The books we remember most are the ones that change our minds or redirect our thoughts. Most readers consume books and ideas that only confirm their existing worldview. Instead of seeking enlightenment, many readers wish only to satisfy themselves that they are already smart. And the books they read confirm it.
But today’s world is in constant turmoil. This turmoil is not necessarily negative; it is more Schumpeterian: technology is constantly making our world and ideas about the world obsolete — not in decades or centuries, but in years, months, weeks, or even days.
This sort of change unsettles individuals and organizations set in their ways and unwilling to adapt. People who pine for the “good old days,” “old-time religion,” and “returning to the Constitution.” Governments that always “fight the last war” and provide “safety and security” at the expense of freedom.
Technology is reinventing the world. Old ways of thinking must give way to new possibilities. Adapting slowly may be comfortable, but it means getting left behind. Just as the Marxists once denounced “the anarchy of the marketplace,” we know now that it is precisely this unfettered marketplace that is creating a more-prosperous and peaceful world. If it is anarchy, it is beautiful: uninhibited by government restrictions, edicts, and violence. This is a world of endless possibilities.
It’s a world that’s hard to imagine, conditioned as we are to think inside the government box. Thankfully, we have someone to imagine it for us, to transition us to becoming early adopters of the freedom that technology provides each and every day.
That someone is Spy Briefing publisher and executive editor Jeffrey Tucker. The book that will change your life is A Beautiful Anarchy: How to Create Your Own Civilization in the Digital Age. It is released first in the Spy Briefing Club and then more generally later.
Tucker’s fervor for freedom is unmatched. This is his hymn to the possibilities for human freedom in the digital age, the possibilities for seceding (as much as possible) from the world controlled by the leviathan of the physical world.
With each and every page he presents a new reality to the reader: a way of looking at the world that is transforming. Why does Facebook work, while democracy doesn’t? Governments are never stable while wrecking the physical world. Copyright impoverishes us all, and at the same time the price system and commerce are our best friends.
A Beautiful Anarchy moves at a blistering pace, yet is rich and satisfying, chock-full of insights and ideas that will make you see the world a different way. Although not written with an overarching idea in mind, like the market itself, the book’s individual chapters work together to make a cohesive order.
There are plenty of authors in the freedom movement adept at telling the reader why liberty works, but it is Tucker’s brilliant imagery that shows the benefits of laissez faire. He views the world with his eyes wide open and sees ”essentially ordered anarchy.” Thank goodness the world Tucker sees from his airplane window is not planned top to bottom by government bureaucrats.
There is no “one click” in government. For all the rumored high-tech surveillance and the like that government is supposedly undertaking, the government people see and encounter day to day deploys none of the latest technology. Rules, uniforms, and thuggery are the government’s tools.
Notice for instance, all technology used by the travel industry ends at the TSA checkpoints. Shoes and belts come off, the latest electronics are put in a plastic tub, and the ultimate protection against terrorism is an old-fashioned person-to-person pat-down. You would have been in for the same treatment if you went to see the king in medieval times. Once you cross the border, technology resumes.
The state sees the citizenry as cattle it must herd or ants it must crush. Individuals and individuality are lost in the leviathan state. The hopes and dreams of individuals are just burdensome annoyances to the agenda of government: easily dashed without thought or pity.
But looking down from 30,000 feet, Tucker sees “precious and awesome complexity, an order that can be observed but never controlled from the top.” Citing Hayek, Tucker doesn’t think central planners have a chance. Its a knowledge problem government can’t solve. “It is a problem of the utilization of knowledge which is not given to anyone in its totality,” Hayek wrote.
So while government meddles and hinders, the genius of individual innovation, effort, and entrepreneurship pushes society ahead, running through or around the roadblocks political systems erect. Socialism can slow progress to a crawl, crony capitalism distort and misdirect, while ultimately prosperity would roar ahead to levels we can’t imagine if laissez faire were allowed.
Fans of Tucker’s other two books, Bourbon for Breakfast and It’s a Jetsons World, looking for practical ways to work around government regulations will not be disappointed with his latest effort. The author devotes a number of chapters to working around government regulations on products like gas cans, lawn mowers, and microwaves. Freedom is not just an abstract exercise for Tucker.
And as busy and focused as the author is, popular culture does not escape his view. He shares his unique take on new movies, books, and restaurants and provides reflections on the numerous trips he has taken over the past year. In a chapter making the case for child labor, Tucker makes his point with his own colorful work history growing up in Texas.
But Tucker isn’t focused on the past. It is the future he is concerned with. Real capitalism rewards those who are future oriented. Thus, for the most part, business people don’t like capitalism at all. Capitalism in anarchy makes consumers prosperous at the expense of businesses. Unfettered competition drives profit margins to zero, while consumers continually get better deals.
Tucker explains that business is always running to government for protection from competition of all kinds, whether it’s technology, imports, or startup businesses. It’s fascism, mercantilism, or socialism that these businesses really want. “Capitalism is not for wimps who don’t want to improve,” he writes.
And so it is with A Beautiful Anarchy. The reader must have an open mind and be ready to embrace change, progress, and improvement — and see past government oppression of the possibilities created by market anarchy.
Capitalism wrapped in a government security blanket only relegates us to poverty and despair. Individuals must be set free. Businesses must be set free. There can be true prosperity only with complete anarchy. The place to start is with your own mind.
