Anatomy of the state - 2. What the state is

• Man has found that, through the process of voluntary, mutual exchange, the productivity and hence, the living standards of all participants in exchange may increase enormously.
  • The only “natural” course for man to survive and to attain wealth, therefore, is by using his mind and energy to engage in the production-and-exchange process.
  • The social path dictated by the requirements of man’s nature, therefore, is the path of “property rights” and the “free market” of gift or exchange of such rights.
• According to Franz Oppenheimer, there are two mutually exclusive ways of acquiring wealth
  • Economic means: production and exchange
  • Political means: seizure of another's goods or services by the use of force and violence.
  • It siphons production off to a parasitic and destructive individual or group; and this siphoning not only subtracts from the number producing, but also lowers the producer’s incentive to produce beyond his own subsistence.
  • In the long run, the robber destroys his own subsistence by dwindling or eliminating the source of his own supply.
• The state is the organization of the political means
  • The systematization of the predatory process over a given territory
• The State provides a legal, orderly, systematic channel for the predation of private property.
  • The State has never been created by a “social contract”; it has always been born in conquest and exploitation.

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