3 ms·

>And yes, virtually all the states on that list are significantly poorer and have drastically worse social services than Western Europe. There's a big gap betw

>And yes, virtually all the states on that list are significantly poorer and have drastically worse social services than Western Europe. There's a big gap between "significantly poorer" and subsistence farmers. As in, an order of magnitude of GDP in many cases from that list (e.g. Russia). >Contrary to propertarian mythology, both the institutions of property and government are imposed by a mixture of force and the likelihood of society being substantially worse off if they didn't exist. The difference is that government necessarily involves force, due to requiring involuntary taxation (an entity funded by voluntary donations isn't generally considered a government, it's considered a charity), while it's possible for a group of people to agree to trade together and respect some notion of property (be it the strong capitalist notion of property or the weak anarchist notion of "possessions") without requiring force.

notahacker 11y ago
Russia certainly isn't a subsistence state, but I'd hesitate to call it a "modern society" too. It's also a petro-state that enjoys the luxury of deriving around a third of government revenues from oil and gas. Most of Western Europe has to make up that gap with additional taxes even before it starts to provide its citizens with more support. You can have a perfectly harmonious society where everyone within it voluntarily respects each others' possessions, but you're still going to need force (or the implied threat of force) to prevent outsiders who aren't part of that particular social contract and don't particularly want to be from making use of that property. The possibility that someone might not voluntarily accept a social contract over the ownership of property is an existential threat to property rights which can only be resolved through [implied] force. Hence de jure and de facto the basis of all property and trade is the coercion that enforces its rules, whether that's by a government institution or a group of friends with big guns.

notahacker 11y ago

Russia certainly isn't a subsistence state, but I'd hesitate to call it a "modern society" too. It's also a petro-state that enjoys the luxury of deriving around a third of government revenues from oil and gas. Most of Western Europe has to make up that gap with additional taxes even before it starts to provide its citizens with more support. You can have a perfectly harmonious society where everyone within it voluntarily respects each others' possessions, but you're still going to need force (or the implied threat of force) to prevent outsiders who aren't part of that particular social contract and don't particularly want to be from making use of that property. The possibility that someone might not voluntarily accept a social contract over the ownership of property is an existential threat to property rights which can only be resolved through [implied] force. Hence de jure and de facto the basis of all property and trade is the coercion that enforces its rules, whether that's by a government institution or a group of friends with big guns.