I’ve been listening to the arguments against state power and, for the most part, I think they are perfectly valid and reasonable. Unfortunately, I think there is one serious issue with them that makes all such theories moot. In order to explain that, I will use the example of the ancient Rome.
You see, the reason why Rome became powerful and why it spread across the known world is that it had an organized state that could maintain a steady army that was well organized and could indulge in prolonged military campaigns. Other nations, that didn’t have an organized state, that didn’t have an organized government that could implement laws and levy taxes, they simply didn’t have a chance against a country that did those things. Their army needed to disband quickly in order to work for a living. There was no state infrastructure that could support prolonged campaigns of a large standing army.
So, let’s say that America returns to its small-state origins. One of its main problems during those times was that its military was very small and unable to wage major wars. Essentially, Mexico had a better organized army. It’s perfectly understandable why – in a capitalist, market-oriented society, military is an unwarranted expense, and could make sense only if you want to make your country into a predator that robs other countries of their resources and you finance yourself that way, as Islam did from the days of Mohammad, for instance. Otherwise it’s a dead expense. But if you don’t have a well organized modern army, you are defenseless against countries that do.
So, want it or not, you need to increase the state in order to arm your country, but then you empower the military industry and the people who decide where the money goes. You also incentivize borrowing or printing money, because this way you delay and defer the financial impact of war. Once you get defense as a valid reason for taxation, some people will come up with ideas about better ways of spending all that money, such as fighting poverty instead of waging war. So, essentially, in a few logical steps you get where you are now.
But is there really an alternative? I certainly don’t see how a civilization could shun defense and survive – the imperial China and its fall under the Mongols is a great warning. Wealth attracts predators. You need to have defense. In a modern world this doesn’t mean pitchforks and swords, it means intercontinental nukes and strategic submarines, networks of satellites and a conventional armed force. Someone, of course, needs to pay for this. You can say, let’s make them mercenaries. Yeah, that went well historically. So keeping a democratic control over the military is preferable, and this means government, which means either taxes, borrowing/printing money, or simply invading and robbing other countries in order to pay for your army.
Essentially, if you want to have a modern army you need to dedicate a significant portion of the GDP to that, and you need to dedicate a significant portion of the industry to military production. You can avoid financing this with taxes if you simply invade and rob other nations, but sooner or later you’ll run out of countries to invade, like Rome did, and then the cost of the military will be directed inwards, in form of taxes and government regulations, or inflation. This will very quickly result in destruction. An alternative is to do what the Imperial China did, to demilitarize to the point of only having a small mercenary force at the borders for token defense. Then the invaders come and make the mercenaries a better offer: “Let’s kill all those wealthy folks, take all their gold and divide it between us”. We know what happened to imperial China at that point.
So basically, you either have a country that collapses under the foreign invaders or under the burden of the expense of its own military. The state does seem to be part of the problem, but there are no obvious ways of getting around it in a way that doesn’t result in the other extreme, of having no borders and protections against invaders.
The situation is a direct consequence of the equality of all men in power. From this, it follows that the only way to get greater power is to organize men into larger groups and/or arm them with better weapons. Other human groups are then forced to respond with symmetric measures or risk being violently conquered; basically, when one human group invents the state, other human groups need to organize into states as well, in order to be able to deal with external pressure. It’s like the nukes: when one nation invents them, everyone else also needs to invent them or be bullied, invaded or destroyed. If anything is to be done, those basic parameters need to change.
The state problem is essentially a health problem.
Defense aside, state would still get ahead in all other areas. And even if there was no state, anywhere, other forms of organization would take over. East India Company. Monopolies. Any kind of company. A tribe. Extended family. Nuclear family.
All arguments against the state that I’ve heard are the same as arguments against eating and they go like this: “Killing animals and plants is bad.” “Eating causes obesity.” “Eating is responsible for diabetes, cavities, and many other illnesses.” “Food preparation and eating wastes time that is better spent elsewhere.” “A desire to eat is an incitement to crime, as clearly seen in the case of Jean Valjean.” All of these arguments are correct. It’s just that they leave out a tiny detail which is: one can’t survive in this world by breathing air. There’s also a reason why single motherhood doesn’t work as good as nuclear family, and why children sent to a jungle on their own will not become Tarzans. A case could also be made that if anything state is more ethical than eating, because eating means something has to die, even if it’s just a plant. State on the other hand is a division of labor and enforcement of order. Neither is inherently unethical (or at least I don’t see it).
A healthy state is like a healthy body. It enables. What is Tesla outside of a state that has resources and infrastructure necessary for him to manifest his ideas? A daydreamer. Yes, he would still be a genius, but we would not know of him, and had he been born in Papua New Guinea what exactly would he be able to do? Now let’s take a look at what some spiritual individuals prefer when it comes to issue of the state, although a case could be made that we simply don’t know of those who made different choices and decided to be born in Amazon jungles and elsewhere. Jesus was born in the Roman Empire. That’s as elite place on the planet as you could get at the time, in terms of the state. Krishna was a prince. So was Buddha. They, as well as many others, were born and lived in one of the most advanced civilizations/states on the planet. You were born in Western civilization. Christian mystics too. And let’s also add Zen masters of China and Japan. I use the term “civilization” to simplify things but if we were to go into specific states things would also get quite interesting.
