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Tl;dr: Perpetual Chaos Is Always The Result Of Centralized Power
Banks, Governments and Corporations Are The Same Thing
Authoritarianism, Communism, Fascism, Feudalism, Crony-Capitalism, Socialism etc. Are The Same Thing: Centralization.
These terms are used to obscure the truth. The truth is: power corrupts and incentives lead to outcomes. If a system is corruptible it will be corrupt.
The state is not a benevolent protector of the people but a mechanism that distorts markets, erodes liberty, and perpetuates crises for its own expansion.
Thinkers like Ludwig von Mises, Friedrich Hayek, Frédéric Bastiat, Carl Menger, Joseph Schumpeter, Hans-Hermann Hoppe, and modern voices such as Ron Paul and Saifedean Ammous have long warned that government intervention—whether through monetary manipulation, prohibition, or militarism—creates unseen consequences that harm individuals while benefiting entrenched elites.
Voltaire’s defense of free speech and individual rights underscores the classical liberal ideal: a society of voluntary exchange, not coercion.
The assertions here —Mexican cartels, enabled by prohibition and state complicity, have inflicted more harm on Americans than any foreign adversary; that U.S. foreign wars serve ulterior motives rather than public interest; and that a deeper structure of centralized power (banking, intelligence, corporate) deliberately maintains profitable chaos —are not mere conjecture. They align with verifiable data and the logical implications of interventionism.
This essay assesses these claims objectively, highlighting how prohibition and endless wars exemplify Bastiat’s “seen vs. unseen”: we see the “fight against drugs” or “spreading democracy,” but unseen are the black markets, blowback, and inflation that enrich the powerful at the expense of the people.
The Drug War and Mexico: Prohibition as the Root of Cartel Power
Prohibition does not eliminate vice; it empowers criminals. As Mises argued in Human Action, interfering with voluntary exchange distorts prices and creates artificial scarcities, spawning black markets and violence. The U.S. drug war, launched decades ago, has followed this script precisely.
Mexican cartels, primarily Sinaloa and CJNG, supply nearly all fentanyl entering the U.S., per the DEA’s assessments.
Provisional CDC data show U.S. drug overdose deaths dropped to around 80,000–87,000 in 2024 (a 24–27% decline from 2023’s peak of ~110,000–114,000), yet synthetic opioids like fentanyl remain the primary driver, accounting for ~60% of fatalities.
Cumulatively, over 1 million Americans have died from overdoses since 2000, far exceeding combat deaths in all U.S. wars combined.
This is not abstract terrorism; it is direct harm from a neighboring pipeline fueled by demand and prohibition-enforced profits.
U.S. efforts against Mexico remain inadequate: bilateral extraditions and seizures occur, but no decisive action disrupts the flow. Why? The drug war sustains massive bureaucracies (DEA budgets), private prisons, and asset forfeitures.
Major banks have laundered cartel billions with impunity. Wachovia (now Wells Fargo) admitted to processing $378 billion in suspicious funds, paying a fine without prosecutions; HSBC settled for $1.9 billion after facilitating cartel money flows, yet continued operations.
These are not oversights but features of a system where corporate and state interests align, as Hayek warned in The Road to Serfdom: central planning breeds cronyism.
If protecting Americans were the goal, prohibition would end tomorrow.
Legalization and regulation, as in Portugal or Uruguay collapse black-market premiums by 70–90%, slashing violence and overdoses while allowing adults free choice.
Government decree does not make something more or less appealing, it creates and incentivizes black markets, criminality including violence.
Cartels would pivot to other rackets (extortion, trafficking), but lose their primary revenue, much as alcohol prohibition’s repeal gutted mafias.
Instead, the state clings to control, using the crisis to justify surveillance and spending.
Middle East Wars: Interventionism and the Petrodollar Empire
Ron Paul, echoing the Founders’ non-interventionism (“peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations”), has long argued that modern U.S. foreign policy creates blowback. It benefits global powers and large industry at the insistence of entrenched interests; it does not benefit America or its people.
Iraq and Afghanistan posed no direct threat to the homeland. Zero Iraqis hijacked planes on 9/11. Yet trillions were spent, thousands of U.S. lives lost, and hundreds of thousands of civilians killed, for vague notions of “democracy".
These wars enforce dollar hegemony, tied to central banking. Mises and Hayek viewed fiat money and central banks as enablers of inflation and war: without sound money (gold standard, per Menger’s theory of money’s organic emergence), states print to fund adventures, taxing citizens covertly.
Post-invasion Iraq saw its central bank restructured under U.S. oversight; Libya under Gaddafi held massive gold reserves and flirted with a gold-backed African currency challenging the dollar. Post-NATO intervention, chaos ensued, with the central bank fragmented.
