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The State is Nothing But Appetite

Posted by M. C. on February 11, 2025

by Oscar Grau

While the state cannot achieve everything, it can certainly achieve much, because the state is the monopoly of monopolies—the one and only that makes all other monopolies possible.

The state admits no competition to its supreme authority. And while it concentrates power in an essential sense, the state also extends or divides this power, whenever those who hold it see fit to extend or divide it in order to expand or protect their own power.

https://libertarianinstitute.org/articles/the-state-is-nothing-but-appetite/

depositphotos 10329262 l

Be it the group that controls the state apparatus or the one that represents the institution of government, let us simply refer to the state.

While the state cannot achieve everything, it can certainly achieve much, because the state is the monopoly of monopolies—the one and only that makes all other monopolies possible. First, the state is the compulsory territorial monopoly of the services of justice (law) and security (order), which, with institutional power to impose property transfers (taxes) for its maintenance, takes by force or threat the final decisions in society. And second, the state is legitimized by opinion (ideology), which reinforces its existence and intrusion in other fields of social life. Thus, to achieve its goals, the state legislates through its jurisdictional monopoly and educates—mind molds—its subjects to alleviate any opposition.

The state rules its subjects by tampering with their right to self-defense; their right to associate and agree on their terms, and to contract and agree on the protection and enforcement of these terms. And since the norms of the just acquisition of property are not a restriction on the state, because it assigns property to itself not through original appropriation or voluntary transfer of property, the state corrupts an otherwise entirely peace-oriented social order—one of full private property. Therefore, the state stands in the way of its alleged goal of protecting peace and social life, because it systematically violates peace in the attempt of this protection. To further explain, given that conflict is possible but not inevitable, as philosopher Hans-Hermann Hoppe notes:

“…it is nonsensical to consider the institution of a state as a solution to the problem of possible conflict, because it is precisely the institution of a state which first makes conflict unavoidable and permanent.”

As the state intervenes in social life, with no other limit than the one coming from any resistance to its authority, the state restricts social authority and any voluntary organization for conflict resolution or social regulation. Thus, the demonstrated preference for peace and cooperation on the part of most people is not only hindered but ignored systematically.

The state admits no competition to its supreme authority. And while it concentrates power in an essential sense, the state also extends or divides this power, whenever those who hold it see fit to extend or divide it in order to expand or protect their own power. Similarly, the state spares no effort to legislate against the strengthening of any authority in society contrary to the state’s wishes. Any authority that inspires genuine and voluntary respect is bound to be undermined. So, clubs, churches and all kinds of civil associations become increasingly subordinated to state legislation, the more they grow in influence and relevance. And then there is the intrusion into the family. Given that the family is the most important pillar of loyalty, cooperation and natural hierarchy in society, the pinnacle of state intervention is meddling in the affairs of the family.

The state distorts the development and functioning of social institutions, causing errors in the understanding of different—albeit fundamental—concepts within society: confusing freedom with state permission, and justice with the application of state-made law. In addition, the legislative power of the state is used to favor particular interests other than those created by the existence of the state. Along with this, the state generates conflicts and unrest through its legislation, provoking controversies and disputes that would not occur in its absence. The state invents “crimes” and “offenses,” even without victims, and puts the use of the state apparatus under discussion while it pits different groups against each other into ideological wars—on culture, religion, and more. So, the powers that be, through the institution of the state, divide the subjects to obtain support, according to need. In this process, the state benefits certain groups outside the state for specific reasons, with the help of the legal system managed by the same state.

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Why the Family Is Not the Model for the State

Posted by M. C. on October 1, 2024

The state-family analogy fails in a number of ways, however. State power is permanent and bureaucratic while parental power—that is, “paternal” power—is temporary and personal.

In states, the corporate power of the state endures indefinitely over all subjects regardless of the age or economic capabilities of the subject. Becoming an adult or earning a living does not free any man from his obligation to pay taxes, submit to conscription, or otherwise obey all state laws. In contrast, in a family, it is considered the norm that a child is subject to parental power only temporarily.

https://mises.org/mises-wire/why-family-not-model-state

Mises Wire • Ryan McMaken

For centuries, advocates for greater state power have claimed that modern sovereign states are like families.

