Doug Casey on the Illinois Debt Crisis

Doug Casey welcomes Illinois’s impending bankruptcy: governments going bankrupt will be the only way to reduce their size and power. From Casey at Casey Research via lewrockwell.com:

Justin’s note: Illinois is dead broke.

Every month, it spends $600 million more than it collects in taxes. The state is now $15 billion in debt. There’s no telling how much worse its financial situation will become, either.

After all, Illinois hasn’t had a budget in two years. If it can’t put one together by tomorrow, Standard & Poor’s will cut its credit rating to “junk.” It would become the first state ever with this distinction.

This would have serious implications for the 13 million people living in Illinois. It could trigger a nationwide debt crisis. Doug Casey and I discuss why in the interview below.

Justin Spittler: Doug, what do you make of Illinois’ debt crisis?

Doug Casey: It’s absolutely wonderful.

Perhaps this brings out a little bit of the quasi-Leninist in me, because Lenin said “the worse it gets, the better it gets.” I’d like to see all of the states go bankrupt for the same reasons I said the federal government should default on its debt.

Most of what all levels of government do is usurped from society. Assuming you even accept the principle of legal coercion—I don’t—there’s very little that a government should do.

Justin: What sort of things should the government not do?

Doug: Education, for one.

The numbers vary, but typically it costs about $12,000 per year to educate a grade school student. It’s a completely absurd amount. Most of it is wasted on administration, bureaucracy, compliance, and overhead. But that’s not the point.

The point is that the state shouldn’t be in charge of kids’ education, because inevitably it turns into indoctrination. Teachers work for their employer, the government. The interests of the government are not necessarily those of either the children or the parents. State education works on the premise that parents are in general too ignorant and irresponsible to care for their progeny. And maybe that’s true—the proof being that they’re willing to send kids off to be incarcerated and indoctrinated by government employees for eight hours a day.

The bankruptcy of Illinois might push things in the direction of privatization and localization of education. Local schools generally get State and Federal funds, and have to obey State and Federal rules. Education necessarily becomes rote, non-innovative, PC, and one-size-fits-all. Teachers, which are less and less necessary in the Internet world, are roboticized and disincentivized.

To continue reading: Doug Casey on the Illinois Debt Crisis