22A043 Let Us Be! by Jim Davies, 10/25/2022

In 1681 an eager-beaver French finance minister (J-B Colbert) asked a group of prominent businessmen what his government could do to help them. Their spokesman Le Gendre famously replied "Laissez-nous Faire!" - that is, let us do (it), leave us alone, let us be. We don't want your help, we can manage perfectly well on our own.

Would that prominent businessmen of today would say the same.

To let us be, to leave us alone, is one thing that no government can afford to do; for very quickly everyone would realize that its whole existence is a fraud; that it is simply not needed. Then its managers and employees would have to find honest work; that is, a way to earn a living by voluntary exchange of services or goods for money. That would altogether ruin their fun; no longer would they be able to pretend to have some superior status, to rule, to live as parasites off everyone's labor.

This is wholly true within a society, domestically, as we all have good reason to know. It's also true between different governments, among countries. If the chance arises, none of them are content to leave other governments alone.

Thus the BritGov, two centuries ago, would not let the American colonists go, or not without a nasty fight, after which they did. And thus Lincoln's government later refused to let the Southern States go from the Union, causing an even nastier fight - which, alas, he won.

Once having gained power, the common characteristic of governments is that they will surrender it only under extreme pressure, such as the loss of a war. There are exceptions, but not many.

Take Poland in 1939 for example. The Germanic city of Danzig had been "given" to Poles in 1919 but its residents wanted to rejoin Germany; Warsaw would not let them go, especially after the BritGov, imagining it had some divine authority to run Europe, promised to intervene if Germans took it anyway. Hence WW2 and its 60- to 80 million deaths.

Take the USSR, for another; after successfully expelling Hitler's hordes in the later part of that war from Russia and the rest of Eastern Europe, it clamped hold on all the "liberated" countries and refused to let them run their own affairs - for 45 years, until their benighted Marxist system inevitably collapsed.

Then take NATO, formed to resist any possible Soviet expansion Westwards; instead of disbanding after that collapse took place, it doubled its membership so as to reverse the threat by enclosing the much-improved Russia. The latter wishes only to be left alone to live its independent way; NATO won't let it.

Even more recently take Ukraine, whose government is hanging on to people in two or three of its regions who have clearly stated they wish to secede and join Russia; were it just to let them go - laissez faire - the present war would end.

There are many other areas - even within Europe - whose residents have said they would like t0 be independent of their host countries. In Belgium, Dutch speakers in Flanders (the North) wish not to belong with the Francophones in the South (Wallonia.) In France, Alsatians in the East wish to be independent and so do the Basques near the Spanish border. Across it, the Spanish Basques are one of twelve groups wanting to break free of Spanish rule. And on and on; this site describes more. But in none of these cases will the ruling government let them secede - or not without violence.

One theoretical way to end the government era is to encourage an endless series of secessions everywhere, until the number of seceded "states" equals the number of human beings. At the rate it's been going so far, however, that will take a while and shed a terrible amount of blood. I think there's a much faster way.