The state is the great fictitious entity by which everyone seeks to live at the expense of everyone else. Welcome to Keith's night. Don't tread on anyone and the libertarian Institute. This is an article by University of Nevada. Las Vegas, Professor, Hans Hermann Harbour where he discusses how the greatest scam ever has been pulled off for thousands of years. Let me begin with the definition of a state. What must an agent be able to To do to qualify as a state.
This agent must be able to insist that all conflicts among the inhabitants of a given territory. Be brought to him for ultimate decision-making or be subject to his final review. In particular. This agent must be able to insist that. All conflicts involving him be adjudicated by him or his agent and implied, in the power to exclude all others from acting
as ultimate. As the second defining characteristic of a state is the agents power to tax to unilaterally, determine the price that Justice Seekers must pay for his services. Based on this definition of a state it is easy to understand why a desire to control a State might exist for whoever is a monopolist of final arbitration within a given territory can make laws and he who can legislate can also tax. Surely.
This is an enviable position more difficult to understand is how anyone can get away with controlling a state. Why would others put up with such an Ocean. I want to approach the answer to this question indirectly, suppose you and your friends happen to be in control of such an extraordinary institution. What would you do to maintain your position provided you didn't have any moral Scruples, you would certainly use some of your tax income to hire some thugs. First to make peace among your
subject. So they will stay productive and there were something to tax in the future. But more importantly Because you might need these thugs for your own protection. Should the people wake up from their dogmatic Slumbers and challenge you. This will not do. However, in particular, if you and your friends are a small minority in comparison to the number of subjects for a minority cannot lastingly rule, a majority solely by brute force.
It must rule by opinion. The majority of the population must be brought to voluntarily. Up your rule. This is not to say that the majority must agree with every one of your measures. Indeed. It may well, believe that many of your policies are mistaken. However, it must believe in the legitimacy of the institution of the state as such and hence that. Even if a particular policy may be wrong, such a mistake is an
accident. That one must tolerate in view of some greater good provided by the state. Yet. How can one persuade the majority of The population to believe this, the answer is only with the help of intellectuals. How do you get the intellectual to work for you to this? The answer is easy. The market demand for intellectual Services is not exactly high in stable, intellectuals would be at the mercy of the fleeting values of the masses.
And the masses are uninterested in intellectual philosophical concerns. The state, on the other hand, can accommodate the intellectuals, typically, overinflated, Egos, and offer them a warm. Cure and permanent birth in its apparatus. However, it is not sufficient that you employ just some intellectuals. You must essentially employ
them. All. Even the ones who work in areas far removed from those that you are primarily concerned with that is philosophy, the social sciences and Humanities for even intellectuals, working in mathematics or the Natural Sciences for instance, can obviously, think for themselves and so become potentially dangerous. It is thus important that you You're also their loyalty to the state put differently. You must become a monopolist. And this is best achieved.
If all educational institutions from kindergarten to universities are brought under State control and all teaching and researching Personnel is State Certified, but what if the people do not want to become educated for this education must be made compulsory. And in order to subject the people to State Control? Old education for as long as possible. Everyone must be declared equally educable the intellectuals.
No, Such egalitarianism to be false, of course, yet to Proclaim nonsense, such as everyone is a potential. Einstein, if only given sufficient educational attention, pleases the masses and in turn provides for an almost Limitless demand for intellectual services. None of all this guarantees, correct status thinking, of
course, it certainly helps. However, in reaching the incorrect conclusion, if one realizes that without the state one might be out of work, and may have to try one's hands at the mechanics of gas pump operation.
Instead of concerning oneself with such pressuring problems, as alienation Equity exploitation the destruction of gender and sex roles, or the culture of the eskimos, the hope he's and the Zulus. In any case, even if the intellectuals feel underappreciated by you, that is by one particular State Administration. They know that help can only come from another state Administration but not from an intellectual assault, on the institution of the state as such, hence.
