Why did NONE of my parents or elders EVER sit me down and explain the following to me?
Disclaimer: I did use some parts of AI to construct this in a piece that doesn't ramble along like I do 🤣
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Why do we say “the state or government” as though it were a living creature?
The state does not breathe. It does not bleed. It does not think. It does not sign an indictment, conduct a raid, threaten a citizen, seize property, or decide whom to prosecute.
People do those things.
A prosecutor is a person.
An investigator is a person.
An inspector is a person.
A police officer is a person.
A judge is a person.
What makes the arrangement extraordinary is that certain individuals are permitted to exercise institutional power while shifting the financial cost of exercising that power onto everybody else.
If a prosecutor decides to pursue you, he does not ordinarily mortgage his house to pay the investigators, experts, lawyers, salaries, offices, discovery costs, and appeals. Other people—the taxpayers—finance the machinery he controls.
But reverse the situation.
Suppose a particular government employee steals from you, abuses you, defrauds you, or commits some other wrongful act. Now you ordinarily bear the cost of trying to expose it, document it, investigate it, obtain counsel, and pursue whatever remedies are available to you.
And if the conduct is criminal, you generally cannot simply appoint yourself prosecutor. Other government employees ordinarily control the decision whether another individual will be criminally investigated and prosecuted.
That is the problem hidden by the phrase “the state.”
The abstraction launders human responsibility.
It converts:
“John Smith decided to use publicly financed investigators and lawyers against David Jones”
into:
“The state brought a case against Jones.”
The second sentence sounds almost natural—like weather.
It was not weather.
People made choices.
And the financing asymmetry remains:
When an official uses governmental machinery against you, that official normally does not personally pay the bill.
When you challenge the conduct of an official, you normally do pay your own bill.
So the meaningful comparison is not:
Citizen versus State.
It is:
One human being required to risk his own money versus another human being empowered to spend money collected from millions of other human beings.
That is a much more revealing description of the relationship.
Government is an institution.
But institutions do not commit acts.
People acting through institutions commit acts.
Calling those people collectively “the state” may be convenient shorthand in law and political theory. But when analyzing responsibility, incentives, and accountability, that shorthand can conceal exactly what needs to be examined:
Who decided?
Who acted?
Who paid?
Who bore the consequences?
And who was protected from bearing the personal cost of his own decision?
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So, why don't more parents or teachers explain this to their children or young people?
Why is this kept a secret?
Is this such a novel concept?
Is this really unknown to the public?
How do people NOT realize this?
Anyone have a reasonable explanation I can understand? 🙄
Disclaimer: I did use some parts of AI to construct this in a piece that doesn't ramble along like I do 🤣
-------------------------------------------
Why do we say “the state or government” as though it were a living creature?
The state does not breathe. It does not bleed. It does not think. It does not sign an indictment, conduct a raid, threaten a citizen, seize property, or decide whom to prosecute.
People do those things.
A prosecutor is a person.
An investigator is a person.
An inspector is a person.
A police officer is a person.
A judge is a person.
What makes the arrangement extraordinary is that certain individuals are permitted to exercise institutional power while shifting the financial cost of exercising that power onto everybody else.
If a prosecutor decides to pursue you, he does not ordinarily mortgage his house to pay the investigators, experts, lawyers, salaries, offices, discovery costs, and appeals. Other people—the taxpayers—finance the machinery he controls.
But reverse the situation.
Suppose a particular government employee steals from you, abuses you, defrauds you, or commits some other wrongful act. Now you ordinarily bear the cost of trying to expose it, document it, investigate it, obtain counsel, and pursue whatever remedies are available to you.
And if the conduct is criminal, you generally cannot simply appoint yourself prosecutor. Other government employees ordinarily control the decision whether another individual will be criminally investigated and prosecuted.
That is the problem hidden by the phrase “the state.”
The abstraction launders human responsibility.
It converts:
“John Smith decided to use publicly financed investigators and lawyers against David Jones”
into:
“The state brought a case against Jones.”
The second sentence sounds almost natural—like weather.
It was not weather.
People made choices.
And the financing asymmetry remains:
When an official uses governmental machinery against you, that official normally does not personally pay the bill.
When you challenge the conduct of an official, you normally do pay your own bill.
So the meaningful comparison is not:
Citizen versus State.
It is:
One human being required to risk his own money versus another human being empowered to spend money collected from millions of other human beings.
That is a much more revealing description of the relationship.
Government is an institution.
But institutions do not commit acts.
People acting through institutions commit acts.
Calling those people collectively “the state” may be convenient shorthand in law and political theory. But when analyzing responsibility, incentives, and accountability, that shorthand can conceal exactly what needs to be examined:
Who decided?
Who acted?
Who paid?
Who bore the consequences?
And who was protected from bearing the personal cost of his own decision?
---------------------------------------------------------
So, why don't more parents or teachers explain this to their children or young people?
Why is this kept a secret?
Is this such a novel concept?
Is this really unknown to the public?
How do people NOT realize this?
Anyone have a reasonable explanation I can understand? 🙄
