Your Choices are Anarchism or Anarchy (June 2025)

One of the problems with our current system of government is that we keep adding things - laws, agencies, employees - without a clear process for removing them. The tax code is a good example. We've added so many new rules that it's impossible for anyone to understand it. It's harder to remove rules than add them so the default outcome is that every new addition persists, compounding complexity.

Why do we accept this? We're born onto this patch of land called America and we have to pay a group of people money every year but it's impossible to know exactly how much we owe and if we get the number wrong they take extra or lock us in a cage and after paying it's not fully clear where all the money goes but what is clear is that rich people pay proportionally less. Certainly room for improvement.

We accept this because of some combination of recognizing that taxes are a necessary cost that should collectively benefit us in the longterm and this is just the way things are - we simply have to pay taxes. Without taxes how would we pay for roads or parks or high speed rails to nowhere?

Imagine there was a national vote to keep the IRS as is or dismantle and reform it. Put partisan politics aside - this isn't a vote on whether we should fund xyz thing. It's a vote on whether the IRS as an agency is collecting and distributing taxes as efficiently and fairly as possible. Put a gun to my head and I'd bet that most Americans would vote to dismantle and reform the agency and tax code.

Now imagine that the IRS and the government writ large knew the vote to dismantle and reform the IRS was coming and they had something like 10 years to prepare. I'd change my bet. I'd bet the risk of being dismantled would incentivize the IRS and all the people directly reliant on them to poll public opinion and improve the department to the point that more than half the country would vote to keep it.

Maybe you think people will never vote for taxes, no matter how much the IRS reflects their interests. First of all, they already do, they're called Democrats. Second, you'd be betting against 4.4 trillion United States Dollars in lost or deferred revenue, which is, to put it mildly, not trivial as far as incentives go. Third, if we put up with the IRS today, at least in part because we know it's a necessary cost, why wouldn't we vote for it tomorrow?

I believe in people to vote for the correct balance of their own self interest and our collective interest. I believe in democracy. But for the sake of argument, assume the IRS was dismantled. Either everything would be fine... awesome... or chaos would ensue and I'd bet that would incentivize people to vote to reinstate taxes, possibly in a more effective and fair way than before.

What I just described is Anarchism. When most people think of Anarchism, they think of anarchy - a bunch of people with pink hair and the letter "A" spray-painted on black hoodies throwing molotov cocktails. Anarchism, with a capital A, like Classical Liberalism, is the outlandish idea that humans are born free and any form of authority bears the burden of proving to the people it has authority over that it is legitimate, otherwise it's dismantled.

Instead of the default outcome being that power persists, the default outcome is that power is lost, unless it proves it is legitimate. In other words, death and taxes are not inevitabilities - death is, but taxes only are so long as the people approve of them. Insane proposition, right?

We sort of have a process like this with presidents - they are done after two four year terms. But there is no process for dismantling the government apparatus below them or the parties behind them (aka the deep state, the puppet masters, they/them), which is where lots of quiet power has congregated in order to escape accountability.

Assume the country wakes up one day and likes this idea of voting on whether agencies should be dismantled and reformed as much as I do. How could we implement it?

DOGE is an early attempt at this sort of thing, and while I like the mission, I don't think it will work. Any effort to reform the government in our current polarized political climate is inevitably going to be weaponized to benefit the party implementing the reform. Not to mention, everything can be undone when the other party gains power.

Elon Musk was accusing Democrats of weaponizing social services to buy votes with one breath and with the next he asked the country to trust him to reform government spending and regulation without preferencing his companies, which rely on government spending and regulation. I don't care if the reformers are on the left or right, how about instead of relying on small powerful groups with only a "just trust me bro" we go back to trusting the people?

What would work better than DOGE is if people could directly vote on individual agencies or initiatives like the IRS, the Department of Education, and USAID. But most people don't have the time or knowledge to participate in direct democracy like this, it's both too burdensome and important of a process. Where does that leave us?

I believe the eventual answer is some form of more granular delegation. I'd love the option to delegate my votes across a dozen or so different issue areas. Maybe I vote on economic policy initiatives myself because it's an area I'm passionate about but I delegate my defense votes to Bob and my housing votes to Sally. And if Bob starts doing things I disapprove of, I can delegate to someone else instead.

This model could not only help depolarize our two party system by allowing people to spread their votes for individual issues across party lines, but it's a middle ground between voting Republican or Democrat in national elections, which is too limiting, and voting for specific ballot initiatives locally, which is too granular.

This idea might sound outlandish. Perhaps the government is too big and complex to change - that might be true. Maybe the only way to change is to elect increasingly autocratic leaders until we lose the right to vote or our votes lose power - that could also be true. But if we continue to ignore some of the more sane ideas of Anarchism and stay on our current trajectory, at some point the government will become so complex and dysfunctional that we risk anarchy, in the molotov cocktail sense of the word.