Structural, hah. They still haven’t figured it out. Goddamn elephant in the living room is going to stomp into hummus every economist and talking head in the country, before they figure it out. None so blind. Hari Seldon would have a cow.

wretchard, the various tyrannies do manage to stomp out crime by the people, in favor of crime by the state. However, I for one consider that progress, of a sort, you don’t *have* a state unless it has an effective monopoly on violence, and if you do have a state, even an evil one, then, um, then you have a state. Is an evil state better than chaos? I dunno. But it’s something more than narrative, I think.