It is hardly surprising that. As a matter of fact, the overwhelming majority of contemporary intellectuals including most conservative or so-called free market. Intellectuals are fundamentally and philosophically statist. So has the work of the intellectuals paid off for the state. I would think so, if asked whether the institution of a state is necessary, I do not think it is exaggerated to say that 99% of all people would
unhesitatingly, say yes. And yet this success rests on rather shaky grounds and the entire state is edifice can be brought down if only the work. The intellectuals is countered by the work of intellectual anti intellectuals. As I like to call them. The overwhelming majority of State supporters are not philosophical. Statist Sy e because they have thought about the matter. Most people do not think much about anything philosophical. They go about their daily lives. And that is it.
So most support stems from the mere fact that a state exists and has always existed as far as one can remember. And that is typically not farther away than When one's own lifetime, that is the greatest achievement of state intellectuals, is the fact that they have cultivated the mass natural intellectual laziness or incapacity and never allowed for the subject to come up for serious discussion. The state is considered an unquestionable part of the
social fabric. The first and foremost task of the intellectual anti intellectuals, then is to counter this dogmatic. Slumbers of the masses by offering a precise definition of the state as I've done on the outset. And when asked, if there is not something truly remarkable odd, strange awkward ridiculous. Indeed, ludicrous about an institution such as this. I am confident that such simple definitional work will produce some very first, but Doubt regarding an institution.
That one previously had been taken for granted a good start further proceeding, from less sophisticated yet, not coincidentally, more popular Pro State arguments to more sophisticated ones. To the extent that intellectuals have deemed it necessary to argue in favor of the state at all, their most popular arguments encountered already at kindergarten age runs like this, some activities of the state are Pointed out the state builds roads kindergardens schools.
It delivers the mail and puts the policemen on the street. Imagine there would be no State then we would have none of these Goods. Thus the state is necessary at the University level, a slightly more sophisticated version of the same. Argument is presented. It goes like this. True markets are best at providing many or even most things. But there are other Goods markets cannot provide or cannot provide. Quantity or quality.
These other so-called public goods are Goods that bestow benefits on to people Beyond those who have actually produced or paid for them foremost. Among such Goods, ranks typically, Education and Research, Education and Research. For instance. It is argued are extremely valuable Goods. They would be under produced. However, because of Free Riders, IE cheats who benefit via so-called neighborhood effects from Education and Research. Church without paying for it.
Thus, the state is necessary to provide otherwise unproduced or under produced public goods such as Education and Research. These statist arguments can be refuted by a combination of three fundamental insights first. As for the kindergarten argument. It does not follow from the fact that the state provides roads and schools that only the state can provide such Goods, people have little difficulty recognizing that. This is a fallacy from the fact that monkeys can ride bikes.
It does not follow that. Only monkeys can ride bikes and S. Immediately following it must be recalled. That the state is an The tution that can legislate and tax. And hence, the state agents have little incentive to produce efficiently, state, roads, and schools will only be more costly and their quality lower for, there is always a tendency for State agents to use up as many resources as possible, doing whatever they do but actually
work as little as possible. Doing it third as for the most sophisticated status argument. It involves the same fallacy encountered already, at the kindergarten level four. Even if one were to Grant the rest of the argument. It is still a fallacy to conclude from the fact that the states provide public goods. That only states can do. So, More importantly. However, it must be pointed out that the entire argument demonstrates.
A total ignorance of the most fundamental fact of human life, namely scarcity, true markets will not provide for all desirable things. There are always unsatisfied once as long as we do not inhabit the Garden of Eden but to bring such unproduced Goods into existence. Scarce resources must be expended which consequently can no. Longer be used to produce other, likewise desirable things whether public goods exist.
Next to private ones does not matter in this regard, the fact of scarcity remains unchanged more public. Goods can only come at the expense of less private goods yet, what needs to be demonstrated is that one good is more important and valuable than another one. This is what is meant by economizing. Yet, can the state, help, economize, scarce resources. This is the question that must be answered.
In fact, however, conclusive proof exists that the state does not and cannot economize for an order to produce anything. The state must resort to taxation or legislation, which demonstrates irrefutably that it's subjects. Do not want what the state produces but prefer instead something else as more important rather than a Mice. The state can only redistribute it. Can produce more of what it wants and less of what the people want and to recall whatever the state then produces
will be produced in efficiently. Finally the most sophisticated argument in favor of the state must be briefly examined from Hobbs on down. This argument has been repeated endlessly. It runs like this in the state of nature before the establishment of a state permanent conflict Reigns, everyone claims a right to everything and this will result in interminable War.