The value of the strategy is clear: most people view families as both necessary and natural. Even in our current age of widespread divorce and single parents, the idea of “family” (variously defined) remains enduringly popular. Thus, for a politician looking to increase the perceived legitimacy of the state, it only makes sense to attempt to show that the family is analogous to the state—that the state is a type of family writ large.

This comparison may seem, to some, as plausible on the surface. But any serious look at the methods used to govern families reveal that the two institutions are thoroughly dissimilar.

Because the family has long been regarded as both natural and popular, however, state builders have been unable to resist trying to use the family to build their political and ideological agendas.

This goes back to some of earliest theorists of the sovereign state and absolutism, such as Jean Bodin who described the family as the “true image of a Commonweal.” The absolutist king James I of England declared in 1609 that “Kings are compared to fathers in families: for a king is truly parens patriae, the politic father of his people.”

Thomas Hobbes, who differed with Bodin on the state’s ideal form, nonetheless employed a similar strategy of invoking the ancient and fundamental character of the family as a model of authoritarian state power. According to Hobbes: “the beginning of all dominion amongst men was in families. In which, first, the father of the family by the law of nature was absolute lord of his wife and children.”

Moreover, in Hobbes’s imagined state of nature, families are governed primarily by violence and fear. Fathers exercise “absolute power” to mete out life or death to their children. For Hobbes, it is the child’s fear of execution at the hands of his father that maintains order. In this view, the family is thus formed by a form of “conquest” over the children, and Hobbes declares the family to be “a little Monarchy.”

Later French defenders of the absolutist state argued along similar lines. In his attempt to show that monarchs are inviolable, Louis de Bonald began with the argument that divorce within families is intolerable. Then, in turn, he applied the same principles to the monarch, a type of “father” from whom the population can never be divorced.

Thus, we see how pro-state theorists can exploit the idea of family in two ways. The first is to free-ride on the assumed historical legitimacy and beneficence of the state. After all, if the family is accepted as good for society, we must then conclude that the state—which is just a big family, you see—is also good for society.

The second way these theorists exploit the family is by creating a caricature of the family that reflects the form and function of the state itself. That is, when men like Hobbes and Bodin invoke the family ideal, they invoke a dubious version of the family that is rigidly hierarchical and authoritarian. In this imagined family, the father’s role is to issue orders, and everyone else’s role is to meekly obey. Naturally, one can see how this simplistic image of the family is attractive to those who seek to promote more power for a monopolistic state.

Modern Sentimental Appeals to a National “Family”

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The State Is Not Your Friend!

Posted by M. C. on August 10, 2024

Once a person frees himself from the delusion that the government is here to help, it’s much easier to make sense of its otherwise inexplicable behavior.  Think of the State as a ruthless conqueror interested only in taking everything you own.

Our governments do not care about free speech, free markets, self-government, or world peace. Why would they? Such lofty ideals only detract from their power and authority. On the other hand, censorship, regulation, bureaucracy, and constant war provide the State everything it needs to rule in perpetuity.

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2024/08/the_state_is_not_your_friend.html

By J.B. Shurk

Right now, the United Kingdom is barreling toward totalitarianism.  After a second-generation immigrant reportedly murdered several children in a vicious stabbing attack last week, native Brits took to the streets to denounce their country’s criminally dangerous open borders.  If these outraged citizens had been members of Antifa, the press would have compassionately framed their actions as “mostly peaceful protests” deserving of praise.  Instead, because the public’s fury is directed toward one of globalism’s sacred cows — mass migration — angry parents have been condemned for fomenting “violent riots.”  Protecting children from serial killers and sexual predators, it seems, is not “politically correct.”  Of course, anyone familiar with the Rotherham grooming scandal already knew that

The problem, according to the ruling Establishment, is not that open border immigration policies have led to marked increases in violent crime and cultural hostility, but rather that ordinary citizens have begun to express their displeasure.  Commie Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer has announced a two-pronged solution for combatting public dissent: (1) increased social media censorship and (2) widespread implementation of facial recognition technology to beef up the U.K.’s already robust mass surveillance.  

This exercise in raw tyranny follows Big Brother’s favorite playbook.  First, the government creates a problem that harms ordinary citizens.  Next, authorities pretend that no problem actually exists.  Eventually, citizens are forced to take matters into their own hands.  Finally, the government uses public outrage as an excuse to expand its own powers.

