Life After the State

Life After the State is a book that will change the way you think about money, education, healthcare and social justice forever. Combining the story-telling skills of Morgan Housel's The Psychology of Money with the number-crunching investigative style of Tim Harford's Undercover Economist, this is a quest into a topic too many of us take for granted – at our peril.

Dominic Frisby never used to think about government. But a fascination with the world of finance led him to a lifetime of investigation, and what he discovered changed how he saw the world.

Wherever government gets involved in people's lives with a desire to do good, it seems to make the situation much, much worse. What if that's not a coincidence – but a fundamental problem with government itself?

The idea of life without a state conjures up Mad Max scenarios. But could the era of the big state in fact be driving us towards a breakdown?

Over 20 story-filled and eye-opening chapters, Life After the State reveals dozens of astonishing insights, including:

•How the most entrepreneurial city in Europe became its sickest
•The unspoken reason your family is getting smaller
•The unlikely candidate for the biggest murderer in history
•How taxation and redistribution of wealth actually increase the gap between the haves and have-nots
•The empty promise on every currency note
•The untold history of the wild results of inflation (including a venture to drain the Red Sea and recover the gold that Moses had left after he parted the waters)
•The baffling way that the price of one of the most important possible things – money – is set by central planners, like Soviet butter
•How debt fuels asset prices in a relentless cycle, depriving those on fixed incomes
•And much, much more.

Wherever you are on the political spectrum, this is a fascinating exploration of an urgent question – with huge implications for every aspect of modern life. You'll be shocked by what Frisby found. You'll also be inspired by the surprising things that we can all do to ensure that everyone flourishes – in a world without government.