Tate Posted February 7, 2013 Posted February 7, 2013 Please forgive my lack of citations. I forget the particular podcasts/YouTube videos I was consuming. I felt like there was an apparent contradiction in some of the ideas Stefan presented about the State. In one particular episode, if I recall correctly, he said that there is no entity that is "The State," rather, it is an idea in people's heads, without which it wouldn't exist. There is little difference between the State and private criminal organizations in terms of their morality; it is only that the former enjoys the benefit of being justified in the minds of most people. Elsewhere, in explaining why his multi-generational approach is necessary, he said that it wouldn't work to simply push a button abolishing the State (if that option were available to us) since many people would call for the return of it. It would seem that if the State were only an idea that abolition would very nearly be the end of it, since what is being abolished is the idea itself. But if we think of abolishing the State in terms of the forceful arrangements that exist (such as taxation, regulation, etc.), then it might not be the end of it, since most people don't fully understand these things.
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