People believe that the state is necessary to secure anything essential: money, private property, health, labour, investment, infrastructure, family, religion, education, farming and mining, etc. When questioned, they will look at you like if you are insane and say "well from where then?! out if thin air?!". Then when regulations fail, they will demand from them to be "stronger", so that they don't fail, of course. It's a real life greek allegory in which the proposition is: when people lose the perception of what "authority" means, they will treat it as a superior entity deprived from human weakness.