Repeating the Interventionist Excesses of the Tudor Period

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Phil Duffy
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Fundamentally, there are only two forms of economic and political organization—centralized or distributed. The distributed model is based upon the principle of subsidiarity, which is, “an organizing principle that matters ought to be handled by the smallest, lowest or least centralized competent authority.” Governments today are in the centralized category. By contrast, the free market—to the extent it was allowed to operate in the age of classical liberalism—was a model of power distribution.

The dominant form of government over recorded history has been monarchy. That began to change in the late 18th century with former British colonies in North America declaring their independence. Thirteen years later, the French Revolution erupted. Since then, centralized governments have thrived in various forms to include progressivism, socialism, fascism, and military dictatorship.

Should we then close the book on the older monarchies, claiming they have nothing to teach us today, or are there lessons in these monarchies that, if understood today, would lead us back to distribution of power and the recovery of personal liberty?

The Tudor Age

The age of the Tudors in England is worth exploring because errors were made then that are being repeated today. We live in a very different technological time, but the methods of power accumulation remain largely the same, and should be guarded against.

The Tudor period probably represented the greatest concentration of power in British history. Historians of this period speak of place-seeking—the seeking of places in the monarch’s court. Place was the object, but achieving place required access. The key to success in the Tudor era, as with all centralized governments, was access. In this statement in G. J. Meyer’s The Tudors, we gain an understanding of the absurdities that were even admired in the name of access during the reign of Henry VIII (1509-1547):

The power of access is demonstrated by the improbable importance, in the second half of King Henry’s reign, of the office of groom of the stool. The core responsibilities of this position seem ridiculous to the modern eye: not only to assure that his Majesty always had a “sweet and clear” place for his daily evacuation, not only to collect what he expelled and deliver it to the court physician for examination, but to wipe the royal backside…

That may be an extreme case of access-pursuit, but access to the person on top is key to all regimes that concentrate power. It applies to all governments that centralize power today, including those claiming to be “democratic.” For example, when the Democratic Party in the United States scurried to replace Joe Biden as the presidential candidate in 2024, questions arose about who had access to the power.

When power is dispersed, gaining access can require an order of magnitude more effort than if it is concentrated. For example, lobbyists for special interests concentrate their offices on K Street in Washington, DC. Had the United States continued with its Articles of Confederation government in 1789, lobbyists would have found it uneconomical to contact politicians in all the state capitals. Federal interventions in the economy would have been limited.

There is a second challenge in centralized government—how to maintain control over a larger and larger governing scope, whether that be measured in area, functions, or population. In the case of Henry VIII, it was necessary to reward the people who supported him, so he built his own aristocracy. His advantage was that he determined who was allowed in the aristocracy, and he established their rank. Access to the king, or those closest to him in government, was extremely valuable. That characteristic of concentrated government is repeated today in the awarding of federal offices after a presidential election. It is modern place-seeking, and success is determined by who is best at getting access to those holding the power.

In order to exercise power, Henry VIII also found it necessary to cast himself as a near-deity. Not satisfied to have the power to nominate bishops, he sought to combine the powers of a pope and monarch. As G. J. Meyer describes in The Tudors, he attempted to dictate church doctrine to assure that his subjects lived their lives according to his doctrine. This he did with his era’s thought police who used imprisonment, torture, and execution to enforce that doctrine.

Today, we have thought police and hate crimes. We also have attempts at deifying presidential candidates who either claim to have steered the economy successfully (incumbents) or will steer it (challengers). For anyone having an understanding of economics, these claims are childish. Economies are too complex and markets are required to react too quickly for these claims to be true.

Elizabeth Tudor

Returning to the Tudors, they continued their assault on freedom in the reign of Elizabeth I, Henry VIII’s daughter by Anne Boleyn. Elizabeth was notoriously harsh on her subjects, and she exemplified the divine right rule of her father. Elizabeth, however, seems to have exceeded her father in adding piracy as a way to seize wealth.

Today few nations are involved in outright piracy, but they have acquired an alternative to stealing on the high seas—tariffs. Tariffs played a major role in the North American colonies’ secession from Great Britain during the War of Independence. Lexington and Concord had resulted from a series of actions and responses related to tariffs. Later, tariffs were successfully promoted by Alexander Hamilton when he was Secretary of the Treasury in the Washington Administration. Tariffs played a major role in the War Between the States. They were employed during the Hoover administration in an attempt to restore jobs during the Depression in the United States (Smoot-Hawley Tariff). Presidential candidates today claim that the United States can solve its economic problems by raising its import barriers.

History and Interventionism

The point of this history is that any intervention in the economy by government is simply an indication of a constant in history—the voracious appetite of an elite for the wealth of the people. It doesn’t matter if the form of government is monarchical, socialist, or democratic. As long as economic and political power is concentrated, a power hierarchy will be created and that hierarchy will expect to be fed. The hierarchy will always find creative ways to extort the wealth of the people.

Finally, the hierarchy is not anxious to do the “get-your-hands-dirty” type of work that ruling and administration require. Thus, a bureaucracy is formed. It is a very effective arrangement. The ruling elite offloads the actual work, and the bureaucrats get secure employment and the opportunity to work at a glacial pace. Today, those bureaucrats are overwhelmingly aligned with one political party which is committed to centralization of power in a federal government.

In summary, there are only two possibilities concerning the organization of economic and political power—centralized or distributed. For most of history, power concentration dominated. The alternative—distribution of political power and free markets—was tried only briefly in history, but it succeeded so well that most of us enjoy a level of prosperity that could not be surmised in the 18th century.

When nations (including our own) open themselves to political interventions in the economy, they show a preference for the false path. We should not be surprised when these governments are driven by legions of “grooms of the stool.”