The State Is a Deluded, Dangerous Religion

The state is the most violent and dysfunctional institution in human history. No other human institution has caused even half as much death and misery as the state has. That the state has taken on various forms throughout history has never really changed the coercive nature of the state. Even nominally democratic governments in modern western countries rely almost exclusively on coercion to persist. Statists will argue that such coercion is justified because by merely existing within the state's self-professed "territory", an individual has consented to the state's authority. According to this asinine logic, over 100,000 Japanese-Americans consented to be imprisoned by FDR during WWII. But despite the state's ceaseless crimes and enormities, and its total lack of logical basis, there is no shortage of people willing to submit to it and to demand the submission of others. In this way, the state is no different than a religion. It relies purely on faith-based dogma that is adhered to by legions of zealots.

 

This is WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY too interesting & deep a topic.

Could you throw in a video with Hillary falling down, or maybe Trump with dog poop on his shoe to make it more user friendly?

 

The title confused me. I thought you were an anarchist against all governments. After reading your nonsense I see you are simply against the United States.

 

Big government should be avoided at all costs.

 

^ Thread win.

Alas.

 

Questioning people's religious beliefs tends to elicit one of two reactions.

Either they respond with hostility or they just ignore it.

At present, the religion of the state is so secure that its adherents feel safe in ignoring this thread for the most part.

But if there ever comes a day when the state religion becomes vulnerable, its adherents will lash out at their opponents with a white hot rage that will make ISIS look moderate by comparison.

 

I'm a philosophical anarchist. I recognize that statelessness is a virtual impossibility at this point, so I don't take any concrete actions to bring about the abolition of the state. Instead, I simply provide philosophical critiques of the state in order to promote education and awareness. Additionally, anarchists, philosophical or otherwise, are not against government per se. Rather, they are against the form of government that results in the emergence of a state. As an example of what I mean, simply consider the fact that pre-agricultural humans lived in stateless tribes, yet they still had governments. All states are governments, but not all governments are states.

As for your interpretation of my post, I can see that your reading comprehension has failed you. That, or you are just being dishonest. And I feel no need to correct either your reading comprehension or your lack of honesty, so I will simply leave it at that.

 

I generally agree. The bigger a government gets, the more authoritarian and corrupt it tends to become. That's not to say smaller governments do not suffer from similar issues, only that smaller governments are limited by their size in terms of the damage they can do. That is why the founders of America placed so much emphasis on the concept of federalism. They realized that most political issues were best handled at a local level. Madison said that the powers of the federal government were few and defined, while the powers of the States were numerous and indefinite (I'm paraphrasing). So while a generic opposition to "big government" is not necessarily opposition to the state per se, it definitely lends itself to arguments for statelessness.

 

That state has saved millions and millions of lives and brought our standard of living higher than it has ever been. That computer you typed your little post on is a product of the state

 

This is a great example of the religious mentality pervading the state. Its adherents attribute all sorts of magical properties to the state while completely ignoring its provable atrocities.

 

without the USA you'd be a dead man

 

Prove it

 

Oy.

 

Before there were states life was nasty, brutish and short.

Nowadays, the nastiness and brutishness is prolonged far too long.

 

I'll bite.

"The state is the most violent and dysfunctional institution in human history. No other human institution has caused even half as much death and misery as the state has"

Isn't this just the same theme we have seen in the last few years of "Problematizing"?

What is "The State"?

Was the German council known as a thing "The State"?

Was the ten from Venice or the hundred and four from Carthage "The State"?

What would be your solution to stop "The State"?

Last but not least, what do you think is the other option? You clearly are some type of anarchist and I guess I can respect that, but whatever about the millions of lives that are walking around right now because "The State" provided them with the safety and resources they needed.

How many brilliant ideas have been fostered?

I guess this is just too big of a thing to claim one way or the other, "The State" is whatever the people involved make it to be. I am not one of the anti-humans that are oh so popular right now, so I very much agree with this premise.

Fun chat though

 

Another example of magical thinking.

 

That's a common misconception.

 

That's a good question. I'm not sure I have a perfect answer at this point. Roughly speaking, I'd say the state is an idea about how people ought to be governed, one that relies on coercion and domination of the masses.

