Anatomy of the State
2016 Reprint of Undated Original Edition [Circa 1965]. Full facsimile of the original edition, not reproduced with Optical Recognition Software. This gives a succinct account of Rothbard's view of the state. Following Franz Oppenheimer and Albert Jay Nock, Rothbard regards the state as a predatory entity. It does not produce anything but rather steals resources from those engaged in production. In applying this view to American history, Rothbard makes use of the work of John C. Calhoun How can an organization of this type sustain itself? It must engage in propaganda to induce popular support for its policies. Court intellectuals play a key role here, and Rothbard cites as an example of ideological mystification the work of the influential legal theorist Charles Black, Jr., on the way the Supreme Court has become a revered institution. A wealth of citations and references supports the basic premise.
Stats for nerds
12recommend
19mentions
15people
2013–2025years
84% recommend16% neutral
Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
- I read a decent amount of books but the ones that stood out are:
- Anatomy of the State (Murray N. Rothbard)
- Diaspora (Greg Egan)
- The Freeze-Frame Revolution (Peter Watts)
- That unfortunately is a common fallacy that people engage in.
In the first chapter of "Anatomy of the State" this idea is utterly demolished.
> With the rise of democracy, the identification of the State with society has been redoubled, until it is common to hear sentiments expressed which violate virtually every tenet of reason and common sense such as, “we are the government.” The useful collective term “we” has enabled an ideological camouflage to be thrown over the reality of political life. If “we are the government,” then anything a government does to an individual is not only just and untyrannical but also “voluntary” on the part of the individual concerned. If the government has incurred a huge public debt which must be paid by taxing one group for the benefit of another, this reality of burden is obscured by saying that “we owe it to ourselves”; if the government conscripts a man, or throws him into jail for dissident opinion, then he is “doing it to himself” and, therefore, nothing untoward has occurred. Under this reasoning, any Jews murdered by the Nazi government were not murdered; instead, they must have “committed suicide,” since they were the government (which was democratically chosen), and, therefore, anything the government did to them was voluntary on their part. One would not think it necessary to belabor this point, and yet the overwhelming bulk of the people hold this fallacy to a greater or lesser degree.
- Yeah, it has never been about saving the children, or fight terrorism. It has been about control and power. People should read more about Austrian economics / Mises, because despite what their preconceived thoughts may suggest, everyone who thinks this is a bad idea, will like what they will read on Mises' website.
Books like "Anatomy of the State" by Rothbard, "Basic Economics" by Sowell, "The Left, The Right, & The State" by L. H. Rockwell, Jr. or "Lessons for the Young Economist" by Bob Murphy are quite nice. Heck, I would even suggest "The Law" by Frédéric Bastiat.
You do not have to read books however, you can check blog posts.
Website can be found here: https://mises.org. You are looking for "Wire" and "Beginners". Make sure to use the search functionality though, there are a lot of very specific subjects that are "irrelevant" to this case.
- I would suggest you read “Anatomy of the State” by Murray Rothbard. I don’t want to sound rude but your comment is what people say when they haven’t read anything about it.
I used to make similar arguments like was at the top of your comment until I actually read some literature around it.
- I encourage you to read Murray Rothbard's Anatomy of the State.
- I don't trust either but at least in situations like this, the incentives for me and the private person/company are aligned. I want a quality product, they want me to be happy with the product so I will tell other people about it and they will sell more products or get more downloads. A government organization doesn't have those incentives, their 'success' is not reliant on a quality product. They don't really care is anyone downloads this app. Someone at the FCC is already taking credit for this app being available even if no one uses it.
The only incentives government organizations have is to spend money. In fact if a government organization is bad at its job and spends all of its money, it can usually go to Congress and get more money. The sole exercise of most employees in the upper levels of government organizations is to increase their budgets for next year.
If you really want to try to understand this way of thinking, I recommend "Anatomy of the State" by Murray Rothbard. You can get a free eBook here: https://mises.org/library/anatomy-state
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