As in America, there is overwhelming public support in the U.K. for secure borders and controlled immigration.  Just as in the United States, both sides of the U.K.’s political Uniparty have ignored citizens’ wishes and instead flooded the country with illegal aliens who cannot easily assimilate into Western society.  After violent crime and community conflicts predictably rose, U.K. authorities were more willing to ban knives than to admit that they had put the public in serious danger.  And now that regular Brits are pushing back against the government’s criminal enterprise, the Marxist prime minister has chosen to use the crisis as a pretext for increasing mass surveillance and banning free speech.  Somewhere on a whiteboard in a Deep State dungeon, this blueprint for erecting a new world order dystopia has long been planned out.  Government officials have the blood of innocents on their hands.

Such ruling-class treachery is nothing new.  Similar blueprints for erasing freedoms and expanding government power abound.  For instance, there is the classic welfare state gambit: (1) move blue-collar jobs overseas, (2) tax and regulate citizens into poverty, (3) buy the votes of impoverished citizens desperate for handouts, and (4) keep the public dependent upon the government’s continued “generosity.”

There is the central bank funny money gambit: (1) give a small cabal of filthy rich bankers the power to print money as they see fit, (2) fund extravagant government programs with loans from the money-printing bankers, (3) artificially inflate the value of Wall Street assets while devaluing the meager savings of the working poor, (4) prop up unnatural economic bubbles with government interventions, (5) transfer all real property from the poorest to the wealthiest, (6) leave the majority of citizens in the precarious position of borrowing all their lives from rapacious creditors, (7) wait for the economy to crash like a house of cards, and (8) force all the desperate peasants into a system with central bank digital currencies that supervises their transactions in real time.  

There is the global apocalypse gambit: (1) indoctrinate citizens with the false message that hydrocarbon energy is killing the planet, (2) heavily regulate all market activity for the public’s safety, (3) tax citizens for using unapproved energies, (4) launder windfall profits to “green energy” cronies, and (5) strictly monitor all citizens’ carbon footprint from cradle to grave.  

There is the WWIII gambit: (1) promise Russia that NATO’s military alliance has no intention of expanding toward its borders, (2) spend the next three decades expanding NATO’s military alliance right up to Russia’s borders, (3) blame any Russian response on its secret desire to conquer Europe, (4) provide the European Commission with an excuse to erase national borders and build a pan-European military, and (5) give Western nations an opportunity to send able-bodied young men off to battle before they can turn their attention to matters closer to home.  

Finally, there is the global health emergency gambit:

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Of Course We Should Mock the State

Posted by M. C. on February 23, 2024

By J.B. Shurk
American Thinker

Ever since Obama’s election, the effort to bulldoze America and rebuild on its rubble a compliant nexus point for the WEF’s coercive Borg to dominate the West has picked up speed. Unaccountable bureaucrats and politicians in Washington don’t even pretend to respect the will of voters anymore.

Of Course We Should Mock the State

Every once in a while, Big Government globalists inadvertently tell the truth.  It’s usually not because they’re dumb, but because they’re so entombed inside their own dystopian cocoons that they forget how crazy they might sound to reasonable, well adjusted people.  The World Economic Forum is filled with giddy zealots who have no idea how insane their plans for global domination sound to the wider population because the WEF’s psychopathic members are universally eager to depopulate the planet; cage the survivors; and drip-feed their human pets with a cocktail of drugs, bugs, and propaganda.  Ordinary people look at Klaus Schwab and see Dr. Evil.  WEF-fers see Commie Klaus as a shiny-headed (perhaps reflecting so much bright light as to be downright Luciferian) globalist god.  While Davos devotees yearn for a “new world order,” prudent Westerners are thinking about how to end the WEF’s madness before it abruptly ends them.

There was a time when Americans would look at some of the eccentric cult behavior taking place in Europe, shake their heads, and dismiss it as the kind of kookiness that happens when Old World aristocrats and commie-curious “elites” get together to drown their sorrows in cognac and regale each other with tales of lost colonies and mighty empires.  Then American politicians began sounding a lot like their European cousins, who speak of common people as a farmer would a sounder of smelly pigs.  When then-senator Barack Obama was yukking it up on the campaign trail with Nancy Pelosi’s friends in San Francisco, he complained about “bitter” blue-collar voters who “cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them.”  Even Hillary Clinton cackled at that mask-slipping moment, when she denounced Obama’s remarks as “elitist and out of touch.”  She was lying, of course, because eight years later, she told an audience in New York City that half of Donald Trump’s voters are “racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamophobic — you name it” and deserve to be relegated to a “basket of deplorables.”  Those moments of candor — delivered in front of adulatory audiences who shared Obama’s and Clinton’s cloistered worldview — crystallized for tens of millions of Americans that the political “elites” occupying D.C. have more in common with Dr. Evil’s communist club of aspiring tyrants in Davos than with the hardworking, God-fearing, patriotic citizens who have always sacrificed so much to make America great.

