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As has been the case throughout history, the only force
capable of counteracting the depredations of coercive
institutions has been technology. Technology, by placing the
ability to reshape the world increasingly into individual
hands, continues to shift the balance of power toward
individuals and away from concentrated, ossified established
institutions. The Industrial Revolution that began in the
18th century finally ended centuries of the stranglehold
known as the Ancien Regime, an alliance between absolute
monarchs and their government-established churches that
crushed the people underfoot. The Green Agricultural
Revolution of the 1960s gave the lie to predictions of
imminent overpopulation, starvation, and incessant wars over
resources. The Information Revolution that accelerated in
the 1980s allowed the Western world a few decades of
continued high standards of living despite immense fiscal
irresponsibility and institutions that have become comically
labyrinthine. As additional political infringements on
liberty occur, technology frees up new areas in which
individuals can be free. And often, technology can keep
several steps ahead of political efforts to restrain and
restrict its use. Eventually, the possibilities opened by
technology trigger cultural and attitudinal shifts that
render previous forms of coercion no longer acceptable to
new generations. Historically, this has already happened to
chattel slavery and (largely) to institutionalized racial
and gender-based discrimination.
The greatest hope for the
future is that technological progress will continue to
accelerate; that the forces of command and control will not
stifle innovators sufficiently to cause them to no longer be
able to come out with improvements to the ordinary person's
standard of living. As thinkers from Adam Smith onward noted,
the human capacity to create value and adjust to even the
most adverse of environments is remarkable. People will find
and expand whatever small spheres of freedom, discretion,
and creativity are available to them. But there have been
eras where the dominant regime so oppressed the people that
even this colossal human drive was not enough to overcome
the abuses. The Late Roman Empire, and particularly the
Edict of Diocletian, come to mind.
As for achieving cuts to
the federal budget, mere rhetoric and brinkmanship will not
suffice. Genuinely effective political reform is not
guaranteed even if the politicians' motivations are genuine
and valid. For a doctor, it is not enough to want the health
of the patient. Likewise, for a politician, it is not enough
to want individual liberty as a goal. As we have a dire
political ailment on our hands, it requires the equivalent
of meticulous, step-by-step surgery in order to cure.
Performing the wrong procedures, or even performing the
right procedures in the wrong order, may kill the
patient—the American people.
Not all federal-government
functions can reasonably be cut right away, not even many of
the functions that would be considered illegitimate from the
standpoint of libertarian philosophy or free-market
economics. The right way to cut the federal government is
the way that would not drag any innocent people down with it.
For instance, unemployment benefits should not be repealed
until and unless the minimum wage is repealed, or else many
of the people who are unemployed because of the minimum wage
will find themselves on the verge of starvation. Only after
allowing these people to make a living for themselves should
the federal government withdraw the life support it has
given them to sustain them despite the federal government's
own prohibitions imposed on their labor. Compounding the
difficulty further, it would be unwise to abolish the
minimum wage until the federal government can repeal all
forms of corporate welfare—the massive subsidies, special
privileges, and barriers to entry that artificially inflate
the size and scope of the most politically connected firms
and give them far more bargaining power vis-à-vis their
employees than any firm could ever hope to achieve in a free
market.
At the same time, how
much hope can we realistically have that today's federal
political class will stumble upon even a first approximation
of the path toward a limited government and a free society?
This set of political doctors will sooner try to
deliberately kill their patient than to gather the patience,
learning, and motivation to actually cure the patient's
ailment. The more viable path forward, then, is for
technology to move enough of the younger generations into a
brighter future that the political class will have no choice
but to get inexorably pulled along and gradually be replaced
by people of more enlightened disposition.
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Even more detestable was
the game of political brinkmanship played by both sides in the buildup to the
Orwellian cuts. A deal was reached a mere few hours before 800,000 federal
workers, but not the members of Congress deciding their fates, would be
furloughed without pay. While some of them, such as the TSA officers who
routinely go beyond even their agency's invasive protocols to grope and molest
innocent travelers, would have deserved it, most are simple functionaries of a
vast administrative machine dominated by a small, concentrated class of rent-seeking
elites and their comrades in high federal office. The workers who would have
suffered most have no real power and bear little to no blame for the detestable
abuses, waste, and coercion within the federal government. They were and remain
mere pawns in the political elites' cynical, manipulative game. Their inability
to carry out routine governmental functions, rightfully appropriated by the
federal government or not, would have harmed numerous private citizens who did
nothing wrong. Millions of people would have become poorer, unable to receive
promised tax refunds (refunds of their own money), obtain permission for home
loans to clear (and the requirement to obtain such federal permission would not
have been suspended), or even visit the "public lands" for whose upkeep they
have unfailingly paid their tax dollars. A federal-government shutdown would not
have reduced the scope and power of the federal government in any real way. It
would simply have made many Americans poorer by denying them whatever scraps of
their wealth and freedom the federal government would have otherwise deigned to
throw back at them. 
