Please Justify the existence of the State

Merry Christmas Statists and Anarchists alike.

As anyone who reads any of the blather I post on this forum knows, I have a problem with the state. Instead of posting on a thread, saying my bit, and being universally ignored, I ask the statist to justify the existence of the state.

I am not asking for answers like "that's just the way it is" because it is not logical to live in a coercive system that does not need justification. When the state does not need to justify its own existence, it no longer needs to justify its actions.

Ideas as such open a Pandora's box of evils like genocide, wars, and unspeakable tyranny against humanity. The whole of human history is an example of this.

So officially, I ask "What justifications are there for the existence of a state?"

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THREAD ABOUT ANARCHY

edit to clarify: 'State' is referring to a system that governs peoples lives deriving power from its legal use of force. France, Ancient Rome, and Hawaii are examples of a state.

[edit on 25-12-2009 by DINSTAAR]

Without civil courts, there would be no neutral third party to resolve disputes in a public forum.

This is why gang drug dealers resort to violence to solve territorial and payment disputes.

In order to enforce contract law and civil court adjudication, one needs at least some kind of publicly paid enforcement agency, either private or publicly run, sanctioned by the populace, to uphold the courts decisions.

You also need some kind of court system to enact justice when someone has harmed another otherwise you get vigilante justice, which typically isn't fair and typically doesn't hold trials to review the evidence.

This also entails some kind of enforcement arm to uphold justice.

There are several ways to go about legislating what is considered "harm" to another, but this also typically takes some kind of public body to clearly define what harming another entails.

That's basically all you need to have a civil and orderly society.

I am not a big fan of the State ..

I do not believe in nations, patriotism and border lines .. and i would love to live in an Utopia were everybody helps everybody ..

But .. the population is too big .. the needs are too high .. for the sake of sanity we need a State ..

Two heads are better than one, quite simply.

For all the evil and war that comes out of the state, the combination of minds and purses toward common goals has given us the highest civilization with the highest technology to ever exist in recorded history.

We're on the verge of stepping off of this world, venturing out to colonize other worlds, possibly, and such a leap would not be possible without the State.

I mean, anarchists aren't exactly financing and building manned interplanetary space programs, are they?

— Doc Velocity

well i cant give you what you are looking for, because; you know greatly what you are searching and the parameters for your question is so limiting, that i doubt anyone will come and give you documents stating this or that as the reason being a states existence.

supposedly there were men who were so enlightened that the very words they spoke inferred they were binding legal; meaning creation itself would not be, if once these words spoken: they not be law itself, apart of creation.well; these guys thought that an expression of the word on document is an extension of spoken word as law. they further thought to the point where documents of said prior expressions have promulgated the existence of creation within the initial thought fore the spoke word.creation looked back on this expression in the same way it perceived the spoken word and held it in the same vein although this was folly.words that are similar to the spoken word and the objects that are arbitrary but are perceived as the spoken word congealed and coagulated to the point where the power that is given to these objects is made manifest within creation, like an inverse to the reaction of hearing the spoken word.this manifestation is called many things and some attach it to whatever they find in relation to them personally; so "state" is interchangeable, with the higher awareness of creation manifesting and manifestation creating:etc...

along the lines similarly to the content i posted and the desired response you intend, based off of the links you provided and the limiting potential for a response unrestrained by your initial limiting prose.

Eh....changed my mind....my post wasn't worthy of your question and wasn't well thought out. Be back later after some research

[edit on 25-12-2009 by ownbestenemy]

reply to post by mnemeth1


So a state is necessary in order to be a neutral third party in conflict resolution and upholding order.

I guess I have to ask, why is the state given the sole responsibility to accomplish these goals? Is that just the way it is, or can this be logically justified?

Originally posted by ownbestenemy
Can you narrow your question down? I like the question but unsure of what exactly you are asking.

When he refers to the "State," he's talking about Mankind's tendency to form governments and organized societies with laws and law enforcement, taxes, etc. Mankind — particularly Mankind of European descent — gravitates to the formation of State.

