Governance
If the misery of the poor be caused not by the laws of Nature, but by our institutions, great is our sin. ~ Charles Darwin
600 years ago, people did not think of themselves as being in a nation. Most lived on subsistence farms, intimately connected to the nearby village, not caring much about the world beyond.
European states began to coalesce from the 14th century, as kings claimed greater power and tightened their control over territories. It was not until the early 19th century that states were established in the form with which we are now so familiar.
Even the educated elite were not much impressed with state-building until well into the 18th century. Most writers and correspondents tended to think of themselves as primarily part of a cosmopolitan European world rather than belonging to a particular nationality.
The kings creating states often had family ties that took priority over their political ambitions. The German monarchs who came to power in England in the early 18th century could not even speak English, so they married locally. During the Great War it was an embarrassment to the British royal house that the Kaiser of Germany was their cousin, so much so that they changed their name from Hanover to Windsor.
Military matters were not nationalized until late in the state-building era. Foreign mercenaries played a key role in most wars. English soldiers might be hired by a French king to fight the English, and vice versa. During the American Revolution, the king of England hired Hessians (German troops) to fight the uppity colonialists.
The invention of the modern nation-state was polished off by Napoléon in the early 19th century: wedding the passion of the French Revolution to an efficient bureaucracy and active army. The resulting state was nearly invincible, and it succeeded in conquering much of Europe. Its power partly derived from an army that for the first time fought not only for themselves, but for their country: France. Though Napoléon was eventually defeated, his demonstration of what a state could achieve meant politics would never be the same.
While Europe and North America had evolved into modern states by the early 19th century, most other peoples in the world lived under a variety of looser polities, like those in the European Middle Ages. Colonialism brought the concepts of state to them.
As imperialism waned in the wake of wars among the empire builders, leaders in the former colonies, almost all having been educated in Europe, adopted the state model under which their people had been oppressed.
Taxes were nothing new, but modern states squeezed hard: taking so much as to impoverish workers in the lower class.
(The median tax rate on wages in developed countries is 34%. The average tax burden on Western European workers is over 40%. Belgians pay 55%; Austrians, Germans, and Hungarians 49%.)
No government can exist without taxation. The grand art consists of levying so as not to oppress. ~ Frederick the Great
Meanwhile, the converse – the state giving rather than just taking – was something that emerged only from crisis. Welfare states in most countries only began to evolve in the wake of the Great Depression.
Power has only one duty: to secure the social welfare of the people. ~ English politician Benjamin Disraeli
Despite the ongoing failure of the market system to provide full employment and decent wages for workers, the state’s active participation in correcting capitalism’s deficiencies remains controversial in many countries, especially the United States.
America’s democracy is at a breaking point. Voters are less engaged, and signs of institutional decay point to a political system increasingly unable to tackle the economic challenges. ~ Zambian-born American economist Dambisa Moyo
The rules are rigged because the rich and powerful have bought and paid for too many politicians. Two sets of rules: one for the wealthy and the well-connected. And one for everybody else. Two sets of rules: one for white families. And one for everybody else. That’s how a rigged system works. ~ Elizabeth Warren in 2018 on US governance
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Government! 3/4ths parasitic and the other 1/4th stupid fumbling. ~ American science fiction writer Robert Heinlein
Societies act as multicellular organisms. The nucleus of each social organism is the state: the political organelle that controls the organism to meet its own needs, not the needs of the citizens which are its responsibility.
Politicians come and go, but the problems they have created for their people remain. ~ Donald Tusk
The state always exhibits the same characteristics, varying only by degrees: limiting public expressions against its rule, taking rent from its citizenry, providing a modicum of services to pacific and preserve legitimacy. Whatever else it does, the state ultimately serves its own survival – all other priorities are secondary.