Ever since Obama’s election, the effort to bulldoze America and rebuild on its rubble a compliant nexus point for the WEF’s coercive Borg to dominate the West has picked up speed.  Unaccountable bureaucrats and politicians in Washington don’t even pretend to respect the will of voters anymore.  Strong majorities of Americans have said resoundingly: close and secure the borders, stop spending money that you do not have, end widespread warrantless surveillance, stop censoring public debate, stop distorting the law to punish dissenting voices, safeguard elections from mail-in ballot fraud, and stop funneling money to foreign regimes that use that money to attack the United States.  The hive-mind Borg in D.C. has told the American people to go suck an egg.  The federal government’s targeted abuse of Americans has been an eye-opening experience for many.

Consider this question: when is the last time you can remember an Establishment politician trying to unite Americans behind common history and principles, irrespective of background or race?  It’s been many years, has it not?  Why is that?  Because the current power structure of the U.S. government depends upon keeping Americans fiercely divided.

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The State Takes The Place Of God… “They Want to be Our Shepherds. But That Requires Us to be Sheep.”

Posted by M. C. on December 8, 2023

Milan Adams

When the project of universal democracy ended in the blood-soaked streets of Iraq, this pattern began to be reversed. Utopianism suffered a heavy blow, but politics and war have not ceased to be vehicles for myth. Instead, primitive versions of religion are replacing the secular faith that has been lost. Apocalyptic religion shapes the policies of American president George W. Bush and his antagonist Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in Iran. Wherever it is happening, the revival of religion is mixed up with political conflicts,

The State Takes The Place Of God… “They Want to be Our Shepherds. But That Requires Us to be Sheep.”

Modern politics is a chapter in the history of religion. The greatest of the revolutionary upheavals that have shaped so much of the history of the past two centuries were episodes in the history of faith – moments in the long dissolution of Christianity and the rise of modern political religion. The world in which we find ourselves at the start of the new millennium is littered with the debris of utopian projects, which though they were framed in secular terms that denied the truth of religion were in fact vehicles for religious myths.

Communism and Nazism claimed to be based on science – in the case of communism the cod-science of historical materialism, in Nazism the farrago of ‘scientific racism’. These claims were fraudulent but the use of pseudo-science did not stop with the collapse of totalitarianism that culminated with the dissolution of the USSR in December 1991. It continued in neo-conservative theories that claimed the world is converging on a single type of government and economic system – universal democracy, or a global free market. Despite the fact that it was presented in the trappings of social science, this belief that humanity was on the brink of a new era was only the most recent version of apocalyptic beliefs that go back to the most ancient times.

Jesus and his followers believed they lived in an End-Time when the evils of the world were about to pass away. Sickness and death, famine and hunger, war and oppression would all cease to exist after a world-shaking battle in which the forces of evil would be utterly destroyed. Such was the faith that inspired the first Christians, and though the End-Time was re-interpreted by later Christian thinkers as a metaphor for a spiritual change, visions of Apocalypse have haunted western life ever since those early beginnings.

During the Middle Ages, Europe was shaken by mass movements inspired by the belief that history was about to end and a new world be born. These medieval Christians believed that only God could bring about the new world, but faith in the End-Time did not wither away when Christianity began to decline. On the contrary, as Christianity waned the hope of an imminent End-Time became stronger and more militant. Modern revolutionaries such as the French Jacobins and the Russian Bolsheviks detested traditional religion, but their conviction that the crimes and follies of the past could be left behind in an all-encompassing transformation of human life was a secular reincarnation of early Christian beliefs. These modern revolutionaries were radical exponents of Enlightenment thinking, which aimed to replace religion with a scientific view of the world. Yet the radical Enlightenment belief that there can be a sudden break in history, after which the flaws of human society will be for ever abolished, is a by-product of Christianity.

