September 12, 2026
Dismantling socialism and preventing socialism both need to be understood and mastered, wrote Jesús Huerta de Soto:
If it is concluded that socialism is ethically inadmissible, as well as a historic failure and an intellectual error, it will eventually be necessary to develop an entire tactical and strategic theory on the dismantling and prevention of it. The above will involve examining the concrete difficulties posed by the dismantling of each historical type of socialism ("real", social democratic, self- management and so on) and evaluating the advantages and disadvantages of the different alternatives or courses of action, particularly "gradualism versus revolution", according to the possible specific circumstances in each case. Finally, prevention takes on key importance, given the recurrent, deceptive and essentially corrupting nature of the mechanisms which at all times encourage the resurgence of socialism and necessitate unflagging alertness, not only in the scientific realm, but also with respect to the defense and development of the institutions, habits, principles and behavior patterns required by any healthy social framework free from systematic coercion.
Progressives have built up socialism slowly, to not alert the frogs to jump out as the pot they're in gets gradually heated to a boil. We won't succeed at dismantling socialism by attempting a mirror-image, gradual reversal. Dismantling needs to be extensive, wrote Phillipp Bagus in a helpful brief review chapter titled The Disinterventionist Spiral:
Free-market reform proposals, therefore, suffer from the problem that they themselves are unstable because they are only partial liberalizations. Successful reforms should be accompanied with deregulations in other fields.
Argentina president Javier Milei has given us significant current examples of hacking away government departments: chainsawing.
Chainsawing is morally required, wrote Murray Rothbard:
... liberty is a moral principle... In particular, it is a principle of justice, of the abolition of aggressive violence in the affairs of men.
... liberty is to be pursued by the most efficacious means, i.e. those means which will most speedily and thoroughly arrive at the goal. This means that the libertarian must be an "abolitionist," i.e., he must wish to achieve the goal of liberty as rapidly as possible.
Chainsawing is legally mandated by the Constitution, I wrote for example here (with updated links):
A president must faithfully protect the Constitution, so he must only allow actions that he interprets correctly are constitutional. This is more than just his strong constitutional power, this is his serious constitutional duty.
Immediately, a constitutionalist president must stop all payments, including payments of salaries and payments on employment contracts, in all unconstitutional departments, agencies, chartered organizations, subdivisions, and scope areas.
As fast as possible without fire sales, he must demolish whatever remains. He must sell assets, including civilian equipment, foreign-based military equipment, buildings, and land. He must work to end contracts such as leases for foreign bases.
Chainsawing is optimal a priori. Obviously, the sooner that losses get stopped, the less further loss occurs. Even though there would be a need for much recovering, wrote Ludwig von Mises in 1929, waiting wouldn't help and would increase the losses:
... we must not assume that an immediate abolition of all the obstacles to the smooth functioning of the capitalist economic order would instantly eradicate the consequences of many decades of intervention. Vast amounts of producers' goods have been destroyed. Trade restrictions and other mercantilistic measures have caused malinvestments of even greater amounts that yield little or nothing. The withdrawal of large fertile areas of the world (e.g., Russia and Siberia) from the international exchange system has led to unproductive readjustments in primary production and processing. Even under the most favorable conditions, many years will pass before the traces of the fallacious policies of the last decades can be erased. But there is no other way to the greater well-being for all.
... a critique of interventionism does not ignore the fact that when some production interventions are eliminated special frictions are generated. If, for instance, all import restrictions were lifted today, the greatest difficulties would be evident for a short time, but there would soon be an unprecedented rise in the productivity of human labor. These inevitable frictions cannot be mitigated through an orderly lengthening of the time taken for such a reduction of the protection, nor are they always aggravated by such a lengthening. However, in the case of government interferences with prices, a slow and gradual reduction, when compared with their immediate abolition, only prolongs the time during which the undesirable consequences of the intervention continue to be felt.
Chainsawing naturally proved optimal in practice following the breakup of the Soviet Union, I wrote here:
Figure. After the Berlin Wall was torn down, fast change brought good results fast, and the progress kept up 10, 11.
The figure summarizes the conditions experienced over a duration of 25 years-a generation. In countries where change was fast and large, economic freedom quickly approached 100% and stayed there for a generation, with no end in sight. In countries where change was delayed, economic freedom was lost for years. In countries where change was slow or stopped, economic freedom was lost for a generation, with no end in sight.
Delayed, slow, or stopped change held economic freedom down to significantly below the potential. Fast and large change lifted economic freedom up to reach the full potential.
Chainsawing is particularly timely now, given recent greatly-stepped-up money inflation and current in-your-face intransigent killing, spending, regulating, and tariffing by both parties' politicians.
Thomas Massie has recently proved to enjoy enthusiastic, high support from non-elderly voters. He will become president if he builds a good party and makes detailed, practical plans for chainsawing.
Voters can help by voting strategically, starting in Republican primaries: never voting for Republican Progressives, and always voting for constitutionalists.
We will take a giant step up in freedom-bringing rapid, mounting relief, and ushering in barely-imaginable prosperity.