"The imperviousness of economic law to political law is shown in this historic fact: In the long run every State collapses, frequently disappears altogether and becomes an archeological curio—every collapse of which we have ancient evidence was preceded by the same course of events. The State, in its insatiable lust for power, increasingly intensified its encroachments on the economy of the nation, causing a consequent decline of interest in production, until at long last the subsistence level was reached and not enough above that was produced to maintain the State in the condition to which it had been accustomed. It was not economically able to meet the strain of some immediate circumstance like war, and succumbed. Preceding that event, the economy of Society, on which State power rests, had deteriorated, and with that deterioration came a letdown in moral and cultural values; men 'did not care.’ That is, Society collapsed and drew the State down with it" — from Chapter One: Economics Versus Politics in libertarian thinker Frank Chodorov's The Rise and Fall of Society.