Without the State, Who Would Incinerate California?

Image credit: US Forest Service.

(From January 16, 2025.)

It is freezing where I live. Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear has declared a state of emergency because of the snow storms here. This means that the Kentucky National Guard, and other state workers have been made available to respond if needed, and an "emergency operations center" has been opened, as have local "warming centers". The state is also doing its best to prevent people from getting goods and services to where they are most desperately needed, with its price-gouging law, and an online reporting system where people can rat out businesses responding in a rational way to market forces. If we are especially lucky, FEMA will not show up to help us.

But it could be worse. It could be much, much, worse. We could be in California.

There, last week, friends and family filled their cars with gas, readied pet carriers, and threw irreplaceable items into laundry baskets, in case they needed to evacuate their homes on a moment's notice. The images we've seen are – horrifying is not even the right word for witnessing a world you once lived in go up in flames.

It is hard to take in, and hard to believe. Our son's Montessori school, nestled in the foothills of Altadena, is gone forever. Entire stretches where we used to drive, enjoy meals and take in the view, now look very much like the remains of cities firebombed in war. We know of many people who have lost their homes - some have seen entire neighborhoods that they grew up in reduced to piles of ash.

Most sickening is just how easily all of this could have been prevented – had preventing it been in the interests of those with the power to do so.

Back in 2020, I wrote "(i)t is as if the state of California has been assaulted by a hostile foreign power." I was writing primarily about the lockdowns, and also that government's long history of hostility to small businesses, and really anyone trying to make a living. I also mentioned the fires – which in that year, destroyed more than two million acres. Five years later, the only difference is that government actors have been emboldened by five years of not being thrown in prison for large scale human-rights violations.

Now, on top of suicidal forest-management policies and state management of the water supply that results in the state dumping 95% of the state's incoming rainwater into the ocean, while fining homeowners who water their lawns on the wrong day, the City of Los Angeles has also fired over a hundred fire fighters for not taking the Covid-19 vaccine, and – with the help of the state government's finely honed water-management skills – found itself unable to keep fire hydrants adequately supplied with water.

It is almost as if those in power hate us.

Do I mean that the fires were set deliberately by the California government? Who knows. Do I believe members of that government are capable of such an act of deliberate evil? Absolutely yes. But it does not need to have been a deliberate act in order for us to recognize that those in power have very little interest in preventing such disasters – and that they do have an interest in making them worse.

If you or I, or any normal human being who didn't wield extraordinary power over the lives of other people, were to cause anything approaching this level of destruction, even if only through negligence, we would be hauled before a court and likely thrown in prison for a very long time.

But none of the people whose actions are responsible for the destruction caused by the Los Angeles fires will be.

The system has built walls to protect itself, and those who act on its behalf, from any kind of meaningful accountability. The damage to people's property, and the loss of life, caused by Governor Newsom's reckless and deadly policies – regardless of what his motives may have been – are things that he will never personally have to pay for. The worst that can happen to him within this system is that he will fail to be re-elected.

Think about that.

Think about being able to do things that cause this degree of harm to this many people. Think about being able to literally burn the state of California to the ground, and the only thing that might happen to you is you lose your job.

No jail time, no guillotine. Just unemployment. And a cushy pension to ease the blow.

This is the entire problem. And not only for California.

STOP CALLING IT INEPTITUDE

Those in positions of authoritarian power benefit from chaos and threats of danger. This is central to the story of our development into an authoritarian society. Randolph Bourne knew this, Robert Higgs knows it. Governments use the threat of far-flung enemies, or deadly pathogens, or really anything that comes to mind, to grab even more power for themselves, and to frighten those living under them into compliance. These are not new insights. But as a society, we act as if we've never heard them before, and can't imagine that they might describe the reality we live in.

How bad does it have to get before we grasp what is going on? How many states have to go up in flames before Americans realize that our government, and governments, are not on our side? That their interests are not only not aligned with ours, they are for the most part diametrically opposed to ours. That our government/governments are, in fact, our enemy?

At what point do we come to recognize the obvious reality that if we create a space in our society where there is no accountability for one's actions, the people who flood into that space will – and do – use that special power against the rest of us. They will steal our property, they will shut down our businesses, they will poison our air and our food, they will forcibly prevent us from fixing our own problems, and healing our illnesses. They will kill us.

That point needs to be now.

The institution of the monopoly state is a deadly thing. The reason for that is in the name itself. We all understand why monopolies are bad in the marketplace: A single producer no longer needs to fear competition from other producers and is free to raise prices and degrade product quality without limit.

Of course, in a marketplace, there are limits. Even if the bogeyman of the free-market generated monopolist were a real thing (it is not), as long as people are free to choose to buy a product or not, they are never completely held hostage by a non-coercive monopolist. They can, at some point, just say "I'd rather do without, than pay three-quarters of my annual salary for a crappy can opener that doesn't even open cans."

But you can't do that with the state. You have to pay for their crappy can openers whether they work or not, whether you want them or not, whether or not you even own any cans. And you have to pay whatever the state says you have to pay.

How do you think that works out for the consumers of this product?

Do you think we might expect to see things like fire hydrants that don't have any water? Medical treatments that kill people? Forestry management that guarantees massively destructive infernos every few years? Dumping billions of gallons of water into the ocean while fining homeowners who water their lawns because there is a "drought"?

Don't you think that if these things were the result of "incompetence", that occasionally that incompetence would work in our favor? That every once in a while, it might churn out a result that helped ordinary Americans in some way, rather than destroyed our property, sucked away our wealth, and threatened our lives?

Stop calling it "incompetence."

These people are not incompetent. They just don't want the same things you and I want. And the sooner a lot more of us understand that, the sooner we can get on with addressing the real problem.