One of the more interesting details of the ‘Haitians are eating our cats’ episode in the US is how it exposed the huge number of people taking easy advantage of welfare to get rich.
The US Government apparently thought nothing about parachuting 20,000 Haitians into a town of 60,000 over a very short period. That’s what a state does when it sees all humans as functionally equivalent economic objects. Citizenship, after all, is only a piece of paper.
We shouldn’t be surprised by the US Government’s amoral attitude. Most Western governments demonstrably no longer uphold their side of the social contract. They have long since shifted from being caretakers of a nation (Latin root word natio meaning “to be born”) to being stewards of a legal entity known as a country. The state sees the world in terms of right and wrong (laws), not good and evil (morals).
Most people still think their government still recognises the difference between citizens and foreigners. It doesn’t. We live in a multicultural market state now, not a nation-state. What is the market state? Here’s Philip Bobbitt, the scholar who coined this term in his book The Shield of Achilles:
“The market-state will live within three paradoxes: 1) it will require more centralised authority for government but all governments will be weaker; 2) there will be more public participation in government, but it will count for less, and thus the role of the citizen qua citizen will greatly diminish and the role of the citizen as spectator will increase; 3) the welfare state will have greatly retrenched, but the State will promote infrastructure security, epidemiological surveillance, and environmental protection as never before."
Bobbitt said the transition to the market state is “bound to last over a long period” and that the particular form of the market state to ultimately emerge from this process “cannot confidently be predicted”. But it is a failure of imagination, he added, to assume that what will replace the nation-state is “another structure with nation-state-like characteristics, only larger”. The world is going to become both stranger and more familiar at the same time.
Science fiction author William Gibson once wrote that the future is already here, it’s just unevenly distributed. This perfectly describes the transition to a market state. As the nation-state evolves into a market state, it has briefly turned the state into a bank vault with the door wide open. To paraphrase Gibson, the future is already here, and those who have noticed are making serious money.
In other words, stop complaining about government ‘waste’ and get involved. The money is sitting on the table. Are you going to pick it up?
The US is a great example of a market state in gestation. Consider the corrupt system of “Section 8” housing, meant to distribute the parasite groups across a city to ease the burden on the producer groups. Section 8 housing will deliberately put welfare recipients next door to $5 million homes owned by upstanding taxpayers. No one with anything to lose likes Section 8 housing one bit, but it just keeps getting worse and worse.
So, why fight it? Why not turn around and flow with the tide of government corruption? After all, the purpose of a system is what it does, and the market state seems to be extremely keen on handing out free money. Why not get amongst it?
Back in 2023, I remember reading about a 21-year-old American who took incredible advantage of Section 8 housing. He ended up owning 79 properties. But what made me do a double-take was that the US Government was paying the rent for each of the ‘tenants’ with taxpayers’ money. The scam worked so well that he was offering advice on how to set up new scams for people who wanted to ‘retire early’ while legally robbing the treasury.
This kind of system-approved, keep-the-money-moving thing is becoming more common across the West. Indeed, one local business owner in Springfield, Ohio (where the infamous Haitians were dropped off), proudly told news media in 2020 that he preferred to hire Haitian migrants over American citizens. The reason? Because he essentially gets government kickbacks in the form of cold, hard cash. That business owner is living in the future.
If you do a bit of digging, you’ll find thousands of stories like this – from the US to Ireland, and from France to down under. Normal people haven’t read Bobbitt’s book, but plenty of them have intuitively grasped that the government is an amoral entity. Governments are not ‘anti’ this group or ‘pro’ other groups – governments simply do not care about any single group at all.
The problem is that the people with civic principles think this future is immoral. These high-quality folk still believe in decent things like good and evil. In their personal lives, they refuse to perform any bad act, even if it is legal. To them, the law is no excuse for being antisocial. These are wonderful people, and I would love to have them in my neighbourhood.
But they are competing in a world that is dominated by the kinds of amoral people who will blame you for believing their lies. These are the people who belong to tribes. To them, the truth is a technology that is only useful if it advances their tribe’s self-interest. Tribal people have zero social guilt, and I wouldn’t want such people within 3000 km of my neighbourhood.
Yet, tribalism seems to be the winning move in a market state.
Tribes are winning because their core principle is nepotism, not the social contract. Tribes refuse to be bound by social ethics because, to them, all out-group laws are just “slave speak”. When you talk about something you can’t do, the tribalists interpret this as you voluntarily removing yourself from competition. The only standard that matters to a tribalist is their status within the in-group. All outside laws and ethics are puzzle games to be exploited.
In a proper nation-state, I would side with the civic-minded. It is always best to incentivise pro-social behaviour. But we don’t live in a nation-state anymore. We live in a market state. As such, those who follow the standards of their in-group, for the benefit of that in-group, will be the ones that survive and thrive.
As Philip Bobbit said, no one is yet sure what equilibrium in a market state looks like. For example, what institutions will persist when a government is amoral? What will happen to taxes? Should the government print all the money and distribute it to anyone who asks? If the state is just another corporation, what is the function of private property? All good questions.
In this politically liminal space as the market state develops slowly, there is much opportunity for you and your tribe – you do have a tribe, don’t you?
When you hear of a government project with huge cost overruns, don’t complain about ‘waste’ or ‘incompetency’. You should look at this more strategically and join the multicultural future of tribes before it’s too late.
Assuming you already have a tribe, the correct way to approach life in a market state is to focus on looting the treasury by any means necessary. You should be tendering for government projects and charging ten time more for your services. You should be ‘greenwashing’ your company to access more subsidies. You should claim to be Māori so that your teenager can have free access to law school.
The money is sitting on the table. Are you going to pick it up? If you don’t pick it up, other groups will. That free money will then be used to strengthen that rival tribe. It will be used to improve their chances of securing more government money. Their children will go to better schools. Their friends will live in safer communities. They will gain power in the market state.
I am not asking decent people to reject their wonderful civic principles and become amoral monsters. I am simply suggesting that you telescope your civic principles toward your tribe instead. You can still be a moral person, but the system that once rewarded civic principles has been dead for perhaps 30-plus years. The ‘New Zealander’ is a figment of your imagination. It no longer exists. We live in a multicultural market state and multiculturalism means tribalism.
There is no common language in a multicultural society. There are no common values. There are no common religions or holidays. There are no common economic goals. More importantly, there are no common descriptions of a successful society. Multiculturalism is a cold war where each group is permanently preparing for the inevitable day it turns into a hot war of supremacy.
In the year 20xx, there is no point in wishing for the return of the nation-state. It is never coming back. All the civic duties you were taught are now liabilities and risks. By paying taxes, you are rewarding your tribal enemies. By obeying the law, you are making it easier for your tribal enemies to get ahead. By refusing to get involved with ‘wasteful’ government spending, you are making your tribe weaker. The future is unevenly distributed – for now.
To compete in the multicultural market state, you must understand that you can’t make power disappear. Someone will always have it. So, your tribe must take power. The alternative is that rival tribes will take it. While money isn’t power, it does buy power, and the government has the biggest pools of money. Are you solving the equation yet?
The time has come to be amoral towards anyone outside your tribe. I wish it were different, but this is how things are now. The rules have changed. It is time to live as though you are part of history – because you are.
