The State - (4) - [Draft]

Image credit. Continued from here.

§ 21 - The Neolithic Impetus to Statehood

Increased growth and density of the world's population, fiercer competition for scarce resources, and more frequent bellicose encounters among conflicting tribes give impetus to a new social technology: the state. Capable of greater military prowess (supporting more effective defence but also imperial outreach) and able to enforce (ownership) rules appropriate to a more highly differentiated division of labour, the (budding) state is the basis and the beneficiary of greater productivity from sedentary agriculture, which provides the material means for organising and sustaining more populous communities.

§ 22 - Problems of Collective Action

Being a social animal, man is always faced with the need for collective action.

For larger social entities to prevail, they must find solutions to the novel problems of collective action triggered by increases in population size, human variety, geographical expanse, decentralisation, anonymity, and the striving for autonomy.

In sufficiently small groups the common purpose is evident. Either because everyone rationally understands and palpably experiences the mutual cause and her personal advantage in serving it - "if our kettle are stolen, everyone of us must starve, so everyone, including me, has a reason to protect the herd."

Or, the individual is indoctrinated by the customs of the community and inescapably exposed to social pressure to such an extent that personal and social goals do not appreciably diverge, in effect or even in the perceptions of the affected. 

§ 23 - Larger Communities and the Problem of the Common Weal

Whereas the good of the community is a common cultural experience in smaller social units, more populous social entities with a ramified division of labour across many dimensions of social life (governance, coercion, legislation, justice, vocational specialisation etc.) face a problem, whose solution is one of the central tasks of freedom: the need to unify the populace for the purpose of peace and productive coexistence under conceptions of a common good when no such common good exists. With freedom comes a measure of individual autonomy that is bound to fragment the sense of a common weal. But man cannot relinquish his desire to respect or act in favour of a common good. In larger, and later in increasingly freer, social environments new ways must be found to define, ennoble, and enforce the ciphers and practices that create a community in our experience.

As communities become larger, there is more scope for divergences between conduct deemed by the individual agent rational and worthy of his endorsement, on the one hand, and conduct that he shuns, on the other hand, even though it is required of him either to shield the community from harm or to make benefits accessible to it. 

Thus, by pursuing a certain course of action that appears rational and desirable from the point of view of the individual, she may give rise to circumstances that are actually detrimental both to herself and the community.

§ 24 - The State - Releasing Men from Prison(ers' Dilemmas)

Consider the following (Prisoners' type of) dilemma: if Betty and Adam refrain from bombing each other, they would achieve what is best for both. Since, however, Betty (Adam) is not sure whether Adam (Betty) will actually refrain from an attack, and vice versa, it is individually rational for both to attempt a first strike. In order to bring about a socially optimal result, i.e. one best for both of them, it would be helpful to find a third party powerful enough to ensure neither Betty nor Adam will engage in a first strike.

In fact, in the tradition of Thomas Hobbes, one may define anarchy as a state of affairs where people are unable to cooperate to their mutual betterment thanks to the absence of an authority (the state) with the power to enforce rules that guarantee peace and mutually advantageous cooperation. Thomas Hobbes's state of nature describes a situation where in the absence of the state, people are trapped in a prisoners' dilemma, they cannot escape their narrow, short-sighted interests which enclose them in a life that is "solitary, poore, nasty, brutish, and short."


Continued here.