America, Land of the Social Security Check, Home of the Welfare Dependent

I applied for Medicare on Friday.  I'm going to be 65 in roughly three months.  When I called the Social Security Agency (welcome to socialist America),  I had an hour-and-fifteen-minute wait before I could get through, and they told me that I had to apply online.  Mark Zuckerberg needs to know, and make no mistake, Facebook can know if it wants to.  The Social Security website froze me out because I had typed in the wrong password when I had checked it several months before, so I called the helpline, which involved an additional 50-minute wait.  The young government worker was helpful, and I eventually applied after a four-hour battle.

As I was waiting on voicemail, the SSA proudly announced that 50 million Americans are currently on Social Security.  The number of Americans on means-tested welfare is roughly the same, about 52 million.  If you add the number of government employees, about 22 million, that's 124 million.  In July 2017 there were 252 million Americans over age 18, the voting age.  That means that 124/252 = 49.2% of Americans are dependent on the state. If you add to that the people who work in zombie industries that would not exist without state support-- including Wall Street, the auto industry, and public partnership real estate--the percentage of voters who depend on government is well above 50%.

In other words, the productive sector in America is well below 50% of the economy.  So much for land of the free, home of the brave--or liberty and justice for all.  America is a socialist welfare state with a dependent population.

I recently finished Garrett C. Fagan's audio  Roman history series from the Great Courses, which was a wonderful experience. The Great Courses lectures are all wonderful, and Rome was one of my favorites, along with Vejas G. Liulevicius's World War I. Fagan teaches at Penn State and Liulevicius teaches at the University of Tennessee.  My next one will be William R. Cook's history of the Catholic Church.  

In between, though, I am listening to Tucker Carlson's audio book Ship of Fools. Carlson makes a number of excellent points, and I am finding the book to be educational. Also, his writing is sharp.  I'm only up to Chapter Three. (I listen to all this in my car, so it is slow going.)

Carlson blames much of the recent decline in the American economy on elite selfishness and immigration.   Some of  his arguments parallel Christopher Lasch's in his books The Revolt of the Elites and The Culture of Narcissism.  Like Lasch, Carlson notes that the segregation of elites in all-white, upper-income neighborhoods makes them insensitive to the effects of the policies they advocate.   

Carlson's pillorying of Democratic Party looters is awesome. His discussion of dumbed-down, overprivileged millennial Chelsea Clinton is hilarious, and his discussion of  Mark Zuckerberg and the ugly effects of Facebook are eye opening.  He accurately depicts the Southern Poverty Law Center as a one-time opponent of racism that has become a fraudulent partisan advocate for Democratic Party elitists.  

As well, Carlson accurately depicts the current economy as one of decline for the average American and one of subsidization and privilege for financial, political, and technology elites.  However, a point of disagreement is that Carlson places the blame on immigration. 

Real wages have stagnated for the past 50 years, since the early 1970s, when immigrants were less than five percent of the population. Immigration is not the reason for stagnant real wages. It is at most a contributory factor, but in the absence of regulation and subsidization, immigration flows would adjust to the market- clearing level.  Native Americans ought to enjoy an economic advantage over immigrants, who do not know the language and culture. Increasing the minimum wage is likely harming immigrants, whose labor is less valuable than native speakers.  I'm not convinced that immigration is the real problem, and Carlson does not offer much fact for his claim.  The real hourly wage began to stagnate in the 1970s, right after the abolition of the gold standard and less than 10 years after the establishment of Medicare and Medicaid. By 1980 immigrants were still only six percent of the population, but real wages hadn't grown in seven or eight years. 

At the same time, it may be time to put a moratorium on immigration because of the anger it has caused. I have heretofore been in favor of open immigration, but about ten years ago I remember thinking that perhaps a moratorium on immigration might be helpful to American workers, who have suffered grievously at the hands of the Fed, the Democratic Party, and big government.  In general, a free economy based on limited government will result in optimal economic outcomes, including rising real wages, modest income inequality, and a stock market, with six percent returns.  In the 19th century most of the returns from the stock market were in the form of dividends.   

Besides immigration, my chief point of disagreement with Carlson is that he seems to believe that old-fashioned state activist liberalism--New Deal liberalism,--ought to be the new conservatism.  The old-fashioned state activist liberalism of the 1930-1970s may still capture President Trump's supporters' imaginations, but it will not restore the economy; it will not restore real wage growth; it will not return the country to the rapid economic growth of the laissez faire, Progressive, and New Deal eras (which ended in the 1960s).  

