{"id":257821,"date":"2016-07-24T09:04:26","date_gmt":"2016-07-24T09:04:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/new-anti-government-tv-series\/"},"modified":"2016-07-24T09:04:26","modified_gmt":"2016-07-24T09:04:26","slug":"new-anti-government-tv-series","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/new-anti-government-tv-series\/","title":{"rendered":"New Anti-Government TV Series"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\u201cNever trust a criminal \u2026 until you have to,\u201d is the official motto of\u00a0The Blacklist<\/em><\/a>, the American crime-thriller television series that premiered on NBC on September 23, 2013. But the real lesson of The Blacklist<\/em> is \u201cnever trust the government \u2026 even if you have to.\u201d Not many shows are both anti-state in their narrative and enjoyable at the same time. The Blacklist<\/em>, however, deserves to be watched. If there is one show that takes the government for what it is, i.e., a \u201cbandit gang\u201d as Rothbard called it, it would be The Blacklist<\/em>.<\/p>\n

The Blacklist<\/em> is the story of an international criminal, Raymond\u00a0Reddington, who decides, for mysterious reasons, to work with the FBI. In exchange for valuable information, the FBI lets him conduct his business freely. Hence, the question is does Reddington work for the government or is it the other way around. Reddington says it explicitly in Season 1, Episode 2: \u201cThe FBI works for me now.\u201d<\/p>\n

It is true that, after three seasons, we still don\u2019t know much about Reddington. As he says in Season 1, Episode 1, \u201cEverything about me is a lie.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Reddington as a Free Trader<\/strong><\/p>\n

Contrary to most politicians, bureaucrats and most self-proclaimed \u201cpragmatic libertarians,\u201d Reddington does not try to please people while pretending to be somebody he is not. It is therefore not surprising to discover that Reddington is a staunch proponent of free markets. Because he is an entrepreneur responding to consumer sovereignty, he is scorned by many in the FBI. In the first episode, for example, Agent Donald Ressler says about Reddington: \u201cHe has no country, he has no political agenda. Reddington\u2019s only allegiance is to the highest bidder.\u201d In other words, Reddington is not trying to force his will upon other people. He is not a nationalist; he does not seek power.<\/p>\n

Why are the most advertised Gold and Silver coins NOT the best way to invest?<\/a><\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

At this point, one might object that Reddington is using \u201cviolent means\u201c to earn his living, that he is not a producer and an entrepreneur but a thief. We must here dismiss a possible misunderstanding. The main feature of the mafia is not aggression but rather the business of private protection. This is what is shown in Diego Gambetta\u2019s excellent book,<\/a>\u00a0The Sicilian Mafia<\/em>.<\/a> Similarly, Red Reddington is an entrepreneur answering efficiently to the most urgent needs of the consumers, whatever they are. For him, violence is just a means to protect other people from aggression by the state or other gangs. In Season 3, Episode 19, when somebody asks Reddington if he has killed anyone before, his honest answer is, \u201cYes, many. But no one who did not deserve it.\u201d Contrary to the state which kills innocent people in wars and with drones, Reddington, as a military veteran, is aware of this, and has tried to avoid the state\u2019s military conflicts.<\/p>\n

One of Reddington\u2019s tasks is also to help people disappear so that they can escape governmental mass surveillance. Therefore, for all those reasons, Reddington understands the virtues of the free-market. The beginning of Season 1, Episode 9 demonstrates Reddington\u2019s economic liberalism in a discussion with the FBI agent Ressler:<\/p>\n

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Donald<\/em>: \u201cWe celebrate what?\u201d<\/p>\n

Reddington<\/em>: \u201cFree trade, Donald! Free trade.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Similarly, in Episode 21 of season three, Reddington, discussing someone who contracted with a violent agency in bed with the federal government, says:<\/p>\n

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He contracted them to help them tame a savage competitor, Kerogent Holdings, which has been flooding the market with cheap oil and driving down prices, to which I would normally give a hardy free-market thumbs up. But the oil in question is purchased to radical jihadists, the proceeds being used to finance all sorts of nastiness.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Free-market thumbs up and free trade summarize perfectly Reddington\u2019s personal convictions.<\/p>\n

Reddington resists government regulatory and fiscal arbitrariness. In Season 1, Episode 17, Reddington saves the day when a criminal has stolen a prototype of a government computer program which could cut through the most secure network just by pushing a button. Reddington wisely remarks:<\/p>\n

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So the federal government has armed a cyber terrorist with a digital equivalent of a nuclear warhead. Another fabulous example of your tax dollars at work. Yet another reason why I don\u2019t pay taxes.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

And in Season 3, Episode 13, noticing government waste, Reddington says:<\/p>\n

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Your law enforcement agencies love their gadgets. The FBI admitted to spend what? A billion dollars on facial recognition software? Which means it\u2019s at least 3 billion. Honestly, if I paid taxes, I would be outraged.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

