- Clarey, Aaron.
Enjoy the Decline.
Seattle: CreateSpace, 2013.
ISBN 978-1-4802-8476-0.
-
Many readers may find this book deeply cynical, disturbing, and
immoral. I found it cynical, disturbing, and immoral,
but also important, especially for younger people who wish to
make the most of their lives and find themselves in a United
States in an epoch in which it is, with the consent of the
majority, descending into a grey collectivist tyranny and
surveillance state, where productive and creative people are
seen as subjects to be exploited to benefit an
ever-growing dependent class which supports the state which
supports them.
I left the United States in 1991 and have only returned since
for brief visits with family or to attend professional conferences.
Since 2001, as the totalitarian vibe there has grown rapidly, I
try to make these visits as infrequent as possible, my last being
in 2011. Since the 1990s, I have been urging productive people
in the U.S. to consider emigrating but, with only a couple
of exceptions, nobody has taken this advice. I've always
considered this somewhat odd, since most people in the
U.S. are descended from those who left their countries of birth
and came there to escape tyranny and seek opportunity. But
most people in the U.S. seem to recoil from the idea of
leaving, even as their own government becomes more repressive
and exploits them to a greater extent than the regimes their
ancestors fled.
This book is addressed to productive people (primarily young
ones with few existing responsibilities) who have decided to
remain in the United States. (Chapter 10 discusses emigration,
and while it is a useful introduction to the topic, I'd
suggest those pondering that option read
Time to Emigrate? [January 2007],
even though it is addressed to people in the United Kingdom.)
The central message is that with the re-election of Obama in
2012, the U.S. electorate have explicitly endorsed a path which
will lead to economic and geopolitical decline and ever-increasing
exploitation of a shrinking productive class in favour of
a growing dependent population. How is a productive person,
what the author calls a “Real American”, to respond
to this? One could dedicate oneself to struggling to reverse
the trend through political activism, or grimly struggle to make
the best of the situation while working hard even as more of
the fruits of one's labour are confiscated. Alternatively,
one can seek to “enjoy the decline”: face the
reality that once a democratic society reaches the
tipping point
where more than half of the electorate receives more in
government transfer payments than they pay in taxes it's
game over and a new set of incentives have been put in place
which those wishing to make the most of their lives must face
forthrightly unless they wish to live in a delusional state.
In essence, the author argues, the definition of the “good life”
is fundamentally transformed once a society begins the slide into
collectivist tyranny. It is a fool's errand to seek to get an
advanced education when that only burdens one with debt which will
take most of a lifetime to repay and make capital formation in
the most productive working years impossible. Home ownership,
once the goal of young people and families, and their main
financial asset, only indentures you to a state which can raise
property taxes at any time and confiscate your property if you cannot
pay. Marriage and children must be weighed, particularly by
men, against the potential downside in case things don't work
out, which is why, increasingly, men are
going on strike. Scrimping and saving to
contribute to a retirement plan is only piling up assets
a cash-strapped government may seize when it can't pay its bills,
as has already happened in Argentina and other countries.
What matters? Friends, family (if you can get along with them),
having a good time, making the most of the years when you can
hike, climb mountains, ride motorcycles way too fast, hunt,
fish, read books that interest you, and share all of this and
more with a compatible companion. And you're doing this while
your contemporaries are putting in 60 hour weeks, seeing half or
more of their income confiscated, and hoping to do these things
at some distant time in the future, assuming their pensions
don't default and their retirement funds aren't stolen or
inflated away.
There are a number of things here which people may find off-putting,
if not shocking. In chapter 7, the author discusses the
“ ‘Smith and Wesson’ Retirement Plan”—not
making any provision for retirement, living it up while you
can, and putting a bullet in your head when you begin to
fail. I suspect this sounds like a lot better idea when you're
young (the author was 38 years old at the publication date of this
book) than when you're getting closer to the checkered flag.
In chapter 8, introduced by a quote from Ayn Rand, he discusses
the strategy of minimising one's income and thereby qualifying
for as many government assistance programs as possible. Hey,
if the people have legitimately voted for them, why not be
a beneficiary instead of the sucker who pays for them?
Whatever you think of the advice in this book (which comes across
as sincere, not satirical), the thing to keep in mind is that
it is an accurate description of the incentives which now exist
in the U.S. While it's unlikely that many productive people will
read this book and dial their ambitions back into slacker territory
or become overt parasites, what's important is the decisions made
on the margin by those unsure how to proceed in their lives.
As the U.S. becomes poorer, weaker, and less free, perhaps the
winners, at least on a relative basis, will be those who do not
rage against the dying of the light or struggle to exist as
they are progressively enslaved, but rather people who opt out
to the extent possible and react rationally to the incentives
as they exist. I would (and have) emigrated, but if that's
not possible or thinkable, this book may provide a guide to making
the best of a tragic situation.
The book contains numerous citations of resources on
the Web, each of which is linked in the text: in the
Kindle edition, clicking the
link takes you to the cited Web page.
August 2013 