[billbears]

Since hostilities in Mesopotamia commenced, thousands of American and Iraqi casualties have been tallied. Every month Washington spends billion of dollars on counterinsurgency and rebuilding efforts in Iraq and further afield, which swells the nation's largest budget and budget deficit in its history

Well 'spreading democracy' is a messy and expensive business....of course I suppose someone forgot to ask if anyone else wanted it in the first place.

As democracy has taken root in the United States and elsewhere, jostling between rival political factions has been less about how flaccid or robust the state should be, but what direction the state should take as its scope expands.

Nuelle's analysis of Hoppe hits the nail on the head. Currently there is not a party of limited government in Washington DC.

[ValenB4]

Democratic government inherently has a short term time preference and will inevitably lead to socialism, whether the country in question wants to call it socialism or not. Democracy presents the worst combination because it is a territorial monopolist while being publicly owned. The temporary caretakers of government have no incentive to consider the long term ramifications of their policies. Warfare tends to be worse when fought by democracies - they are ideological and lead to total warfare in which innocent populations are considered legitimate targets.

Monarchy, while still a monopolistic system, is better in that it has an inherent long term time preference because it is privately owned. Taxes tend to be lower. Wars tend to be more constrained because they are essentially disputes of property ownership.

The ideal system would be that of non-monopolistic privately owned protective services competing with each other for citizen-subscribers. How a society gets to that point I do not know. But perhaps that will be the next phase of the evolution of Western civilization.