The one state solution.
No village, no Mafia, no church, no family.
In general, in any human society, every individual relates to
— a family
— a village/community/mafia
— a church
— a state
These structures offer the individual the following services
— social security
— basic services like roads, trains, hospitals
— law enforcement
— spiritual guidance
And compete with each other for taxing the individual.
Here are a few examples of how things work:
The Family. It is the oldest form of human organization.
Each family has some traditions. This culture is what makes each family a little different and what families use to compete with each other.
When people are poor or weak, they often find release at home, in the family. Or, at least, used to. The same for when they are young or old.
When people do bad things — drugs, sleeping around, etc — the family is often able to address the matter in a more effective way than any other agency.
Furthermore, whoever earns money in a family, is supposed to bring a large fraction of that money home to be used in ways that benefit the whole family, not just the individual. In exchange the individual gets a home, which is much cheaper and nicer than a hotel, home cooked food that’s cheaper and nicer than a restaurant and, maybe, love that comes to life in happy children to take the values and spirit of the family into the future.
The Mafia and the village. The village is composed of people living nearby (often including extended family members like cousins, uncles, aunts, etc), which are expected to help, and of officials: the priest/rabin, the doctor, the school teacher, who provide advice. Mafias, on the other hand, are considered shady, and not official. They are networks of powerful individuals. In small cities, the mafia mostly merges with "the village" or community.
Imagine you are in a hospital and a doctor makes a mistake. Who will fellow doctors be loyal to? Their colleague, the hospital, the patient or the truth? Or, what happens when a policeman makes an error? Maybe he loses his cool and hits or shoots a presumed criminal without a good reason. This is a crime. Who will fellow policemen be loyal to? The victim, the law and the truth or their fellow policeman. The same example can be give for army personnel or for religious leaders. Imagine a priest makes a mistake. Who will the other priests be loyal to? God, the victim and the truth? Or their church, and the friend/colleague? Imagine a jail in any country. When a guard acts illegally against a prisoner, which side will the other guards take? The victim and the truth or their friend and colleague? Of course, we may dream on, but it’s rarely the truth.
Often when the truth is exposed, the perpetrators can have a lot of trouble, even when acting legally. These are all examples of mafia law ruling supreme over individuals and over the state law. These are mafias that operate currently in our society, well outside the standard domains of mafias, like sex and drugs. When a member has trouble, his colleague will offer protection. This may be in the form of colleagues taking over extra unpaid work or overlooking mistakes or even defending criminal wrongdoing in front of a court of law.
I’d venture to say that every company has a culture and "a mafia"/community that works to some degree. These mafias are essential for the functioning of companies. A company that is loyal to the truth above all else may end up making little profit. Tax paying mafia members will have an easier life and achieve more with less effort. It pays to be in.
The Church. The Church pretends to be heavy on the spiritual side. Yet, its tax collection abilities have been quite good and as old as the Church itself. After all, big churches need lots of money to run and to be build, etc. The Catholic Church has also funded most of science until recently. Without the Catholic Church, we would not have Galileo Galilei or Charles Darwin, Pascal, Newton and many others. We would not have astronomy and evolution. Despite the inner conflicts, these are some of the best things the Church produced. While we remember the Church for jailing Galileo (for a rather short and not very deadly time) or for discrediting evolution or for burning alive less fortunate scientists, we must not forget that it is the Church who paid for all the research. The Church was the main science funding organization, and it gave us astronomy, evolution and much more.
While, in modern times, the law enforcement has become less brutal in the church, it is still rather effective. People who attend church are quite unlikely to be involved in the sort of crime that the church does not like. The church has covered abuses by priests to maintain its power in the same way the army covers abuse.
The State. In recent years, the state has become very powerful. Different states have also joined forces in a common Western culture that has the same values almost worldwide. The US sits atop of this virtual edifice, and other countries follow. For example, the US was the first country to have a president. Now, most countries do. It is also an union of states that others like the EU try to copy. This very powerful global state has taken over most things that the church, mafia and family used to do in the past. Thus, most individuals pay a larger fraction of their income to the state than to the family, the mafia or the church. This makes the state ever more present and powerful.
