G20 meeting heading towards train wreck status

Ever since the state was invented, several thousand years ago, it has been nothing but a collective agreement between swindlers and thieves to use force to rape and pillage the rest of us.

In the telling picture above, the first pharoah of Egypt, Menes, is smashing down on the face of the conquered people of Lower Egypt with a stone mace, as he rampaged down from Upper Egypt, just to bring the point home. This image, and the many like it which followed, has always been the emblematic icon of the state.

The voluntary world, based on the free market, despite being continually smashed in the face by the state, has managed to overcome this force, to deliver us into a condition of relative civilisation. However, the state has now grown so large, even the market may fail to overcome its destructive use of power.

For example, the forthcoming G20 meeting is going to be a disaster, because it will aim to try to use force to destroy what little remains of the free market, especially in the financial world.

Fortunately, even now, we can tell it is going to be a train wreck, because everything we hear about it is based on force and one-sided self-interest. Although they will try to burden the rest of us with their insane nostrums, the meeting will be so chaotic and so filled with acrimony, just like everything else the state touches, that enough of the free market may slip through to save the world again. Just check out these stories:

=> Ambitious Harman accused of 'muscling in' on G20

=> G20 ministers set for clash over economic crisis solutions

=> G20 summit: EU and US are sparring, not feuding

=> G20: Europe has done enough, Juncker tells US

=> G20 summit: US Treasury department won't answer their phones, says top UK civil servant

But then, what do we expect from a bunch of people who deliberately got us into this mess through their central banking systems, who refuse to take the blame for anything despite taking vast salaries for 'being in charge', and who cannot tell one end of a balance sheet from another, unless it tells them how much is personally in it for them?

The language of the free market is always based on voluntary agreement and two-sided mutual self-interest, thus is diametrically opposed to the state. Fortunately, it also provides us with a global mechanism to solve all economic problems, if it is left well enough alone.

Let us hope that the pygmies at the G20 conference are so concerned about trying to screw one over on each other, that they leave the rest of us well enough alone to actually try to start a recovery.

We can but hope.