4 ms·

The sole purpose of the state, is organize its population for war. All other stuff a state do, is extras. There were stateless societies with things like soci

The sole purpose of the state, is organize its population for war. All other stuff a state do, is extras. There were stateless societies with things like social welfare and public health and so on. But the purpose of the state itself, as organization, is organize for war, states not only can exist without economists, they exist for 5000+ years, and for much of that time without any economist existing, and some states right now still don't rely on economists. EDIT: if you disagree with me, explain why, do not downvote.

notahacker 6y ago
> There were stateless societies with things like social welfare and public health and so on. Citation needed (unless we're talking about village-sized communities sharing harvest and giving access to a witch doctor, which is not the same thing, logistically) States certainly existed without economists, but the world doesn't half look richer since states started caring more about economist hobby horses like trade policies, monetary stability, investment and human capital and less about gold reserves and military action to expand them. Apart from anything else, they came up with an awful lot of influential arguments about purposes for and measures of prestige of states other than efficiently plundering their neighbours
- eru 6y ago
  Well, I think humanity got lucky that by and large since the industrial revolution many things that improved human welfare also improved fighting power. The economist hobby horses you mention do mean that you nations can spend more resources on their military. That's both in the steady state, and what extras they can mobilize in terms of emergencies.
TeMPOraL 6y ago
Counter-theory: states exist to coordinate large groups of people for mutual gain, mostly in form of shared services (such as law, law enforcement, defense, thriving markets, but in current era also healthcare and social security) and wealth redistribution (taxes go in, subsidies come out). They may start as an attempt by a group of people to subjugate and extract wealth from a wider group of people, but they don't grow and survive unless they offer all these "extras". In this way, they're another step of the natural way people divide into hierarchies as the group size grows beyond a size that's manageable through social conventions (which happens to be more or less Dunbar's number). Now that explains why they exist and why people accept them. As for their purpose, I'm reminded of the good ol' POSIWID[0] - "the purpose of a system is what it does". -- [0] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_purpose_of_a_system_is_what_it_does https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_purpose_of_a_system_is_wha...
- speeder 6y ago
  The problem with this theory is that non-state organizations that did that, existed for a while, but were defeated in combat, or by threat of combat (ie: the threat of combat made them change to mount a defense) by states. For example: During early Roman Empire era, they had a few rivals that were states themselves, and they dedicated most of the resources defending against them, but there was lots of wars and skirmishes with "barbarians", many that were considered a nation in the ethnic sense (Germania, Alemannia, Lusitania, etc...) but weren't states, they were bigger than dunbar number but their coordination in the nation sense, were more of a league of settlements and warbands, not an organized state, they had many things modern states do, like ways to provide for the old, law enforcement and so on, but had no central command for the army. Many of these people were just crushed by states that did exist, often outright genocided (for example the Helvetii), the ones that survived (for example the precursors of modern Germany and France) eventaully became states themselves to be able to defend themselves. The major exception was peoples living in places where agriculture is not possible, seemly agriculture is a sort of requeriment for a state to exist, so in the eurasian steppe/desert, african desert and so on, some non-state nations survived for a long time (for example Mongolia, although now they are a state too, still, they moved their capital to a place where agriculture is possible). Seemly the "weirdest" states now in some senses, are the states that became possible because of our current oil-based economy, states that became fully sedentary despite not having enough food, because they export oil and buy food or irrigation equipment/water (for example UAE)

notahacker 6y ago

> There were stateless societies with things like social welfare and public health and so on. Citation needed (unless we're talking about village-sized communities sharing harvest and giving access to a witch doctor, which is not the same thing, logistically) States certainly existed without economists, but the world doesn't half look richer since states started caring more about economist hobby horses like trade policies, monetary stability, investment and human capital and less about gold reserves and military action to expand them. Apart from anything else, they came up with an awful lot of influential arguments about purposes for and measures of prestige of states other than efficiently plundering their neighbours

eru 6y ago
Well, I think humanity got lucky that by and large since the industrial revolution many things that improved human welfare also improved fighting power. The economist hobby horses you mention do mean that you nations can spend more resources on their military. That's both in the steady state, and what extras they can mobilize in terms of emergencies.

TeMPOraL 6y ago

Counter-theory: states exist to coordinate large groups of people for mutual gain, mostly in form of shared services (such as law, law enforcement, defense, thriving markets, but in current era also healthcare and social security) and wealth redistribution (taxes go in, subsidies come out). They may start as an attempt by a group of people to subjugate and extract wealth from a wider group of people, but they don't grow and survive unless they offer all these "extras". In this way, they're another step of the natural way people divide into hierarchies as the group size grows beyond a size that's manageable through social conventions (which happens to be more or less Dunbar's number). Now that explains why they exist and why people accept them. As for their purpose, I'm reminded of the good ol' POSIWID[0] - "the purpose of a system is what it does". -- [0] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_purpose_of_a_system_is_what_it_does https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_purpose_of_a_system_is_wha...

speeder 6y ago
The problem with this theory is that non-state organizations that did that, existed for a while, but were defeated in combat, or by threat of combat (ie: the threat of combat made them change to mount a defense) by states. For example: During early Roman Empire era, they had a few rivals that were states themselves, and they dedicated most of the resources defending against them, but there was lots of wars and skirmishes with "barbarians", many that were considered a nation in the ethnic sense (Germania, Alemannia, Lusitania, etc...) but weren't states, they were bigger than dunbar number but their coordination in the nation sense, were more of a league of settlements and warbands, not an organized state, they had many things modern states do, like ways to provide for the old, law enforcement and so on, but had no central command for the army. Many of these people were just crushed by states that did exist, often outright genocided (for example the Helvetii), the ones that survived (for example the precursors of modern Germany and France) eventaully became states themselves to be able to defend themselves. The major exception was peoples living in places where agriculture is not possible, seemly agriculture is a sort of requeriment for a state to exist, so in the eurasian steppe/desert, african desert and so on, some non-state nations survived for a long time (for example Mongolia, although now they are a state too, still, they moved their capital to a place where agriculture is possible). Seemly the "weirdest" states now in some senses, are the states that became possible because of our current oil-based economy, states that became fully sedentary despite not having enough food, because they export oil and buy food or irrigation equipment/water (for example UAE)