> There were stateless societies with things like social welfare and public health and so on. Citation needed (unless we're talking about village-sized communi

> 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