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Reality is relative, a state stealing 20% of your shit is additive and necessary relative to a neighboring clan stealing 100% of your shit.
I agree and appreciate you articulating the rest of those thoughts. It is relative and what has not been demonstrated is that society can't be better off by casting off that last 20%. It's only a continued benefit if they actually are the barrier against conquest by a worse group, after all.
They violently protect their rents from alternatives, which is not evidence that the alternatives can't work, just that there are no more gains to the rulers to be had.
It would absolutely be better if we could cast off that last 20%, what hasn't been demonstrated is that we can. I wish we could, in theory we could if everyone was just cool, but that's not reality.
We're left having to make sub-optimal choices, but choosing not to choose is leaving the choice solely to your lessers.
As long as people are imperfect the emergent systems will be too. The rational anti-government stance is choosing 20% against 100%. If we hold the line and 20% wins, we may get to fight another day and support 10% vs. 20%.
We may never gain ground, but must participate to not lose ground. The NAP does not mean simply lying down and lamenting you're on a battlefield by default.
violently protect their rents from alternatives
As I've said in other threads, states are shaped by culture... anti-government types removing themselves from culture is surrender. People are a force multiplier of legitimacy, and legitimacy is gradient.
"The state" is ephemeral because it can be divided against itself. Every state has a shadow-state or rival state lying in wait. This is the closest thing to market dynamics we can get in a natural monopoly that there is always an apex force.
The incentive constraint dilemma is the evidence alternatives can't work, the status quo for all of recorded history is evidence that alternatives can't work. There is only theory based on unrealistic assumptions that an alternatives can. However, by acknowledging the constraint dilemma, we can apply market principles in that context... that's called politics.
Haha. After all that, it turns out we don't even disagree very substantially. You're making assumptions and calling us abdicators, but we aren't removing ourselves from the culture at all. We participate and try to convince people that there's a way to do better than that 20%.
I agree that it hasn't been demonstrated that we can get there. However, the available evidence from both theory and observation suggests it might be possible, which is enough for me to think it's worth trying.
Crux of the disagreement is you're not on board with defending the ground of 20% today, the perfect is the enemy of the not-worse etc... we need that as the staging ground to go for 10% or 0
Politics is tactical
It depends what you mean. I'll oppose anyone looking to expand that 20%, whether they're currently in power or not.
I'd say that's more where we differ. I don't perceive anyone near power currently as holding down the 20%. I see them all trying to expand it in various ways.
Sure its not as simple as tax rates or unwinding the state directly, that's why discernment is important.
We're more in a globalist vs nationalist battle today, perhaps even 5GW between great powers (afformentioned Thucydides Trap).
In that context, the choice is a global state or a localish one, or self-security vs. being a vassal.
Can't fight the next battle until you've won the current one.
"The state" is ephemeral because it can be divided against itself. Every state has a shadow-state or rival state lying in wait. This is the closest thing to market dynamics we can get in a natural monopoly that there is always an apex force.
fascinating!
There is no distinction between private and state security firms, there is only scale.
A clan providing for its own security is private, eventually that conflicts with another clan, then the existence of that other clan becomes a security liability. One way or another, two clans become one... repeat ad infinitum until it the scale emerges as a state. "Hiring" the security rather than providing your own is just being a vassal.
The only demarcation of multiple states comes when the cost of proactive defense exceeds that of reactive defense, which is why states generally fall along natural or cultural borders.
"Private" security firms for millenia only exist within the context of a larger security apparatus, larger security apparatus that millennia before evolved from clans. No armchair theories obviate emergent behavior over thousands of years.
If Mises was so brilliant, where are these private firms you speak of? Why are there no private cities? The same reason there's no Marxist utopia, the theories are unworkable as they don't solve for realist dilemma.
Now you're getting it. That's as an unsolvable problem as economic calculation.
Thucydides Trap applies to any security firm whether you call it private or state. A private security firm doesn't exist unless it's the biggest or has an inherent asymmetry like natural/cultural borders... ergo, a state.
Incentive constraint dilemma, mirror to economic calculation, that renders Mises every bit as useless as Marx.
Reality is relative, a state stealing 20% of your shit is additive and necessary relative to a neighboring clan stealing 100% of your shit.
There hasn't been a single one, only articulations of aligned ethos... unless you're shamed by your own ethos?