{"id":103599,"date":"2026-07-14T03:00:42","date_gmt":"2026-07-14T07:00:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=103599"},"modified":"2026-07-13T14:14:54","modified_gmt":"2026-07-13T18:14:54","slug":"the-problem-is-the-state","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2026\/07\/14\/the-problem-is-the-state\/","title":{"rendered":"The problem is the state"},"content":{"rendered":"

Brivael Le Pogram<\/a> explains that acceptance of mediocrity is key to the decline of most western societies … meek acceptance that we are lesser people living in the ruins of a just-passed but rapidly receding Golden Age:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

An SNCF Train \u00e0 Grande Vitesse<\/em> (TGV) Duplex DASYE (moteur asynchrone, nouvelle generation de duplex<\/em>) train at Figueres-Vilafant station, May 2011.
Photo by eldelinux via Wikimedia Commons.<\/p><\/div>\n

I’m on a “air-conditioned” train where it’s 26 degrees. The WiFi doesn’t work. No one says a word.<\/p>\n

And that’s what fascinates me the most: not the breakdown, but the collective acceptance.<\/p>\n

The socialist state has pulled off a psychological feat. It’s made us internalize that a mediocre service, paid for at exorbitant cost, is normal. That it’s even what “public service” means.<\/p>\n

The same service in a free market would cost a fraction of the price. And if the AC broke down, you’d be refunded within the hour, because a competitor is waiting right next door for you to switch shops.<\/p>\n

Make a list of everything the state touches:<\/p>\n

    \n

    Education<\/strong>: plummeting standards, teachers burning out, PISA rankings in freefall.
    Healthcare<\/strong>: months-long waits, hallways full of gurneys, caregivers fleeing.
    Transport<\/strong>: delays, breakdowns, strikes, prices exploding.
    Justice<\/strong>: years for a judgment.
    Police<\/strong>: overwhelmed, demoralized.
    Colossal budgets<\/strong>.
    Record-high tax takes in Europe<\/strong>.
    Result<\/strong>: everything’s rotten.<\/p>\n<\/ul>\n

    Why?<\/p>\n

    Because two things are missing that only the market provides: skin in the game and prices.<\/p>\n

    Skin in the game first. An entrepreneur who delivers a lousy service goes bankrupt. He loses HIS money, HIS reputation, HIS years of work. A bureaucrat who mismanages a public service loses nothing. He’ll get promoted, transferred, or at worst he’ll coast to retirement. Failure has no personal consequences. So failure repeats, indefinitely.<\/p>\n

    Prices next. Hayek showed it: market prices are an information system. Every price aggregates millions of individual decisions and signals where to allocate resources. When the state sets prices or subsidizes at a loss, it destroys that signal. No one knows anymore what anything is worth. We sprinkle money at random, we waste, and we call it “public investment”.<\/p>\n

    That’s why the bureaucrat is the worst possible steward of your taxes: he spends other people’s money, on other people. No incentive to save, no incentive to serve well. Milton Friedman summed it up in one sentence: it’s the worst of the four ways to spend money.<\/p>\n

    The problem isn’t this minister, that government, this reform. The problem is structural. A monopoly without competition, without prices, without skin in the game, will ALWAYS produce mediocrity. No matter who’s running it. No matter the budget.<\/p>\n

    If you’ve grasped that, you’ve grasped 90% of political economy.<\/p>\n

    So do one simple thing: explain it to your loved ones. Next delayed train, next emergency room wait, ask the question: “Who loses money when this service sucks?” Answer: no one. That’s the problem.<\/p>\n

    The information will eventually spread. And one day, collectively, we’ll stop swallowing it.<\/p>\n

    The problem is the state. Always.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

    Auto-translated from the original French by X.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Brivael Le Pogram explains that acceptance of mediocrity is key to the decline of most western societies … meek acceptance that we are lesser people living in the ruins of a just-passed but rapidly receding Golden Age: I’m on a “air-conditioned” train where it’s 26 degrees. The WiFi doesn’t work. No one says a word. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[62,1117,84],"tags":[262,337,755,76],"class_list":["post-103599","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-europe","category-france","category-government","tag-culture","tag-eu","tag-incentives","tag-socialism"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-qWX","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/103599","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=103599"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/103599\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":103613,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/103599\/revisions\/103613"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=103599"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=103599"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=103599"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}