Essential Reading: The Eye that Watches and the Hand that Feeds

The Eye that Watches and the Hand that Feeds: A Requiem for the Revolutionary | Jason Jordan: "Yet the laudable contempt libertarians have for the State and its agents has perhaps become a liability; it has led them to underestimate their sworn enemy. While our government has proven abysmally incompetent at governing, the primary concern of all governments is never to govern, but to preserve their power; and to this end governments have proven able indeed.

This particular talent is rarely taken as seriously as it warrants. In spite of the arithmetic of our current predicament, neither an economic breakdown nor subsequent revolution is quite so obviously entailed. Indeed, the putative inevitability of our reckoning has engendered a dangerous complacency on the part of many enemies of statism. They have become almost Marxist in their outlook: the collapse of the welfare state and the revolution to follow is increasingly seen as historically necessary. This is a profound error. A collapse of sorts may be inevitable, but any revolution to follow not merely contingent, but doubtful."

If you're sentient, you will read this and be enlightened. No it's not perfect, but pretty damned impressive -- for instance on the timing vis-a-vis Snowden's revelations.