Sidestepping a knockdown You have a bland, undifferentiated product and your business plan demands that every person

in America buys it. This would be a first class ticket to bankruptcyunless you are a monopolist, of course. But there is an organization, which blissfully indifferent to expectations of its wildly diverse clientele, is still alive. Confident in its monopoly, the biggest purveyor of services on the market, the U.S. government, has been arrogantly pushing its one-size-fits-all wares on American public for years. It is hard to mold a smalla few persons strongfamily group into a smoothly functioning organization, even when its participants come from a similar ethnic and cultural tradition. Can the enterprise of state accommodate the hundreds of millions of very different individuals? Clearly, it cannot; but it has beenso farcapable of locking down the population into its rigid structures by generous application of brutal force. For someone living in comfort exceeding almost any other place on the earth, it sounds a tad insincere to grouse about this political confinement. But the complaint is honest; it flows from the sad realization that our privileged situation is likely to change for worse. The American state goes bankrupt, like any other incompetent enterprise. The one-and-a half trillion deficit of the federal budget is a phenomenon with astronomical qualitieshard like an iron-rich meteorite and big like the Moon. No one, including the government planners, predicts its elimination. The best we can do, it seems, is to reduce the budgetary gap, and even these attempts are truly uninspiring. We are on a collision course with a mountain, an event not that exceptional in the worlds history, but cataclysmic for us. Considerations of social solidarity, kindness for ones neighbors, fairnessall the

heart-warming talk of social conscience does not address the central issue: the systems terminal inefficiency. Instead, it obfuscates the picture, always a risky thing when dangerous straits must be navigated. A method of dividing a pie becomes irrelevant when it disappear in other peoples mouths. Other societies, better prepared for the international competition stepped into the ring and we are receiving a serious beating. The competitors may be burdened by their own inefficient state structures, but the Asian populations are better prepared for this round of economy boxing. Steeped in the ethos of Confucianism, grown in the culture favoring obedience over independence, our oriental rivals are better prepared to accept personal sacrifice for sake of their societys long term good. In the slug-out of heavy weights, we may still throw a good punch, but we have a glass jaw and the opponents know it. One good hook and we go to the mat. We might try to modify our Western individual-centric society, butsince it took the Chinese a few thousand years to attain their current social traditionwe might be somewhat retarded in trying to reform. This leaves us with the following options: A. Go down for a count (hopefully American laundries will prove to be popular when jobs are hard to come-by) B. Sidestep the opponent, by switching the competition to a game that favors our cultural strong points. The heavy and clumsy bulk of the centrally run state seems to be inseparable from the success stories emerging from the other side of the Pacific, but are they ingrained in our genetic code? To the contrary, America was build by individuals and small communities, its central political structures traditionally kept small and efficient. The current bloat of federal institutions is a relatively recent phenomenon. Why not return to our roots and convert the United States back into a confederation of highly efficient, agile, small and ever changing social organisms? Let a lumbering Goliath across the Pacific come and face not another sumo fighter but a colony of African (well, American) bees. Some tasks are too big for any communitythe County of Honolulu will not put a man on the Moon and the Orange County could use a national-size defense force therefore we may need to keep a narrow core of federal responsibilities. Other tasks however, like education, healthcare or social welfare could be performed so much better and cheaper at a local level. Who knows better than the locals who deserves a welfare payment or Medicaid? Savings of decentralization are undeniable and some other big-scale experiments in all-powerful state (the Soviet Union, for example) had already crashed, shaking the world with a spectacular bang and obscuring heavens with clouds of smoke. The conclusion from their demise should be obvious but we keep proceeding in the same direction. Who is steering us into the disaster? Cui bono? The most obvious beneficiaries of central institutions are public servants, trade union officials and everybody else paid from the central purse, but they are just the first layer of a parasitic system. They, as much as the political classno distinction made along party linesare a mere front for the small clique who own most of the national resources. We do not hear of them often, but these are the real beneficiaries of bank bailouts or tempering with banking laws.

