Hey everyone. Welcome back to the What Is Money Show. I'm sitting down again today with Mr. Max Hillebrand.

And I think this is our capstone episode for going into the Ethics of Liberty by Murray Rothbard.

We're going to start today with this topic of the origin story of the state.

And Rothbard cites a quote here by Thomas Payne from common sense that I'd like to read to start.

And this is on the origin of kings and of the state.

Thomas Payne writes, quote, could we take off the dark covering of antiquity and trace them to their first rise.

We should find the first of them nothing better than the principal Rufian of some restless

gang whose savage manners or preeminence in subtilty, subtlety, not sure about that word, obtained him the title of chief among plunderers and who by increasing in power and extending his depredations overawed the quiet and defenseless to purchase their safety by frequent contributions. That word

subtlety, I think that's used to describe the serpent in the Garden of Eden as well,

which is interesting. And then, I mean, the way that I interpret this is that the emergence of the state or kings and the state, I guess, is really just like a mafia, right?

These are people or groups charging for defense from the very antagonisms that they themselves threaten or inflict.

Yes, and that goes again to the basic definition of what a state is, right?

Institutionalized theft on large scale with the legal justification to do so in a certain

jurisdiction.

And the question is, how did we end up with this?

And then one common argument is that if there were multiple kind of protection agencies,

then they would continue to fight amongst each other, basically.

And there would continue to be crisis that cannot be settled, as ultimately physical force

is what actually allocates resources.

So whoever is the most forceful, or there would be a lot of constant physical force and violence,

presumably, in between those private security firms and therefore a natural monopoly, so to say, emerges where the highest level of security is provided, if there's one trusted third party, that is the only legitimate user of force and being the state.

And therefore, all conflicts can be collapsed down to one decision maker again.

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