There is no way out of this predicament by means of agreements for who would enforce these agreements whenever the situation appeared advantageous one or both. Parties would break the agreement. Hence, people recognize that there is, but one solution to this disarray, bottom of Peace. The Establishment per agreement of a state IE, a third independent party as ultimate
judge and enforcer yet. If this thesis is correct and agreements, require an outside enforcer to make them binding, then a state by agreement can never come into existence for an order to Enforce. The very agreement that is to result in the formation of a state, to make this agreement, bonding. Another outside enforcer, a prior state, would already have to exist. And in order for this state to have come into existence, yet. Another still earlier state must be postulated.
And so on in infinite regress. On the other hand, if we accept that states exist, and of course they do. Then this very fact contradicts the hobbesian story. The state itself has come into existence without any outside enforcer. Presumably at the time of the alleged agreement. No prior State existed.
Moreover, once a state by agreement is an existence, the resulting social order Still Remains a self-enforcing one, to be sure if a and b. Now agree on something, there are Agreements are Made binding by an external party. However, the state itself is not bound by an outside enforcer
there exists. No external third-party insofar as conflicts between State, agents and state, subjects are concerned and likewise no external third-party exists for conflicts between State agents or agencies insofar as agreements entered into by the state vis-à-vis its citizens. Or of one state agency, be Sofia. Another are concerned that is such a grievance can be only self binding on the state. The state is bound by nothing
except. It's own self accepted, and enforce rules, IE, the constraints that it imposes on itself, vis-à-vis itself. So to speak, the state is still in a natural state of Anarchy, characterized by self-rule and enforcement because there is no higher state, which Bind it further. If we accept the hobbesian idea that the enforcement of mutually agreed upon rules does require some independent third-party. This would actually rule out the
establishment of a state. In fact, it would constitute a conclusive argument against the institution of a state. IE of a monopolist of ultimate decision-making in arbitration for, then there must also exist, an independent, third party to decide, in every case of conflict. Act between me private citizen and some state agent and likewise an independent. Third party must exist for every
case of intrastate conflict. And there must be another independent third-party for the case of conflicts between various third parties. Yet. This means, of course, that such a state or any independent third party, would be no State. As I have defined it at the outset, but simply one of many freely competing third party. Arbitrators. Let me conclude, then the intellectual case against the state seems to be easy and straightforward, but that does not mean that it is practically
easy indeed. Almost everyone is convinced that the state is a necessary Institution for the reasons that I have indicated. So it is very doubtful. If the battle against statism can be one as easy as it might seem on the purely theoretical intellectual level.
However, even if that should turn out to be impossible, at least, Have some fun at the expense of our statist opponents and for that, I suggest that you always and persistently confront them with the following riddle, assume a group of people aware of the possibility of conflicts between them. Someone then proposes as a solution to this human problem that he or someone be made the ultimate Arbiter in every such case of conflict, including those conflicts in which he is
involved. Is this a deal that you would accept? I'm confident that he will be considered. Either a joker or mentally unstable yet. This is precisely what all status proposed. Thank you for watching Keith and I don't try it on anyone and the libertarian Institute. Oh, dude. When we are truly free. It doesn't mean there won't be any evil in the world. In fact, a stateless society is a recognition of the fact that
evil exists. And the first place that evildoers go is to the state to gain control over the state, right? If human beings are all good. We don't need to state of human beings are all evil. We can't afford the state if human beings are. Mostly evil and only somewhat good. Then the mostly evil people vote for Democratic policies, that overwhelming, subjugate the good people.
If people are mostly good and only somewhat evil, which is my belief, then the good people become the tax livestock controlled by the evil people who swarmed to the state to get control over the good. There is no scenario. Of any add mixture of Good and Evil which justifies the existence of the state. The state is a giant magnet. Four monsters in human form.