One of the most cancerous examples of the state reaching into lives beyond its human abilities is the highly impersonal speeding camera. Roads develop emergent group dynamics that rise to suit the conditions of the moment; speeding cameras destroy that spontaneous form of self-organisation and force the citizen to deal with the bureaucracy by rote - learning where the cameras are to avoid penalty.
It is all the worst aspects of central decision making with no feel for fluent local requirements, and the matching of impersonal technology for the purpose of revenue. It is the state at its most opportunistic, inhuman and cynical. (more)
Augusto Pinochet was the tyrannical leader of the military junta which ran Chile from 1973 to 1990. Unusually at the time, but which is becoming standard for juntas or one party states more recently, he adopted economic policies of economic liberalism with the help of the
'Chicago Boys'
. One of the benefits of liberalisation of any system is that its maximises efficiency through self-organisation. Chile under democratic rule has had higher economic performance and decline in poverty than it did under dictatorship.
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