umbrella of law and order will inevitably cause schism, disappointment, and resentment.

To be harmonious and successful we must begin anew; we must disconnect, disunite ourselves from all institutions or rise above them.

But how, you ask, can this be, where each is a member of the body politic–where obedience to some law or other is indispensable to the working of the political machine? If every one was the law unto himself, all would be perfect anarchy and confusion. No doubt of this. The error lies further back then you have contemplated. We should be no such thing as a body politic. Each man and woman must be an individual, no member of any body but that of the human family. Blackstone says, “It is the wants and the fears of the individuals which make them come together,” and form society.

In other words, it is for interchange of mutual assistance, and for security of person or property, that society is originally formed. Now if neither of these objects has ever been attained in society, we have no reason for keeping up a body politic…

With regard to security, we see that in the wide range of the world’s bloody history, there is not any one horrid feature so frightful, so appalling as the recklessness, the cold-blooded indifference with which laws and governments have sacrificed person or property in their wanton, their criminal, or ignorant pursuit of some blind passage or unsubstantial phantom of the imagination.

Governments have failed in their expressed purpose, so why bother preserving that failure? After all, people will voluntarily come together when they need mutual assistance, which is supposedly the entire point of government anyway.

Before the Civil War, many prominent abolitionists were basically total anarchists, because they saw the injustice perpetrated by the government on the black slaves.

Frederick Douglass spoke about slavery in a way that is impossible not to draw parallels between government citizens and slaves.

To make a contented slave, you must make a thoughtless one. It is necessary to darken his moral and mental vision, and, as far as possible, to annihilate his power of reason. He must be able to detect no inconsistencies in slavery. The man that takes his earnings, must be able to convince him that he has a perfect right to do so. It must not depend upon mere force; the slave must know no Higher Law than his master’s will.

And many people do repeat like sheep, “Because it’s the law!” without ever analyzing whether such laws are just and moral. Henry David Thoreau argued that the moral thing to do is break unjust laws and make an effort to pay as little taxes as possible, lest one be a party to injustice.

If the injustice is part of the necessary friction of government, let it go, let it go; perchance it will wear smooth,-certainly the machine will wear out… but if it is of such a nature that it requires you to be the agent of injustice to another, then, I say break the law. Let your life be a counter-friction to stop the machine. What I have to do is see, at any rate, that I do not lend myself to the wrong which I condemn.

Lysander Spooner, another 19th-century anarchist, perfectly summed up the blaring inconsistency of government policy just after the Civil War:

There was no difference of principle—but only of degree—between the slavery they boast they have abolished, and the slavery they were fighting to preserve; for all restraints upon men’s natural liberty, not necessary for the simple maintenance of justice, are of the nature of slavery, and differ from each other only in degree.

Lysander Spooner actually started a service to deliver mail to compete with the U.S. Postal Service.

Likewise, Josiah Warren was not simply satisfied with criticizing the government; he invented ways to compete with the government. One of his ideas was an attempt to wrest the control of money away from government power. His ideas for currency were aligned with the value of labor.

Time Stores

In 1827 Warren introduced his own currency called a labor note, linked to a “Time Store” he set up. The idea behind the time store was that one should charge an amount for goods based on their labor in bringing the goods to market, versus supply and demand.

Clearly, this only really works for goods in sufficient supply. He bought flour, for instance, and charged customers the price he paid, plus a fee for the amount of time it took him to purchase the flour, store it, and bag it to sell to the customer. In turn, the customer would agree to trade their labor for the same amount of hours or minutes. So if the total cost for Warren to supply them with a pound of flour was ten cents and an hour, then the customer owed Warren ten cents and an hour of, say, sewing or wood splitting.

It was a slightly more advanced form of barter. But in a sense, it was also too simplistic. Warren asks, why should someone get a large sum for digging up gold when the labor is the same to dig a ditch? He failed to take into account the scarcity of the resource. Prices rise as goods with a limited supply become in comparably higher demand.

At one point, Warren even refused to sell his entire supply of grain to a speculator, because he wanted to be able to sell smaller amounts of grain to whoever needed it. Even when the businessman offered him more than just the cost of Warren’s labor for the grain, he still refused.

The Time Store did seem to be successful, however. Warren was able to keep it running, and the customers loved it because they could get goods for a better price. Then the labor notes could be traded so that if Warren didn’t need an hour of sewing, but a lumberjack did, Warren could get the labor from the lumberjack in exchange for the sewing labor.

