Yes. The point of government is to fight things too big for us to fight ourselves. That is the only reason government has to exist. All the other things are nice to have features, but a government is a fighting force.
That doesn’t mean we give up our own weapons though. We need an army to fight the other armies, law to fight the power of money, and government for those. But we also need weapons of our own to prevent the government from physically fighting us.
Our weapons keep the government polite. The government keeps other governments and other large organizations polite.
It’s the minimum structure necessary for a society where respectful interaction is the norm.
All these weapons and power structuring aren’t about dominating. They’re about maintaining a power balance to prevent domination … and make space for respect and trade.
Government therefore exists in order to:
Prevent any individual from dominating any other individual, creating guaranteed space for respectful trade
Ensure the first item by having enough physical power (army) to control any individual including removing them
Also configure that army to oppose other armies so that they can’t come dominate the local individuals
Be unable to dominate the whole polity if it fights together (government carries a sword but each individual carries a small knife; only large groups of individuals can oppose the sword)
It all starts from needing a way to enforce nobody is dominating anyone else.
What i take away from this is that when an individual becomes too powerful (e.g. rich) it becomes a threat for the government and the government should consider it a threat and intervene. Yes, I’m talking about the billionaires.
Yes. The point of government is to fight things too big for us to fight ourselves. That is the only reason government has to exist. All the other things are nice to have features, but a government is a fighting force.
That doesn’t mean we give up our own weapons though. We need an army to fight the other armies, law to fight the power of money, and government for those. But we also need weapons of our own to prevent the government from physically fighting us.
Our weapons keep the government polite. The government keeps other governments and other large organizations polite.
It’s the minimum structure necessary for a society where respectful interaction is the norm.
All these weapons and power structuring aren’t about dominating. They’re about maintaining a power balance to prevent domination … and make space for respect and trade.
Government therefore exists in order to:
It all starts from needing a way to enforce nobody is dominating anyone else.
What i take away from this is that when an individual becomes too powerful (e.g. rich) it becomes a threat for the government and the government should consider it a threat and intervene. Yes, I’m talking about the billionaires.
That’s why it’s important to study the mechanisms of the state to see who actually controls it.