Fascism Is Materially No Different Than Communism

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According to our woke overlords, fascism is unmitigated evil and communism is basically good but very difficult to institute without some unfortunate side effects. And because our woke overlords have cultural hegemony, especially in education, news, and entertainment, fascism and fascists are loathed, and communism and communists are tolerated as well-meaning but foolish.

But is fascism materially different than communism? I don’t see how it is. In fact, if I had to choose which ideology were more repugnant, I’d give communism a slight edge.

To show how I came to this conclusion, let me introduce the Groovy Curve.

In a nutshell, the Groovy Curve measures the effect of government coercion on property security and the quality of life. With no government coercion at all, property security and the quality of life are dismal. Once government is created, however, and its coercive powers are used solely to protect and nurture property, property security and the quality of life begin to improve. And because the amount of coercion needed to protect and nurture property is quite expansive, property security and the quality of life continue to improve the more the coercion of a property-centric government increases. But at some point, sadly, the upper limit of just government coercion is reached. Property has all the protection and nurturing government coercion can possibly provide. Government coercion beyond this point can only harm property. With each additional unit of government coercion, government becomes an ever greater instrument of plunder, and property security and the quality of life begin to erode. And if the coercion of a robbery-centric government continues to grow unabated, man will eventually return to the condition he found himself in when there was no government coercion at all: property security and the quality of life will once again be dismal.

Preliminary Definitions

Now before we explore the various points on the Groovy Curve, I need to define a number of key concepts, especially the concepts that appear on the axes that bound our Groovy Curve. Here we go:

Property security: For the purposes of the Groovy Curve, I have a very simple definition of property. It’s anything that you can ethically own. And assuming for the moment that this definition of property is valid, there are essentially four forms of property that you can ethically own. Here they are:

Classic: This is the stuff that immediately pops into your head when you think of property—inanimate objects such as land, money, homes, cars, and laptops, and animate but non-human creatures such as family pets and livestock. The primary benefit of owning classic property—or any form of property for that matter—is dominion. As long as you’re not using your stuff to violate someone else’s property, you control your stuff as you see fit. You decide who can use your stuff, you decide how your stuff is used, and you decide what sale terms are amenable to you for the voluntary transfer of your stuff to another.

Cognitive: This is another name for intellectual property. Inventions, books, movies, music, etc. have economic value, however small or non-existent that might be in most instances, and their creators deserve exclusive rights to whatever economic value their creations generate.

Corpus: This is the property you have in yourself—your body. Your back, limbs, hands, feet, eyes, tongue, and brain are fantastic tools for pursuing happiness and generating economic value, and as long as you aren’t using your body to violate someone else’s property, no one has the right to stop you from exerting dominion over your body. If you want to loiter on the couch all day, you loiter on the couch all day. If you want to wag your tongue against the received narrative of our woke overlords, you wag your tongue against the received narrative of our woke overlords. If you want to use your brain and start a business that challenges the established players in a given field, you use your brain and start a business that challenges the established players in a given field.

Constitutional: Something that is immoral when done by private citizens doesn’t automatically become moral when the government does it. Constitutional property is the property you have in the checks that stop the government from becoming an instrument of plunder. We commonly understand this property as “rights.” The government must be as respectful of your property as your neighbor. This doesn’t mean, of course, that the government can’t confiscate your property. In order to referee the game of life (i.e., protect the weak and unsuspecting from the scum) and supply universally needed goods and services that wouldn’t exist without coercion (e.g., roads, sewers, fighter jets, legal tender, environmental protections, etc.), the government must be able to confiscate corpus property (i.e., put scum in jail) and classic property (i.e., collect taxes and condemn privately owned homes, buildings, and land). But the government can’t confiscate your property willy-nilly. It has to do it ethically. It can’t put you in jail without first providing you with due process. It can’t tax you without first getting permission from a legislature filled with representatives that you and your fellow citizens elected. And it can’t condemn your home to make way for a highway without making you whole—that is, without paying you the fair market value of your home.

With no property security, your property is very vulnerable. Any immoral brute can visit vandalism, thievery, or destruction upon your property without any negative consequences. This is especially chilling regarding your corpus property. With no property security, assault, rape, slavery, and murder wouldn’t be an abstraction, something that happens to “the other guy.” It would be a very real concern—and something you’d be hard-pressed to avoid.

Absolute property security is the polar opposite of no property security. Immoral brutes are somehow made moral and vandalism, thievery, or destruction is never visited upon any of your property. You don’t have to lock your doors, displaying a wallet full of cash in public won’t invite a mugging, and you can go about your business blissfully unaware of the people in your vicinity. Life on earth would be as close to heaven as possible. Remove transgressions from your fellow man and your only foes will be nature and yourself.

