The End Is Near and It's Going to Be Awesome: How Going Broke Will Leave America Richer, Happier, and More Secure

(Hardback)

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Every year, consumer goods and services get better, cheaper, and more widely available while critical necessities delivered by government grow more expensive even as their quality declines. The reason for this paradox is simple: politics. Not bad politics, not liberal politics, not conservative politics, not politics corrupted by big money or distorted by special-interest groups, but the simple practice of delivering goods and services through federal, state, and local governments and their obsolete decision-making practices.

The End of Politics is a radical re-envisioning of what government is, a powerful analysis of why it doesnt work, and an exploration of the innovative solutions to various social problems that are spontaneously emerging as a result of the failure of politics. National Review Online economics columnist Kevin Williamson describes the crisis of the modern welfare state in the era of globalization and argues that the crucial political failures of our timein education, health care, retirement pensions, and monetary policy-are entirely due to the government monopoly on providing these services. Meanwhile, those who cant or wont turn to the state for goods and services--from home-schoolers to Wall Street to organized crimeare engaged in millions of acts of social experimentation to replace the outmoded social software of the state with market-derived alternatives.

Williamson compellingly analyzes governments numerous failures and reports on the solutions that people all over the country are discovering for themselves, including evangelical home-schoolers who have abandoned the public schools and a Harvard don who established his own radically reimagined for-profit graduate school in Austin; an international criminal who has developed his own currency and a former CIA section chief whose private security firm handles kidnapping and extortion cases far beyond the reach of the U.S. government.

Author Bio

Kevin D. Williamson covers the intersection of economics, politics, and culture for National Review and National Review Online. His highly regarded Exchequer column relies on his trademark "English-major math" to chronicle the daily growth of the national debt and the ugly symbiotic relationship between Washington and Wall Street. He is a regular on Kudlow & Company, Lou Dobbs Tonight, and National Public Radio, and has appeared on dozens of other television news and talk-radio shows. He has served as a professor at The King's College and as director of the journalism program at the Institute for Humane Studies at George Mason University. He lives in New York City.