I only hear of arguments against the state from Stefan, and the problem is that although he has a lot of good videos the issue of statism is one of his blind spots. His recent video titled “George Soros Hack: What They Don’t Tell You!” (8m30s for example) is apologia of Soros, as incredible as it sounds. His blind hatred of the state has led him to blame the statists for what Soros is doing, and to claim that Soros is merely doing what’s legal and what others were doing in the first place (using the state apparatus). Moreover, I don’t think he dislikes the state because he thinks the alternative would be more individual power. I think he dislikes the state exactly because the state represents power. And it also represents power inequality – someone or something has more power. I think this is behind his atheism as well. God represents power, and it also represents power inequality. I could be totally wrong on this, but it’s the impression I got watching some of his recent videos, in particular “Evidence for God?”. So, while I agree with the criticism of an unhealthy state, I disagree with the remedy.
I agree that the issue was mostly resolved in the times of Rome; also, I agree that in the absence of state some other human group would take up that role, and that, also, already happened, in form of various clans fighting for power, it all culminating when they agreed to take turns at exploiting the general population.
Without a state, we would probably have corporate entities with private armies.
Also, I agree that Stefan, for all his appearance of rationality, advocates several basically crazy ideas, like “spanking children is the root of all evil” (in fact, spanking children seems to be the root of good upbringing of children who know their limits) or “state is evil”, or “initiation of force is evil”. I personally think that all those concepts are dogmatically imposed absolutes and I reject them. For instance, I think that it would be perfectly fine if God initiated force, and I think that state can work just fine as long as you limit what it is allowed to do and you limit decision-making to the stakeholders. I actually think that universal suffrage is much more of a problem than the state, because it allows people who have no horse in the race to pull ideas out of their ass about who should have what amount of other people’s money, which is basically socialism. If you think someone should have money, take a part of your personal money and give it to him. That’s how normal people do it. What communists do is dictate who should be robbed and who should be subsidized.
So I basically think all the worst problems that we have now began with universal suffrage, basically with removal of property census from voting rights. I’m tentative on the link between women voting and socialist policies being voted in, because it’s mostly a form of non-stakeholders determining what happens to other people’s money.
Spanking means exercising power, and it’s also a situation of power inequality. I think that’s why he considers spanking “evil”. He simply sees power as evil. That’s also consistent with his views on foreign policy.
The thing with universal suffrage is that the more people are allowed to vote the worse it gets, and if states also allowed kids to vote we would reach the extreme that would show just how ridiculous the concept is. But there is one critical thing that I think happened with women suffrage. A switch from grand achievements to personal gain. While we had “patriarchy” the states were competitive in terms of technology, culture, exploration, territorial expansion, and so on. I’m not saying everything was perfect, and there were needless wars certainly, but there was a mindset that led us to space travel and everything we have today. And then women suffrage happened, which results in a nanny state and a police state. The goal is to be nice to everyone and extra protection is for your own good. The politics is now all about getting resources from the state. Eat, sex, sleep. That’s it. People used to pool resources in order to build a cathedral for prestige, but now the resources pooled all go to welfare. Election slogans in the US show the difference nicely: “I’m with her” vs “Make America Great Again”. The current Muslim invasion without resistance would not be possible in a patriarchy, but it looks exactly how single-mom upbringing would look like on a large scale. I like to use the example of China because of contrast. In China they are pooling resources and building glass bridges for fun, or huge statues such as Spring Temple Buddha. In Europe, they are pooling resources and borrowing money in order to provide Muslim invaders (and others) with welfare.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tqfAt7TshLw
Context:
https://www.reddit.com/r/videos/comments/3cswfp/in_one_season_of_the_dutch_version_of_survivor/
I of course agree that he seems to have an issue with power, and it’s quite strange, because this objection to power and attempt to completely exclude violence, force and anything physical from circulation seems to be a female thing, and it’s actually a form of power play: when men are prohibited from using their main advantage over women, which is physical strength, women are suddenly at an advantage, because they are superior in all forms of social manipulation, basically leveraging sexual attractiveness and compassion. This makes me hugely skeptical of anyone who opposes violence and power as a matter of principle, because then I ask, what kind of evil manipulation does he attempt to implement when he so fears physical retribution that he attempts to prohibit anyone else from using it not only against him, but against anyone and anything as a matter of principle. To me, violence is a tool, like a hammer. You need to have it in your toolbox, but you use it sparingly and only when required. For instance, I open coconuts with a power drill and a hammer; I bore two holes into the coconut’s “eyes”, drain the liquid into a glass, and then I whack the coconut with a hammer so that it breaks in two. It’s a very elegant method. If someone tried to prohibit me from using the hammer, I would be at a serious loss at how to crack it open efficiently; I could for instance use an angle grinder or a circular saw, if I had them (which I don’t), but in any case it would make my life extremely difficult. I would probably stop buying coconuts because they would be more trouble than they are worth.
It’s the same thing with violence. It’s extremely effective to have it available as an option, and the effectiveness is exponentially increased if others know that you do. What happens then is that they tend to avoid all courses of action that would lead to violence; they will usually be polite and will negotiate things in a civilized way. If, however, they know that violence is not an option, there will be a very good chance of them being rude, abusive and even violent. That’s the reason why people are so rude online, and very seldom IRL. When they think they are safe from violence, they behave like total assholes. IRL, however, they will tend to avoid all courses of action that could provoke a violent response – they will be polite, civilized and reasonable.
So, far from violence being some huge boogey-man that is to be eliminated from civilized society, I think it’s actually the necessary prerequisite of having a civilized society in the first place. When you know that the other person can challenge you to a duel with pistols or swords, you will develop sophisticated civilized manners, and the society in general will be uplifted greatly.