But each ruler still had a monopoly of rule within their relatively small principalities, bishoprics, kingdoms, and merchant republics.
I’d say more symbiotic in the beginning.
And my contention is that initially, the same could be said about civilization.
Not anymore, but I think it would’ve been initially. Otherwise, why would the state be an almost universal institution today?
This simply can’t be true as written. I would suggest that only half is true. You cannot have a state without civilization. Civilization without a state, well, to have either you have to start with civilization and develop the state later, if my first claim is true. In fact, I’d go further and say you cannot build a civilization with a state. You can build one once you have some civilization, but cannot build civilization in the presence of an entity which claims a right to take away what you produce when it chooses. If you have no capital structure, and such an organization, I don’t see how the process of capital formation can occur.
Hoppe has a paper on this subject, actually.
Yes, just as every property owner does. The difference with the modern State, again, is that you had to outbid other principalities if you wanted to keep Da Vinci around.
I think it’s more of a case of co-evolution.
Nomadic tribe has chieftain to protect against lions, other tribes.
Sedentary tribe has king to watch over granary, and protect fields from barbarians.
And so on and so forth.
If they have the spears, and you don’t they they call the shots. Since settlements were so small in the beginning, it would be easy for an ambitious hood to monopolize power, confiscate the grain, and redistribute it (especially when the parasitic priest class joins in to literally “put the fear of God” in the poor farmers). This is what the Mesopotamian Ziggurats were, large temples/grain collection/distribution centers.
That doesn’t seem too different than the best and brightest being lured with a prestigious university post to one modern country, or another.
Fine, that works for grain. The question is, though, under such conditions, would you develop capital structure?
What do you mean?
Your position, if I am understanding you correctly, is that the rise of civilization cannot take place without a state. I ask you this - imagine a world before civilization. Most notably, there would be no time-structure of production, no capital structure, just immediate consumption of what is produced. To get civilization, that has to change. But what is the incentive to build capital structure, to invest in longer production projects, if there happens to be a band of thugs around who you know will take from you what you produce? In such conditions, you’d want to keep on doing what you’re doing, and invest whatever energy and time you have left in protection, not production.You certainly don’t want to go building irrigation systems, fencing off land, and so on.
Division of labor and mutual exchange are naturally beneficial and occur naturally, even with language barriers. Capital may start small and easily self-protected, but in its ability to produce a surplus given immediate consumption, it can develop a capital structure → this is not mutually exclusive to protection. In fact it is self-reinforcing. Maybe my spear is useful for both defense and hunting.
The problem is really that the powerful are driven to become the state, not that anyone cannot use capital investment to become more powerful.
You should just ask them:
“so when you are shopping in the store do you buy whatever gets you the most for your money or do you buy whatever you think is most fairly priced”
Then ask them why it’s okay for a household to do this with groceries but not okay for an entrepreneur to do this with labor.
And vice versa. They mutually developed.
It was probably pretty sweet.
They command you to, under penalty of punishment, or they scare you with the threat of divine retribution (don’t forget, this is way back we are talking here).
If you are commanded to, you will. Given you logic, why doesn’t everyone quit making more money than it takes to be under the poverty line, since they wouldn’t have to pay taxes anymore?
There are examples of this historically, like the Latifundia, or even serfdom. In exchange for security, peasants are willing to give most of their products of labor.
I’m sorry, this just can’t be true. Two non-identical conditions cannot be necessary conditions for each other, if either came to exist at any time.
Why do you say that?
If you intend to build capital structure through command, those commands will need to be specific. But this is exactly what Hayek says will not work - a central planner deciding the particulars of what type of capital structure to build, and having it actually do something productive in the end. On the other hand, if you just say “build capital structure or die” you’ll get nothing worthwhile either. See Atlas Shrugged.
As I acknowledged before, once a certain standard of civilization has been built, the state and civilization can coexist. Once we have some capital structure, and the investment is already there, the payoff margin for further improvements grows. In addition, civilization brings with it expectations of civilized behavior, which we frequently apply even to actors who turn out to be uncivilized. So, before civilization, there is no expectation of keeping things you build when the stronger folks are watching you, but after civilization, there is.
Sure, and that’s exactly the issue. Serfs give up their grain and their labor, and for that very reason, they spend their time producing grain (enough to pay off the master and live) and not building capital structure. That’s why we had this industrial revolution after the fall of the ancien regime, as Murray Rothbard describes.
Well, fill me in; Chicken, or egg?
Tribal societies always seem to involve lots of sleeping.
Sow this field, give me the grain.
This may just boil down to definitions of “civilization”. I’m talking at the beginnings of division of labor, not only post-industrial revolution.
Don’t you get it? The conservatarians are only opposed to “the modern state” and statism-with-egalitarian-pretensions. On the flip side, they’re explicitly pro-state if it’s plutocratic, monarchic, or feudalistic in nature - they’ll just semantically define it’s statehood out of existence.
Oh great, another made up word. Let’s call everyone who supposes that maybe at a more primitive state, wherein coercion was never questioned amid mankind, that the state was seen as necessary by as many as it is today who see it as un-necessary.
Seriously, I’d love to see what an alternative history would’ve looked like where the statists were the minority & the state as a concept didn’t catch & was looked upon as absurd, but that didn’t happen did it? I would love to see the cavemen operate under the principles of market anarchy & non-coercion amid butchering their neighbors for cheating on their mates.
Why isn’t this called being a realist, let alone rational? Such an analysis does not condone the state, it simply doesn’t pretend that long ago in a far far away galaxy, there was a stateless utopia that was the natural law & was ruined by others who didn’t believe in said stateless utopia, bringing about a paranoia towards anyone who disagrees with those who agree to that, as statists.
I mean, if I’m completely wrong (I don’t think I am), then what a mess.
I have already given my opinion: that civilization predates the state as an organized form. Sure, before the rise of civilization there was violence, but as an organized, self-conscious state, I maintain that you cannot form such a thing without civilization, and that civilization cannot arise with such a thing present. However, such a thing can (and does) come into existence later without destroying civilization, although it does have a decivilizing influence. See Hoppe.
And being killed in your sleep…
And this builds capital structure how?
Why would you want to call the beginnings of the division of labor (which I don’t quite see either) civilization? I would say that civilization is a state of being in which people respect some basic rights of others and look down on aggression, to some extent. It’s a continuum, of course.
I would argue that view is somewhat simplistic. It wasn’t like one day, some Egyptian woke up and said “you know, I think I’m going to start agriculturing today”. It was a gradual evolution into division of labor. I think the “which was there first” argument is fallacious, because they both “grew up” together, like the chicken and the egg.
[:P]
that’s what a night watch is for.
What do you mean by capital structure?
All people? The majority? If either of these is what you meant, then I would say we still haven’t quite gotten civilized, using your definition.
How could they grow up together? You’re saying that simultaneously, people came to believe that they should treat others with respect and dignity and also, at the same time, built an organization which does the opposite?
Once again, that is the problem. You’re investing all your resources in safety out of necessity.
Round-about structure of production, time structure of production, whatever you want to call it.
As I said, it’s a continuum, not a binary condition. Different societies are more or less civilized at a given time.
No. What does civilization have to do with respect and dignity?
Which is how a state gets born.
Why would a state prevent this from happening?
I think we are using two completely different concepts of civilization to qualify our positions.
I have no idea what to make of this. What do you mean when you say “treat people in a civilized manner”?
Well, no. A state is not a protective agency, a state is a self-enriching agency.
As I’ve said, because there’s no reason to invest in the capital necessary to have these round-about production methods if you expect that at any moment, your land and property can be seized by this group which expressly states that it may do so.