Of course, the internet makes Warren’s ideas about human capital more viable. A website called Simbi.com allows users to offer their services in exchange for others’ services. Like the Time Store, if you provide a service, but aren’t interested in the services of your customer, you can earn Simbi credits instead, and spend these elsewhere. Services offered range from marketing help, athletic coaching, recipes, training to create products out of shopping bags, logo creation, relationship advice, and so much more. There are reviews, stats, and badges to help you know who is best to work with.

But Simbi is far from the only bartering service on the web. This MoneyCrashers article highlights 34 different web platforms for trading vacation accommodations, rides, clothing, children’s toys, books, and more.

Utopian Societies

Josiah Warren wanted to create a Utopian society. While he never fully succeeded in creating the perfect society, let alone separating one from the United States, his writing, and experiments in governance has influenced the efforts to create a more fair and just society.

Warren’s Time Stores didn’t stand the test of time, nor did his mini-societies which fell victim to land speculation. But his ideas have stood the test of time, and likely influenced others who came after him, like Lysander Spooner and Henry David Thoreau.

His contributions are little known and oft overlooked by those who fight for freedom. But he offers a unique perspective that differs from the typical libertarian or anarchist thinking. I certainly don’t agree with all he wrote, but his perspective offers an interesting challenge to entrenched beliefs about the market and serves as a churn to test their validity.

Ron Paul And Lew Rockwell Discuss "War And Peace In The Age Of Trump" - Live Feed

Cost of Best Picture winners show very significant devaluation of the dollar Average cost to make an Oscar winning film is over $43 million - in gold terms, this is over 106,000 ounces. In an error prone, irrational and volatile world, gold retains value over time ...

Justice And "Social Justice" Are Two Very Different Things

Recently, Harvard political theorist Danielle Allen wrote in the Washington Post of “The most important phrase in the Pledge of Allegiance” — “with liberty and justice for all.”

Allen recognized that justice required “equality before the law” and that freedom exists “only when it is for everyone.” But she confused democracy — defined as progressives “build[ing] a distributed majority across the country, as is needed for electoral college victory” — with liberty, which is very different. Similarly, she replaced the traditional meaning of justice (“giving each his own,” according to Cicero) with a version of “social justice” inconsistent with it. And her two primary examples of rights — “rights” to education and health care — were inconsistent with both liberty for all and justice for all.

Americans cannot have both liberty and this type of social justice — under whose aegis one can assert rights to be provided education and health care, not to mention food, housing, etc. Positive rights to receive such things, absent an obligation to earn them, must violate others’ liberty, because a government must take citizens’ resources without their consent to fund them. Providing such government benefits for some forcibly violates others’ rights to themselves and their property.

The only justice that can be “for all” involves defending negative rights — prohibitions laid out against others, especially the government, to prevent unwanted intrusions — not rights to be given things. Further, only such justice can be reconciled with liberty “for all.” That is why negative rights are what the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, especially the Bill of Rights, were intended to protect. But those foundational freedoms continue to be eroded by the ongoing search to invent ever-more positive rights.

Echoing John Locke, The Declaration of Independence asserts that all have unalienable rights, including liberty, and that government’s central purpose is to defend those negative rights. Each citizen can enjoy them without infringing on anyone else’s rights, because they impose on others only the obligation not to invade or interfere. But when the government creates new positive rights — which require extracting resources from others — these new “rights” violate others’ true unalienable rights. In other words, people recognize these positive rights as theft except when the government does it.

Almost all of Americans’ rights laid out in the Constitution are protections against government abuse. The preamble makes that clear, as does the enumeration of the limited powers granted to the federal government. That is reinforced by explicit descriptions of some powers not given, particularly in the Bill of Rights, whose negative rights Justice Hugo Black called the “Thou Shalt Nots.” Even the Bill of Rights’ central positive right — to a jury trial — is largely to defend innocent citizens’ negative rights against being railroaded by government. And the 9th and 10th Amendments leave no doubt that all rights not expressly delegated to the federal government (including health care and education) are retained by the states or the people.

Liberty means I rule myself, protected by my negative rights, and voluntary agreements are the means of resolving conflict. In contrast, assigning positive rights to others means someone else rules over the choices and resources taken from me. But since no one has the right to rob me, they cannot delegate such a right to the government to force me to provide resources it wishes to give to others, even if by majority vote. For our government to remain within its delegated authority, reflecting the consent of the governed expressed in “the highest law of the land,” it can only enforce negative rights.

