States, Governments and You
Posted on October 30, 2009 by Trent Strong
What is a state? What is government? Two questions that hold a great deal of naive-thinking simplicity to them. “Well a state is like jig-saw pieces of a big puzzle that makes up a country; like Kentucky!” Well, yeah. Kentucky is a state… but what defines a state? Is it (x) amount of land? (x) amount of people? Questions like these need further examination. The state, in my eyes, is a geographical territory occupied with a population that is dictated under a higher ruling. We will discuss this “higher ruler” in the following paragraphs. Like the jig-saw example, conventional ideas of a state would be Montana, New Hampshire, and the other 48 states that create one large state (or country), the United States.
On the other spectrum, the much smaller and overlooked spectrum, states can be very small in contrast to that of the state of Texas! They can be a classroom at your local school, your own household, or a church on Sunday morning. All still align into the same universal definition of a state.
Government is a structure designed to control functions and to dictate the state. Governments are select groups of individuals over a specific state. The government’s population is always much, much, smaller than those of the state. If for some theoretical reason the numbers of those in government were to extremely overpopulate those not in government – would it be a government? Since the governments first and foremost objective is to regulate and control the state would it still be a government anymore? Or would the government then become the state? Governments are not people. People are in governments. Try thinking of it like this, you can not take a picture of the government, just like you can not take pictures of a family. You can take pictures of people in the government and you can take pictures of relatives (people) in the family, but both are terms which do not independently exist (Analogy credited to Stefan Molyneux). This shows you that as long as society accepts the idea of government – there will be government. No matter how many people hop aboard the government bandwagon, those in higher power seeded in government (or newly created state) will govern those below them (even if they are technically government) and branch off into a higher form of government.
Just like states, governments can be small and large – or anywhere in between. For the classroom of students, the government is the teachers, faculty members and principals. For the home, the dictating and overruling parents. For the Sunday church service, the pastor governs his followers through god-like ways. All examples of “governments” on a much more minute scale. These all are obviously different from the government as we think of but never-the-less, the rules are made and enforced by these little governments in your little state.
The thing that is most troublesome with these state-government relationships are the agreement between both parties. Most of the time – well 99% of the time, there is no mutual agreement involved. It is a one-sided agreement, favored by just one of the participates. Obviously in this case the eager participate is the government, because once again, if the majority of the state wants a government and pushes the government upon the minority through force, a whole new contract will be created and the process will start all over again. However, in a stateless and free society there will be many, many obstacles and problems you’d run into that would make this process virtually impossible; that we will get to later.
A few different examples of these state-government agreements could easily be recognized with little effort. We will just use one of the given examples for time purposes, so let’s dissect the example of schools. First, let’s name a few facts. Children must go to school because of laws and obey the rules. If they fail to obey and abide by the laws and rules they will face many disciplinary actions. This is nothing new and I am fairly confident you know the problem-child’s parents would face the force of the state, as seen with truancy laws, if these rules are not met. This agreement between the child and the school is made possible because of the state gun (laws) and/or abstract laws in place making it very hard to be home schooled. Another notable mention would be the very limited choices of affordable private schools as a direct result of government intervention in the market and education. Hopefully it is clear by now the kid is virtually bound to the rulings and dictations of the school and the state. Public schools (government schools) is just a little taste of the involuntary ways of the government and our rulers.
Thanks for reading – Look out for part II.