The vertical axis on the Groovy Curve measures the degree of property security a society has. The lower your society finds itself on the vertical axis the more vulnerable your property becomes—the odds of your property being vandalized, stolen, or destroyed goes up. The higher your society finds itself on the vertical axis the less vulnerable your property becomes—the odds of your property being vandalized, stolen, or destroyed goes down.

Quality of life: This refers to the ease you have in securing your daily bread and your happiness. If you have to walk down to a river with a bucket to secure water for your pasta, your life will be harder than someone who can secure water for his or her pasta by walking a few steps to a kitchen faucet. If you can only use your household appliances and electronics for less than half the day because of rolling blackouts, your life will be harder than someone whose household never has to suffer rolling blackouts—electricity is always available for him or her. If you have to wait over a year for a building permit, your life will be harder than someone who has to wait a month for his or her building permit. I could go on, of course, but you get the idea. Quality of life pertains to what technology a society uses and how efficiently a society is run. The lower your society finds itself on the vertical axis the more arduous your life becomes. The higher your society finds itself on the vertical axis the less arduous your life becomes.

Paycheck freedom: This isn’t explicitly on the Groovy Curve, but it’s critical to know because it’s an objective way of distinguishing just government coercion (property-centric) from unjust government coercion (robbery-centric). Paycheck freedom can be summed up with one pithy mantra: “My paycheck, my choice.” In other words, he who makes the money gets to spend the money. Spending equals values and priorities. Control someone’s spending decisions and you effectively control someone’s mind—you’re rendering his or her values and priorities moot. And this is why paycheck freedom is so important. Take away someone’s paycheck freedom and you’re plundering his or her corpus property (i.e., you’re effectively enslaving him or her) and putting his or her quality of life in tatters (it’s impossible to have a very fulfilling life when your autonomy has been usurped and someone else decides how the money you lawfully earned will be spent).

Quick aside: For the purposes of this post, paycheck freedom exists whenever the total tax bite of government is 25 percent or less of a citizen’s income. Absolute paycheck freedom isn’t feasible. If citizens were free to decide how every dollar they made was spent, the government couldn’t exist. So how did I arrive at the 25 percent figure? Good question. First, I began with the self-evident observation that man, in order to be free, must own more of his paycheck than the government. So right there, I removed 51 percent of a citizen’s paycheck from the clutches of government. Then for the remaining 49 percent, I basically split the difference: 24 percent for the citizen and 25 percent for the government. Is that fair? Am I being too parsimonious toward the government? No. As you will see, 25 percent of the governed’s livelihood is more than enough money for the government to perform all its legitimate functions. 

Endowment freedom: This is another key concept that isn’t explicitly on the Groovy Curve but is critical to know because it’s an objective way of distinguishing just government coercion (property-centric) from unjust government coercion (robbery-centric). Endowment freedom is nothing but unfettered competition. You can test your mettle in any field you desire by 1) following the same rules your competitors are obliged to follow, and 2) submitting to the same standards your competitors are obliged to submit to. Endowment freedom doesn’t mean you don’t have to contend with obstacles that are peculiar to you and not your competitors. You might be too dull, poor, or undisciplined to effectively compete in your desired field—sadly, nature and cultures don’t distribute talent, means, and drive evenly and therefore don’t give a rat’s ass about “equal opportunity.” Endowment freedom just means you have an equal opportunity to try—no arbitrary and capricious obstacles have been erected by the government to hobble you and assure victory for your competitors. Should you be blessed with endowment freedom, the only thing that stands between you and success is your competency. If you’re competent, you will succeed. If you’re incompetent, you will surely fail.

Government coercion: Government isn’t heroic or romantic; it’s organized force. Government has the legislators to write laws and the guns, jails, and police to enforce the laws it writes. In other words, government is guys with guns who tell you what to do. The closer to the vertical axis your society finds itself on the horizontal axis, the more autonomy you have; the government makes fewer rules, confiscates less of your paycheck, and frowns less upon unfettered competition (i.e., there are fewer arbitrary and capricious obstacles to your economic advancement and your pursuit of happiness). The farther away from the vertical axis your society finds itself on the horizontal axis, the less autonomy you have; the government makes more rules, confiscates more of your paycheck, and frowns more upon unfettered competition (i.e., there are more arbitrary and capricious obstacles to your economic advancement and your pursuit of happiness).

The Points on the Groovy Curve

Finding the Right Amount of Just Government Coercion

“If men were angels, no government would be necessary.” No quip ever uttered makes a better case for why man created government. Man is far from angelic. Man thus needs a neutral third-party force that can effectively police his base impulses. The first half of the Groovy Curve reflects the rise of property-centric coercion. We see man’s bumbling quest to create government, make it a friend of property, and then make sure it doesn’t go rogue and become an enemy of property.

