Our Enemy, the State

What Hacker News says

1. jtlienwisMay 2020
   Sholzenitzen's Gulag.

   Twains Pudd'head Wilson and "The Corruption of Hadleyburg"

   Ayn Rand et al "Capitalism, The Unknown Ideal"

   Peter Kropotkin "Mutual Aid: A Factor in Evolution"

   Tannehill, Morse "The Market for Liberty"

   Albert J. Nock "Our Enemy the State"

   Stephan Wolfram "A New Kind of Science"

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2. jacoblylesMay 2013
   Outside of Ayn Rand novels, collective action is necessary for the livelihood of free peoples. Old-fashioned civic virtue used to fill the roles that the state usurped (see Albert Jay Nock's "Our Enemy, The State").

   I have a soft spot in my heart for Ayn Rand, but her moral system would be a poor foundation for a free people (which I am here using as a euphemism for market anarchy).

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3. kd3Aug 2019
   It's not just ICE but the entire government that is a problem. I personally stopped accepting any work from any government a few years ago. Once you realize what government is, there's no going back.

   "The State […] is an anti-social institution, administered in the only way an anti-social institution can be administered, and by the kind of person who, in the nature of things, is best adapted to such service [a psychopath]. Taking the State wherever found, striking into its history at any point, one sees no way to differentiate the activities of its founders, administrators and beneficiaries from those of a professional-criminal class. As Dr. Sigmund Freud has observed, it can not even be said that the State has ever shown any disposition to suppress crime, but only to safeguard its own monopoly of crime." - Albert J. Nock in “Our Enemy, The State”

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4. wmylJan 2015
   "Our Enemy, The State", by Albert J. Nock - 1935. CHAPTER 4 ===================================================== AFTER conquest and confiscation have been effected, and the State set up, its first concern is with the land. The State assumes the right of eminent domain over its territorial basis, whereby every landholder becomes in theory a tenant of the State. In its capacity as ultimate landlord, the State distributes the land among its beneficiaries on its own terms. A point to be observed in passing is that by the State-system of land-tenure each original transaction confers two distinct monopolies, entirely different in their nature, inasmuch as one concerns the right to labour-made property, and the other concerns the right to purely law-made property. The one is a monopoly of the use-value of land; and the other, a monopoly of the economic rent of land. The first gives the right to keep other persons from using the land in question, or trespassing on it, and the right to exclusive possession of values accruing from the application of labour to it; values, that is, which are produced by exercise of the economic means upon the particular property in question. Monopoly of economic rent, on the other hand, gives the exclusive right to values accruing from the desire of other persons to possess that property; values which take their rise irrespective of any exercise of the economic means on the part of the holder.[1]

   Economic rent arises when, for whatsoever reason, two or more persons compete for the possession of a piece of land, and it increases directly according to the number of persons competing. The whole of Manhattan Island was bought originally by a handful of Hollanders from a handful of Indians for twenty-four dollars' worth of trinkets. The subsequent "rise in land-values," as we call it, was brought about by the steady influx of population and the consequent high competition for portions of the island's surface; and these ensuing values were monopolized by the holders. They grew to an enormous size, and the holders profited accordingly; the Astor, Wendel, and Trinity Church estates have always served as classical examples for study of the State-system of land-tenure.

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5. crassusDec 2013
   This mirrors the argument in Albert Jay Nock's book "Our Enemy: The State" (1935). He argues that expanding government crowds out non-governmental social activity, giving the example of hurricane response. In his time he already saw the shift in the public mind from treating a disaster as a problem for the entire community to something that the government should handle.

   If Nock is correct, there is a darker thesis that follows. Over the generations, dependent thinking becomes ingrained. It becomes impossible to think otherwise, as the examples we have of civil society solving problems fade into the past. In short, we become domesticated humans.

   It was also the thesis of Marx that for socialism to succeed, a new Socialist Man would have to be raised, that human nature would have to be changed. This began in America with the reign of FDR, which coincided with the birth of the third American Republic - the Bureaucratic Superstate.

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