As fine an argument for minarchy as you’ll ever see

This always amuses us:

He’s commander-in-chief of chaos. Now we’re all victims of Trump’s wars

Nesrine Malik

New tariffs, gas price rises, the deaths of thousands, insecurity … We’re living at the whim of one capricious, vain, easily bored man and his gang of stooges

Not Ms. Malik’s columns that amuse, but the insistence that it’s so terrible that a bad person has all this political power.

It simply is true that if we concentrate power - of any kind - into one place then those who desire power over others will attempt to occupy that position. So as to have that power, d’ye see?

The answer to the wrong people gaining such power is not to have the concentrations of power.

We are not commenting upon whether Trump is good or bad as a person to have such power. Only upon the logic of the argument as presented. For one of the things we have observed over the decades is that The Guardian is very rarely* happy with any occupant of such a position of power. There’s always something bad they’re doing, something good they’re not.

That every powerful politician is such a disappointment is an obvious clue to the idea that power should not be so concentrated. The answer is therefore minarchy. Do not allow government to have such power over us and thereby reduce the risk when that wrong person does gain power. For, as long as we remain a democracy, it really is going to be true that the other side will have a turn now and again. So, don’t construct a system with so much concentrated power that you don’t want the wrong person to have it.

Less government, minarchy, it works. And the best advertisement for it working is the government we currently get.

Tim Worstall

*The exception is of Polly Toynbee’s ritual praisesinging of any incoming Labour PM. The “one-eyed Viking” of two decades back still amuses.