Hobbesocracy: Named after Thomas Hobbes, this point on the Groovy Curve is where government fails to exist. There is no neutral third-party force to protect the property of the weak and naive from the malicious designs of the strong and cunning. It’s a “war of all against all.” And in this war, the weak and naive don’t have a chance. Their property is easily plundered and their quality of life is dismal.

Guardocracy: This point on the Groovy Curve is where people realize that a “war of all against all” isn’t cool. They create government for the sole purpose of protecting everyone’s property. And by allowing themselves to be governed, the people win by losing. They lose a part of their paycheck freedom that they can comfortably do without (police, jails, and courts can’t function without taxpayer support), and they lose a part of their endowment freedom that they shouldn’t have in the first place (a citizen can no longer pursue happiness by vandalizing, stealing, or destroying someone else’s property); but in exchange for these “losses,” they get more property security (providing the government they’ve created is an effective deterrent against property crime), and they get an environment more conducive to building wealth (building a business or a career and having nice things only make sense when those hard-won fruits can’t be destroyed or whisked away in a flash by some random brute).

Madiocracy: Named after James Madison, the Founding Father most instrumental in reconciling the friction between majority and minority rights in our Constitution,* this point on the Groovy Curve is where people realize that there’s more to life than just property security. A society’s quality of life has merit too. And if collective action can make life easier for everyone in society, the majority should be able to impose such rationality on the minority. The majority of the governed thus vote to expand the scope of government. The government is no longer tasked with just protecting property; it is now obliged to nurture property by providing goods and services that are 1) universally needed and 2) wouldn’t exist without coercion. Examples of such goods and services are roads, sewers, water treatment plants, national defense, a common currency, and a standardized system of weights and measures. Again, the governed—most willingly, though some unwillingly—win by losing. They give up a little more of their paycheck and endowment freedoms; but in exchange for these “losses,” they get an easier life. It’s a heck of a lot easier to engage in commerce, for instance, when there’s an extensive system of paved roads and everyone uses the same money. A hodge-podge of dirt roads and multiple monies spread across multiple jurisdictions do more to sow bother than comfort.

* Quick aside: The majority and minority division referenced above is in a numerical sense only. It has nothing to do with race, sex, or class. A majority is equal to or greater than 50 percent of the voting-age population plus one, and a minority is equal to or less than 50 percent of the voting-age population minus one.  

Rawlsocracy: Named after the philosopher John Rawls, this point on the Groovy Curve is where people realize that the bell of bad luck doesn’t always toll for others, it sometimes tolls for them. It is in their interest, then, to devise a way of smoothing over bad luck that is particularly egregious. They metaphorically place their perfectly good selves behind a “veil of ignorance” (in Mr. Rawls’s words) and ask themselves how they would want their societal kin to act if the veil were lifted and they found themselves saddled with some horrible calamity: they were brought low by blindness, or they were paralyzed from the neck down by a horrific accident, or they were rendered homeless and jobless because their community was smote by a tornado of biblical proportions. Would they want their societal kin to do nothing? Or would they want their societal kin to help? Most people would want the latter; it’s the epitome of enlightened self-interest—you be there for me when the SHTF, and I’ll be there for you. Rawlsocracy thus refers to the introduction of a government-provided safety net. A majority of the governed once again vote to expand the mission of government. In addition to protecting property and providing those limited number of goods and services that are universally needed and coercion-dependent, the government is now obliged to enter the charity business and help those who are economically crushed by something they had absolutely no control over. The governed once again win by losing. They lose a little more of their paycheck and endowment freedoms; but in exchange for these “losses,” they gain a little more financial security and a little more psychic comfort. No one has to worry about being completely abandoned should egregious bad luck pay a visit. The government will at least temporarily comfort those poor souls with food, clothing, and shelter.

