Apropos

Albert Jay Nock quotes, courtsey of Jonah Goldberg:

Let us suppose that instead of being slow, extravagant, inefficient, wasteful, unadaptive, stupid, and at least by tendency corrupt, the State changes its character entirely and becomes infinitely wise, good, disinterested, efficient, so that anyone may run to it with any little two-penny problem and have it solved for him at once in the wisest and best way possible. Suppose the state close-herds the individual so far as to forestall every conceivable weakness, incompetence; suppose it confiscates all his energy and resources and employs them much more advantageously all around than he can employ them if left to himself. My question still remains – what sort of person is the individual likely to become under those circumstances?

Also:

The State has no money. It produces nothing. Its existence is purely parasitic, maintained by taxation; that is to say by forced levies on the production of others…What such schemes (as Social Security) actually come to is that the workman pays his own share outright; he pays the employer’s share in the enhanced price of commodities; and he pays the government’s share in taxation. He pays the whole bill; and when one counts in the unconscionably swollen costs of bureaucratic brokerage ones sees that what the workman-beneficiary gets out of the arrangement is about the most expensive form of insurance that could be devised consistently with keeping its promoters out of jail.

Me: he seems to be the only person I've heard of who realizes that there is no difference between the "employer's share" of social security/medicare and the "employee's share". The employee earns 100% of it. The employer writes the check for 100% of it. And the consumer ultimately pays for 100% of it.