The best argument for statelessness

Logic on the side of freedom

Nov 11, 2024

The best argument for statelessness emerges in response to the most common straw man fallacy against statelessness; that is “without a government, people would descend into chaos.” This is demonstrably false, because in all of human history, every time a state collapses, it is immediately replaced by another color of state, more palatable to the needs of the people. This shows that people always tend to organize in some way, but doesn’t prove that statism is the only way (please keep reading).

Besides, most of government’s functions today were not even heard of up until a century ago. So, to assume that without them we’d have chaos is highly illogical. For example, people were able to build cathedrals without ever attending a state school (indoctrination camp for children), nor brandishing a dime-a-dozen useless PhD accredited by the state.

The disturbing assumption that “we’d descend into chaos” slyly implies that most people are fundamentally brutish, evil, and dumb, as they can’t even recognize what’s in their best interest. For example, no one wants to live in a Mad Mad caricature of a post-apocalyptic society; even the baddies in that fantasy would be better off cooperating with others instead of burning it all to be kings of ashes (even though some would prefer this).

Those who assume that “humans are fundamentally evil” betray their fundamental misunderstanding of human dynamics. They assume that threats motivate people more than incentives, which is absolutely false. Threats terrorize; incentives encourage. The courageous man is stronger than the terrorized one.

Also, people who assume that “humans are evil” divulge their own self-image, as they project their devilish nature onto everyone else, judging us all as they see themselves. By proclaiming that “without a government, people would descend into chaos,” they confess that, without oversight, they’d do vile things. By assuming that everyone would do what they think would be normal, they admit their “normality.”

To assert that we need a shepherd to control our evil nature is to admit that we are all hopelessly evil (and sheep-ish). It is also a schizophrenic assumption to presume that the shepherd, who is also one of us, will not abuse his evil nature, even more so given his power over others.

Self-interest in peace

Self-interest does not lead to chaos - it leads to cooperation. Yes, there will always exist the vile few who don’t get it, but they are irrelevant. They aren’t worth imposing an institution of violence (the state) to keep those few violent at bay - this is fighting a kitchen fire with a forest fire, and it is insane.

Self-interest is good. It is BECAUSE of our self-interest that we - most of us at least - seek to cooperate, and reach win-win resolutions. The existence of government is the result of the vast majority of people accepting to one another that it’s best to organize in a certain way (whatever way we know). And because we don’t know any better, the knee-jerk reaction so far in human history is to invent a step-parent figure: the state.

See? The mere existence of government proves that people’s self-interest leads to cooperation. Yet, this doesn’t mean that government is the only way to organize society. It means it’s just one way - an extremely inefficient, ineffective, and immoral way.

By now, we have proven that people’s nature, time and time again, leads to cooperation, not chaos. What if there were another way to organize society; an efficient, fair, and moral way…? something smarter and more mature than the matriarchal nanny state, which is only suitable for immature adults without self-accountability or even conviction in their ability to cooperate, negotiate, and arrive at win-win resolutions without enforcement by someone else…

The existence of a government shows that people set aside their short-sided animalistic selfishness for higher far-sighted self-interest; meaning they would refrain from killing their neighbor in a heated argument, if that would mean their neighbor would refrain killing them. This is what separates us from animals: we think ahead. The mere existence of a state proves that the vast majority of people understand that it is in their best interest to be civil with each other, enough to submit to the concept of hegemonic stability (otherwise known as authoritarian rule).

Government exists only because most people understand and accept that they can relinquish a lot of their freedom to the state in return for a sense of protection. So, this alone - the existence of a form of government everywhere on the planet - proves that the vast majority of humans can indeed cooperate into an orderly society.

The problem is that we rest assured and docile, naively assuming that centralized government is the only way to organize a civil society (it’s not). Just like apes in the ‘5 monkeys experiment,’ we presume that statism is the only way just because it’s what we’ve always been doing (appeal to tradition fallacy). Are we no better than monkeys?

No, without a government, humans would not eat each other on the streets (ironically, people who believe in government also believe there cannot be streets without it).

Without a government, the vast majority of people prefer the authoritarian rule of someone - anyone - as long as there’s some hegemonic stability, regardless of power abuses. They are willing to endure the state’s power abuses, because they assume they are not as bad as the imagined chaos without it. This is how much people crave for stability and social order.

So, no, people would not kill each other in a Mad Max scenario. Ironically, the Mad Max worldview actually shows how societies do indeed organize without a state.

In history, whenever a government collapses, people get together to form - you guessed it - yet another government. People instinctively do want to cooperate. Now imagine that we were a bit more mature, educated, and self-accountable, and instead of a centralized government, we allowed for the spontaneous emergence of decentralized stateless systems of self-governance…

Human incentive

Incentive is a better predictor of human behaviour than threat. If you threaten someone, you don’t know how he’d react, because you assume he knows you’re in power. You also don’t know what he’s doing when he thinks he’ll get away with it. Besides, anything good loses its appeal when it has to be enforced. There is resentment that brews when you feel coerced to do something, as opposed to the satisfaction of doing the same thing voluntarily. Similarly, there is an appeal to breaking a taboo when something victimless needlessly becomes forbidden.

