In \u201cNotes from Underground,\u2019\u2019 Dostoevsky fired a broadside against all the Victorian do-gooders who dreamt of a perfectly rational society. \u201cYou seem certain that man himself will give up erring of his own free will,\u201d\u009d he fulminated. He foresaw a ghastly future in which \u201call human acts will be listed in something like logarithm tables . . . and transferred to a timetable . . . [that] will carry detailed calculations and exact forecasts of everything to come.\u201d\u009d In such a world, his utilitarian contemporaries believed, there would be no wrongdoing. It would have been planned, legislated, and regulated out of existence.<\/p>\n
We are nearly there. Or so it seems….<\/p>\n
I am deeply suspicious of the concerted effort to address all these problems in ways that markedly increase the power of states \u201d\u201d and not just any states, but specifically the world\u2019s big states \u201d\u201d at the expense of both small states and the individual. What makes me especially wary is that today, unlike in Dostoevsky\u2019s time, the technology exists to give those big states, along with a few private companies, just the kind of control he dreaded.<\/p>\n
Consider some recent encroachments on liberty.<\/p>\n