We may criticize civil service and laugh at the inefficiencies of “bureaucracy” — but the fact remains that these helped make the world modern.

Of course, there could be too much of a good thing. Modern states could expand too much and too quickly. The debate over the right size of the state — and the taxes required to finance them — have fueled debates throughout the West for almost a century. The libertarian right, starting in the 1970s and with increasing force in the 1980s, offered appealing critiques that could be summarized as “market good, state bad.”

We are now paying the price for this line of thought. The alternative to the impersonal legal order, to the modern administrative state, it turns out, is not the market, but rather a return to the pre-modern politics of strong men, mafia bosses and charismatic personalities.

Ironically, for markets to function correctly, they require the provision of public goods that only well-functioning state bureaucracies can supply — whether roads, airports, or public health.