When you comply to a threat, you only avoid punishment. When you choose to follow an incentive, you get rewarded with an over-and-above benefit. A society running on incentive, rather than threats, is a superior one.
The typical straw man emerges from the above: “But what if people don’t understand incentives, and they simply attack you?” This is an off-topic straw man; to motivate someone “to do” something out of their inaction is not the same as deterring them from attacking you. You can incentivize people to do things, without letting go of your right to defend yourself against aggression.

Even monopolies bleed

If even the monopoly of government feels the need to virtue-signal with standards and regulations, then imagine a competitive free market. If even a disincentivized centralized monopoly of violence still has to “keep appearances” to somewhat appease its hopeless plebs, then imagine how much more incentivized the competing businesses and professionals of a free market would be in providing all the services that government so miserably fails to provide - at great cost to our purse, our morality, and our dignity.

Why we (almost) always get government

But if human incentive dictates human behaviour, then why do we always get government? Easy: because the emotional mantra “government is the best system we have” is just as prevalent as the cry “let’s sacrifice children to the rain gods” was throughout most of human history.

Throughout humanity’s existence, some form of authoritarian government always took over stateless societies. This is because of two reasons:

Perhaps the only thing that centralized authority is better at than the free market is centralized violence, so states always violently took over stateless societies. This is an argument against the state, not for it. It is an confession for the preference of the greater evil, and an admission that the state is evil, always.
People don’t tend to know better. Humanity, still in its infant state, cannon fathom existing without parent-god figures. In our immature, still uncivilized conditioning, we imagine the benevolent entity of “the state,” which is nothing more than self-serving bureaucrats and abusers. Yes, we haven’t had a sustainable stateless society yet, but we haven’t colonized Mars yet either. Does this mean that getting to Mars is impossible?

The fact that we haven’t had a sustainable stateless society (as far as we know) is that people didn’t know better. People have engaged in child sacrifice and slavery for the vast majority of human history. Does this mean we can’t live in a society without those atrocities? People didn’t use penicillin for the vast majority of human existence - they didn’t know better. So, when penicillin was introduced, it would have been illogical to claim that penicillin would not work just because “it was never used in the past.” That would have been an appeal to tradition fallacy. Similar objections were voiced before every abolitionist movement: “But it hasn’t been tried before… without slaves, our society will collapse into chaos!”

Even the state runs on incentive

If the disincentivized unaccountable monopoly of government cares about public opinion enough to regulate, for example environmental policy, then that public opinion can be way more influential on competing businesses, which are incentivized to compete, and are accountable to relentless free-market pressures. A great example is how the private sector literally solved the hole in the ozone layer problem by simply introducing CFC-free aerosols. After competing businesses began wide adoption to catch up with their environmentally conscious customer demand, the government went on to make it mandatory to take all the credit. We do not need government at all for any environmental policy - the same government that kills the environment with its war machines and weather modifications (cloud seeding).

Imagine assuming that the government cares enough to make meaningful regulations about the environment - the same government that makes nuclear weapons, and maintains and uses vast militaries that completely decimate the global environment. Any environmental regulations it does impose are to throw a bone to appease the naive public, and thus renew their faith in the state. Also, environmental regulations are there to create business for oligopolies, and to take out the competition for smaller competitors, and even foreign exporters. Let us not forget the environmental funding grift for unsustainable “sustainable energy” (like battery-run cars and ridiculous wind energy).

The same goes for financial regulations. It’s schizophrenic to assume that the same government lobbied by Wall Street thugs - the same government that bails out thieving banksters and fraudster brokers - somehow cares enough to regulate them.

It’s illogical to believe that those in government care more about the opinions of voters than the wishes of lobbyists. The existence of government is not in the best interest of the people. Government is in the best interest of big corporatist monopolists - filthy-rich people who got that way only through hijacking government powers. Government is what creates corporatism. Corporatism fears the free unregulated market, because a market free from despotic intervention is regulated and equalized by the forces of competition, and of meeting consumer demands. Less regulation is in the best interest of consumers. Big corporatist monopolists need more state intervention, as it kills their competition, hands them state funding, and grants the favorable regulations that grant them privileges at the expense of their competition (and their customers).

Yet government, for all its power of violence, still feels the need to propagandize and lie to the people, because it needs to appease them (otherwise the government falls). The state has the incentive to keep people satisfied and inert in their delusion of government benevolence. Even government runs on incentive.

The bottom line

If every time people find themselves in a community, they organize to create some form of government, then this proves that societies can never descend into chaos. The mere existence of the state proves that, when there is no state, people will instinctively cooperate to find some kind of social organization. The fall of the Soviet Union, for example, saw the immediate and spontaneous emergence of regional governments. This is due to the fact that human incentive governs human behaviour. Social cooperation emerges out of people’s needs for safety, economy, and sense of community.

However, the fact that we always get government does not prove that government is the only way to organize society. This only proves that government is all we know in our infantile state - the knee-jerk reaction of an infant who always seeks a parent figure because it can’t make it alone. We don’t believe we can self-regulate, so we look to despots to regulate for us.

If only we knew of better ways to organize society. Yes, the threat of violence of a centralized “authority” is always the knee-jerk reaction, the easy choice. But what if we knew better ways, more efficient and moral structures to organize society? What if enough of us understood how voluntary decentralized systems of self-governance worked?