The Welfare State and the Pseudo-Anarchist
States have two tools for staying in power. Without either of those tools politicians would be run out of town or strung up from lampposts.
The first is the welfare state. The welfare state came out of Bismarck’s Germany in the 19th century. The Kaiser needed a plan to stop the newly freed serfs from overthrowing the ‘accepted order of things’.
Bismarck came up with the welfare state.
It was evil, but it was genius. It was a way of controlling newly freed people in such a way that ‘the people’ approved of the very system that ensured that they would immediately return to the status of serfs (dependent upon their Lords and Masters)… though this time voluntarily.
It’s success was instantaneous and led quickly to its adoption in other western countries.
The second tool of The State used to justify their existence is the fear of the alternative.
The State created the bogey-man of the pseudo-anarchist. The pseudo-anarchist was a fire-breathing, bomb throwing, wanton killer of men, women and children, not to mention babies.
Without The State to protect society, we would all immediately revert to the barbarism of these pseudo-anarchists.
It is of course a fairy story as the collapse of States, and they do collapse with great regularity, is never accompanied by such mindless violence.
When one of the two tools collapses then so will The State. My bet is on the collapse of the welfare state. It was always a giant pyramid scheme. The State spent all the money that it confiscated. Not a single penny was put aside.