It is true that much of America's elite--the Clintons, Buffetts, Goldman Sachses, Zuckerbergs, Soroses--are a cancer on the average wage. It is also true that New Deal policies led directly to their ascendancy, and the group that was in power before them was already taking the country down a primrose path. Replacing today's rapacious, politically correct, finance-and-technology elites with the military-industrial complex about which Eisenhower and C Wright Mills warned and included George HW Bush's dad, Prescott Bush,  will not change the underlying problem, which is the result of monetary and regulatory systems controlled by a centralized, special-interest dominated state. The federal government has squashed real wages and allocated credit to crappy technology like Facebook,  crooked Wall Streeters like George Soros, and crooked hacks like the Clintons and Bushes.

Franklin Roosevelt, copying the innovations of Gustav von Schmoller and Bismarck in Germany, implemented a system that has similarities to what brothers Tiberius and Gaius Gracchus imagined for Republican Rome in the early phases of the Roman Revolution, which led to its becoming a dictatorship, then an empire, and ultimately a monarchy:  Their plan was to give the plebeians cheap grain. (Later in the empire Emperor Septimius Severus made grain free.)    The dislocations of World War I and Progressive eras paralleled the processes in the Roman Revolution, which lasted about 150 years.  Although the Progressive era was short, its system may last for as long as the early empire and the Pax Romana, which lasted 150-200 years.  It may be that in 2,000 years historians will view our era as an extension of the Progressive and World War I eras. This is already occurring as historians are beginning to view the two world wars as one war.   

It is sad to see an America with the beautiful ideals of Locke and Jefferson turned into a bread-and-circus, totalitarian state dominated by the nincompoops of today's state, technology, and finance elites and their dumbed-down propagandist-journalists.  Carlson's hilarious depiction of psychopath Max Boot is on the money.

Even if  President Trump follows the proscriptions of Carlson and slows the looting by state, technology, and Wall Street elites, there is little hope for improvement because Americans have been satisfied with a $16,000 Social Security benefit, a welfare check, and Medicare. The dynamics of public choice and special interest behavior guarantee that a large, centralized government will benefit the most corrupt and opportunistic, and  Carlson's debate with the Democrats ignores the underlying dynamic. 

America a Republic, Not a Democracy

Mairi sent me the second video below from the Saving the Republic site. I liked the first one even more:

Power and Rationality

Decentralization enforces pragmatism. In a competitive economy markets test firms. Decentralization creates competition and so the possibility of failure. Without failure there is no pragmatism, for experiments fail more often than they succeed.

Centralization presupposes the ability of the rational mind to solve problems. It denigrates or neglects experimentation, even as it uses the rhetoric of science as its rationale. Without trial and error there is no science and no reason. There is no such thing as a priori expertise. Progressivism claims to be a movement of experts, but its claims are self contradictory. Progressivism forestalls experimentation by centralizing decisions. Progressivism is (a) ideological and (b) aims to facilitate the operation of special interests. It uses the rhetoric of "conscience" rooted in Christianity to justify special interest brokerage.

The use of centralization to facilitate special interests goes back to the Romans. The institution of free bread to the proletarians began with the Republic, and Septimius Severus increased the welfare benefits as well as special benefits to the military two centuries later. Septimius's escalation of welfare in Rome preceded Rome's fall by over a century. The Romans justified centralization of power in part in terms of welfare benefits to Roman citizens, but the biggest beneficiaries were businesses that catered to the Roman state, the military industrial complex.

Like the ancient Romans, Progressivism re-distributes wealth using claims of social welfare. However, its project is complicated by technological and scientific discovery that evolved out of Hellenic and barbaric decentralization. In order to coopt the source of progress, Progressivism needs to claim that it offers a superior method of scientific advance. It develops this claim through the ritualization and control of knowledge in universities. It also develops methodologies of allocating the "right" to think through IQ and other standardized tests that have validity. Such validity is partially related to the ability to invent or to create economic value, but to a greater degree to the ability to accomplish tasks within parameters, e.g., to perform a job well. IQ tests have been validated with respect to job performance but NOT with respect to entrepreneurship. Studies of millionaires do NOT find that they have extraordinarily high IQs, merely above average. Rather, they have moral, time preference and interpersonal skill characteristics that facilitate acquisition of wealth.

