When nature manifests itself with fury in Portugal, the script is as predictable as the delay in state aid. As soon as the waters subside (or the fires go out), two sides of the same statist coin appear – the collectivist left and the right – firing in unison. One accusing “ultraliberals” of silence in these situations, because “only the State can save” people; another calling for intervention in the name of “national interest” or “protection of populations”. It is a pyrrhic victory for dirigisme, based on a reversal of reasoning that poisons the debate: the idea that the State has its own resources and that, out of intrinsic goodness, it decides to share them with its subjects in agony.
It is necessary to restore the basic truth: the State does not ‘give’ anything. The State does not produce wealth, nor does it create a cent. Everything that political and ‘public’ agents manage is the result of the work of citizens who saw their capital or simple salary being compulsorily taken from them. Tax is not a voluntary donation, it is a forced payment under the promise of a return in the form of protection. When this service fails – and it fails systematically, in all essential sectors – what we have is not a “lack of more State”, but the pure parasitism of a structure that consumes the host while convincing it that it is its life support.
Milton Friedman explained it with blunt clarity. The State almost always operates in the most inefficient spending quadrant: spending other people’s money on others. There is no incentive for savings or quality. This is why state aid always arrives late and is bureaucratized. Left-wing collectivism wants the State as the great provider; right-wing collectivism wants the State as the great corporatist protector. In the end, both agree on one point – citizens are incapable of managing their own risk and their own money. They want childish and docile people, with “little” thinking, for their respective elites to order in the name of the “common good” (whatever that is).
The Austrian School teaches us that price is the only real indicator of value. By suspending this logic, the State replaces effectiveness with political convenience. Thomas Sowell, in his Vision of the Anointeddescribes this phenomenon: policies are not evaluated by results, but by intentions. If the ruler – be he “progressive” or “nationalist” – announces a fund worth millions, the narrative is saved, even if the money is lost in the corridors of the Administration or arrives when there is no more to save. It’s amazing how we keep falling into this trap!
The most tragic thing about this infantilization of the population is the lack of consequences. Those who mismanage funds, who fail to prevent and who delay in providing assistance, are rarely punished. On the contrary, they are often promoted to international stages, shielded by the machine they created. Meanwhile, the citizen is kept with his hand outstretched, conditioned to be grateful for the crumbs of bread that he himself paid for.
We don’t need another State, come with red or pink, blue and yellow flags. We need to give citizens back the dignity of being masters of their destiny. The collective suicide of a nation begins when it accepts that its survival depends on the “generosity” of those who plunder it. We have to stop being grateful for what rightfully belongs to us and demanding accounts from those who, having our money in their hands, leave us alone in the rain.
Executive editor of News Diary
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