Anarchists, on the other hand, want no part of State formation, they oppose the State, would rather see a dissolution of the State — so we'd all be pretty much free agents, fending for ourselves.

So, the OP's challenge is to justify the formation and existence of the State.

— Doc Velocity




[edit on 12/25/2009 by Doc Velocity]

The State is the highest authority within the governance of a populace. Depending on how a society is constructed will ultimately dictate what the State is.

In a controlled State, the State is the final authority on all manners of citizens. Private contracts are not, in fact, private. Only the State itself can enter in, control and enforce said contracts. The State in this manner is the means to the end.

In a free-society, the State is constructed based on an overall consensus of the populace of the time to be the governing body. Ultimately, the populace is what picks the persons that reside within the State and to oversee the State.

In my view, in some capacity, Man desires to have some sort of structure within their lives. Some have greater desire and wish to be told from sun up to sun down what to accomplish, while others with to only have a loose set of guidelines to abide by as to keep the moral status of the general population within a constricted area.

reply to post by Ausar

well i cant give you what you are looking for, because; you know greatly what you are searching and the parameters for your question is so limiting, that i doubt anyone will come and give you documents stating this or that as the reason being a states existence.

I am looking for moral justifications to the existence of the state. How is this limiting in the least bit? I am not looking for reasons it does exist, but for reasons it should.

Originally posted by DINSTAAR
I guess I have to ask, why is the state given the sole responsibility to accomplish these goals? Is that just the way it is, or can this be logically justified?

You ask good questions, but the answer is obvious...

People don't want to pull the trigger themselves. So they appoint and elect others to do the dirty work for them.

And when I say "pull the trigger," I mean just that. We want to be able to kill without guilt — through war or the death penalty or through simple law enforcement. We want somebody else to do the killing for us, to wash away the blood and drag off the bodies.

That's why we created the State.

That's why government has, for ages, been considered the dirtiest of dirty professions, lower than low. It's when the government attempts to climb up out of the primordial ooze and assume a dominant stance over the people that it must be toppled.

Time and time again.

— Doc Velocity






[edit on 12/25/2009 by Doc Velocity]

reply to post by Doc Velocity


I would argue that is what the State has become, not what was intended. At least here in the USA. It is true though.

It still doesn't justify the State nor provides a logical picture of the whole on why Man, has a need for creating a State.

Moral justifications of the existence of government stated thus far...

1. In order to be a neutral third party in conflict resolution and upholding law and order (mnemeth1)

2. the sake of sanity and overpopulation (Polynomial C)

3. Two heads better than one i.e. some projects are too big to accomplish without government help(Doc Velocity)

4. Mankind's desire for structure (ownbestenemy)

5. People do not want to pull the trigger themselves (Doc Velocity)

Thank you for your input!

One more question before I go to bed.

Are the reasons stated above even moral and if so, can they only be accomplished by the state?

I am not trying to fish for a certain response so I can jump on it and ravage it to pieces with my razor-sharp talons of sharpness (got 'em at CostCo, pack of 50), I am just trying to ask important questions about ones foundational political beliefs.

Most people don't give two seconds to these questions, and they should. Providing some form of moral justification to the states existence is foundational to defining clear-cut roles of a state. To accept the state as a reality unfettered by any need for justification is to accept a fate of subjugation.

edited for Polynomial C's clarification

[edit on 25-12-2009 by DINSTAAR]

reply to post by DINSTAAR


Dinstaar...no need to state you are not out to shred responses. Well, maybe a little, some people are quite dense and do not actually read what is asked

The question you state is philosophical in nature as it will continue to ask more questions than answer them, i.e what is moral, can they be only accomplished by the state, etc. I believe there is nothing wrong with this, because it is how enlightenment occurs.

Morality=State: Meaning, what a populace sees as morality is based on the overall conditions of that populace. If the population, as a whole, feels that it is morally correct and justified to have no government and only live their lives according to their own rules, those rules are still constrained by their morality.

As also if the State has been created by the populace to give a structured society with rules/laws for all citizens to abide by, those rules/laws are generally created by the morality of the civilization.

reply to post by DINSTAAR


My main reason was Overpopulation ...

