Welcome to the Stateless Standard — where we burn down statist myths and light the way toward real freedom.
Why the hell do we obey the state? Why do these self-proclaimed rulers get to do things that would get any normal person locked up, shot, or both — steal your money at gunpoint, tell you what you can ingest, spy on your life, bomb churches across the globe — and call it "governance"?
Let's start with some wise words from St. Augustine, in City of God. Alexander the Great captures a pirate and demands,
"How dare you infest the seas?" The pirate fires back: "The same as you infest the earth! I do it with a tiny boat, so I'm a pirate. You do it with a mighty navy, so you're an emperor."
Mic drop.
That's the core scam right there. Scale up theft, murder, and extortion, slap a flag on it, and suddenly it's "legitimate authority."
Michael Huemer hammers this in The Problem of Political Authority: acts that are straight-up immoral when done by private people become "necessary public policy" when the state does them. Taxation = theft. Regulation = extortion. War = mass murder. Yet the state gets a magical moral pass.
Huemer calls this the problem of political authority: governments claim a special right to coerce us, and we supposedly have a duty to obey. But is any of it justified?
Nope. Let's tear the main excuses apart.
The "Social Contract" Fairy Tale
Statists love the "social contract" — we all supposedly agreed to this deal for protection and order. Cool story, except no one signed anything. No contract at birth. No opt-out clause. States were born from conquest, not consent.
They pivot to implicit consent. Huemer shreds four versions:
- Passive consent — You don't object, so you agree.
Reality: Object all you want; they'll still tax and cage you. That's not agreement—it's duress. - Consent via benefits — Use roads or schools? You owe obedience.
Reality: Those "benefits" are forced on you, paid with stolen money, and come with strings. It's like a mafia "protection" racket billing you for the windows they didn't break. - Consent through participation — Vote or engage politically? You're in.
Reality: Voting changes zilch at the root level, and boycotting doesn't exempt you. Coercion stays the same either way. - Consent by presence — You're here, so you consent. Hate it? Leave.
Reality: "Love it or leave it" is tyrannical. Why forfeit your home, job, family, and property just to say no? Unless the state owns everything (communism alert), this is extortion.
Bottom line: no valid consent, implicit or otherwise. It's coercion cosplaying as contract.
Majority Rule? Just Mob Privilege
If most people want the state, that binds everyone? Nah. Majority doesn't create rights. Four friends vote you pay the full dinner tab — obligated? Hell no, that's bullying. Scale it to millions and suddenly it's "democracy"? Same principle. Majorities have backed slavery, genocide, gulags. Numbers don't magically manufacture morality.
Consequentialism: Ends Justify the Means?
Some say coercion sucks, but the benefits (order, safety, roads) outweigh the costs. Subjective as hell. History's full of net-negative states — Mao, Stalin, Hitler, Pol Pot. Even "good" ones rack up wars, debt, crony handouts. And if benefits justify violence, why not let a benevolent billionaire tax and bomb too? The state gets a pass only by assuming its authority first — circular reasoning.
Why We Still Obey: Brain Hacks and Survival Tricks
If the justifications collapse, why the widespread compliance? Cognitive biases and psychological coping mechanisms.
- Status quo bias — We rationalize whatever system we grew up in as "normal" and moral. Foot-binding, human sacrifice, divine kings—once the status quo, now barbaric. Government? We're born into it, propagandized in schools, so it feels inevitable.
- Stockholm Syndrome — Hostages bond with captors for survival. Citizens do the same: state holds the guns, doles out occasional "benefits," isolates dissenters. Result? Patriotism, emotional attachment, denial of the violence. We call theft "civic duty."
- Cognitive dissonance — Paying for drone strikes on kids or caging non-violent people clashes with our values. To fix the itch, we invent: "Government's special. Obeying is noble sacrifice." Way easier than admitting we're complying out of fear or habit.
Political authority is a sham — a bigger pirate operation with better branding. Governments aren't morally superior; they're just organized criminals who won the power game.
This doesn't mean chaos. Basic rules against aggression (don't steal, don't murder) stand on their own moral grounds. But state monopolies on violence? Illegitimate edicts? Question them ruthlessly.
Huemer nails it: obey laws only when they align with independent morality — not because some costume-wearing politician said so.
If this lit a fire under your ass, drop a comment: What's the biggest lie that keeps people obedient?
Stay sovereign.