Librocracy: This point on the Groovy Curve is where the people realize that majorities don’t have a monopoly on virtue and wisdom. Majorities can and do take advantage of the well-intentioned mission creep of government and turn government into an instrument of plunder. A public good once defined as something that is universally needed and coercion-dependent (e.g., a road) is now also defined as something that is mostly wanted and too costly for the primary beneficiaries to produce on their own (e.g., an NFL football stadium). A safety net once reserved to aid orphans and other victims of egregious bad luck is now also used to aid well-connected corporations. A humble majority thus realizes that it needs to impose discipline on itself. It can always have the elected officials it wants, but it can’t always have the government it wants. So to ensure that it and future majorities have an extremely hard time turning the government into an instrument of plunder, the majority votes to permanently hobble the decision-making ability of government and to permanently restrict the allowable actions of government. In other words, the majority erects guardrails to keep the government property-centric: the government has no choice but to show proper deference to every citizen’s property—including the property of those citizens who are little esteemed and wield little power. Here are the main components of those guardrails:

• Separation of power: Government is divided into three distinct branches—legislative, executive, and judicial—and the chief players of each branch are chosen or appointed by different constituencies.
• Enumerated powers: The duties and authority of each branch are spelled out in easy-to-understand and hard-to-corrupt language. For an excellent example of this, see the U.S. Constitution.
• Checks and balances: Each branch of government is given the power to check the overreach of the other two branches. Again, for an excellent example of this, see the U.S. Constitution.
• Decentralized power (i.e., republicanism): Government is broken up into tiers. The national government is only given authority to deal with national matters, the regional or state government is only given authority to deal with regional or state matters, and the local government is only given authority to deal with local matters.
• No taxation without representation: The power to tax is the power to destroy, and that power is not ethically wielded by the government without the consent of the governed. The governed, by majority vote, thus decide who gets to sit in the legislature and who gets to sit atop the executive branch.
• Independent judiciary: Judges can’t be beholden to any party, faction, or mob. They must rule according to the law. To increase the likelihood of this becoming a reality, judges are appointed for life.
• Freedom of speech: Government does not own the tongues of the governed. Save for instances of libel and slander, it has no right to usurp that ownership and police how the governed wag their tongues.
• Freedom of religion/conscience: Government does not own the minds of the governed. It, therefore, has no right to usurp that ownership and decide for the governed what religion they should practice or what worldview or political ideology they should embrace.
• Freedom of the press: Government is manned by fallible men and women; it doesn’t have a monopoly on virtue and wisdom. Any narrative, policy, or idea it promotes must therefore be subject to fierce scrutiny. A truly free press provides that fierce scrutiny and increases the likelihood that the government will be severely humbled whenever it promotes something pernicious or stupid.
• Freedom from unreasonable searches and seizures: The government can’t willy-nilly search the corpus and classic properties of the governed. It can only do so if 1) it has probable cause that the citizen in question has committed a crime, and 2) it has secured a search warrant from a judge.
• The right to bear arms: Property that can’t be protected isn’t property—it’s unrealized booty, just waiting to be plundered by some loathsome brute. The governed must have the right to protect their property from barbarous peers and barbarous government officials.
• Trial by a jury of one’s peers: Jurors appointed by the prosecution and dependent on the prosecution for their livelihoods would be the epitome of a kangaroo court. Such jurors would have more allegiance to the prosecution than to the truth. To increase the likelihood of an impartial jury, jurors must be culled from a random selection of the great unwashed.
• The right to cross-examine prosecution witnesses: Prosecutors and witnesses are neither saints nor infallible. And their all-too-human foibles can only be checked by allowing the defense to cross-examine every witness the prosecution brings to bear against the accused.
• No self-incrimination: The government can’t force a citizen to testify against him or herself. The power to coerce testimony, because people are very susceptible to pressure and manipulation, is the power to get the innocent to “confess” to crimes they didn’t commit (see here, here, and here).
• No double jeopardy: The government only gets one shot to prove its case against the accused. If the accused is found not guilty in that first trial, the government doesn’t get another trial to secure the guilty verdict it wants.
• No cruel and unusual punishment: The government’s punishment for crimes must be measured. It can’t exact a major punishment for a minor crime. Someone who steals a bicycle shouldn’t be drawn and quartered.
• Just compensation for property takings: No property is one hundred percent sacrosanct. Sometimes property must be sacrificed for the good of society. But if the government confiscates the property of a citizen, and the confiscation doesn’t pertain to taxation or punishment for a crime, the government must justly compensate that citizen for the loss he or she suffers. A classic example of this is a condemnation of a swath of homes to make way for a highway. Those citizens who lost their homes must be paid the fair market value of their homes by the government.
• Equal protection of the law: The government must be impartial when it comes to governing. It can’t favor one group of citizens over another group of citizens.
• Competition equality: The best way to humble the mission creep of government is to saddle the government with competition equality. Whenever the government decides to produce a good or service that is lawful for the private sector to produce, the government must extend its tax advantages to those private sector producers. For example, it’s lawful for a citizen to open a school and charge tuition for the education his or her school provides. If the government decides to get into the education business and opens several schools, all private-sector schools in its jurisdiction must immediately be exempt from every tax the government is exempt from. What’s fair is fair. If the government, for instance, doesn’t pay property taxes on its school buildings, then neither should the owners of private schools—their school buildings should be exempt from property taxes too.
• Limits on taxing authority: There is no material difference between one man owning another and the government owning 100 percent of a citizen’s paycheck. In both situations, someone toils and earns bread and someone else gets to eat that bread. Onerous taxation is nothing but slavery by another name. And to make sure the majority doesn’t vote to enslave itself or a despised minority, the percentage of a citizen’s paycheck that the government may lawfully confiscate must be strictly limited. (For purposes of this post, the percentage of a citizen’s paycheck that the government may lawfully confiscate should be limited to 25 percent. Anything beyond that percentage is flirting with tyranny. See the discussion on paycheck freedom above.)
• Limits on spending authority: It makes no sense to limit a government’s taxing authority and allow it to spend whatever it wants. The majority could thus steal from future generations by voting for a government that engages in deficit spending and borrows from the treasury to bridge the annual shortfall. Government spending must be limited to a percentage of GDP not too far above the percentage of its taxing authority. If the national government, for instance, can only confiscate 15 percent of a citizen’s paycheck, its spending authority should be limited to, say, 16.5 percent of GDP. (Spending authority that is 10 percent greater than taxing authority strikes me as a fair way to keep government spending in check and still give the government the wiggle room it needs to handle unexpected expenses and emergencies in any given year.)
• Limits on regulating authority: The government can’t write regulations to protect the powerful from its competition. It can only write regulations pertaining to safety and business ethics.
• Penalties for prolonged fiscal mismanagement: Politicians don’t do very well without accountability. If they’re not penalized for fiscal mismanagement, they will continue to treat the taxpayer’s wallet with extreme contempt (for a great example of this, see the current size of our national debt). Four straight years of deficit spending strikes me as a fair definition of prolonged fiscal mismanagement. And the penalty for that rank profligacy? All the legislators who delivered that fourth consecutive year of deficit spending are immediately lame ducks. They can finish their terms, but they may never hold elected office again—and they may never engage in any kind of lobbying.

