I love thought experiments: they cost nothing but time, involve no complex instruments, can be run in a variety of permutations, virtually instantaneously. Here’s one:
Let’s say Seattle is home to a very large and restive group of businesspersons. Call them the “John Galt Society.” One Sunday (they’re busy working every other day of the week), goaded to frenzy by the latest tax increases, they march en masse to Downtown Seattle and occupy a six-block-square area in the heart of the Business District.
They set up roadblocks and stop traffic; quickly declare they have established an “autonomous zone;” a group announces that henceforth, in the “Galt Autonomous Zone,” or “GAZ,” there will be no further payment of property taxes and that the businesses therein will “no longer act as tax collectors for the Fascist Washington State Government,” so sales taxes are equally null and void.
How fast does one think that mayor Jenny Durkan, who previously said that the comparable “Capital Hill Autonomous Zone” would maybe result in a “Summer of Love” if left alone, would screech that this sort of anarchy was impermissible? How long would it take Governor Inslee, who apparently didn’t even know about the formation of “CHAZ” to whistle up the National Guard to crush this band of crazy revolutionaries?
I think they’d move so fast the wheels on their thousand-dollar executive chairs would melt ruts into their high-end glass chair mats.
Because in the Soviet of Washington, violent and destructive actions against the enemies of the state – even those previously part of the state who, like Nikolai Bukharin, couldn’t keep up with the changes – are perfectly acceptable. The police must go and anarchy reign because the mob must be appeased. The Vanguard of the Revolution must be protected by any means necessary.
Whereas those who raise the same cry as they who gave us our country are crazy counter-revolutionaries who must be crushed immediately. The idea that money belongs to the people who make it rather than to the state is so dangerous that it must be wiped from the Earth before anyone hears it.
To stand the old Creole quip on its head, “Tell me whom you hate and I’ll tell you who you are.” In this case the answer to the first part of the sentence is clear; the second part, it seems to me, is people who have no business being near the levers of power. Anywhere.