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Chattel Slavery

Posted by M. C. on October 18, 2023

There came a time when Christians agreed that chattel slavery had to go. It may be time to say the same about the state.

Joseph Sobran – Subtracting Christianity/The Powers That Be

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Why Are So-Called ‘Anti-State’ Types Still Supporting the State and the Politicians Who Wish To Rule?

Posted by M. C. on September 7, 2023

There is but one big picture, and that is that the State is the mortal enemy of all that is good in this world. Perpetuating and supporting the lie that government is necessary, that control by the few is legitimate, that representative rule is needed, that independence leads to chaos, and that arbitrary laws enforced at the point of a gun somehow create harmony, is the epitome of a society consumed by irresponsibility, and one that seeks its own enslavement.

https://www.lewrockwell.com/2023/09/gary-d-barnett/why-are-so-called-anti-state-types-still-supporting-the-state-and-the-politicians-who-wish-to-rule/

“He had just about enough intelligence to open his mouth when he wanted to eat, but certainly no more.”

~ P.G. Wodehouse

Once again, I find it necessary to write about the insanity of so-called freedom supporters (or anyone else) who voluntarily choose to continue to promote politicians for political office, as if keeping this heinous and evil system alive in the ‘hope’ that it will work this time around, is a viable option. Every single election brings out supposed anti-state individuals and groups, stumping for their candidate(s) of choice, without ever once considering that the entire system is not only flawed beyond imagination, but is, and has always been, and by design, controlled, corrupt ,and criminal since the very beginning. Choosing a new master in an ocean of government scum, will never lead to freedom and prosperity, as the problem is not who rules, but that rule exists at all.

It is brutally obvious that politicians, most all politicians, are either fully controlled, or are willing accomplices in crimes against mankind.  If that was not so, things would not have worsened incessantly throughout all of time, regardless of which worthless trimmer got ‘elected’ (selected) in these make-believe and fraudulent ‘elections.’ Despite party affiliation or rhetoric, any elected politician is agreeing to uphold abhorrent State ‘laws,’ including the government-created Constitution, which is an assault against natural rights and liberty. Voting is a fool’s game, and is only allowed in order to trick the weak of mind into thinking they are controlling their own destiny. Anyone who still believes such nonsense, is a completely lost soul.

I always consider voting for a ‘master’ asinine, but I do not expect those claiming to be anti-state to fall for such nonsense. It matters not who is ‘elected,’ as it is the system that is rotten, so simply replacing one politician with another cannot ever bring a good outcome. The abolishment of government, or at the very least, the elimination of all power to regulate or restrict, is necessary if freedom is to exist.

The main focus of this rant is directed at those claiming to be conservative, ‘liberal,’ independent, or libertarian, who continue to support and promote this governing system by advocating the choosing of different candidates working within the very same flawed, dishonest, and horrendous system, that brought us this extreme tyranny in the first place. It is as if, whether innocently or by design, they believe that simply choosing a new face will put out the fire of totalitarianism, while leaving in place a dominant master ruling cabal. This kind of illogical non-reasoning is usually based on blind hope, or on knowingly presenting this ludicrous option so as to keep a corrupt agenda in place. Either way, it is always doomed to failure, and does nothing but perpetuate the enslavement of the masses.

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The State Protects Itself While Crime against Ordinary People Surges | Mises Wire

Posted by M. C. on August 22, 2023

Naturally, law enforcement officers rarely face any sanctions for their failures to bother themselves with private property, life, or limb. The federal courts have made it clear that law enforcement officers are not obligated to actually protect the public. In other words, the taxpayers must always pay taxes to hold up their end of the imagined “social contract” or face fines and imprisonment. But the other side of that “contract,” the state, has no legal obligation to make good on its end. This, of course, is not how real contracts work. 

Ryan McMaken

In all the media and regime frenzy over the Janaury 6 riots and the Pentagon Leaker in recent months, it is interesting to examine the contrast between how the regime treats “crimes” against its own interests, and real crime committed against ordinary private citizens. 