Libocracy can best be defined as the absence of unjust government coercion—every citizen can do whatever he or she wishes, providing he or she respects the property of others and surrenders a small portion of his or her income to the government so it can impartially referee the game of life (hello, guardocracy) and provide those limited number of goods and services that are universally needed and coercion-dependent—including a rudimentary safety net to temporarily help those visited by egregious bad luck (hello, madiocracy and rawlsocracy).

And because libocracy does a keen job of mitigating unjust government coercion, libocracy delivers the maximum amount of property security and quality of life a citizen can hope to have. A citizen in a libocracy has little to fear that his or her property will be violated by either a fellow citizen or the government—deterrents against foul behavior are in place, for both the citizen brute and the government brute, and every citizen is granted the means to protect his or her property should those deterrents fail. And a citizen in a libocracy has little to fear that his or her society will be backward relative to other societies—property rights combined with robust competition are a great way to spur risk-taking, innovation, and wealth.

Quick aside: Our Founding Fathers were political geniuses. Our Constitution, as it stands today, gets us 80-85 percent of the way toward a libocracy. The two most glaring failures of our Founding Fathers, however, were the failures to shackle the federal government with strict limits on its taxing and spending authorities. Add those two guardrails to the Constitution—along with the guardrails of competition equality, safety-and-business-ethics-only regulating authority, and accountability for profligate politicians—and America will have the world’s first functioning libocracy.

The Trouble with Democracy

Our woke overlords love “democracy.” In fact, they love it so much, they have fetishized it. “Democracy is as pure as wind-driven snow because it’s the will of the people.” Democracy, however, is nothing but majority rule. And as I pointed out several times in this post already, majorities don’t have a monopoly on virtue and wisdom. You allow majorities to not only get the elected officials they want but also get the government they want and you will inevitably wind up with some form of tyranny. Jim Crow, for instance, is the embodiment of “democracy.”

Democracy is an invitation to plunder because democratic government isn’t obliged to remain impartial. The neutrality-imposing guardrails of libocracy are absent, and a democratic government is thus free to plunder the politically weak at the behest of the politically strong.

We have now reached the right half of the Groovy Curve, the half where robbery-centric government resides. And the most benign form of robbery-centric government is our woke overlords’ beloved democracy. Benign, in turn, isn’t being used here in a diagnostic sense. It’s being used in a relative sense. Democracy is bad. It’s just less bad than other forms of robbery-centric government you will find farther along the Groovy Curve. Here, then, are the four ways democracy turns on the politically weak and plunders their property.

