May 11, 2012

Kill the government

Good idea, but it's like trying to stomp a hog snake with your sneakers. Derned thing just keeps on squiggling. Ask any of the 44 souls who populate Mount Sterling, Iowa, down along the Missouri border.

Mount Sterling is an official city with an ambition to be an official nonentity. Even the city council agrees it has nothing much to offer and has voted itself and its town into oblivion except as a "populated place" to the cartographers. They can live with that level of recognition and organization. Couldn't we all?

Not so fast says Higher Authority. The vote was 2-0. The third council person was absent . Never mind her presence would have made no difference. Everyone down there wants to disband.

The confusion comes from a decision some years ago -- no one seems sure just when and no one much gives a damn -- to pare the council from five to three. The official red tape got tangled, so maybe two members didn't really constitute a legal quorum. Now the lawyers and state bureaucrats are involved, and Mount Sterling remains alive as a taxing, law-enforcing, zoning-law capable bureaucracy with authority to  borrow money it couldn't possibly repay. Sort of like the government that lives in Washington.

If it's that hard for 44 good folks to behead their government, we libertarian/ancap fanciers may have a longer row to hoe than we thought.  Just have to keep on stompin' I guess.







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