Our country was founded on unalienable rights, not rights granted by Washington. That means government has no legitimate power to take them away. However, as people have discovered ever-more things they want others to pay for, and manipulated the language of rights to create popular support, our government has increasingly turned to violating the rights it was instituted to defend. And there is no way to square such coercive “social justice” with “liberty and justice for all.”

Size Matters - No Country Should Be Bigger Than This

From the perspective of the state, one of the benefits of growing larger geographically is that bigness makes it more difficult for residents to emigrate or cross over borders to escape taxes. 

In his writings on the origins of the "European miracle" that led to the continent"s economic success, Ralph Raico has noted the importance of small states in Europe and the ability to easily emigrate from one political jurisdiction to another. This free movement has been essential in forming a free and open economy and society. Raico contrasts Europe with Imperial China where the state was more easily able to monopolize both natural and human resources through its large size. 

In an earlier article at mises.org, we also explored how the creation of a larger number of (necessarily smaller) states creates more options for residents of the existing states, and thus increases the potential for fruitful migration and escape from overweening state power. 

Larger states, geographically speaking, work in the opposite direction of this, limiting options for relocation, and placing greater barriers in the way of residents who might be looking to change the the conditions under which they live. 

In the case of the United States, for example, the sheer size of the United States requires a potential emigrant to move hundreds of miles from friends and family simply to live under a different national government. Even worse for the potential immigrant is that, in the case of the US, there are only two bordering states. This means, unless the emigrant can gain entry into one of those two neighboring states, he may potentially need to move thousands of miles from friends and family. 

The magnitude of such a move means that an emigrant, in order to visit family members, or conduct business in his or her community of origin, must endure great expense in terms of travel costs and time. 

On top of this, given that 80 percent of the world"s native English-speakers live in the United States, any potential emigrant is also likely to need to learn a new language, which is no small affair. 

This, of course, helps illustrate the absurdity of claims by nationalists that any critic of the local state should simply "love it or leave it" and move somewhere else. Even if that person can gain entry into another state — something that is by no means guaranteed — he would then need to separate himself from friends and family by hundreds or thousands of miles, learn a new language, and be prepared to potentially spend thousands of dollars and take time off from work simply to visit a sick relative. 

Not surprisingly, then, virtually no one emigrates based on political views alone because the quality of daily human life depends largely on a countless number of connections to family, social networks, and business associations that tend to depend on physical proximity to others. Leaving these social and economic networks can come at a great personal cost, and the further one must move from them, the greater the cost may be. 

Thus, the more a state can make cross-border travel expensive, tedious, or time consuming, the more that state can easily impose a wide variety of disincentives to emigration. 

For these reasons, among others, advocates for greater freedom in the movement of goods, persons, and capital, should seek to limit and shrink the size of states. Given that states, by their very nature, rely on extending a monopoly on coercion over a specific area, one can say that smaller states are less state-like. Larger states, by contrast, act more like the quintessential state since they are able to effect greater consolidation of monopoly power. 

Mises"s View of State and Society

Ludwig von Mises believed that states, in theory, could be reduced in size to a single household. That is, he was theoretically an anarchist. However, Mises also recognized that, for practical reasons, individual political jurisdictions were likely to be larger than a single person or household. Writing in liberalism, Mises concludes: 

If it were in any way possible to grant this right of self-determination [via secession] to every individual person, it would have to be done. This is impracticable only because of compelling technical considerations, which make it necessary that a region be governed as a single administrative unit and that the right of self-determination be restricted to the will of the majority of the inhabitants of areas large enough to count as territorial units in the administration of the country.

But what does Mises mean by "compelling technical considerations?"

To get insight into what Mises may mean here, we can extrapolate from Mises"s view of how and why human civic institutions are formed in the first place. 

For Mises, individuals associate with each other voluntarily in order to take advantage of the division of labor. Writing in Human Action, Mises notes:

Every step by which an individual substitutes concerted action for isolated action results in an immediate and recognizable improvement in his conditions. The advantages derived from peaceful cooperation and division of labor are universal. They immediately benefit every generation, and not only Iater descendants. For what the individual must sacrifice for the sake of society he is amply compensated by greater advantages. His sacrifice is only apparent and temporary; he foregoes a smaller gain in order to reap a greater one later. 

Mises continues: 

[H]uman action itself tends toward cooperation and association; man becomes a social being not in sacrificing his own concerns for the sake of a mythical Moloch, society, but in aiming at an improvement in his own welfare. 

In Mises"s view, these efforts to enhance trade and cooperation among human beings lead to the creation of cities and other population centers. 

