[This article is chapter 3 of Breaking Away: The Case for Secession, Radical Decentralization, and Smaller Polities.

Ambrogio Lorenzetti’s frescoes adorning the Palazzo Pubblico in Siena, Italy, tell a timeless tale of governance. They portray a city flourishing under just laws and crumbling under misrule. The latter side of this allegory rings alarmingly relevant today as the recent riots in France paint a destructive urban tableau, mirroring the narrative of government failure.

Voluntary cooperation gets commandeered by the government gradually in peacetime, then suddenly through war.

The recent University of Michigan survey’s reading of one-year price inflation expectations rose to 3.4 percent in July from 3.3 percent in June. The five-year outlook also increased to 3.1 percent from 3.0 percent in the previous month.

There is a mainstream narrative that is growing all over the financial media: We must accept three percent annual price inflation as a success at combating rising prices. This is enough to pivot and return to monetary easing. It is not.

That annoying clicking sound you hear from your nearby pickleball courts is not just the paddles hitting the plastic balls. It’s twisting knees and cracking hips. A report from UBS, reported in the Financial Times, estimates medical costs of $250 million to $500 million “directly attributable to pickleball and see potential for greater medical costs indirectly linked to pickleball.”

On the eve of its opening, I had the pleasure of viewing Christopher Nolan’s new film Oppenheimer with the Mises Summer Fellows. Despite what the trailers may lead one to believe, this movie is about much more than the bomb. It is about minds, wits, power, and politics. Oppenheimer is the focus of a much larger story unfolding in front of viewers, involving the role of ethics in scientific discovery, Presidential cabinet struggles, the Cold War, and of course, the story of the development of the atomic bomb.