Development of methods of wealth creation is at part dependent upon the characteristics that IQ measures, but far from exclusively so. Progressivism limits access to universities based on IQ, then claims that universities are the chief source of wealth creation. National wealth is allocated to university-approved projects, specifically finance, legal and banking interests whose ranks are dominated by university graduates. Central planners come up with failed ideas, but ones with good rationales. IQ facilitates the spinning of manipulative explanations but without decentralization, experimentation and failure characteristic of markets IQ is not capable of innovation.

The result is a society that fixates on allocation of human resources through standardized tests and then subsidizes those with the highest IQs through government. Elements of risk are included. The economy becomes a casino, entry to which is made possible through admission to an elite university. Power rather than market and rituals associated with rationality rather than reason determine allocation of wealth. The system is self perpetuating and susceptible to manipulation. It is a system characteristic of decline.

Septimius Severus, Progressivism and the Banality of Evil

Going through Rostovtzeff's Social and Economic History of the Roman Empire leads to a question: Is the pattern of the rise and fall of Rome similar to the pattern of events that the United States has been and is experiencing? The answer is complicated but I would argue that on a certain level of abstraction the two are parallel. The similarity is most direct in comparing the sequence of events following Progressivism to the decline of Rome, specifically to Americans' adoption of a rigid state strategy, Progressivism, as opposed to flexibility and decentralization characteristic of states' rights and laissez-faire capitalism. The differences between Rome and the American experience were most pronounced in America's 17th through the 19th centuries. The American model of progress differed sharply from Rome's. But the twentieth century might be called America's Roman age, for America adopted not so much the Roman techniques but the formulaic rigidity that characterized the Roman model, although there was greater emphasis on conquest and imperialism beginning with the Progressive era. As well, Progressivism and the New Deal adopted the Antonine and Severine strategy of playing the proletariat against the capitalist in order to concentrate power at the imperial height, i.e., in Washington cum Rome. America's adoption of the philosophy of Progressivism and the New Deal was the Romanization of the United States.

Rome fell because it was inflexible. All civilizations, like most business firms, are to some degree. It was in the adoption of a rigid formula, Progressivism; reform through experts; centralized control of the money supply hence the economy through the Federal Reserve Bank; a large military; and universities to supply advice and provide the experts, that America parallels Rome. Not in these policies themselves, but in the existence of a pre-determined strategy and the creation of an elite that depends on favors from a centralized source. The similarity is this. All strategies and policies reach breaking points. Civilizations fail when they lack the flexibility to redeploy assets in response to strategic failures. The ability to change and to experiment is more important than a specific strategy. Adoption of high fixed cost, large-scale strategies leads to ridigity and the unwillingness to experiment. The emphasis on economies of scale, which was associated with Progressivism, hearkens back to the Roman model of progress which also depended on large, institutionalized state-backed military-industrial complex.

In comparing any two large groupings of humanity there will be differences and similarities. The key difference between Rome and the US is the American concept of liberty, which differs from the ancient concept and which, in turn, led to the idea of spontaneous progress through private enterprise. Spontaneous order rooted in decentralization and liberty of decentralized units versus the Roman vision of centralized control and duplicative decentralization. The American approach led to technological advance that might have been seen 2,000 years ago if the Greek world had predominated over the Roman instead of the other way around.

The Roman concept of progress was based on conquest, political manipulation (co-opting the upper classes of conquered nations) and exploitation. By our standards the Romans were cruel and destructive. This is not just a moral question. The Roman model of progress, because of its rigidity and its assumption of a fixed pie, placed limitations on the Romans' ability to become wealthy. The rigid commitment to the model of conquest, establish cities, establish a dominant local elite, and exploit the majority as tenant farmers, serfs or slaves, what might be called the Romans' resource-dependent model of expansion (as opposed to the Americans' learning- or technologically based- model) led ultimately to Rome's decline. Sadly, Americans have increasingly adopted the resource-based model at the expense of the learning-based one. Witness the policies surrounding the recent financial and banking failures, which involved subsidies and insistence on control rather than organizational death and renaissance.

However, the Roman model was robust and the ascendancy of Rome lasted seven centuries. Time is not a perfect indicator because the pace of travel and communication were slower. Also, the Romans created intolerable conditions for many inhabitants of the conquered nations. Although the system was stable it was violent, exploitative and cruel.