Moreover, for Mises, the state — properly limited to the function of protecting private property — can potentially assist in creating conditions that facilitate the cooperative behavior he envisioned. Thus, it is the cost of acting as an administrator of law that leads Mises to conclude that certain "compelling technical considerations" are are likely to keep states above a certain minimum size.  

A problem arises, however, when we recognize that this vision of the state exists in tension with the fact that — as illustrated by Raico — the physical and geographical growth of states tends to facilitate the expansion of state power well beyond the role imagined by Mises. 

When contained at a municipal or metropolitan level, state power is one thing. Relocation to a neighboring metropolitan area remains relatively easy. Once states begin to take control of sizable frontiers and multiple municipal areas, however, the situation becomes far different, and states begin to limit and regulate trade and free movement, rather than facilitate it. 

Thus, even if we accept Mises"s idea that there is some level at which economies of scale for state administration may be beneficial, those assumed benefits are increasingly threatened the larger a state becomes.

A Modest Proposal for States on a More-Human Scale

The answer lies in limiting state size to a human scale in which human beings can still associate, travel, and trade across jurisdictional boundaries without incurring a great cost. The standard for "great cost" is subjective, of course, and over time has changed substantially. The cost of traveling 50 miles in the 16th century, for example, is significantly different form the cost of traveling the same distance today. 

There are ongoing attempts by geographers, however, to determine the "natural" size of a region that encompasses a population"s economic, political, and social institutions. In a recent study, for example, Garret Dash Nelson and Alasdair Rae attempted to identify regions that "have been substantively tied together by the forces of urban development, telecommunications, the frictionless circulation of capital, and the consolidation of both public and private institutions." 

Basing their standard of scale on tolerance for commute times, the geographers selected 50-mile commutes as an indicator of how closely tied together is a specific region. The end result was this:

Full methodology and explanation available here. 

The authors then create a suggested map of political units based on the scale of megaregions: 

What are the implications of this analysis? 

Analysis of regions such as these are significant because, even if we accept many of the arguments claiming that states are necessary to facilitate basic infrastructure and services, this analysis suggests there is no need to have states any larger than the so-called megaregion. After all, if one takes the view that states are necessary to streamline legal relations within certain economic regions — as Mises suggested — then this can easily be accomplished at the level of the megaregion. There is no reason, for example, why a single megaregion could not fund its own infrastructure and welfare state through the usual redistributive means. I do not advocate for this sort of redistribution, but am merely recognizing that geographically expansive states are simply not necessary to provide the sorts of state interventions put forward by modern-date social democrats. 

Indeed, many welfare states we find around the world to this day are scarcely more than singular megaregions themselves, as in the case of Finland or Norway. Both states are little more than small handfuls of metropolitan areas surrounded by sparsely populated frontiers. 

Moreover, even military needs, as dictated by geopolitical realities need not require a geographically large state. Historically, these issues have been successfully addressed by membership-based confederations such as the Hanseatic League and the early United States (especially during the 1770s and 80s). In both cases, these groups composed of independent city states or small states successfully addressed outside military threats. In the case of the Hanseatic League, which had no central government at all, this continued for nearly two centuries. 

To this day, of course, small independent states continue to enter into agreements for the purposes of defense and do not require consolidation of domestic power into a central state. 

These realities, however, are unlikely to lead to any re-arrangement of the United States — or any other state — along the lines of smaller megaregions. Even if advocates for interventionism recognized that the "services" for which they advocate could be provided at a much smaller scale, they would be likely to recognize that state power would tend to be more limited by a large number of smaller states than in a world of fewer large states. 

After all, when kept to a size such as that of the megaregions listed here (to use just one example), the persons who live within them could for more easily leave one jurisdiction to do business in another, even on a daily basis. Political jurisdictions seeking to raise taxes and regulatory burdens would be limited by the relative ease of moving one"s business or family to a neighboring jurisdiction. Even worse — from the state"s perspective — those expatriates would still be able to visit friends and family "back home" with relative ease. And, those jurisdictions that sought to engage in various types of prohibition such as those on marijuana, would find it far more difficult to prevent their citizens from easily traveling over jurisdictional lines to spend their money in neighboring areas — thus robbing the prohibitionist states of further tax revenue.

With States, Size Matters

Many advocates for limited government or even laissez-faire government continue to debate the proper extent of state power, or whether states should exist at all. What should be apparent, however, is that even for those who want states to provide certain amenities, many modern states are far, far greater in size and scope that what is even necessary to provide those amenities in the first place. Unfortunately, the primary effect of bigness in these states is to enhance the power of the state and limit the ability of citizens to escape the state"s taxes and impoverishing regulations.