One might almost admire the relentless efficiency with which governments, regardless of continent or ideology, seize upon any public misfortune as an opportunity to expand their own dominion. The recent news from Ecuador, where prosecutors have charged a former minister and six others, including a cartel leader, in connection with the assassination of presidential candidate Fernando Villavicencio, is but the latest installment in this enduring political drama. While the headlines scream of justice and accountability, a discerning eye can’t help but notice the familiar pattern of the state, like a hungry leviathan, growing fatter on the very chaos it purports to quell.
Let us be clear: the murder of any individual, especially one engaged in the public square, is a tragedy. My sympathy, as always, lies with the victim and their loved ones. However, the subsequent actions of the Ecuadorian state, and indeed, any state, often raise more questions about power and liberty than they answer about justice. We’re told a former minister, a man who once held the levers of government, is now accused. The irony is as thick as the red tape he likely once helped to weave. Was he a part of the problem, or merely a convenient scapegoat for a system that often fails to protect its citizens?
The inclusion of the leader of the Los Lobos cartel in the charges is, of course, presented as a triumph. Yet, one must ask, how did such a powerful cartel come to be in a position to allegedly orchestrate such an act in the first place? Governments, in their infinite wisdom and boundless capacity for regulation, frequently create the very black markets and criminal enterprises they then purport to fight. Prohibition, whether of alcohol, drugs, or even certain economic activities, doesn’t eliminate demand; it merely shifts supply into the shadows, empowering those who operate outside the law. When the state attempts to control every aspect of human endeavor, it invariably fosters the very criminality it then seeks to prosecute.
And so, we witness the familiar cycle. A crime is committed, shocking the public conscience. The state, ever eager to demonstrate its indispensable nature, responds with a flurry of activity: more charges, more investigations, undoubtedly more calls for increased surveillance and stricter controls. It's a grand spectacle, designed to reassure a frightened populace that the leviathan is on the case, protecting them from the very dangers that often flourish in the fertile soil of state overreach.
One can almost hear Friedrich Hayek sighing in the background. “The curious task of economics is to demonstrate to men how little they really know about what they imagine they can design,” he might have mused. And in the realm of state-controlled security and justice, this ignorance is often blissfully ignored. The state, convinced of its own omnipotence, believes it can unravel every conspiracy, apprehend every villain, and in doing so, bring about a perfect, orderly society. The reality, as Ecuador is starkly demonstrating, is far messier.
The temptation, after such a heinous crime, is to surrender more power to the state, to allow it to "do whatever it takes" to restore order. But history, if we bothered to read it, teaches us that such concessions are rarely temporary and almost never beneficial to individual liberty. Each new layer of regulation, each expansion of prosecutorial power, each instance of state intervention, chips away at the foundations of a free society. We are left, not with greater security, but with a more powerful, more intrusive government, forever demanding more authority to solve the problems it often inadvertently exacerbates.
So, while the headlines announce charges and the promise of justice, let us not forget the larger picture. The tragedy in Ecuador is not just the loss of a life, but the potential for the state to use that loss as a pretext for further encroachment on individual freedom. The question we should be asking is not merely who committed the crime, but what conditions, often fostered by government itself, allowed such criminality to flourish, and how much more power we are willing to cede to the very institutions that so often prove incapable of safeguarding our liberty. The show, it seems, must go on, and the state, as always, is playing the starring role.