… but which are actually a result of lots of self-reinforcing least-bad decisions taken collectively:
- The nation-state with fixed borders
- Land ownership
- Taxation
- Currencies/money
- Democracy
- Banking
- Government spending
- Peace
- National identity and immigration control.
You can't really have any of these without the others.
For example,
- the nation-state with fixed borders and land ownership are more or less synonymous;
- autocratic nation states/dictatorships are inherently less stable than democracies;
- democracies are less likely to wage war on each other than dictatorships or autocratic states;
- democracy isn't much use if there isn't a defined area within which the rules will apply, to be defended;
- there can be no taxation without government (even though the reverse is just about conceivable);
- democratically elected leaders like to be seen to spend money for the benefit of the masses;
- more spending/redistribution means higher taxation;
- peace is cheaper than war, enabling higher spending for a given level of taxation;
- nation-states themselves are a bit of a confidence trick, they require a national identity/sense of collective, which in turn means some brakes on immigration.
- tax and spending is more or less synonymous with currency;
- which people then use as a unit of measurement for everyday trading;
- which banks then use as a unit of measurement for creating debts i.e. money in the narrow sense;
- but banks are a huge confidence trick, they can only work as long as there is a government to enforce debts for them.
And so on and so forth.
Debate Magazine
