Government as we now know it in the USA and other economically advanced countries is so manifestly horrifying, so corrupt, counterproductive, and outright vicious, that one might well wonder how it continues to enjoy so much popular legitimacy and to be perceived so widely as not only tolerable but indispensable. The answer, in overwhelming part, may be reduced to a two-part formula: bribes and bamboozlement (classically "bread and circuses"). Under the former rubric falls the vast array of government "benefits" and goodies of all sorts, from corporate subsidies and privileges to professional grants and contracts to welfare payments and health care for low-income people and other members of the lumpenproletariat. Under the latter rubric fall such measures as the government schools, the government's lapdog news media, and the government's collaboration with the producers of professional sporting events and Hollywood films. Seen as a semi-integrated whole, these measures give current governments a strong hold on the public's allegiance and instill in the masses and the elites alike a deep fear of anything that seriously threatens the status quo.
anarchy
austrian-school-of-economics
belief
capitalism
coercion
collectivism
communi
democracy
empire
free
free-markets
freedom
irrational
laissez-faire
libertarian
liberty
markets
non-aggression-principle
peace
politics
prosperity
self-ownership
slavery
socialism
statism
subjugation
superstition
taxation
theft
totalitarianism
trade
useful-idiots
voluntaryism
voluntaryist
About This Quote
About Robert Higgs
Robert Higgs was a contemporary American economic historian. Robert Higgs is an American economic historian and economist. He is known for research on the growth of the United States government, especially the ratchet effect, the idea that state power expands during wars and other crises and only partly recedes afterward, which he developed in Crisis and Leviathan (1987). Read more on Wikipedia →