The Impossibility of Limited Government

Now, once the protection monopoly is in place, a logic of its own is set in motion. Every monopolist takes advantage of his position. The price of protection will go up, and more importantly, the content of the law, that is the product quality, will be altered to the advantage of the monopolist and at the expense of others. Justice will be perverted, and the protector becomes increasingly an exploiter and an expropriator. More specifically, as the result of the territorial monopolization of protection, two tendencies are generated. First, a tendency towards the extensification of exploitation, and second, a tendency towards the intensification of exploitation.

  Originally local institutions, States have an inherent tendency, driven by self-interest, of wanting more income rather than less—toward territorial expansion. The more subjects a State protects—or rather exploits—the better it is. The competition between States—that is, territorial monopolists—is an eliminative competition: either I am the monopolist or you are the monopolist of ripping people off.

  Moreover, with numerous States, people can easily move with their feet. However, a loss of population from the point of view of the State, is a bothersome problem. Hence, States almost automatically come into conflict with each other, and one way of solving this conflict, from a statist viewpoint, is territorial expansion: either by means of war or intermarriage, and sometimes by outright purchase. Ultimately, this tendency would come to a halt only with the establishment of a one-world single state.

  The second tendency is the intensification of exploitation. Extensifying exploitation—ripping people off—of a State monopoly, implies in and of itself an intensification, because the smaller the number of competing states—that is, the larger the State territories become—the less are the opportunities of voting with one’s feet. And under the scenario of a world State, wherever one goes, the tax and regulation structure is the same. That is, with the threat of immigration gone, monopolistic exploitation will naturally increase—that is to say, the price of protection will rise, and the quality will fall.

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