Entrenchocracy: This is the point on the Groovy Curve where the government stops being neutral toward the governed and begins to favor the entrenched players in business and the trades. A shot across the bow of endowment freedom is shot. Big businesses and big trades go to the government and demand laws that hobble their competition. And because big businesses and big trades have the money to fund political campaigns, big businesses and big trades get the preferential treatment they so desire. Amazon, Walmart, and Target, for instance, get tax breaks that smaller retailers don’t. The National Education Association (NEA) makes sure that public education dollars are only spent hiring the teachers it represents—the idea that NEA teachers and their non-union counterparts should compete for students (via vouchers) the way grocery stores compete for downtrodden shoppers (via SNAP) is anathema.

Crowocracy: This is the point on the Groovy Curve where the government ups the ante of impartiality and begins to punish those citizens who belong to the “wrong” tribe. Yes, crowocracy is an even more pernicious attack on endowment freedom than entrenchocracy—the basis for erecting arbitrary and capricious obstacles is no longer confined to just commercial traits (e.g., entrenched businesses versus start-up businesses); it now also includes biological traits. The tribe with the largest numbers goes to the government and demands laws that protect them from the pesky competition of lesser tribes. And because the tribe with the largest numbers has the votes to sway elections, the tribe with the largest numbers gets the preferential treatment it so desires. Prior to 1970, America’s white tribe used its numerical strength to legalize discrimination against America’s black tribe. Black Americans were legally barred from many trades, professions, neighborhoods, and schools. Today in America, a new tribe is steering the fowl ship of crowocracy. America’s woke tribe uses its numerical strength to legalize discrimination against America’s white tribe—especially the straight conservative male members of that tribe. And while the arbitrary and capricious obstacles faced by the white tribe today aren’t as bad as the arbitrary and capricious obstacles faced by the black tribe of yesteryear; they’re still bad. Just ask a white straight conservative dude who wants to be a sociology professor at Harvard, a reporter for the New York Times, or an executive at Disney.

Democratic socialism: This is the point on the Groovy Curve where the government stops respecting the paycheck freedom of the governed. The government stops taking small tolerable bites from the paychecks of the governed and begins taking large obnoxious bites. And the first manifestation of this more harmful stage of robbery-centric government is democratic socialism. A majority of citizens want more government-provided goods and services and are perfectly willing to accept a tax bite that consumes more than 25 percent of a citizen’s paycheck. Think of it as the many enslaving the many.

Slaveocracy: This is the point on the Groovy Curve where a majority of citizens want a two-tiered system regarding paycheck check freedom: they want paycheck freedom for themselves but paycheck slavery for some despised minority of citizens (e.g., the rich). Think of this as the many enslaving the few. A great example of this is the antebellum United States. Eighty-eight percent of the population had a high degree of paycheck freedom. Twelve percent had no paycheck freedom—their labor was owned by their masters.

The Trouble with Man

Man is lazy by nature. The impulse to avoid drudgery—whether physical or mental—is baked into his DNA. As such, man has great esteem for idleness and rigged victory and great disdain for work and honest competition.

Fortunately, man is also imbued with a moral sense. He instinctively understands that idleness won by stealing and victory won by cheating aren’t cool. And this moral sense helps check his lazy nature. In other words, the average guy and gal can rationalize a little unearned idleness and a few unearned victories—especially if the stealing and cheating are done on his or her behalf by the government—but the average guy and gal can’t rationalize a lot of unearned idleness and a lot of unearned victories. That degree of stealing and cheating would be beyond the pale of good taste; it would be disgustingly rude.

But then there are those who are moral outliers in a bad way. Their moral sense is so weak—two or more standard deviations below the norm—they have no compunction when it comes to stealing and cheating. They’ll gobble up all the unearned idleness and victories they can.

Moral outliers below the norm are a problem for any society. And they’re a mega problem for society if they somehow manage to advance beyond the confines of ordinary street scum and gain control of the government. This is where the bane of totalitarianism makes its appearance on the Groovy Curve. Bad guys with guns have all the levers of government power at their disposal, and they use those levers to visit the most robbery-centric government imaginable upon the governed.

Now, before we explore the varieties of totalitarianism found on the Groovy Curve, I want to list the characteristics that all totalitarian governments have in common. Think of these characteristics as the guardrails of tyranny. They ensure that the bad guys with the guns don’t have to work—they live like kings off the labor of the governed—and they ensure that the bad guys with the guns don’t have to brook challenges to their whims—the only opinions the governed are allowed to have are the opinions approved by the government.

