Life After the State

Why We Don't Need Government

By: Dominic Frisby

Narrated by: Dominic Frisby

Life After the State is a book that will change the way you think about money, education, healthcare, and social justice forever. Combining the storytelling skills of Morgan Housel’s The Psychology of Money with the number-crunching investigative style of Tim Harford’s Undercover Economist, this is a quest into a topic too many of us take for granted–at our peril.

Dominic Frisby never used to think about government. But a fascination with the world of finance led him to a lifetime of investigation, and what he discovered changed how he saw the world.

Wherever government gets involved in people's lives with a desire to do good, it seems to make the situation much, much worse. What if that’s not a coincidence–but a fundamental problem with government itself?

The idea of life without a state conjures up Mad Max scenarios. But could the era of the big state in fact be driving us towards a breakdown?

Over 20 story-filled and eye-opening chapters, Life After the State reveals dozens of astonishing insights, including:

•How the most entrepreneurial city in Europe became its sickest.

•The unspoken reason your family is getting smaller.

•The unlikely candidate for the biggest murderer in history.

•How taxation and redistribution of wealth actually increase the gap between the haves and have-nots.

•The empty promise on every currency note.

•The untold history of the wild results of inflation (including a venture to drain the Red Sea and recover the gold that Moses had left after he parted the waters).

•The baffling way that the price of one of the most important possible things–money–is set by central planners, like Soviet butter.

•How debt fuels asset prices in a relentless cycle, depriving those on fixed incomes.

•And much, much more.

Wherever you are on the political spectrum, this is a fascinating exploration of an urgent question–with huge implications for every aspect of modern life. You’ll be shocked by what Frisby found.

©2024 Dominic Frisby (P)2024 Dominic Frisby

Epic performance of a very long 'Opinion' piece

I could listen to Dominic read the book of recipes and be so engaged in the content, his performance is that good.

The book is great, though the content is a bit all over the place so it's easy to get lost. If you pause midchapter it's hard to recall what has been said previously. If you aren't familiar with Dominic's work it could be hard to follow and digest the content.

Overall, objectively looking, it's one giant 'Opinion' piece. Even though I agree with most of the propositions laid in the book I feel that this could easily slip into, what Thomas Sowell describes as an intellectual trap, where we have the "Intellectuals" that are pushing for some agenda without really understanding the consequences of the decisions.
Take for example the chapter on giving birth, it is easy to follow the thread of thought that giving birth in a hospital is a horror and that women have been giving birth at home for thousands of years, and given how much society has improved the hygiene of homes, it would be logical to go back to the practice of giving birth at home. I can see this easily turning into chaos. Just look at what is happening before and after the birth. Look how much are parents, moms in particular bombarded with information, often contradictory information on what to do while you are pregnant, or what is good for the baby? And how capitalist bloodsuckers are leaning on a vulnerable state of new parents to sell you something, Should you vaccinate? Should you give the baby vitamin drops? Use this creme, go to this training, buy only "these" fabrics, on and on... I can imagine what would be the propaganda about home birth. How information and instructions are unclear, and how everything related to giving birth is super expensive because parents have no choice and are ready to pay the price. And, how homebirth easily goes out of control and how we see a surge in birth complications just because parents are not sure who to listen to.
Most of the content is like this, and I would say most of the things challenged by this book are not bad in itself it's just that the government is so bad at doing them that we feel any alternative would be a better solution.