THE CITY
concludes. And they also understand that government does not need to be vested in the hands of one man to be tyrannical. Democracies are just as capable of becoming tyrannical: all they have to do is dis‐ regard law and govern by raw power. Tyranny is, in fact, not really government at all. Under a tyranny men do not live under laws, but under the whim of other men. There is no predictable mechanism for resolving disputes. There is no real security or public order because the tyrant—whether a man, a mob, or a bureaucracy—may, at any moment, decide to rob or murder any citizen. The tyrant’s decisions are arbitrary, unreliable, and final. John Locke asked regarding tyranny, “I desire to know what kind of gov‐ ernment that is, and how much better it is than the state of nature, where one man, commanding a multitude, has the liberty to be judge in his own case, and may do to all his subjects whatever he pleases, without the least liberty to any one to question or control those who execute his pleasure?” It is, in fact, no government at all. “Much bet‐ ter it is in the state of nature, wherein men are not bound to submit to the unjust will of another.” This is the libertarian paradise. However, it is difficult to organize an effective and long‐lasting tyranny because it requires intelligence and cooperation to design and sustain a highly‐organized system of oppression. Man’s stupidity happily limits his capacity to implement man’s evil. Cooperation must come voluntarily through trust or it must be coerced through terror. Trust is hard to sustain because people are evil—even tyran‐ nies are undermined by corruption, petty graft, turf wars, and bu‐ reaucratic infighting. Terror, on the other hand, is hard to orchestrate and sustain because people are stupid—totalitarianism is a complex and sophisticated undertaking. Libertarians are right to fear tyranny, but they often give proto‐tyrants more credit than they’re due. As a result, dire libertarian warnings about the encroachment of the state often sound like Chicken Little or the boy who cried wolf. In fact, there is an equally dangerous possibility at the opposite pole from tyranny. Government is a difficult art, especially large, effective government over an expansive territory. Many governments fail not only to impose a tyranny worth fearing, but any semblance of government at all. The evilness of human nature can be channeled into oppressive concentrations of power, but the stupidity of human nature can sometimes take over and simple resist any exercise of power in institutions, governments, and entire nations at all, a point 22