Anarchy is in the air. Alex Soros celebrated the New York mayoral result by tweeting, “The American dream continues!” His father’s Open Society Foundations have a history of funding anarchy-producing criminal-justice reforms and antipolice movements. Some American dream.

Why anarchy and destruction of social order? Always ask: Who benefits? The breaking down of society is a means to an end—the long game of political control. Citizens scream, “Save me!” This isn’t new. The Reichstag fire. Food shortages driving a Bolshevik uprising. Pandemic riots. Anarchy works. I have no love for czars, but control often passes to political systems that are much worse. Socialism. Communism. Authoritarian control. Only the new rulers are better off.

But wait, isn’t society crumbling? Haven’t you heard that costs are skyrocketing, jobs are hard to find, late-stage capitalism is failing and the source of all evil? Many youths think, “Socialism, save me!” But there’s always economic upheaval. Unlike anarchy, economic chaos is driven by creative destruction, and productivity is a long-term plus. It generates societal wealth by breaking down a sclerotic status quo and bringing better living standards. Anarchy destroys wealth to grab power.

The 1970s were dismal. In 1976 the Sex Pistols released “Anarchy in the U.K.,” which goes: “Don’t know what I want, but I know how to get it / I wanna destroy passersby.” In “God Save the Queen,” Johnny Rotten sang, “No future, no future for you.” It resonated. Jobs were scarce, inflation was roaring, unions ruled, schools failed to educate. Sound familiar?

Today undereducated (and economically illiterate) youths, along with a quieter illegal-immigrant population, are complaining about no future. Will socialists and anarchy save them? Hardly. It wasn’t anarchists that ended the ’70s malaise. It was a different type of voter-frustration regime change that upended the status quo: free-marketers like Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan. Constructionists, not anarchists.

Still, disorder sells. I’ve noticed the New York Times now labels the 2020 George Floyd riots as “broadly peaceful protests” because CNN’s “mostly peaceful protests” was ridiculed so badly. Anarchy ruled in Seattle’s Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone in 2020 and in the smelly Occupy Wall Street encampments of 2011. Add to the list the Jan. 6, 2021, mouth breathers who stormed the Capitol.

The recent (partially funded by Iran) campus protests and progressive support of Hamas terrorists in Gaza and further Middle East unrest is all about anarchy. Same for Greta Thunberg’s Omnicause of grievances. Europe was left behind because of green spending. Anarchy, especially during cold winters. Again, why? Who benefits?

Now New York, Chicago, Portland and gerrymandered California are headed in that direction. Statists and soft-on-crime weak-knees enable anarchy. Like Orwellian newspeak, they instill nonsense like pregnant men and an existential climate apocalypse until even Bill Gates calls bull hockey.

Open borders and sanctuary cities create more anarchy. Anarchists are antieducation. Antigrowth. Antiprogress. Anticapitalist. Bring on a new social order, it takes a village, we’ll make the decisions, not you. Trump tariff chaos has a whiff of this. Maybe it’s why the left hates him so much—he’s executing their game plan better than they are.

It feels like the desired endgame is an overthrow of existing regimes for a more squishy communal paradise. That’s been tried, and instead autocrats take over and crush dissent, boots on throats.

Yes, we need change. Society always does. Progress never sleeps. But we need change driven by the next wave, which has its fits and starts. And those who were left behind: Luddites. Buggy-whip manufacturers. Local department stores. Phone operators and bank tellers. And now artificial-intelligence-threatened graphic designers, coders, teachers, lawyers and doctors.

Some confuse this for anarchy. It isn’t. Instead of entropy (physicists’ definition of disorder) you get productivity and enthalpy (more energy) in the form of societal wealth and progress.

Anarchists want to tear society down and revert to a more feudal world. Will we see the equivalent of New York’s early-1990s crack dens? Hope not. Instead, let entrepreneurs and capital markets thrive, build order and create opportunities for everyone from the lowest to highest rungs of the economic ladder, and move society toward a higher purpose. Health, wealth, happiness. Work hard, play hard instead of asking for free stuff. It’s better than “No future for you.”