Not just here, but everywhere else, a countrys elite uses state instruments to leech their compatriots, as well as use them in order to coerce other populations into exploitative economic ties (e.g. Englands opium wars), to extract raw materials (e.g. history of the Middle East) or simply meddle into other people's affairs to satisfy their vainglorious global political ambitions. Political parties, elections and other expressions of democracy are maintained to mask the reality of population being hitched to the wagon of state, left with as much choice as a horse. Freedom of braying is encouraged, but a sharp correction with a whip and rein will come whenever pace or direction change is attempted without orders from the drivers seat. The contest of wills between the pulling team and the drivers is pre-determined: the small but knowledgeable group of operators with unlimited access to public money can easily control millions of uninformed, intimidated and often impoverished citizens. History proves that all inefficient states, from Rome to Soviet Union, unravel ultimately, when their strangled economies cannot provide for police, prisons, bread and circuses any more. In a global competition, the most efficient societies thrive and devour wasteful competitors; its just a simple natural selection, which does not take into consideration the notions of justice, fairness or morality. People on top of this game are better informed than anyone else and they must be well aware of its eventual outcome. Yet, they keep pushing the statist policies. Do they lack long-term vision or perhaps are preparing to jump the ship at the last moment? Knowing direction of our centralized economy (down), and the near-impossibility of wrestling the controls from hands of its powerful drivers, are we doomed? Are we just waiting for the final knockdown? Perhaps not At least, not all of us. For the first time since the Neolithic Age, many individuals can effectively choose their destiny. About 9 000 BC, our ancestors started swapping the troublesome lifestyle of hunters-gatherers for the sedentary existence of farmers. In this trade for better food security, they gave up a few years of their lifespan (an average life duration did not catch up till 18-19th century), better teeth and a few inches of stature (an average male was close to 59 tall in Europe nine thousand years ago). They also put on their necks a yoke of a village strongman, a dignitary who never stopped growing, reaching now the heft of the U.S. government. Once they settled to work their plot of land, there was no escape. A local lord knew where to find them and collect his dues. Some egalitarian populations managed to live out of any administrations reach (I wrote about them in Not Governed, but they were rather exceptional and had been effectively wiped out with introduction of modern weapons, transportation and telecommunication. And now, just when the landlords have tied up all loose ends, a dramatic new twist stirs the way that wealth is being created and shared. We, the serfs, can detach ourselves from land! Not only doctors, scientists and programmers, but also plumbers, machinists and mechanicsanyone who has a marketable skill can drop his proverbial plow and move to the greener pastures. America has been built and enriched by tidal waves of entrepreneurial people fleeing disasters in their home countries. There is no reason why this flow must be unidirectional; the talent will flow wherever it is treated best. Modern travel, Internet

the same innovation that helped to subdue the not-governed communitiesmake it so much easier now to escape clutches of our masters. I am not privy to Microsoft strategic plans, but . . . is there a reason why it has to be headquartered in Washington State? Couldnt it move to, say, Zimbabwe, or any other state whose government is looking into an abyss, ready to offer any possible incentive to snare a royal jewel? A new sparkling campus of the Autonomic Republic of Microsoft could be ready in a year, a new city in the middle of Africa, sporting all of Seattles amenities and much better weather. Contrary to popular belief, demand for highly trained workers is healthy and entrepreneurs can throw darts at the world map choosing their next location; every nation loves them. The fast increasing population of mobile workers discovers opportunities far from their homes and ply their trade wherever the conditions are best. And doing that, they convert those places into cities gleaming with prosperity, like a golden dust. But once they decide to live, the old landlord has a problem. The economy slows and taxes from high-value individuals stop flowing. The pauperized population becomes rebellious, forcing the authorities to enhance an expensive security apparatus. The end result is a poverty-stricken police state. Claims have been made over recent years that a nation-state is bound to disappear. I doubt it. Not only ruling classes need a state to preserve their wealth and status, but also many ordinary citizens want it as a provider of basic needs. Poor and oppressed as they will be, they are the same crowd who bets against the house in Las Vegas. Convenience and hope beat the intellectual awareness of odds; gamblers know which is the short end of a stick but keep feeding their coins into a machine and pull on a handle. The lands natural resources will providehowever disappointinglyrevenue to meet both these groups objectives, even if the creative activities grind down. It might be enough for a state to limp on. What is likely to disappear is a stable middle class. Mobile workers flying in from far away will replace it. Unattached to any fixed locale, and always ready to sprinkle their golden glitter on some other place if the winds change, they will be accommodated and cajoled, because the states success will depend on its ability to attract this golden dust. Hated and denigrated for their lack of geographical attachment by both the elite and underclass, they will be an economic necessity for both. The new nomads will become the ever-shifting tribe truly in control of their destiny, first such a group in ten thousand years. But why should they be blamed for pursuit of happiness? A personal calculus of benefits, costs and risks should guide all freethinking agents. The risky freedom of a nomad or the securefor the time beingserfdom of states subject, their right to chose should not be questioned. And at the end, seeds of our species better future are more likely to sprout in this freethinking community than sclerotic organs of a state. Alex Modzelewski Author of Return to Paradise, Woman on the Moon, Demon of Darien http://www.booksbyAlex.com a knockdown