• No separation of power: The legislative, executive, and judicial branches of government are all under the control of one man or party.
• No checks and balances: The legislative, executive, and judicial branches aren’t obliged to check each other and make sure some worthwhile ideal is upheld. They’re all obliged to work in unison and make sure the wants of the ruling man or party are satisfied.
• No limits to authority: The government can follow any whim it desires and regulate whatever aspect of the governed’s lives it wants.
• No opposition parties: Opposition parties are verboten. Dare to promote a political platform that challenges your totalitarian overlords and you will be imprisoned or shot.
• No due process: Habeas corpus, the right to a jury trial, the right to an impartial jury of one’s peers, the right to an attorney, the right to cross-examine prosecution witnesses, prohibitions against self-incrimination, prohibitions against ill-gotten evidence, prohibitions against double jeopardy, and prohibitions against cruel and unusual punishments—all the protections for the accused that are enshrined in a libocracy are completely alien under totalitarian rule.
• No right to bear arms: The government has a monopoly on gun ownership. An unarmed citizenry is much easier to control.
• No freedom of conscience: The government has a monopoly on spirituality. It decides for you what religion you will or won’t follow.
• No protections from government overreach: Republicanism, no taxation without representation, freedom of speech, freedom of the press, just compensation for property takings, equal protection of the law, competition equality, limited taxing authority, limited spending authority, limited regulating authority, and penalties for wastrel politicians—all the protections against robbery-centric government that are enshrined in a libocracy are completely alien under totalitarian rule.
• No marketplace of ideas: The government controls every school, news outlet, movie studio, recording studio, broadcasting facility, internet provider, search engine, and server. It decides what ideas are fit for consumption and what ideas aren’t.
• No marketplace: The government decides what will be produced and who will produce it.
• No endowment freedom: The governed toil at the direction of the state. The governed have no right to use their corpus property as they see fit. Government needs come first. You might have a keen engineering mind and know how to produce widgets far more efficiently than they’re currently being produced, but unless you have favorable connections with the government, you’re not opening a widget factory. At best you’ll be working under the idiot boss of the established widget factory. And that’s if the government likes you. If you’re not liked, your engineering prowess will be forsaken and you’ll be working a menial job in a shoe factory (see the quick aside below).
• No paycheck freedom: The governed toil at the pleasure of the state. Whether they’re owned outright by the government or “free,” they have no fundamental right to the income they produce. Again, government needs come first. The governed must subsist on whatever crumbs the government graciously leaves behind.

Dictatorship: This is the point on the Groovy Curve where the guardrails of tyranny are being wielded by one man. He has the allegiance of the army, and he uses this allegiance to make sure the governed mind their manners. No uppityness from the great unwashed is tolerated.

Fascism without bigotry: This is the point on the Groovy Curve where the guardrails of tyranny are first wielded by a larger force. Instead of being wielded by one man, they are wielded by one party. Fascism without bigotry can be described as a very pragmatic form of totalitarianism. Rather than own you, the government owns your paycheck. Rather than own the means of production, the government owns whatever profits a business produces and is the CEO of all CEOs. And rather than persecuting you for something you have no control over (e.g., your race, your ethnicity, your religion at birth, etc.), the government only persecutes you for actions you control and it deems subversive (e.g., you start an opposition party, you start a newspaper that challenges the state’s narrative, or you refuse to hire the idiot nephew of some muckety-muck bureaucrat, etc.). Fascism without bigotry has all of the benefits of slave labor but with far fewer hassles. Human beings naturally chafe at being a chattel slave, at being denied the glories of making and building something that they find inspiring, and at being jailed or ruined for something they have no control over. But if you give human beings a whiff of freedom, autonomy, and control—and bombard them with 24/7 propaganda asserting that more freedom, autonomy, and control will bring them nothing but insecurity and hardship—they’re far less vigilant when it comes to protecting their property, especially their corpus property, and much more agreeable to being herded by the state.

Communism without the gulags: This is the point on the Groovy Curve where the party wielding the guardrails of tyranny does so with less aplomb. Communism without the gulags is less pragmatic than fascism without bigotry. This form of totalitarianism gets the ownership of the governed right (from a totalitarian’s perspective, of course). The government owns your paycheck, not you. And this form of totalitarianism gets the persecution of the rabble-rousers right (again, from a totalitarian’s perspective). Rabble-rousers aren’t defined by traits inherited at birth—they’re defined by actions—and rabble-rousers aren’t punished by being shipped to far-away slave-labor camps—they’re relegated to low-status jobs and forced to live hand-to-mouth.* But this form of totalitarianism gets the ownership of the means of production wrong. Rather than own the profits of “privately-owned” businesses and manage the “bosses” of “privately-owned” businesses, the government owns and manages every business itself. This degree of control, in turn, does more to sow poverty than wealth. Take away the knowledge and incentives** that only exist in markets featuring privately-owned businesses engaged in voluntary exchange and managers of state-run businesses are forced to operate in an untenable environment. They’re flying blind with much too little authority and much too little accountability. The end result is that businesses in communist economies are plagued by ISIS: incompetence, sloth, inefficiency, and stagnation. For a more learned discussion of these inherent flaws in the state ownership of the means of production, I suggest two gems: Knowledge and Decisions by Thomas Sowell and The Fatal Conceit by F.A. Hayek.