The Worst Get on Top vs. Selection of the Best<\/strong><\/p>\n

F.A. Hayek famously demonstrated in The Road to Serfdom<\/em><\/a> that there exists a tendency, in a statist system, for the worst to get on top. The Blacklist<\/em> exemplifies this tendency perfectly.<\/p>\n

Reddington has a realistic theory of power. For him, a governmental institution either has no binding power and is just useless or else it has coercive power and is nothing less than a public mafia where the worst get on top. This is why in Season 2, Episode 15, Reddington correctly states: \u201cI have always been leery of the United Nations. The very concept is comically dichotomous. Nations putting their self-interest aside in the hopes of building a global community? Holding hands and Kumbaya? Honestly, it\u2019s like kindergarten.\u201d<\/p>\n

In The Blacklist<\/em>, the American government is captured by a ruthless and secret conspiracy composed of criminal and high-ranking public officials. This can happen only because the honest civil servants are constantly pressured to do immoral deeds. As Connolly, the attorney general in the show, says: \u201cI never had any principles \u2014\u00a0that\u2019s why I am on a rocket to the top.\u201d Another instance of selection of the worst happens in Season 1 when an FBI agent wants to discover a dark truth. Her chief just answers \u201cYou should just take care of your career.\u201d Comply and climb the ladder, do not and you will occupy an irrelevant job for the rest of your life, such are often the alternatives when it comes to the government.<\/p>\n

But the dehumanization by the state machine goes a lot further. The government always tries to contrast the \u201cgood\u201d with the \u201cbad\u201d guys so that bureaucrats feel no remorse when they violate their victims\u2019 rights. During Episode 11 of Season 1, for instance, the government investigates the attack on a black site on smoking out a mole. A discussion between the investigator and an FBI Agent goes as follows:<\/p>\n

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Investigator<\/em>: \u201cAccording to the report from your therapist, you feel guilty about what happened during the raid.\u201d<\/p>\n

Agent<\/em>: \u201cOf course I do, I shot a man. I thought what I said in therapy was confidential.\u201d<\/p>\n

Investigator<\/em>: \u201cYou shot a terrorist, why would you feel guilty about that?\u201d<\/p>\n

Agent<\/em>: \u201cBecause he is human!\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Later, the investigators \u2014\u00a0or, in other words, bureaucrats who are trained in missing the point \u2014\u00a0think the FBI agent in question is the mole. It is thanks only to the expertise and protection of Reddington, who conducted is an own investigation, that the FBI agent is cleared of suspicion. What is striking in The Blacklist<\/em> is that even good people are forced to be bad if they want to save their skin, or even if they want to do something good.<\/p>\n

Unlike the state, Red Reddington is highly efficient in his business operations. He even has better intelligence than the omnipotent surveillance state. As a good libertarian mafioso, he criticizes government waste and the inefficiency of the government intelligence services:<\/p>\n

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Do you have any idea how much the US government spent on signal intelligence in the past year? [\u2026] Your country has become a nation of eavesdroppers. Frequency domain triangulation, satellites, crypto \u2026 whatever! You forgot that what matters most is human intelligence. Alliances, relationships, seductions.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Not only does Reddington have much more style than do dull bureaucrats, not only does he speak impeccable French \u2014 to which\u00a0I can testify \u2014\u00a0and has a good knowledge of French wines, but he also beats the government in everything he does. Season 2, Episode 2, Reddington even escapes with great panache from a restaurant surrounded by the police and the FBI.<\/p>\n

By following his own interests, Reddington serves the public good by eliminating the corrupt public criminals who infect the government machine. Some might argue that Reddington became rich thanks to the Don Corleone theory of trade \u2014\u00a0i.e., by making offers one cannot refuse. This is not, however, how Reddington is proceeding. He does not make threats except in order to protect his property. Reddington is rich because he is the best at what he does. The state, on the other hand, is the institution which uses the Don Corleone theory of trade systematically to insure its supremacy. The state doctrine is simple \u201ceverything belongs to you what is not yet mine.\u201d Oppositely, Reddington\u2019s doctrine is \u201cLet\u2019s make a deal.\u201d<\/p>\n

Note:<\/strong>\u00a0The views expressed on Mises.org<\/a> are not necessarily those of the\u00a0Mises\u00a0Institute.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n

Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cNever trust a criminal \u2026 until you have to,\u201d is the official motto of\u00a0The Blacklist, the American crime-thriller television series that premiered on NBC on September 23, 2013. But the real lesson of The Blacklist is \u201cnever trust the government \u2026 even if you have to.\u201d Not many shows are both anti-state in their narrative […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[519],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-257821","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-newswire"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/257821","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=257821"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/257821\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=257821"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=257821"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=257821"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}