Life After the State: Why We Don't Need Government 1st Edition

I loved this book for several reasons. The most important, perhaps, is its universality, at least in the western sense of the expression. Dominic Frisby, the author, is an English comedian (apart from some some other things), that one day decided to learn everything about that monster which is the state. As I was doing my own way on that topic I decided to shorten the road and see what Frisby had to tell us. And I have to say that I decided that even though the reality for Frisby, mainly UK and the US, could be very different from mine, which is Chile's.Well, the good news is that in every single topic the coincidences ranking high. The cause is a little bit obvious since a country like mine doesn't influence the rest of the world --being "the world" Europe and the United States. In short: we copy. We copy everything. And that's why Frisby was right on the mark when he talked about health care, bureaucracies or tax systems. Everything that happens there, it happens here also. I could see and experience all the shortcomings and inefficiencies, to say the least, that the monster is always dropping over us, the citizens, no matter where they are or where they come from.The book is organized in four parts: I) The rise of the monster, II) Money and tax: why you'll never be one of the 1%, III) Pillars of the state, and IV) Towards life after the state.Every part is composed of several chapters that explain the history by telling stories, like that of the first chapter on Scotland, that helps to compound the big picture of this machinery that no one knows how to stop (that's the reason, I guess, behind the title, formulated like a big expectation). And so, the track follows though the money (what is, why is as it is, how it was in the past), the taxes, the health care system, the education, the laws, not to mention the wars and revolutions. And in so doing, Frisby is always proposing alternatives that doesn't flow out of the blue but from history, pure and simple. And it makes sense as long as the state --as Frisby shows-- has almost always arrived late to improve a problem that sometimes not even existed.It's hard to imagine a life after the state. It's an impossibility that takes the form of a Philip K. Dick novel. Not one of us, if it had the power to do it, would abolish the state. We are afraid of even think about it. But this book let you know that every time that private interests or dark guys with so much money in their wallets, are accused of fraud or collusion (you name it), behind that malignant guy, there's always the shadow of the state, rapid to accuse but very effective in avoiding to be accused. You can hang the bad guy but you'll never be able to hang the state even though this one is the worst of all.The book is not so somber as you could imagine because of what I've said. Frisby is sympathetic which I'm not. He's amusing and very interested in being understood. He puts it in this way: "As a comedian you quickly learn that if they don't understand, they don't laugh." In this book, Frisby tests his own recipe and makes you laugh. Really. What else could you do?Perhaps the only topic I missed was the history of the state, how it emerged, how it became what we see know, everyday and everywhere, how it did to stay here before we born and how it will do to follow here after we die. But for that topic there's a lot of books like the one by Francis Fukuyama,  The Origins of Political Order: From Prehuman Times to the French Revolution  and some others.In sum, this is a highly recommended reading together with Matt Ridley's "The evolution of everything" and "The rational optimist." I hope it will be an abundance of books like this later on available in bookstores and libraries. By now, they have a very small presence in them, so accustomed the state has us to his way and presence. I hope it will change.

This book is a fully comprehensive review of the crimes that is part and parcel of any and all governments.It is a gathering force of information needed to unravel the Gordian knot that leads to the abuse of self serving and self sustaining government wasteful programs and sites ways and means to correct same.Some of the sentence structures are a bit hard to understand, but I would highly recommend it to any one who wants a free unfettered life style that we can pass on to our most precious children.Rest assured elected government officials WONT put these ideas into motion as it would be the end of their cushy artificial jobs.Only educated people who arm themselves with such information will be able to throw off the yoke of government waste.A very informative read.

Very nice and thought provoking book.How goverment intervention twists even the best intented initiative.His points on education are most valid. We dont need no goverment to educate our children.His points are that the free market is dead when people and politicians alike do nothing more than lobby for legistation that makes rent seekers richer.I should suggest the reader to pay extra attention to rent seekers that excuse themselves for ecological reasons especially imaginary threats like climate change.Electricity is becoming a luxury in countries like germany that invest heavily on photovoltaics.However his arguments against goverment paid health care should be read with causion.Scandinavian countries that have a health based system with very big goverment inteventions have the highest life expentancy with the least cost.(At least compared to America and Britain)On health care it is very important factor who has highjacked the goverment, and if goverment and state beraucracy is accountable to laws or citizens or not to tell if a goverment paid health works.

Loved it, probably because it reinforces my views about government and bureaucracy. Should be compulsory reading for all B Comm students. I won't live long enough to see such changes but hope that my grandchildren, all 9 of them, will and will enjoy the freedoms.

I heard the author interviewed on DELLINGPOLE'S PODCAST. I like his conservative views.

One of the best books on plain logical thinking about government I've ever read, I cannot recommend this book any stronger.....

A must read. An eye opener.

A book with good ideas.