This power is seen in good ways — social protection is now more likely to be offered by the state, weakening connections within churches, mafias and families. Law enforcement is also very much in the hands of the state, with mafias, families and churches playing an ever smaller role. The state often gives a better return on investment for the individual’s taxes. It operates at larger scales and has lower margins than families, churches and mafias. It’s also said to be more honest, less subjective and makes fewer mistakes. It is more permissive. Many things are supposed to be better.
But is it always better? All intelligent systems can hallucinate. We see it quite clearly in ChatGPT, but happens to human powered organizations too. An ever bigger state will mean ever bigger consequences of these hallucinations. The Corona phenomenon is a clear example. Based on a government hallucination, most countries decided to pass extraordinary laws that restricted individual freedom in ways unprecedented. Different states, that bear different names reached the same ideas and conclusions at the same time, all hallucinating in the same way.
This invites the question: How different are they, i.e, the different states? The consequence of hallucinatory behavior is loss of territory, population, income, etc. Mad men can’t be the head of household. And, when they are, the family often fails to compete with others. Same with companies and, I dare say, churches. Madness leads to death, loss, failure. When humanity is split in different separate groups, the same hallucination will not occur at the same time everywhere. Thus, while some may die, there will always be some that survive in a competing system of rules and laws. Those will then take over the territory, resources and, maybe, surviving members of the hallucinating group.
The situation becomes scary when there is only one entity that has power. Then there is no other way. Then no one does things differently. Even if the frequency and intensity of hallucinations is low, having a unique system is terribly dangerous and brings us closer to extinction. It's like having one kind of chicken, and one kind of apples. They are all vulnerable in the same way. We argue the state does not discrimiate, but one cannot reach this level of power without discrimination.
Discrimination. Each system will favor some group of people over others. Societies, churches and legal systems often do not agree. There was a time when we had slaves. They were an abused underclass. Today we often treat animals wrong. And women. And black people. And people of a different religion like the jews or the muslims. And immigrants. And children. And homosexuals couples. And the list is not complete.
Often the underclass is not visible from inside the system. Powerful systems can cause more harm to the group they target. And, the modern state is very powerful. OK, but we have laws and rules and an effective religion against discrimination. We are not allowed to discriminate against most of the above groups. Our global state is, perhaps, the least discriminatory in history. Sure, nothing is perfect. Immigrants and children can’t vote. Immigrants can’t access wellfare or work in the same way as natives/locals. Children can’t attend university, often even when intellectually able to. They also don’t go to jail when they do bad things. Women in Belarus can’t get the capital punishment, as men do. But should they? Should there be no discrimination?
Is there a group of people that the current global state abuses in ways future historians will find akin to the Holocaust or Stalin’s Russia or worse? Is there a situation or quality a group of people can have to be mercilessly discriminated against by our progressive society? I will now put forward a daring hypothesis.
Unconcieved Children. Across all animal species where sexual reproduction takes place, evolution has taken great care to give unconcieved babies a very strong bundle of rights. Males fight, often to death, for mating a female. They then put the lives of their unconceived babies above their own. They risk life in order to create new life. Situations where existing adults allow an unconceived animal to forego a chance to be conceived are very rare in nature. I can’t think of any. Whenever conception is possible, conception often takes place. This ensures the existing generation gives birth to the next generation. So life continues. If there ever was a form of life that didn’t do this, it no longer exists. For the first time in the history of life as we know it, our human society has decided to go against all of nature and exterminate unnconceived children. For the first time, since the dawn of time, men pass by women and allow eggs to go unfertilized year after year to serve the state by paying taxes and to serve their own adictions which are so strong they take precendence over all else including reproduction. By addictions I mean those that allowed and often encouraged by the state and its sponsored institutions like internet, videogame, social media, medications, porn, and food addiction, which in turn enable the state to control the population. They thus allow unconceived life to never see the light of day taking away not only most of the present, but also our future. A few brave but deperate women choose to parent alone when their biological clock is almost done ticking. Some have children with donors chosen by state sponsored companies based on facial matching and other such techniques, whom the child may meet or not depending on the laws of the state by the age of 18. Of course, because it's the last train, only a fraction of those who try to catch it succeed.
While we are so great at not discriminating against anyone, are we right to deny life to a group of people just like us, just because they haven’t been conceived yet? Just because they have no DNA and no feelings, does it give us the right to prevent them from having these in the future? And, by not letting them live, are we not killing our selves? Our future selves? Ourselves, as a culture, species, mankind? Ourselves in one word?