Witness, for example, how the Biden administration and corporate media have treated the January 6 riot as if it were some kind of military coup, demanding that draconian sentences be handed down even to small-time vandals and trespassers. Regime paranoia has led the Justice Department to ask for a 30-year sentence for Enrique Tarrio, a man who was convicted of the non-crime of “seditious conspiracy” even though he wasn’t even in Washington on January 6. In recent months, Jacob Chansley, the “QAnon Shaman,” received a sentence of three-and-a-half years, even though prosecutors admit he did nothing violent. Riley Williams was given three years for simply trespassing in Nancy Pelosi’s office. Members of the Capitol Police force have been lionized in the media as great protectors of “sacred” government buildings, and any threat to the property or persons of Washington politicians has been equated with an assault on “democracy.” 

Yet, had these supposed insurrectionists inflicted these same actions against an ordinary private individual, there’s a good chance the perpetrators would not even be arrested, let alone given years of prison time. Consider, for example, the mobs that ransack private businesses in American cities, stealing tens of thousands of dollars of merchandise while police and prosecutors consider it all to be low priority.  Violent crime and property crime surge in many areas of the United States, with violent crime rising 30 percent in New York City in 2022. Unsolved murders in the US are at a record high. Meanwhile, progressives and social democrats are looking for ways to reduce criminal penalties against violent criminals. Police departments often devote only tiny portions of their budgets to homicide investigations, and if your property is stolen, odds are good you can forget about ever seeing it again. 

The situation is quite different when it comes to protecting the state, its agents, and its property from any threat.

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Minimizing the State’s Ability To Coerce You… How To Obtain Real Independence

Posted by M. C. on July 5, 2023

Minimizing the State’s Ability To Coerce You… How To Obtain Real Independence

by Nick Giambruno

…In light of Independence Day, I think we should consider an important question:

What does real independence look like, and how can you achieve it?

It might be better to start with what it doesn’t look like:

  • The cumulative effect of income tax, sales tax, property tax, capital gains tax, estate tax, and countless others
  • Vaccine mandates
  • Travel restrictions
  • Legal tender laws, which force people to use rapidly debasing government confetti as money
  • ESG social credit scores
  • Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs)
  • Forever wars
  • The gutting of the Bill of Rights
  • The need to comply with an ever-growing stack of regulations, mandates, and laws
  • The politicization of the justice system
  • Government and Big Business promoting cultural degeneracy

This is just a short synopsis of the current state of affairs. The list is far from exhaustive.

Here’s the bottom line.

It doesn’t matter which party is in power. They are all headed in the same direction, albeit at different speeds…

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You Can’t Depend on the State to Maintain Public Order | Mises Wire

Posted by M. C. on June 10, 2023

On multiple occasions, the US Supreme Court has opined that US citizens have no constitutional right to police protection and officers cannot be held legally liable for failing to protect them. You must pay them under penalty of law, but they are not required to provide anything in return.

The taxpayer-funded monopoly on policing became even less effective without leaving any more money in taxpayers’ pockets. Drawing another parallel with government schools, which closed without returning the taxpayers’ money, several cities cut police funding and staffing while keeping the money that taxpayers ostensibly paid for that purpose. It truly is only the government that can take your money, barely provide a service they’ve monopolized, and then insist on how necessary they are for the provision of that service.

https://mises.org/wire/you-cant-depend-state-maintain-public-order

Tate Fegley

Although commonly used, Max Weber’s definition of the state—an entity that has a monopoly on the legitimate use of force within a given geographical area—can mislead people into thinking that the state is the only or even the primary reason for security and order. This is illustrated in the trends in the nonstate provision of security, as revealed by my Google alert for the phrase “private police.” Lately, incidents of car and bike theft have led individuals to either organize themselves to prevent and respond to it or hire private security to do so.

One example is a gas station in Philadelphia (a city that has frequently been in the news lately due to growing crime problems, having set a new personal record for annual murders) that has hired security armed with rifles to protect patrons, mainly from car jackings, since motorists are especially vulnerable to attack while pumping gas.

One thing I found notable from a Fox News interview of the head of security Chief Andre Boyer (other than the fact that journalists at a “conservative” outlet are just as clueless as other journalists about what an AR15 is) is his response to a question about whether he and his agents will intervene when witnessing a crime in progress. Chief Boyer responds, “We have to. We have a contract to protect our clients and our clients’ assets.”

As I have noted previously, the fact that voluntarily hired security has a contractual obligation to provide services to the people who pay them is in stark contrast to government police. On multiple occasions, the US Supreme Court has opined that US citizens have no constitutional right to police protection and officers cannot be held legally liable for failing to protect them. You must pay them under penalty of law, but they are not required to provide anything in return.

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