For a while I have been growing increasingly suspicious of Government despite the fact I had always assumed that good Government would provide us out of the mess we are in. I also always believed that Government could protect economies form the more insidious aspects of the free market.Frisby successfully argues the problem is not the free market but the fact that a bloated and overly interfering State is the cause of the erosion in democracy and the widening wealth gap. In fact, if the free market was allowed to just get on with it by a very small State, we would have far more choice and liberty. Of course we might have to pay for more ourselves, such as health and education but he demonstrates government is inherently wasteful and easily manipulated by large corporations for their own interest and not the voters government represents. A smaller state means much lower taxes which means more freedom to pay for what we want and need and competition would force providers to provide it cheaper and better. I can see he has a point. What I am much less convinced by is the notion that the poor will be looked after by the emergence of charity because lower taxes enables people to choose to be more philanthropic rather than having their cash taken off them, and reallocated in an inefficient and untransparent way. This is how it was aparantly in Victorian times. Not quite sure how a free market avoids the Poor House etc, etc.Despite that, what I really enjoyed about the book is it’s different perspective. I think he argues really well that a free functioning free market is a much better option than an overly intrusive state. What he doesn’t explain is how we could get there. In fact he admits it’s probably never going to happen in our lifetimes unless there is a complete collapse in the financial system. If that did happen, the solution he advocates is in this book as a great starter for 10.This is a really engaging and easy read. I found it hard to put down. His explanation of the current economic system is straight forward and untaxing. It has certainly provided me with an alternative way of looking at the problems we face and I am always grateful for new perspectives and views. My hope is more people read this and become more open minded to his suggestion because maybe one day we might need it!

Worst case of confirmation bias I have ever seen-every quote and anecdote in here is used to back up his view that everything that's wrong with society is due to government interference.Because Communism works so poorly therefore in Frisby's view the complete opposite would be the perfect solution. Except that it's clearly not.-the US has huge levels of poverty and very little government intrusion compared to Europe. Their medical system is also broken like the NHS, except in their case their free market approach has meant that people have a financial incentive to keep people sick and remain on immunosuppressants.-it was the government that cleaned up New York in the 90s from the dump it had been for decades previously-San Francisco has whole areas of people living rough, areas you can't even walk through (Tenderloin) and yet there you have a free market in the tech gold rush. Rather than everybody benefitting you get the privileged taking Google buses while everyone else has to use the rundown public transport system (the BART etc).This book is nonsense libertarian propaganda-the notion that money is a neutral indicator of value you are providing is rubbish. Investment bankers can make billions from using clever tricks to package and sell securities, yet a nurse's income will pale in comparison.I don't know the answer to improving our society, but such a reductionist view as this is not helpful.P.S. His Bitcoin book is great which makes this all the more disappointing.Edit: just heard Frsiby on Radio 4 that if we hadn't had state education in the early 20th century, the working classes would have educated themselves. No wonder he's a comedian...

Fantastic book, cannot rate this highly enough. Part absorbing, and part give-you-the-hump-at-govt-incompetence, this is a truly fascinating read, and really opens your eyes to the scandal of pretty much all political parties' win-power mentality. If you are a thinker (of any political persuasion, or none), this is a must read book - if only to get away from the echo-chamber we all invariably find ourselves in from time to time.Not a chore to read at all, this author writes extremely concisely and engagingly. You won't be disappointed (ok you MAY be, but will be in the minority... it's a thoroughly brilliant read!).

Dominic Frisby has built a lucid and factually based argument on why it is not just important, but vital to our health and well being, to shink the size of the state. The subtitle of the book could be, 'Why your tax is killing you, and everybody else. He even makes some suggestions as to how we could organise education, health, culture and foreign relations without government getting in the way.If you are wondering why you feel poorer and less free in one of the most productive periods in history, this book will help you understand what has been happening, and more importantly, what we, collectively and individually, can do about it.Written from a classical liberal humanist perspective, my only complaint is that he is too restrained in his condemnation. For me, we need to bleed the beast until its legs tremble, but in the meantime, if you want to know why we need to shrink government involvement if we want to be free and prosperous, read this book.

This is a handy little book that makes the case for a UK whose economy is based on free enterprise, rather than the current crony capitalism that so many mistake for free market economics.To those of us who who are familiar with the work of the Mises Institute and Lew Rockwell, there will not be too many ideas that are really new here, but what makes Frisby's book worth reading is that he applies these Austrian ideas to the UK, backed by some interesting data and taking on some of the UK's most notorious sacred cows like the disfunctional NHS in the process. This is something that far too few UK writers have attempted.Along the way he convincingly demonstrates how welfare entrenches and spreads the very poverty it is supposed to relieve, and how fiat money and central banking enrich unproductive elite groups at the expense of the productive economy. He also shows how this money-out-of-thin-air system is an essential ingredient of the modern warfare state.Frisby's style is easy to read yet never condescending and the book is hard to put down once you get going; I wouldn't be surprised if many people who buy this book will read it in one sitting.If I absolutely had to make one criticism of this book, it would only be to say that the author has not mapped out an escape route from the UK's version of the welfrae-warfare state. Prospects for this happening politically seem quite dim at present, given the UK's one-party LibLabCon system, where practically all significant politicians parrot the statist mantra (it is after all a very profitable one for them).Perhaps the best that can be expected is that the system will eventually collapse under its own weight - something which, unlike most of the goals it sets for itself, it seems eminently capable of achieving.