Thread: What Gives the State the Right to Exist?

Democracy is the greatest farce ever. That must have been proven to everyone by now. If we elect a government for four or five years, during that time they have the ability to do what they like within the bounds of the constitution. At best, they act in the in interests of the majority that elected them, virtually disregarding everyone else. At worst, they destroy the country for their own good.

"It is morally wrong not to pay your taxes" - yet another farce. Taxation is another word for theft. If you don't pay your taxes, the State will take your through the courts, and force you to pay it or face imprisonment. I have no choice in the matter - there is no way, short of living in the middle of a disputed territory in the ocean, that I can avoid paying tax.

There is an illusion that tax is our money, even after it is paid to the State. Successive governments purport to spend it for our own good, but do we have any real choice in how it is spent? No. We elect a government every four or five years, and they do as they please during that period. If we dislike them, we kick them out of office, and a new crowd, elected to the same flawed system, rarely does any better.

The State has a monopoly over justice and policing, defense and in some cases, key services like health. This gives them power, and as they say - power corrupts, and total power corrupts totally.

So what gives the state the right to exist? What gives them rights beyond what the ordinary citizen experiences?

Let's say you were allowed to not pay your taxes - would you be willing to forgo access to roads, libraries, defence, protection of the legal system and, depending upon your particular nationality, hospitals, schools, water, power and communication networks? Or at the very least, pay for your own infastructure in each of these areas? It would be very difficult for you to live in a modern nation without taking advantage of something that has been constructed through the planning of the State, so what right do you have to not pay taxes while still taking advantage of things that have been paid for by taxes?

States essentially evolved as a result of strength in numbers; a unified group of people working together is more powerful than each of those individuals alone. When people work together, however, pure democracy fails quickly as the number of people involved become larger and larger - if you have to let every single person air their view, and have every item voted on by every person, the group would quickly become disfunctional. While many other government structures have been tried, if we look purely at modern representative democracies, they have grown out of the need to essentially summarise the views of the population. At fixed intervals, the people "summarise" their views, and appoint representatives for the next term. The rights of the State are those given to them by the people when they vote (again focusing on democracy, since that seems to be the focus of your post); a representative Government is a summary of the voices of all the people that it represents (in theory), and essentially excercises the rights of all those people combined.

I'm not going to try and argue that democracy is perfect, but to paraphrase a rather famous quote that I haven't got the time to hunt down at the moment: democracy is the worst type of government, except for all the others that have been tried. The State needs to exist, because without it, projects such as road networks (predominantly capital expenditure, so unattractive from a business point of view, and if they were constructed by business you could gurantee that you'd have toll stations on pretty much every major street, and anywhere that was low population density could just forget about having roads at all) just wouldn't occur. If there was no State at all, national defence would be almost impossible to organise, meaning that it would only take one powerful State to form and their neighbours would be in trouble. It may be the lesser of two evils, but the presence of a State is certainly preferable to its absence.

Let's say you were allowed to not pay your taxes - would you be willing to forgo access to roads, libraries, defence, protection of the legal system and, depending upon your particular nationality, hospitals, schools, water, power and communication networks? Or at the very least, pay for your own infastructure in each of these areas? It would be very difficult for you to live in a modern nation without taking advantage of something that has been constructed through the planning of the State, so what right do you have to not pay taxes while still taking advantage of things that have been paid for by taxes?

This would be a valid reply if taxes were based upon services rendered by the state to a given subscriber. An examination of taxation quickly proves that taxes are not given per services rendered, but to arbitrary "benefits" gained by the individual. It is little different from the operation of a mafia. It would also require that the state have not utilized unjust methods to seize the land, the materials, and the political appendages to acquire it's current position. Further, if one views the state as illegitimate, there is nothing theoretically inconsistent about taking advantage of taxes as a means to an end. If one is against a prison in which ones lives, what harm is it in eating the food provided by the staff? You might say that one can simply leave the jurisdiction of the state, but this is evading the obvious question of why I am obliged to do so when it is perfectly justifiable to utilize state resources against the state.

States essentially evolved as a result of strength in numbers; a unified group of people working together is more powerful than each of those individuals alone. When people work together, however, pure democracy fails quickly as the number of people involved become larger and larger - if you have to let every single person air their view, and have every item voted on by every person, the group would quickly become disfunctional. While many other government structures have been tried, if we look purely at modern representative democracies, they have grown out of the need to essentially summarise the views of the population. At fixed intervals, the people "summarise" their views, and appoint representatives for the next term. The rights of the State are those given to them by the people when they vote (again focusing on democracy, since that seems to be the focus of your post); a representative Government is a summary of the voices of all the people that it represents (in theory), and essentially excercises the rights of all those people combined.