The Romans did permit considerable latitude to the private sector, and there was a considerable amount of capitalistic agriculture, shipping and manufacturing. But the role these played was to serve the military-industrial complex. Rome's wealth could only increase through new conquest. They did not imagine that technological advance or business innovation could enhance wealth. The Romans did not envision progress through technology, learning, invention or better products. There was learning and advance in areas like law, engineering and construction and, as well, there were sophisticated farming and shipping enterprises. But these largely relied on technologies that the Greeks, especially the Hellenic cities of Asia Minor, had innovated. Rome invented the military-industrial complex. It existed on a smaller scale in medieval and mercantilist Europe and it also existed in Greece, China and elsewhere. Prior to Progressivism America was isolationist and economic activity entrepreneurial. The centralization of industry opened the door to the argument that Progressive government was needed to protect the poor. This was the argument of Hadrian and Septimius Severus. Few would argue that the Roman Emperors were primarily concerned with the poor. We know, historically, that the lot of European peasants did not improve from the Second to th Fourteenth centuries. Yet, many Americans believe Progressives' claims, the claims of Theodore and Franklin Roosevelt, that they were for the poor. Yet, real wages started declining less than 30 years after FDR's death, and they have not recovered.

Coordination of the massive land area that it had conquered posed important managerial challenges that Rome had to meet through decentralization. But the decentralization it practiced led to reduction in the value of the conquered provinces. It was an imposed decentralization that inhibited spontaneous development. Rome tended to destroy cultural differences and initiative and to aim to homogenize the elites of each conquered province. The provinces were to be clones of Rome. In turn, their provincial agricultural and economic surplus was Rome's.

As the extent of the empire grew, the cost of expanding further increased and the benefit from expanding further decreased. Part of this was simple mechanics. The Empire's circumference became larger; there were more threats; greater distances to travel. As well, as Rome went further from the Mediterranean the level of civilization was lower and the difficulties in establishing footholds greater.

To enable the conquered colonies to turn into decentralized duplicates or mini-Romes, Rome had to build urban centers in each one. It spent huge amounts of money building urban centers in all of the colonies. The purpose of the urban centers was to create an elite who would dominate the colony on behalf of Rome. It encouraged urbanization to create Romanization of the conquered populations. But in order to Romanize, resources had to be diverted to support the urban centers and subsidize "bourgeois" regional elites.

In effect, Rome was involved in a "pyramid scheme" that lasted seven centuries. In order to become wealthy it needed to conquer new provinces that in turn subsidized the mother-city and Italy. In order to control the provinces it needed to create new urban centers that absorbed much of the wealth of the conquered colonies. To pay for the expansion and allow the new elites in the newly conquered provinces to prosper, additional conquest had to be made. Additional gain could only be achieved by new conquest. Over centuries the pyramid scheme became so unwieldy that it could not be continued. Stresses began to be felt in the time of the Flavian and Antonine emperors.

Moreover, decentralization weakened Rome and Italy because Romans had to settle in the provinces in order to accomplish the goal of replication of Roman society. In other words, the provincial urban centers were a combination of Roman expatriates and elite colonial nationals. The result was a hollowing out of Rome as the best and the brightest settled in Gaul, Spain, Britain, upper and lower Germany, Africa, Greece, Asia Minor, Egypt and Arabia.

A comparison of Rome and the United States suggests that decentralization needs to be spontaneous to be productive. Without decentralization Rome could not have functioned, but it lost the ultimate value of decentralization. This was inevitable because spontaneous decentralization is inconsistent with conquest.

The ultimate result of the duplicative decentralization policy was that Rome became ruled by non-Romans from the provinces. The reason was that the praetorian guard, the Roman army unit that protected the Emperor and Rome itself, had selected the Emperor. Historically, the scope of the provinces had become too large for a Roman national-dominated army to protect it. Moreover, the Romans did not trust their own proletariat and were reluctant to permit them to dominate the military. The result was a provincially-dominated military whose soldiers were not completely Romanized. The end result was an Emperor who himself was non-Roman. The pattern had begun with Augustus, but reached a head in the second and third century AD reign of Septimius Severus, the first foreign-born emperor and one who perpetuated Marcus Aurelius's institution of a hereditary monarchy.