A 6 billion people (even a 30 million people) anarchy would be pretty chaotic .. i don't think we have it in us ...

Originally posted by ownbestenemy
I would argue that is what the State has become, not what was intended. At least here in the USA. It is true though.

What the OP is going for is a moral justification for the existence of the State. Not just the USA, but the State in general, right?

It's easy to back-engineer the creation of the State, given what we know of human behavior dating back into pre-history.

A tribe of Stone Age humans is comprised of men, women and children. A few of the biggest males do the hunting and stand guard at night and walk the perimeter, occasionally fighting off the large predators and protecting the camp.

When it comes time to punish a member of the tribe, these same big guys do the punishing, and this sometimes entails killing the offender; and when it comes to warring with other tribes, these same big guys go out there and massacre their adversaries.

These fellows perform the dirtiest, nastiest, most repulsive duties that nobody else wants to do. They kill, they bludgeon animal predators and humans alike. It's a filthy job but it must be done.

How do you think these guys are treated by the rest of the tribe? Oh, you bet your ass, they are treated with respect, they are honored, they are showered with gifts of thanks from their tribal community.

They are the go-to guys, they are the protectors and providers.

But, by God, you have to make that job attractive with all kinds of perks and entitlements, right, because NOBODY wants to do that job. NOBODY wants to kill a wooly rhinoceros by hand, NOBODY wants to smash out the brains of the enemy, NOBODY wants to execute the prisoner, for Godsake, let's get somebody to do it for us!

Witness the birth of the State.

For good or ill, the State is where Humans invariably go.


— Doc Velocity

Originally posted by DINSTAAR
reply to post by mnemeth1

 

So a state is necessary in order to be a neutral third party in conflict resolution and upholding order.

I guess I have to ask, why is the state given the sole responsibility to accomplish these goals? Is that just the way it is, or can this be logically justified?

Because you need public contract laws to enforce property and civil rights.

A private adjudicator being paid by a private individual would necessarily be biased in the cases he was adjudicating.

Of course, we have EXTREMELY biased judges in our courts today, but I think when you go the private route, you end up with something even worse. Just look at our vaccine courts. The judges are paid for by taxes on vaccines as are the judgments awarded. Do you think a judge is going to bankrupt a company that pays his salary?

The key is to find ways to bind them down.

We tried that with our constitution and failed, but some mechanism like our constitution needs to be in place to force judges to obey and respect our natural rights.





[edit on 25-12-2009 by mnemeth1]

re. my prior post;

a king makes a declaration; this declaration is but the words of a king in a monarchy
to a rebel who wants the king without the king his declaration is made manifest as an object intangible

"so we could call the kings declaration a state; and all who enter creation from the point of his declaration are in the kings state".



[edit on 25-12-2009 by Ausar]

Why should States exist? It is a fair question, and I believe the answer is that it is the most natural course for the human species. Mankind, like wolves, or wild horses live in groups, it has always been our human nature to do so, and the creation of governments was the natural extension of that.

Before the first civilizations man lived in family groups. In such a group an anarchical system was all that was needed. Over time though, these family units would, for the security of the whole, meld together into larger groups until finally cities come about. With cities made up of many of these family groups, their common, unwritten rules would become blurred, and the leader of one family faction would obviously not want to bow to another. That leads to written laws, and governments. I could go deep into this subject, but I think that you get the point.

As far as why this is right, well that is an individual question that depends on your own beliefs. Civilizations obviously don't allow for as much personal freedoms an an anarchy would. On the other hand, Anarchy would be a terribly inefficient system that would restrict mankind's ability to grow in all fields. That is why I believe that a democratic civilization is the best option. Is it perfect? No, and it never will be as long as their is greedy, and immoral people in the world, but I believe that it allows for the best balance of personal freedoms, and technological growth available to us.

The state and any form of government is tyranny.

Any institution can give rise to authority and political parties will inevitable lead to a political dictatorship over the inner democratic process. Parliaments and legislative branches of governments should be replaced with civil assemblies - far more democratic and representative of the people.

In order to have a free, open, fair and classless society - the state and all form of government must be stopped.