There is no historical evidence of states having evolved from a cooperative process, and there is not theoretical reason to suppose that cooperation necessitates the state. There is more historical evidence of states having evolved from bands of thugs and murderers who decided that slow, sustained exploitation was better than wandering, random raids. It is also possible that the state evolved from cheifdoms who abused their power, either way no historian, no political philosopher, can take the notion of a "cooperative state" seriously. The actual amount of democracies in most modern "democracies" is questionable. Most of the US government functions beyond any democratic controls in the form of bloated departments, presidents are elected by electorals, and the Senate functions more along the lines of a democracy of the states than a democracy of the whole american people. "The People" is an entity that is not kept together by the consent of said persons, it has been kept together by force since the Shay's and Wiskey Rebellions by powerful military forces. In other words, what "people"?

I'm not going to try and argue that democracy is perfect, but to paraphrase a rather famous quote that I haven't got the time to hunt down at the moment: democracy is the worst type of government, except for all the others that have been tried. The State needs to exist, because without it, projects such as road networks (predominantly capital expenditure, so unattractive from a business point of view, and if they were constructed by business you could gurantee that you'd have toll stations on pretty much every major street, and anywhere that was low population density could just forget about having roads at all) just wouldn't occur. If there was no State at all, national defence would be almost impossible to organise, meaning that it would only take one powerful State to form and their neighbours would be in trouble. It may be the lesser of two evils, but the presence of a State is certainly preferable to its absence.

The State does not need to exist in any capacity, and it hasn't for most of history. The primary reason for the creation of roads has not been for civilians but for military ordinance. Toll booths wouldn't be desirable for roads simply because of the inconvience they pose, and it is likely a trans continental system would never evolve for such a toll system to be put in place. It is more feasible to simply have people pay for advertising or licence to use a road, and such opportunities wouldn't need to be available for many outside the community except for travelers. "Privatization" of the roads is not a good solution because the framework in which such a scheme would likely take place would be corporatist in nature, and have no reflection of authentic community or market activity (as roads and paths need not all be privately owned or constructed, public spaces precede the state).

If there was no state, national defense wouldn't be a meaningful concept as artificial national concepts would collapse being replaced by a more authentic, localized, personalized feeling of shared community. Patriotism is a reflection of a man's love of his own culture, his home and homeland, the state creates artificial boundaries and histories to serve it's purposes. It will kill to preserve these ill gotten gains, have no doubts about it.

In essence, the reason we ought to impose slavery on ourselves is so slavery won't be imposed upon us? Such strangeness.

So once again, to reiterate, what gives the State the right to exist? How does it attain legitimacy, and why should it's decrees, it's "property" it's violence be respected more than that of any other armed group?

Read Thomas Hobbes' "The Leviathan"

lets start by saying that you don't live in a democracy. democracies are unstable and literally run by the common man, even if he is senseless. second of all, life isn't fair. you pay taxes, you get public services. it's the way of the world. now, what gives the state the right to exist? Well, what are you going to do about it? Face the army?

Originally Posted by UnknownBearing

Read Thomas Hobbes' "The Leviathan"

This.

I would rather have a state to which I surrender some of my personal sovereignty in return for certain services (civil protection, a justice system, infrastructure, libraries and public education), than live in the chaos of the state of nature, where there are no rights for me to defend, and no laws or authorities invested with the power to stop you from raping my girlfriend, shooting me, and then squatting in my apartment (and vise versa).

@Lamperoux: First you say life isn't fair, and then you try to prove that it is?

@Edgewise: The State of Nature is not neutralized by the State, but it simply becomes a weapon. The sovereign Hobbes imagined is absolute, and few states can maintain absolute control. The "Leviathan" is a fantasy, nothing more.

Democracy is far from an ideal system, for many reasons, but the alternative systems are all worse.

States rule by force, ultimately those who oppose the state are crushed by force. Thus are states justified, as soon as one exists another must be founded to defend against it.

If you want some reading based in reality try "The Prince" by Machiavelli, it is only short, but I bet most Western world leaders have read it.

Originally Posted by Matty Lee

@Edgewise: The State of Nature is not neutralized by the State, but it simply becomes a weapon. The sovereign Hobbes imagined is absolute, and few states can maintain absolute control. The "Leviathan" is a fantasy, nothing more.

Do you know what causes these states to lose absolute control?

"...well yes, democracy is a farce, agreed..." went the goblin, adding "...where dictatorship is for real then, but mind you, given the choice, wouldn't you prefer to to lied to, rather than being ordered about here..." , somehow the goblin's mind was first thinking about russia, where mr medvedev was president but mr putin was in charge, and then about america, where mr bush was president but obviously somebody else was in charge, concluding "...well there you have it then, the russians are more honest to their electorate than the americans are..."

Open dictatorship is much easier to deal with than a web of lies which must be disentangled before the more practical business of resisting the criminals is addressed.

Do you know what causes these states to lose absolute control?

