The Three Layer State
who will tell us how to get out
Jeffrey A. Tucker has a good idea at Epoch Times: “The Three Layers of the Technocratic State.”
Deep State: The Intelligence Community, with CIA, FBI, NSC, NSA, CISA, DHS, and the rest of the 18 IC agencies.
Middle State: bureaucracy and civil service adding up to more than 400 agencies.
Shallow State: consists of legacy media outlets, social media, search tools, contractors, NGOs.
Tucker uses Big Pharma as an example of an industry involved at all three levels. They do biodefense work for the Deep State, they shuffle people back and forth with the NIH and FDA of the Middle State, and they dominate advertising in the media.
Notice how the Deep State was all over Trump with its Russia Russia and leaks; how the Middle State ambushed him on the COVID full-court press; and how the Shallow State hates his guts.
And now, STOP PRESS, a Manhattan jury has convicted Trump on 34 counts of falsifying business records. Was that the Deep State, the Middle State, the Shallow State at work, or all three?
The interesting question is: why try to demolish Trump? Why bother? If you look at government spending, the big items are pensions, health care, defense, and education. Is Trump going to abolish all that? Obviously not. So just what exactly is the problem with Trump? Why has he got to be stopped at any price?
I suppose the short answer is that any regime hits back at any threat to its power, and especially when it is clearly failing to provide a peaceful world in which ordinary people can prosper.
But back to the bigger question. Given the vast power of the modern state to order, to control, to tax, to regulate, and to break down all barriers to the deployment of its power, how do we get to a regime that does not have that power and does not succeed in increasing its power, and where people do not bother to know the details of the Three Layer State.
The instinct of the educated-class regime over the last century and more is that everything should be under its supervision and administrative control. But that does not work. The more administration, the more control, the more that things break down. The most extreme efforts, by Stalin and Mao, led to direct starvation and economic collapse, where government controls 100 percent of GDP. The medium efforts, by western democratic welfare states, lead to inflation, stagnation, and worse outcomes for people not directly connected to the state apparatus, where government controls about 40 percent of GDP. The minimum effort, by countries like Singapore, lead to remarkable growth and prosperity and low government spending of about 15 percent of GDP.
Where is the genius to lead us out of this box canyon?