Rostovtzeff describes the Antonine Emperors, Nerva, Trajan, Hadrian, Antonius Pius and Marcus Aurelius, as "enlightened". The Antonine pattern was that the Emperor would adopt the ablest Senator as his son, and power would be passed to the adopted son. Unfortunately for Rome, Marcus Aurelius broke this tradition and appointed his natural born son, Commodus, who was a poor ruler and in some ways paralleled Nero:

"He relied too much on the praetorian guard and the police corps of the capital, and neglected personal relations with the provincial armies...The repeated doles and other favors bestowed on the garrison of the capital...aroused their jealousy...The rumors about his dissipated life, his ignominious behaviour, and his liking for charioteers and gladiators, which were spread by the efforts of the officers, made it possible for the commanders of the most important armies, those of Britain, Pannonia and Syria, to take part in a military pronunciamento."

A senator, Pertinax, served briefly as Emperor, but the praetorians did not like him and murdered him. There was a civil war and for the first time the praetorians had become too weak to decide who the emperor would be. The provincial armies fought it out among themselves, and Septimius Severus, the leader of the Pannonian army in Germany and Illyria (what is now eastern Europe) ultimately prevailed after Didius Julianus bought the office from the praetorian guard and was deposed.

The pattern of economic development that Rome followed was that they conquered a nation. They built an urban center. They encouraged the elite of the nation to become educated in Roman culture and customs. The elite then supported Rome and adopted Roman culture. They permitted free enterprise, but the vast majority of the population was forced to work as tenant farmers. Industry became centralized because the largest markets were for state use: the army and Rome itself. Thus, farming had gone in the time of Augustus from peasant and self-owned to capitalistic farming. Ultimately, the state took control of considerable lands. Wealth became increasingly concentrated in the hands of the few who benefited from state contracts and trade. But trade was widespread and private manufacturing existed throughout the provinces, especially Alexandria. Much of the cost of administration was born by wealthy businessmen, in the form of what was called liturgies or duties. Eventually Rome required elite businessmen to collect taxes and perform other services as well.

As a usurper, Septimius Severus depended on the army for support. In response, he introduced military reforms and he dramatically increased the presence of barbarians in the Roman aristocracy and the Senate and made membership in the Roman aristocracy dependent on having a military career. He also increased military pay, exempted veterans from municipal liturgies and recognized marriages by soldiers.

To legitimize himself Septimius calimed to wish to avenge the murder of Pertinax, claimed to be Commodus' brother and forged papers showing that he had been adopted by Marcus Aurelius. Crucially, he adopted a policy of reconciliation with the peasants at the expense of urban centers and the wealthy. Rostovtzeff emphasizes:

"the legislation of the Empire was never more humane than in the age of the Severi. The great jurists of this time, Papinian, Ulpian, and Paulus, were given a free hand to develop their favorite humanitarian ideas of equal law for everybody and of the duty of protecting human life in general and the weak and the poor in particular. On the eve of the great social revolution for which the militarization of the Empire was preparing the way, Roman law displayed for the last time its noblest and most brilliant aspect...It is manifest, however, that the liberal social policy of Septimius was designed first and foremost to consolidate his own power and that of his dynasty. Like Commodus, he determined to base his power on the classes from which his soldiers were drawn: hence his liberal legislation and his measures for the protection of the peasants and the city proletariat against the ruling classes and the imperial administration...Septimius apparently wished to increase the numbers of free landowners on his estates, and he insisted on the strict adherence of the contractors and the procurators to the provisions of his predecessors..."

Like Hadrian and Commodus, Septimius aimed to win over the peasant population in Egypt and Asia Minor (p. 357). Rostovtzeff writes:

"We possess three or four petitions dating from the time of Septimius, all recently found in Lydia. After making complaints to the high officials and suffering disillusionment, the peasants appealed directly to the emperor, using the most devoted and loyal language. In one of the petitions their representative says: 'We beg of you, greatest and most sacred of all emperors, that having regard to your laws and those of your ancestors, and to your peace-making justice to all, and hating those whom you and all your ancestors on the throne have always hated, you will order...

"...Thus the policy of Septimius towards the humble was a policy of protection and concession. Towards the cities his attitude was different...We cannot forget the fate of Lyons in Gaul and of Byzantium. The former never recovered from the ruthless punishment meted out to it. Severe chastisement was also inflicted on Antioch. Scores of cities were obliged to pay enormous contributions because they had been forced to furnish money to ( Septimius's rival) Pescennius Niger. Of the confiscation of the property of of many members of the provincial aristocracy we have already spoken.