* Quick aside 1: When I was at Buffalo University (1979-1984), I had a statistic class taught by a very accomplished statistician who escaped from the Soviet Union. He was a professor in the Soviet Union as well. But once his dissidence became too vocal and troublesome (he objected to the Soviet treatment of its Jewish citizens), he was stripped of his professor duties and forced to work as a custodian in a shoe factory. And he remained a custodian in a shoe factory until he emigrated to the United States.

** Quick aside 2: Prices are knowledge. They tell society what things are scarce or plentiful, what things are valuable or worthless, and what things do or don’t warrant a heroic amount of cognition and sweat. Managers in free-market economies have excellent knowledge because prices reflect reality—they’re impartially determined by unfettered competition. Managers in a command economy have poor knowledge because prices are a distortion of reality—they’re arbitrarily determined by some bureaucrat. Managers in a free-market economy also have better incentives (from a wealth-building perspective) than their command-economy counterparts. Competition and the prospect of ruin are great spurs to get people off their asses. And so is paycheck freedom. A man who owns the fruits of his labor is far more likely to exert himself than a man who doesn’t own the fruits of his labor. Again, for a more learned discussion of the less-than-satisfactory knowledge and incentives found in a totalitarian state, see Knowledge and Decisions and The Fatal Conceit. 

Fascism with bigotry: This point on the Groovy Curve is where the second cruelest version of totalitarianism resides. Under fascism with bigotry, you get government ownership of every “citizen’s” paycheck, you get government ownership of all profits generated by “private” businesses, and you get government oversight of all management decisions made by the “bosses” of “private” businesses. Those standard fascist tyrannies are a given. But in addition to the standard fascist tyrannies, you get the foul tyranny of bigotry. In a bigoted fascist state, inherent traits become super important. Those born with, say, the “right” skin color are treated much better by the government than those born with the “wrong” skin color. Just how badly the government treats those with the “wrong” skin color isn’t fixed. It varies. If the government finds those with the “wrong” skin color mildly irksome, it will bar them from participating in certain fields or professions. If the government finds them moderately irksome, it will look the other way when their corpus and classic property are attacked by government-sponsored thugs. And if the government finds them particularly irksome, it will ship them off to death camps.

Communism with gulags: This point on the Groovy Curve is where the cruelest version of totalitarianism resides. Under communism with gulags, you get government ownership of every “citizen’s” paycheck, and you get government ownership of every business and institution. Again, the standard communist tyrannies are a given. But in addition to the standard communist tyrannies, you get the foul tyranny of gulags. Rabble-rousers aren’t just humbled economically by relieving them of all employment opportunities save employment in menial jobs; they’re completely humbled socially by relieving them of their presence in their communities—they’re either shipped off to “reeducation” camps or slave labor camps. Hello, Gulag Archipelago.

Final Thoughts

I put fascism at a slightly more preferable point on the Groovy Curve than communism because private property is more abundant under fascism than communism. Fascist “citizens” have a little more leeway than their communist counterparts when it comes to acquiring and exerting dominion over classic, cognitive, and corpus property. But this ever-so-slight improvement on the property-security front only exists if the fascist “citizen” plays nice with his or her fascist overlords. The moment a fascist “citizen” crosses his or her fascist overlords, whatever property, wealth, and comfort he or she has managed to acquire will be lost—and lost with extreme prejudice. And that’s the main point. There is really no material difference between fascism and communism. They aren’t on opposite ends of the political spectrum. Fascism isn’t “right-wing,” and communism isn’t “left-wing.” They’re both on whatever wing you decide to locate the extreme amounts of coercion produced by an extreme robbery-centric government—they’re the kissing cousins of totalitarianism. Whether you’re a schlub in a fascist state or a schlub in a communist state, your paycheck freedom, endowment freedom, property security, and quality of life will be dismal. You will exist primarily for the benefit of the government. Your preferences, wants, and aspirations will mean nothing.

Okay, groovy freedomist, that’s all I got. What say you? Do you believe the woke propaganda that fascism and communism are polar opposites? And do you believe the woke propaganda that communists are noble but misguided and pre-totalitarians (i.e., democratic socialists) are noble and well-informed? Let me know what you think when you get a chance. Cheers.