The magical statist fairy tale

All belief systems are, fundamentally, fairy tales. They believe in magical beings, magical powers, and magical thinking- from the whole Christian nonsense all the way down to the magical spine of the chiropractors or the politico-scientists' belief in the power of numbers over reality.

The statists are no exception to this belief in magic. Their belief in anarchy as a horrible state of affairs betrays their belief in the state as a magical force. They say things of the order of "without government, there would be crime in the streets, and nothing would stop people from killing you and stealing your house!".

Now of course, there are two basic problems with that kind of talk. The first is that people do not magically become evil because there is no more government. I drive the point home by asking them "if there was no more government, would YOU kill me?". Those who do have the courage to answer will say that they wouldn't, but that other people might. It's always other people. It's funny how every time you ask one of those self-righteous ignoramuses, they're always the only moral person on Earth. Maybe they should have moral competitions amongst themselves, so they can decide who is the only moral person once and for all!

But the more important point here is that we already have plenty of crime. The state does not, and cannot, "cure" crime. Nothing can possibly stop someone from killing me if they so desire. And what's worse, we observe that countries with bigger governments have more crime! Now, this is not to say that the state is the only factor in determining the crime rate, but it is one factor. Bigger governments create more criminals simply by virtue of their legislative power and their promotion of social warfare. How does this surprise us, if we understand that fundamentally government is nothing more than a parasitic group of thugs whose main activity is to constantly threaten people to obey their edicts or be met with force?

Statists have this magical fairy tale of a group of thugs that somehow makes everyone else a moral person. Sure, by comparison to a politician I am very moral, but the existence of the state does not make me a moral person. Neither does the arbitrary code of laws of the state. Although behaviour can be guided in a positive or negative direction by structural intervention (which, in the case of the state, is always negative by definition), virtue or vice itself cannot be imposed from above. It is the result of one's character, habits, and capacity to reason.

But it is a common belief of all collectivists- religious, political or otherwise- that morality can somehow be imposed from above, top-down, and that men can be turned into angels by the purifying touch of a monopoly of force. This is a ridiculous belief, hardly worth any attention, and yet people still believe it. It is the same belief that motivates people to push their religion on other people. They firmly believe, without any evidence whatsoever, that only their religion is moral, and that people need to be "civilized" by adopting their religion before all others. This is pure propaganda.

Which of course brings us to the question of "justice". I am always astonished when it is affirmed that we need the state in order to have "justice". Now, look at this scenario. You have a group of thugs, liars and murderers lording it over us, dictating what we can and cannot do, constantly stealing our money, constantly threatening our security and privacy, and somehow we are supposed to believe that only those people can give us "justice"!

Sure, the state criminals have a big interest in stopping OTHER crime syndicates and criminals. Otherwise they would not be a monopoly. Other criminal elements are their competition, just like how religion was competition to the Communists. But that is not "justice"- except in the statist fairy tale.