"More important than these temporary measures of repression was the general policy of Septimius towards the upper classes of the city population. In speaking of liturgies in the preceding chapter, I laid stress on the fact that Septimius was the first emperor who insisted upon the personal responsibility of the municipal magistrates. He was also the first who, with the help of his jurists, developed the oppressive system of liturgies into a permanent institution legalized, regularized and enforced by the state. The jurists who did most to elaborate the system and theory of munera (duties) were Papinian and Callistratus, the contemporaries of Septimius, and Ulpian, the adviser of Alexander Severus..."

Rostotzveff notes two liturgies, duties or taxes that Septimius reenforced (they had previously existed but he intensified them): decaprotia, or a duty or munera on the top ten citizens of a city; eikosaprotia, or a duty or munera on the top twenty citizens. Rostovtzeff adds:

"It is certain also that more systematic pressure was exercised by Septimius and his successors on the associations and corporations which served the state. The fact that Callistratus, in speaking of the organization of the munera in municipal life, devotes so much attention to the corporations (or trade associations), shows that Septimius, following the lead of his predecessors, particularly Hadrian, M. Aurelius and Commodus, minutely regulated the relations between the corporations and the cities. Specially important were the navicularii (shippers) and the merchants...It is significant of the position of these corporations that Callistratus emphasizes the assistance of the merchants and the service of the shipowners, and that he insists upon the point that both are performing a munus publicum (public duty)."

Thus, as in Progressivism, special interests played a role in the early decline of the Roman Empire. Like Franklin D. Roosevelt and the New Deal, Septimius saw an important advantage primarily in support for the poor:

"While helping in this way some members of the privileged classes whose service was needed by the state, or rather while endeavoring to ease somewhat the increasing pressure of the burden which lay on their shoulders, Septimius never forgot the interests of the humbler and poorer classes. It is probable that it was he who extended the privilege of exemption from the municipal liturgies to the tenants of the imperial estates. Very likely he was moved to do so by their repeated complaints about the arbitrary way in which, though not resident in the cities, they were forced by the municipal magistrates and the imperial officers to share the municipal burdens. In the petition of Aga Bey in Lydia the peasants lay great stress on this point and threaten the emperor with a mass strike in the form of an anachorasis

The end result was the squeezing of the well to do in favor of the poor and very wealthy:

"Some of the richest men being thus exempt, the owners of land and shops, belonging chiefly to the middle class, remained the sole bearers of liturgies. It was no wonder that they tried by various ingenious devices to escape these burdens, which undermined their economic prosperity."

Septimius engaged heavily in the redistribution of wealth, which in turn led to widespread criminality during his reign:

"Confiscations of landed property en masse convulsed economic life to an extent which must not be underestimated. Private capital and private initiative were thus removed from large and flourishing concerns and replaced by a new system of management, bureaucratic and lifeless in the extreme. Political persecutions on a large scale scared thousands of people, both guilty and innocent, and forced them to flee from their homes . The chief evil, however, was the enormous number of government agents, mostly soldiers performing the duties of policemen--the frumentarii, stationarii and colletiones--who in their pursuit of political criminals penetrated into all the cities and villages and searched private houses, and who were, of course, accessible to bribes...Still more serious were the exactions of these same agents in connexion with the frequent military expeditions of the emperor. In time of civil war no one cared a straw for the people. New recruits were levied in masses and compulsorily; means of transport and men were requisitioned for armies on the march; foodstuffs and war material also had to be supplied by the people; and quarters provided in their homes for soldiers and officers. The inscriptions mention many prominent men who were in charge of the war chest, that is to say, whose function it was to levy money contributions and war supplies from cities and individuals. These men naturally could not perform their duties without the aid of a mass of minor officials and soldiers, who swooped down like a swarm of locusts on the cities and villages, devouring their substance and scaring and exasperating all class of the population."

Naturally, American society has not reached such extremes. But as Hannah Arendt noted in her book Eichmann in Jerusalem, the modern world is characterized by the "banality of evil". Who needs officials to levy taxes and terrorize the population when this can be accomplished effortlessly through the Federal Reserve Bank?