The ulterior motive is clear: not liberty, but control over resources and monetary dominance.
Schumpeter’s creative destruction (when old, inefficient ways get wiped out by better ideas) thrives in free markets, not state-orchestrated wars that enrich defense contractors while destroying wealth.
State intervention to “protect” consumers from deception quickly morphs into state control over information, prices, and choices: Hayek’s fatal conceit in action. Mises insisted only individuals, not planners, can judge truth.
The market’s self-correction: reputation, boycotts, whistleblowers etc. remains the only reliable, non-coercive path; any government “shield” eventually turns inward against the people it claims to defend.
Venezuela: A Convenient Confluence of Incentives
Venezuela exemplifies mixed motives masked as humanitarianism. The U.S. recognized Guaidó as “interim president”, imposed sanctions, and accused Maduro of corruption—all while Venezuela holds the world’s largest oil reserves and trades outside the dollar (with Russia, China, Iran).
From Hoppe’s private property ethic and Ron Paul’s non-intervention views that align with many American founding fathers, early U.S. presidents, this is aggression against a sovereign nation.
Sanctions starve civilians, not leaders. If countering China/Russia were priority, why provoke them abroad while ignoring direct harms at home?
Venezuela has a state-owned central bank, no connection to the world's central banking cartel (the federal reserve, IMF or world bank) control, its defiance of dollar orthodoxy threatens the petrodollar hegemony and invites pressure. Historically countries operating outside the world's most powerful central banking system, including the U.S. have faced pressure and ultimately chaos brought on by these powerful forces.
True defense of American interests would prioritize borders and liberty: end prohibition (starving cartels), avoid entangling alliances, and audit domestic corruption (e.g., government tolerance of drug routes).
The Deeper Structure: Centralized Power Maintaining Chaos
The most parsimonious explanation is deliberate tolerance. Central banking (the Fed, per Ron Paul and Ammous’s The Bitcoin Standard) enables endless deficits for wars and welfare, eroding purchasing power.
Corporate cronies: banks laundering billions, pharma pushing opioids, big food peddling poison; virtually all modern markets are walled gardens that profit from chaos and oppression. Governments and intelligence agencies have always facilitated this.
This is divide-and-conquer: crises justify control, “crumbs” (stimulus, wars on abstractions) appease masses, while elites accumulate. As Bastiat noted, the state lives off plunder; free markets voluntary.
If for the people, we’d end the Fed for sound money, end prohibition and return to non-intervention. Instead, Americans become fodder, overdoses and black markets fueling criminality, soldiers abroad while the soap opera sold to the masses perpetuates corruption and the financial-industrial powers.
It's always sold as safety. They will even cause the problem, cause chaos to sell the idea that they need to give you safety. Look up "Operation Northwoods".
They’ll always yell, “You need a big gun to fight the big bad wolf.”
But Mises nailed it: the moment you give one pack the power to print money or spy, they become the wolf.
Real defense isn’t centralized payroll soldiers. It’s armed, healthy, educated neighbors, encrypted networks, voluntary militias.
People already do it. Look at the Swiss: no empire, just citizens who own guns and keep their gold, and no one invades them.
Misinformation? Market-proof money fixes that—sound money doesn’t let tyrants flood headlines with fresh cash.
Terror? A free society repels it with borders that can open or shut with vigilance, not permanently locked ones that rot from internal corruption.
The state’s offer is always: “Trust us to rob you slower than they will". History says no, every time people have bought that, they've been robbed twice, from outside and from within.
The fear they peddle: “It’s already too late, let them get stronger and we’re done.”
But Hayek would call that a death spiral argument.
Every time we “intervene” to stop Russia/China, what do we do? We print trillions, hand them to defense contractors, erode our own dollar, breed enemies who weren’t enemies before, and China just keeps buying our debt while Russia sells gold-backed oil.
Non-intervention isn’t surrender. It’s withdrawal from the game.
Let Russia keep Venezuela. Let China buy oil in yuan.
Watch their systems rot from the inside: no sound money, no freedom, no creativity. Just top-down rot that implodes faster than any empire we fund.
We don’t lose if we stop feeding the beast. We lose when we keep proving we’re better slaves than they are.
Most folks hear “non-intervention” and think “weakness".
But the real weakness is thinking we can control the world without becoming its prisoner.
History’s full of empires that “had to” act and ended up bankrupt, hated, or both.
Better to stand on our own soil, armed, free, and solvent.
In Voltaire’s spirit: defend liberty against coercion. The solution is peace through freedom: markets, not mandates; peace, not empire.
