Nobody can adequately define what government is or where it comes from.
Nobody can adequately define why government exists.
Therefore acknowledging that government does not exist there remains only a monopolization of social power instead through collective hysterical belief.
Government does not exist but certainly it’s followers do exist everywhere.
It then reasons that people only believe in government because it makes them feel good about themselves and the world around them or if they somehow benefit from postulating it’s existence as a government supporter.
There is no explanatory value of the word government.
It all really depends on how you define the word “exist”. I personally agree with you, it doesn’t exist. It’s just a load of people doing different jobs (usually really, really poorly). We pay them to do those jobs “for” us, and we don’t have a choice about whether we pay them, nor whether or not we’d rather pay someone else. If we don’t pay those exact people, we go to jail, and so does anyone trying to infringe upon the jobs they have decided are theirs. Does anyone remember signing a contract with these people?
What I’ve always found hilarious about the government is that state drones pay the taxes that are used to pay them… How ridiculous! The reason they don’t just get paid less? To keep someone else busy.
I’m under no illusions about what government “is”, and have yet to hear any sort of an argument that would “convert” me back to being a statist. Statist arguments are at best baseless and at worst pro-violence.
This is one of the things that bugs me about where ‘radical’ politics is headed. The likes of the Von Mises institution, Ron Paul, Stefan Molyneaux and certain other libertarian minarchists/anarcho-capitalists use this a lot. The existence of a contract is so often implied in our society that it is largely irrelevant if you haven’t actually physically signed a contrast with the government. The issue of state imposition goes way beyond simply having not signed a paper contract to say that you’ll pay taxes if they do certain things.
Likewise, the notion that if you sign a contract then magically everything will be alright in this lovely free market economy where of course there won’t be corruption because in a free market corruption is bad business and lalalalalala is a load of crap.
I say this as an anarchist, just not one who thinks free market capitalism is somehow the answer to all of our problems. Capitalists have done some of the worst things in human history.
Sorry, where was it that I stated that I thought the issue of state impostion began and ended with the paper contract? And where exactly did my post state that signing a contract would whip up a utopia within the day?
Like so many instances I notice on ILP, here’s another example of how important it is to some people to feel superior, even when their post is based on a personal interpretation of the beliefs the person they are quoting may hold.
Where was it that I claimed that you did? I was talking about the Von Mises/Austrian school advocates, it was simply your comment that kicked it off. I said nothing about your beliefs other than to quote one line from your post.
As I believe I made clear, I was not attacking your beliefs. You’re right, I’m not particularly interested in your beliefs, I was simply using one sentence in your post - a sentence that is oft-repeated by others whose beliefs I was attacking.
Of course, if you want to offer your opinion on my criticisms of the libertarian minarchists and anarcho-capitalists then you are, and have always been, free to do so.
I don’t think that any of the entities you cite are wont to state that the problems of government begin and end with the problems of an implicit social contract. It seems you know better than they do, though, so perhaps you should get in touch with them.
Perhaps not, but they do often argue the corollary position that somehow private contracts such as between you and a corporate entity are somehow much much much better than the implicit social contract between you and a the government.
Basically, they don’t understand that the government is a corporate entity and that corporations are state entities. Or they willfully ignore the fact.
You really are a smug, patronising cow aren’t you?
Well, banking is an obvious example but there at the heart of the thing in each nation you have a central bank, which has the national monopoly rights of a government department but the secrecy and unaccountability of a private corporation. Even when the bank itself is nationalised, which has happened in some countries, it still functions in the same way as a normal central bank, in that it sells debt in order to raise money to then loan to the government, while at the same time using that process to back the simple creation of money out of nothing to then loan to the government. The bigger the governmental deficit, and all capitalist nations run at a deficit pretty much all the time, the better it is for the central bank. So the government spends more money that it can obtain through taxation by agreeing to hand over a proportion of that taxation on interest payments to the central bank and to debt holders.
Thus, the economy will always be growing in that there will always be more money in the economy (i.e. inflation is a given) even when in real terms it is shrinking, when the increased money supply actually pays for less stuff. This happens when inflation outstrips the increased money supply, i.e. when private businesses charge more in order to eat up more of the money supply in the name of making larger profits. Frankly, if you’re a Tesco or a Wall Mart or a Exxon Mobil or whoever you can hardly fail to make money in such an economic system. Your profits basically come from the increase in money supply caused by the government borrowing it through the central bank.
This is not just collusion between the government and big corporations, it is a systemic tie that neither could truly survive without. The government can’t borrow enough money to keep enough people employed to keep enough people paying taxes to keep borrowing more money. So the corporations employ people at less than their labour is worth but just enough to keep them consuming and paying taxes, as dicatated by the market forces in such a system. If you take out the government and the big corporations there really aren’t that many people left who are making much money or paying much tax. Of course, if we could get rid of the debt-machine that is state capitalism then there’d be a much more open economy in which you’d get lots and lots of smaller businesses and civil institutions. Probably.
Exactly. Polly, you seem to very much understand where I am going with this thread.
I agree with your post on all fronts.
Anarchists are the atheists of government in our lifetime for the lack of belief in it’s existence, benefit, and purpose. The similarities between atheism and apoliticism is astounding.
