Anyone who regularly navigates between the private marketplace and the world of government and politics is bound to notice the flexibility, choice, and efficiency offered by the first and the corruption, stagnation, and inefficiency on display in the second. The marketplace is an arena of endless choices among products and services tailored to individual preferences, while governments take advantage of their monopolistic power to offer second-rate services at prohibitive prices. In the private marketplace, companies that do not deliver the goods will soon be out of business, unless they can arrange a subsidy from the government, but in the public sphere citizens have few such choices. They are more or less stuck with their governments and have little capacity to change them in fundamental ways.

That is all about to change according to Kevin D. Williamson, author of this provocative new book, The End is Near and It’s Going to be Awesome: How Going Broke Will Leave America Richer, Happier, and More Secure. Mr. Williamson, author of the Exchequer column for National Reviewmagazine and a widely cited expert on the costs and inefficiencies of public-sector programs (as well as the theater critic for this publication), argues that the era of large-scale government is about to give way to an era of political decentralization as Americans increasingly look for ways to circumvent political institutions by inventing private mechanisms to address areas of government failure. As state and local governments go broke and longstanding federal programs like Medicare,