the rent-seekers while remaining blind to the conditions of the state which give rise to rent-seeking actions. 7. As state coercion increases, rent-seekers' corrupting influence proportionately accelerates and expands , so that the coercive purposes of the state are ever under rising pressures to serve the more limited, focused, motivated and informed number of rent-seekers, rather than the more expansive, dissipated, conflicted and misinformed general public. Advocates of statist crisis resolution are blind to this fact. 8. As the state is defined by coercion, and coercion-engendered rent-seeking corrupts the state's capacity to act as a public-minded agent, every increase of state intervention, thus coercion, inevitably entails a further decrease of the state's ability to serve the public good , since increased coercion must of necessity also increase rent-seeking and corruption. Thus, to repeat the paradox: there is a direct relation between the increase of state action, for crisis resolution, and the decrease of state qualities that recommended that increase of action . Until this lesson is learned, those who presume to protest the status quo unwittingly serve it.