Be it the group that controls the state apparatus or the one that represents the institution of government, let us simply refer to the state.
While the state cannot achieve everything, it can certainly achieve much, because the state is the monopoly of monopolies—the one and only that makes all other monopolies possible. First, the state is the compulsory territorial monopoly of the services of justice (law) and security (order), which, with institutional power to impose property transfers (taxes) for its maintenance, takes by force or threat the final decisions in society. And second, the state is legitimized by opinion (ideology), which reinforces its existence and intrusion in other fields of social life. Thus, to achieve its goals, the state legislates through its jurisdictional monopoly and educates—mind molds—its subjects to alleviate any opposition.
The state rules its subjects by tampering with their right to self-defense; their right to associate and agree on their terms, and to contract and agree on the protection and enforcement of these terms. And since the norms of the just acquisition of property are not a restriction on the state, because it assigns property to itself not through original appropriation or voluntary transfer of property, the state corrupts an otherwise entirely peace-oriented social order—one of full private property. Therefore, the state stands in the way of its alleged goal of protecting peace and social life, because it systematically violates peace in the attempt of this protection. To further explain, given that conflict is possible but not inevitable, as philosopher Hans-Hermann Hoppe notes:
“…it is nonsensical to consider the institution of a state as a solution to the problem of possible conflict, because it is precisely the institution of a state which first makes conflict unavoidable and permanent.”
As the state intervenes in social life, with no other limit than the one coming from any resistance to its authority, the state restricts social authority and any voluntary organization for conflict resolution or social regulation. Thus, the demonstrated preference for peace and cooperation on the part of most people is not only hindered but ignored systematically.
The state admits no competition to its supreme authority. And while it concentrates power in an essential sense, the state also extends or divides this power, whenever those who hold it see fit to extend or divide it in order to expand or protect their own power. Similarly, the state spares no effort to legislate against the strengthening of any authority in society contrary to the state’s wishes. Any authority that inspires genuine and voluntary respect is bound to be undermined. So, clubs, churches and all kinds of civil associations become increasingly subordinated to state legislation, the more they grow in influence and relevance. And then there is the intrusion into the family. Given that the family is the most important pillar of loyalty, cooperation and natural hierarchy in society, the pinnacle of state intervention is meddling in the affairs of the family.
The state distorts the development and functioning of social institutions, causing errors in the understanding of different—albeit fundamental—concepts within society: confusing freedom with state permission, and justice with the application of state-made law. In addition, the legislative power of the state is used to favor particular interests other than those created by the existence of the state. Along with this, the state generates conflicts and unrest through its legislation, provoking controversies and disputes that would not occur in its absence. The state invents “crimes” and “offenses,” even without victims, and puts the use of the state apparatus under discussion while it pits different groups against each other into ideological wars—on culture, religion, and more. So, the powers that be, through the institution of the state, divide the subjects to obtain support, according to need. In this process, the state benefits certain groups outside the state for specific reasons, with the help of the legal system managed by the same state.
The state also fixes society to itself, so when some people do not want the state to do something, the state apologists may say that these people do not want it done at all; as if being against tax-funded health care implied being against sickness to be cured. More and more, then, the state floods into the interstices of social life and increases its scrutiny over the lives of its subjects. And dependence on the state increases as the state advances over the individual and assumes responsibilities that would otherwise urge people to give more importance to the way they conduct their lives. Successively, almost everything related to individual responsibility is for the state something to generate control and legitimacy among the people, for if the state can provide, some idea will be presented to justify the provision. Thus, the state arrogates more functions to itself as personal responsibilities can be conceived of, restricting responsibility and making the most responsible pay for the mistakes of the least responsible.
Conclusively, the state promotes incentives that undermine virtue in society, affecting morality in the way individuals cope with the uncertainty of life. And as the state fights a myriad of social concerns, it acquires new functions and more legitimacy to expropriate people more easily. Therefore, the state intensifies popular submission, making its subjects more dependent on its apparatus and criteria—either for the pursuit of personal ends in general, or for the satisfaction of needs subordinated to state intervention and financing in particular.
As economist Ludwig von Mises once explained, the market is not a thing, or a collective entity, but a process “actuated by the interplay of the actions of the various individuals cooperating under the division of labor.” But as the source of legal monopoly and compulsory regulation, the state benefits special interests by allowing some to benefit over others through its forced legislation—defining what some people may achieve and what others will not be allowed to achieve in certain circumstances. Likewise, the state grants subsidies or monopolistic privileges to companies, whose prices are sometimes established with the state itself, ensuring a permanent profit for these companies despite any eagerness to compete coming from the marketplace.
Or the state can create a company, for example, to venture into the production and sale of a particular good. Hence, the state wants more money by selling goods through a state company created out of taxpayers’ money. In this case, let us say gas. In principle, the project would entail almost the same questions as for any other enterprise expecting to get something out of a project. So, the state must also rely on the advice of experts to estimate the output that a project would render. There will be better options than others for obtaining gas, and not all options will be financed. But how can the state responsibly and cost-effectively choose one project over another? The selection and execution of state projects is not a process of resource allocation and economic calculation of a value-generating and freely coordinated market economy, but one outside the cost-benefit balance that drives business continuity. And since the state carries out its projects regardless of its failures and can externalize costs to finance them, the state cannot go bankrupt like private individuals. Hence, the resources mediated by the state cannot be used entrepreneurially, because these resources are not used by real entrepreneurs who risk their own resources and business continuity.
In the state social order, social cooperation is not the outcome of state order in society, but the result of whatever measure of free and peaceful interaction is allowed by the state. Moreover, the subjects of the state are obliged to confront the continuous legislation, intervention, and arbitrariness of the state, which is in reality an immoral institution that does not allow the free and natural process of society. It’s a process by which the moral and behavioral requirements for peaceful coexistence are recognized or established, thus fostering well-being, cooperation, association or dissociation, and inclusion or exclusion while culture and social institutions develop.
But state authorities do not suffer the consequences of practices that any private individual is expressly prohibited from engaging in, such as when the state engages in theft, murder, and kidnapping. For instance, when the state levies taxes, wages war and imposes military conscription. And while private individuals are expected to take responsibility for the consequences of their actions, the state’s personnel enjoy a variety of possibilities from which they can hardly suffer any significant consequences, apart from the potential so-called political cost.
To make matters worse, who protects the subjects from the state itself? Who does when it is the state that makes them depend on itself in so many respects? And who punishes the state? Except for what the subjects may do at the risk of being punished for defending themselves against the state, the answer to these questions is no one.
Since every person is an independent decision-making unit—that is, since everyone can make his own judgement about the claims of others—every person is then a potential independent third party for the resolution of conflicts and disagreements between rival positions. Therefore, the imposition of a third party for such a resolution is not necessary for the concurrence of an independent third party to decide correctly between those positions. That is to say, the state, which imposes itself as the final judge of all conflicts in society, including disputes involving the state itself as a litigating party, is not necessary for justice to be made. And although the permanent infallibility of any justice provider cannot be assured, since to err is something human and common, it is precisely fallibility that makes it imprudent to always have the same justice provider who pays no price for being wrong, because the state is the only justice provider that cannot be punished with the loss of clients—as it will continue to receive funding independently.
Finally, here we are left with an inescapable conclusion about the state and its subjects: that for justice to be served, the state must give up its claim to rule and judge over the lives and rights of its subjects, since the state has not been able to prove to date—and it will never be able to—that it has a right to the life or property of anyone. And the subjects, once free, must set about the task of living their lives and dreams without any state in their midst.
