AMC CEO, Josh Sapan envisions a Stateless free market society

Comic creator, Robert Kirkman describes The Walking Dead as “the zombie movie that never ends” and “the sequel to virtually every zombie movie ever made.” Even as AMC gears up for the fourth season, the comic continues, passing the 100 issue milestone. There is story enough for 10 more seasons, and it seems AMC CEO, Josh Sapan agrees. He recently told the audience at the Barclays Global Technology, Media and Telecommunications Conference that he sees no end in sight for the show. But he added something more, suggesting that the post-apocalyptic world of The Walked Dead will lead to, “a complete free enterprise world in which there are no nations.”

If there’s one perk to the zombie apocalypse it’s the replacement of one bloated and violent central parasite with millions of individual and manageable parasites. We often look to the writers and artists to glean insights into the interpretations of a story, but why not the producers? Don’t they have a perspective guiding which pitches they swing for? Might Josh Sapan have motive in which comic books he elevates to record breaking AMC tv shows? I can tell you for sure that Silver Circle is more the vision of Producer and Director, Pasha Roberts than the vision of writer Steven Schwartz and comic artist Jackie Musto. And why not? Could it be that the liberty themes we see in The Walking Dead are as much the grand orchestration of the AMC CEO as they are the vision of Robert Kirkman or former showrunner Glenn Mazara? This may be some indication.

At the Barclays Global Technology, Media and Telecommunications Conference, Sapan lamented that Breaking Bad will end next year, and Mad Men will end the year after that, but he sees no end in sight to The Walking Dead.

Sapan said of Breaking Bad and Mad Men, “Like some of the best shows in history, there will be a mantle that exists sort of virtually in people’s minds… We will bring them to a close with the people who created them at the right time.” But of The Walking Dead he said, “We hope that zombies live forever, and we’ve just begun to find out what the post-apocalyptic world is like, so that we’ll be sitting here at the Barclays conference in 2022 discussing the fact that Walking Dead is not over … at that point, I think any one of the companies will have replaced the United States government and we’ll be in a complete free enterprise world in which there are no nations.”

I had to read it twice, because I wasn’t reading LewRockwell.com or even DailyPaul.com. I read that at The Hollywood Reporter. And he wasn’t speaking at PorcFest or Libertopia. Josh Sapan used The Walking Dead to advocate a Stateless free market society in a room full of executives and investors in the entertainment industry.

It’s not hard to find liberty themes in The Walking Dead when the State has already packed up and left everyone for dead. No taxes. No gun control. And the only cop left has taken off his uniform and given his sheriff’s hat to his 13-year-old son. There is also a strong theme of property rights throughout the show. When Andrea shows some suicidal ambition Dale confiscates her pistol. Thinking better of it later he returns it, against his better judgement, as a matter of property. When the group takes refuge on the Greene family farm, Hershel repeatedly implies he wants them to leave. Rick is consistently reluctant but willing to take the group back on the road, because Hershel owns the land. The liberty themes really emerge with the introduction of “The Governor.” Is it a coincidence that the show’s primary villain is the only character with a State title? He espouses all the familiar platitudes about security and terrorism we expect from power-mad authoritarians.

Those elements are all translated faithfully from the comic. But in the comic the government plays no role whatsoever. It’s absence is a foregone conclusion. In the show we get a whole sequence at the Center for Disease Control that never happened in the comic. The group goes to the CDC for help and they find everyone dead except for one scientist living in luxury inside. We learn that the government completely failed to control the pandemic, and the sociocrats took refuge inside while the public died outside. Then the sociocrats committed suicide out of shame. By the end of the episode the CDC building explodes in a dazzling self-destruct sequence. That’s the State in the world the The Walking Dead: incompetent, suicidal and ultimately self-destructive.

So they have a Stateless society. What about free enterprise? Well, if the show continues to follow the comic after Rick’s group leaves the prison they’re invited to a peaceful, walled-off town called the Alexandria Safe-Zone, and there’s indications of trade with another safe-zone called The Hilltop.

If I’m right, and Josh Sapan is using The Walking Dead to advocate a Stateless free market society, I predict we’ll see another extra sequence, like the CDC episode, that wasn’t in the comic, expanding on the possibility of trade-routes between safe-zones in The Walking Dead. I also expect that whatever shows launch after Mad Men and Breaking Bad end will present another creative way of presenting liberty themes in popular media.

Find out where you can see Silver Circle by checking our theater and special screening schedule on  -->our event page -->.