For centuries, people have argued how to produce, distribute and allocate resources to ensure a better society for all. But to get to what a state should be, I ask “What is a State?”
Is a state a group of people sharing an identity? Is a state boundaries on a map? Is a state, a god’s authority on Earth? It might be not be easy to define a state in these terms. Different cultures, different beliefs, different societies and realities would make it difficult for me to conclusively state every possible version of a state in such manners. Therefore, I will look at a state from the perspective of security, economy and society. Allow me to further define these in terms what would it mean for a state.
Security: The ability to protect the economy and society against external and internal threats. Economy: The net wealth in a state related to goods, services & resources and trade occurring in and out of the state. Society: A collection of entities capable of forming social relations amongst themselves, where social relation is defined as the ability to communicate information.
I know that these definitions are loose. I will expand on these definitions in future articles. But for now, they are loose definitions for a reason. I will demonstrate below.
Consider a forest from the perspective of security. How does a forest have security? Well a forest is often occupied by territorial animals. These animals guard their own regions of the forest and by additive value the forest at large. Or consider this, any threat to a forest will displace animals likely to disturb the very same entity displacing them. I know this isn’t the perfect security, but that’s beside the point. Consider a forest from the perspective of the economy. Surely animals don’t have material wealth or trade. Well animals do tend to store food. Squirrels with nuts and bees with honey. Furthermore, animals also tend to have symbiotic relationships such as birds eating food from crocodile’s teeth. It is hard or next to impossible for me to ascertain monetary value of such things. But nonetheless, there does exist an exchange of goods in lieu of services such as in the case of birds and crocodiles. Or the forest with its abundant food and water supplies are also a wealth of their own. I am not considering wealth from minerals and other resources since I doubt these hold any value to animals. This is also a point I will discuss in future articles, but for now just from perspective of animals living in the forest.
Consider a forest in terms of a society. Putting aside social animals, there is a certain degree of communication that occurs among animals. Simply growling is a communication that can occur between a tiger and a monkey. Where neither the tiger nor the monkey would traditionally be considered to be in a social group. But nonetheless some amount of communication can occur between different animals. Plants can put out fragrances to attract animals. Naturally there may be instances that two entities in a forest may not be able to directly or indirectly communicate and we can argue if a forest should be considered to be made up of multiple states. But I am not really an zoologist to dive into such matters. Those discussions do lie out my realm of understanding.
But let us look at one such entity, the beehive. Anybody can attest to the security of a beehive. If not, feel free to go poke a beehive. Then let me know your experience. The wealth of a beehive can simply be measured in the amount of honey it has. Furthermore, you can consider the beehive “state” to trade with flowers by performing services of carrying pollen in exchange of nectar. Lastly, the societal aspect of a beehive. Bees tend to have a strict hierarchy where they are born in different classes such as worker, drone and queen to the best of our knowledge. These classes perform different functions for the state. The queen produces offspring, the drone bees mate, and the worker bees do a range of tasks from security to collecting nectar for the beehive. If this societal model doesn’t remind you of anything, I would like to point out examples of class systems across all civilizations in human history. Where people were born into professions, interacted primarily with people of the same class, lived and died in a class.
Before I continue, I hope the reader would permit me to take some space to make myself clear. I am not arguing that class system is the ideal society. I am just pointing out similarities between human states and states of other animals just to drive the notion that the Perfect State is simply a constructed notion based on need of production, administration and management of resources.
Moreover, I can tell that some people will read this and go that the rigid class system is a natural way of life. Hence, society should be divided in classes. Firstly, the class system is a way of life. Just because bees and humans have do it, doesn’t mean it’s the only and ideal way of life. There are also many different types of class systems, there is rigidity of classes, inequalities among classes, and the list goes on. Secondly, even if you consider something to be a natural way of life. Then it makes no sense to actively or passively enforce it. Because that would be contradictory to the notion of it being natural.
I will demonstrate with an example, let’s say you put forth the statement, “It is natural for any man to be with a woman and produce children and have a family”. Then it makes no sense for you to enforce that men need to be with women and produce children. Since according to the statement, it is supposed to be natural. If you need to enforce this notion on men who would not want to be with women or want to have children, then the statement is false since it is clearly not natural if you have to enforce it.
I will give another example. Let’s say you put forth the statement, “Societies are naturally divided along the lines of people’s height. Hence short people and tall people need to be separated”. The same notion from the previous paragraph applies, if societies are naturally divided, you do not need to divide or separate them. If you have enforce a separation or division, then it is not natural.
This is why I don’t consider human/animal rights to be a natural thing. Since, it has to be enforced by a state. This is also a demonstration that just because something is unnatural doesn’t mean it’s bad. Since, people do seem to be in agreement that rights are a good thing. Whether it is natural for states to decide and enforce rights, is whole another matter. I will explore it when I write the article related to rights.
So a beehive seems to resemble more of what we would consider a state than a forest. Beehives have an hierarchy, a clear storage of food, coordinated actions taken against enemies, and in general it is less chaotic than forests. Despite, the fact that both the beehive and the forest exhibit the notions of security, economy and society. The key difference between both these systems is communication channels. For example, consider when a forest in under attack. A tiger protecting one area of the forest can’t really coordinate with a leopard protecting another area. Communication between animals and plants of different species may be limited to acts of aggression such as growling or throwing objects or running away.
On the other hand, consider communication between bees. Bees can communicate sources of nectar with other bees, communicate threats against the colony. There is a more standard form communication amongst bees that allows them to effectively communicate more complex ideas than animals in forests. For example, a tiger may be limited to the amount of information it can communicate with the monkey in forms of growls or running away. Moreover, the information is not necessarily clear as to who the tiger is growling at, or why it is necessarily running away.
But nonetheless, it is certainly beneficial for societies to standardize communication channels for effective transmission of information. It is this need for standardization of communication channels that gives rise of governments. Governments are at the very least simply standardized communication channels for information to be conveyed in and out of a state.
Consider currency, currency is a standardized form of exchange in an economy. It clearly conveys the value of the item, moreover is easy to transmit, usually concise and easily accessible in terms of exchanging it for other goods and services. Furthermore, it’s a guaranteed method of communication given by the government.
Or perhaps consider judicial systems. Judicial systems are a standardized format of settling disputes. The judge doesn’t pass judgements acting on his own will, rather simply passes information relating to compensation or punishment which the state (depending on nature of the state, the society or part of it) has deemed in respect to the dispute. Even if the state grants a judge powers to settle disputes by his own notion. There still exists a selection process of a judge, thus the state is simply ensuring that certain information gets passed down when a dispute arises. The notions of communication applies to the government, however bizarre it may seem. While, it judicial systems are associated with notions of justice and righteousness. They still are communication channels, they can be judged on the basis of accessibility, clarity of information received and given out, how quickly they can give judgements, how much information is required to settle disputes, etc. I will talk more when I write about these specific topics.
So, what is a state. Rather than answering that question, I will say that the state that I am going to write about is a state occupying physical space, constituted of beings capable of communicating through communication channels often standardized and commonly referred to as governments.