ИПИ Библиотека

The state makes a mess of everything it touches, argues Jeffrey Tucker in Bourbon for Breakfast. Perhaps the biggest mess it makes is in our minds. Its pervasive interventions in every sector affect the functioning of society in so many ways, we are likely to intellectually adapt rather than fight. Tucker proposes another path: see how the state has distorted daily life, rethink how things would work without the state, and fight against the intervention in every way that is permitted.
Whether that means hacking your showerhead, rejecting prohibitionism, searching for large-tank toilets, declining to use government courts, homeschooling, embracing alternative micro-cultures, watching pro-freedom movies, baking at home, maintaining manners and standards of dress, publishing without copyright, and just living outside what he calls the "statist quo," we should not lose touch with what freedom means, even in these times.
The essays cover commercial life, digital media, culture, food, literature, religion, music, and a host of other issues -- all from the perspective of a Misesian-Rothbardian struggling to get by in a world in which the walls of the state have been closing in. He writes about the glories of commerce, the horrors of jail, the joy of private life, and defends a kind of aristocratic radicalism in times of increasingly restricted choices.

"Most of the essays in this book do just this. They imagine radical new possibilities of living outside the status quo. Or perhaps we should say “statist” quo because it is the state that is responsible for shaping our world, in brazen ways and also subtle ones that we do not fully realize.
Examples from the book include how and why the “hot” water in our homes became lukewarm and what can be done about it, how our toilets stopped working properly because of legislation that reduced toilet-tank size, how traffic-law enforcement became a racket for extracting wealth from the population to feed the overlords, how copyright and patent legislation is depriving us of cultural and technological innovation, and how politicians who we think are protecting us are really just taking away our own rights to protect ourselves.
To see the costs of statism is to see what Frederic Bastiat called the “unseen.” It is about imagining the existence of some possibility that the state has forbidden from existing, playing with that possibility in your mind, and then acting on what has previously been an abstraction and making it a reality. Art helps us accomplish this mental feat, which is why many of these essays deal with literature, movies, culture, and the arts."

Jeffrey Tucker

Jeffrey Albert Tucker is the executive editor of Laissez Faire Books. He is past editorial vice president of the Ludwig von Mises Institute and past editor for the institute's website, Mises.org. Tucker is also an adjunct scholar with the Mackinac Center for Public Policy and an Acton University faculty member.

Tucker compiled an annotated bibliography of the works of Henry Hazlitt, entitled Henry Hazlitt: Giant For Liberty, which is now in print. A Foundation for Economic Education review described the book, which "includes citations of a novel, works on literary criticism, treatises on economics and moral philosophy, several edited volumes, some 16 other books and many chapters in books, plus articles, commentaries, and reviews," as "an apt eulogy of Henry Hazlitt."

As a writer, Tucker has contributed scholarly efforts and humorous essays to LewRockwell.com, Mises.org and elsewhere. Examples of the latter essays include his defense of morning drinking, his advice on "How to Dress Like a Man", his attack on shaving cream, and his admiration for the speedy-service haircut. 

 He is author of It's a Jetsons World: Private Miracles and Public Crimes and Bourbon for Breakfast: Living Outside the Statist Quo.