Friday, September 15, 2006

What makes the state?

To understand the statist mentality and what it worships, we must examine the most fundamental, and yet overlooked, question: what makes the state? Let's examine this question and try to find where the answer might be.

Is the state health care? Many people say that we need the state to give us a "right to health care". This, of course, does not exist- if we have a right of health care, then doctors are inferior to their patients and must be forced to serve them, which is a contradiction. Nevertheless, is health care what the state is about? No. A hospital provides health care, and yet it is not a state. It can be financed by the state, staffed by the state, but even then it is not a state in and of itself. It is just a hospital.

Is the state education? Once again, people believe in the "right to education". They believe that schools should be subject to ruling class values, teaching what the ruling class wants their children to learn, and learning it in the way they want, in order to help society progress. It's completely absurd and contradictory. But is education the state? A school performs the task of education, but a school is not a state. It's just a school.

Is the state roads? People obsess over the roads as a "public good". Yet paving and repairing roads is a job that theoretically anyone can do, with the proper equipment, and anyone can own a road and make use of it. There is nothing particularly public about it compared to, say, a school or a hospital. And private roads are proven to be a superior alternative to tax-funded inefficiency. Nevertheless, people think the roads must be furnished at the point of a gun. So is a road a state? Certainly not.

Is the state military force? States sure seem to be very good at war- it has been their primary activities for most of their history. Killing foreigners is one of their few points of national pride. But a militia or a squadron is not a state. It's just a group of people with big weapons.

Is the state all of these things together? All the hospitals, all the schools, all the roads and all the military forces? Well, no. You can have all of these things in a society and they won't necessarily talk to each other, let alone coordinate an entire state (besides, why those specific areas? Why not chips production and gyms?).

So, is the state not a productive entity, but rather an organization that coordinates them all? We're getting closer, but still no. No one would claim that a B2B company, however big it is, is a state.

So what makes the state? Is it the acts of coercion, for example, taxes imposed by force? No. Someone can stand on a street corner with a gun and demand that people give him money. He may get some, but he will not be called a state.

And yet what do the people composing the state do? They kill, kidnap, extort, enslave, steal, defraud and lie. They do things that ordinary people do, and yet we don't call those ordinary people politicians. So what is the difference?

The difference is: legitimacy. This group of thugs, which controls education, the media, and every other vital area of society, has hookwinded everyone into believing that the state is necessary for a peaceful, equal, ordered and prosperous society- even though they themselves only plunge their own societies into more poverty, inequality, chaos and violence.

What do statists worship? They worship the art of deception. It's as simple as that.

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