Their impossible goals and criminal natures.

Originally Posted by Matty Lee

Open dictatorship is much easier to deal with than a web of lies which must be disentangled before the more practical business of resisting the criminals is addressed.

It’s not very easy to deal with from the inside of a prison, gulag or reeducation camp.

I’m joking, of course. Dictators and totalitarian regimes are famous for their openness, transparency and honesty.

Originally Posted by Olly Buckle

Democracy is far from an ideal system, for many reasons, but the alternative systems are all worse.

Right you are, Olly. Railing against something is pretty pointless unless you can suggest something that might work might better.

Originally Posted by Matty Lee

@Lamperoux: First you say life isn't fair, and then you try to prove that it is?

@Edgewise: The State of Nature is not neutralized by the State, but it simply becomes a weapon. The sovereign Hobbes imagined is absolute, and few states can maintain absolute control. The "Leviathan" is a fantasy, nothing more.

doesn't mean it can be fair at times. and where do i state that it's fair exactly?

government isn't something perfect, where are all the answers are there, it's something manmade, where we try to bring order to our lives.

Originally Posted by Lamperoux

doesn't mean it can be fair at times. and where do i state that it's fair exactly?

government isn't something perfect, where are all the answers are there, it's something manmade, where we try to bring order to our lives.

It's not so much stated as implied "life isn't fair. you pay taxes, you get public services. it's the way of the world." Seems like an appeal to the fairness of the Nation-State.

There is no "we" because a government is always administered upon one group by another. It is not a process of mutual consent, respect, or self-discipline. It is first and foremost a means for a group in power to make use of a group out of it.

It’s not very easy to deal with from the inside of a prison, gulag or reeducation camp.

I’m joking, of course. Dictators and totalitarian regimes are famous for their openness, transparency and honesty.

It is in fact easier because hatred and a desire for resistance are almost always a given. Guards know that they are guards and prisoners know that they are prisoners. There is no illusion of "we the people" to negate resistance. There is no system through which the prisoners channel their anger at the status quo to support it. Prisons are much easier than webs of lies because everyone knows it's a prison.

Dictatorships are clearly dictatorships. Being "open" isn't something any government, including the US Government, is famous for.

Originally Posted by Matty Lee

@Edgewise: The State of Nature is not neutralized by the State, but it simply becomes a weapon. The sovereign Hobbes imagined is absolute, and few states can maintain absolute control. The "Leviathan" is a fantasy, nothing more.

A weapon? I think you are misunderstanding the terms of the discussion.

Hobbes was a pessimist when it came to human nature. He believed that when humans live in absolute freedom their base tendencies towards destruction and violence go unmitigated in a "war of all against all". That is the state of nature, in which the personal liberty of every individual is such that every person enjoys the right to do to any other individual as he sees fit. Liberty, in this case, is not especially optimistic or inviting. The State is the entity to which humans surrender some of their personal freedom in order to live in relative peace. I, personally, believe Hobbes was correct in his assessment of humanity as inclined towards discord, thus necessitating the State as an arbiter of harmonious relations between individuals. Even if you disagree with Hobbes' opinion that the Monarchical state is the most ideal type of government (and I do not take issue with disagreement on that point), there is nothing fantastical about recognizing the fact that humanity would suffer as much by the absence of States as it has under the most brutal and tyrannical examples of States.

Originally Posted by Matty Lee

It is in fact easier because hatred and a desire for resistance are almost always a given. Guards know that they are guards and prisoners know that they are prisoners. There is no illusion of "we the people" to negate resistance. There is no system through which the prisoners channel their anger at the status quo to support it. Prisons are much easier than webs of lies because everyone knows it's a prison.

Dictatorships are clearly dictatorships. Being "open" isn't something any government, including the US Government, is famous for.

You’re being too literal. I’m not talking about what goes on in prison. In a dictatorship, opposition isn’t tolerated. People who openly oppose the regime are imprisoned, tortured or made to disappear. It’s the only way to maintain power.

At the very least, in our “we the people” government, as messy and flawed as it is, we aren’t systematically denied our most basic rights – including free speech, the right to assemble, worship as we choose (or not) and move freely from one place to another etc.

And what’s the point of “resisting the criminals” and unraveling your so-called “web of lies?” What comes next -- your “more authentic, localized, personalized community?” Even if something like that could be achieved in the short-term, it is inevitable that some hierarchy or structure would evolve. Some dispute between these communities would lead to conflict. You see where this is going?

To deny that states would not come into being, one way or the other, is to deny basic human nature. And so, it would only be a matter of time before you would be presented with the same question – which form should the inevitable government take? I would contend some kind of “we the people” representative government would be the preferable alternative – even if it’s simply the lesser of all evils.

And whether the state has a right to exist is a moot question. Whatever "right" even means in this case. It will inevitably exist, in one form or another.