Again, good questions.

Personally, I believe the smaller a government is, the less like a state it appears to be. Pre-historic modes of government in the form of hunter-gatherer tribes are a pretty good example of humans organizing politically without a state.

Enlightenment.

Decentralization and democracy.

Personally, I believe any transition away from statism would need to be done incrementally, given how pervasive the state's influence has become. In my opinion, it would not be sensible or even sustainable to radically abolish the state since so many people have become dependent on it.

How many brilliant ideas have been suffocated in their crib by the state's overbearing influence on our society? How many future Einsteins and Newtons were killed in wars started by states?

 

Government is evil. Look at what Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Castro, etc. have done.

 

Not at all.

Now that we have states, the nastiness and brutishness is prolonged far too long.

 

What other options are there? We have states, probably because that is the only way we have managed to progress as civilization. If there were something better, we would have seen its success and it would have been emulated. So far, that has not happened.

I distrust states as much as you do, because it is run by people, and sometimes the worst people possible end up in power, somehow.

The real problem is human nature, IMO. Human nature corrupts everything it touches, which explains the problems with a State. But unless there is a mass revolution in human consciousness, we may as well get used to it. ha ha

 

The gov-edu-union-contractor-grantee-trial lawyer-MSM Complex has bent over backwards for decades trying to hide the historical fact that the state is a necessary evil, not something that "takes care" of human needs.

They have entrenched the fallacy in gov-edu by instituting a cult of personality around the Presidency and other aspects of the government, VASTLY overemphasizing the role of government in innovation and prosperity, while utterly ignoring the private sector (other than the paragraph on Edison and the "Robber Barons" in the textbook) and especially ignoring the key role of sophisticated, relatively free finance and stable capital markets in U.S. prosperity. Gov-educated fools can name lots of Presidents, 0 financiers, and folks, that is by design.

Every HS student knows Upton Sinclair and The Jungle. Yet the only good banker/financier they can name is around Christmas when "It's a Wonderful Life" comes back. That's amazing in a terrifying way, that Americans are ignorant of the primary driving forces in their prosperity.

This is why we also have near infinite Complex MSM coverage of scams like Enron and Madoff, yet curiously, almost -0- coverage of the overwhelming contributions of finance to nearly everything you can look around and see or touch.

To the actual topic, I could do with an 80% or so decrease in central, federal government back to the states, and most of it just outright abolished.

Whether one is an anarchist or whatever, one immutable fact of history is that as government becomes less and less local and more and more central, over time, it WILL corrupt and decline. Useful idiots don't realize this, while the true Complex fiat capitalists know it full well, and lie through their teeth couching the reality in made up, deflective narratives and social problems that... surprise! surprise! more and more government is required to solve. It's just a coincidence that larger, more central government allows these creeps to steal more and more easily.

Government is the friend of no one but the unjust seeking enrichment via extraction from their neighbor instead of honest work.

 

The alternative is decentralized, localized democratic government.

 

But I thought the American Indians lived peaceful and honorable lives, in harmony with nature.

 

Has it been tried, how did it work out in the real world? A pure democracy is a mobocracy. Right? How then would a nation, consisting of tens of thousands of local democracies protect itself? Afterall, the history of humanity is a history of never ending conflict, war, death, suffering. How could this 10 thousand headed entity operate together, in the interests of the geographical area, the entire geographical area? How would you work it out?

Hell, we already see what a hyper divided nation yields. Now consider 10 thousand different localities, with no central gov't, with the interests of one area counter to the interests of the other. Surely you know what we are, as a species? And it ain't nice and history evidences that in spades.

I am not against such an idea, but I just think nothing would be really solved. Or in solving some things other things would arise that might be just as detrimental to the welfare of humanity. I think the problem lies not in whether you have a state or local democracies acting independent of one another, in the interests of the localities, but in the very nature of what we call human nature. We are not capable of what you wish for, IMO. Human nature corrupts all that it touches, and transforms it to be a reflection of this human nature. That much is self evident if nothing else is, IMO

I think we have what we have because it is what has worked, even with its many problems and issues. And it sucks, but you can blame that on what we call human nature and all of its detrimental aspects.