What is the value of the State?

\0xDynamite dreamingforward at gmail.com
Wed May 3 06:27:05 PDT 2017


>>That's some good bit o' history.
> It was you who asked the question "Without a State, would we have
> electronics?  Radio?"

Yes and I was being serious.  I hadn't encounted that history before.

>>  I was really referring to the level
> of existing order needed to create *more* levels of order.
> That sounds like gobbledygook to me.    What do you mean by this?  What is a
> "level of order"?

It's not gobbledygook at all.  Just as single-cellular life gave rise
to multi-cellular life, a new LEVEL of order was made beyond the cell.
  In this sense, you could say all the problems that we've been having
with "the State" are birthing pains bringing about the solutions to
solve this endless conflict at the current level.

Einstein was credited with saying "You can't solve the existing
problems at the same level which created them" (or something like
that).

It could surmised that no amount of "self-oganization" could create
that transformation seen in biology -- it had to be a GOVERNOR of some
kind.  By which I intimate that leadership, with a greater view of it
all, can generate better, meaningful, and virtuous levels of order and
that it HAD to happen at some point in the past, in order to give rise
to the mammalian life which we cherish..

> And why do you (apparently) think that government is
> somehow necessary (or even desireable) to act as a driver of technology.   I
> think the opposite is true.

It's not that government is the driver, it is simply a large force
that can assemble huge amounts of resources and human effort to solve
problems.  You would never get equivalent levels of order in an
anarchic situation.   It would take some extreme urgency bording on
panic to assemble such forces (because anarchists don't want to join
someone else's causes, right?).

>> I don't
> think it's possible to argue with that.
> Until we actually UNDERSTAND what you meant, how can someone argue?
>
>>But I like the sentiment.  I think the problem is more than the State.

> What problem?

The problem that is often simply labled "the State."

\0x


More information about the cypherpunks mailing list