Defense is Government
The need for defense is a natural corollary of human existence. Government provides defense by acquiring the monopoly on violence. It must do so without enslaving us.
“Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster.”
Friedrich Nietzsche
What is government? To answer this question, let's look at what government actually does. Government is in the business of defense. As a corollary, government holds a monopoly on violence. Another way to define government is to look at who fights wars. War is when governments fight for the monopoly of violence. Once settled, the winner gets to rule over their constituencies because they have the monopoly on violence. A war is when two governments fight for the monopoly of violence. Government is an emergent property of competition. Whenever you have competition between people, some sort of government emerges. Whether it’s in Sicily, where the Mafia takes over the role of government, or in the USA, where a representative democracy deals with security and safety for its citizens, government always emerges when humans compete.
Treating government as an inevitable emergent property of competition between humans helps solve some fundamental questions about how to deal with government. First, you can’t just abolish it. Anarchists have never had a chance, and that’s precisely because they fail to understand that government is not something humans choose to have. It’s inherent in the nature of competition between humans. Second, once you accept that government is inevitable, you can focus on how to best organize it. Government and defense are two sides of the same coin. They’re the same. Safety is a basic human need. Safety is necessary because there is always competition for something. Either between humans or between humans and animals. Government is always going to emerge. The monopoly on violence is what defines government. And that’s where the problem lies. When you have a monopoly on violence, you tend to overreach your powers. Corruption and decay are unwanted cousins every government has to deal with.
Every society has to deal with the problem of defense. The intensity of the problem increases with wealth. It’s interesting how more wealth creates a greater need for defense and also enables societies to better defend themselves. At the core of all this is the government. Government is the entity that ultimately provides defense.
The goal of this article is not to discuss the merits of government. Plenty of ink has been spilled on the pros and cons of government. Whether it’s salt or fresh water Economics in the US, Austrian or Keynesian thought in Europe, and even Marx debate what government can, must, and must not do for people. My goal here is to derive government from first principles and treat it like an emerging property of competition. Viewed from this angle, the discussion about government doesn’t dwell on the merits of government or whether we should have one or not. It’s about how to best organize ourselves, knowing that there will be a government eventually ruling over us. The question is not whether we should allow that to happen, but how. Some scholars have asked the question, "Why do people give up sovereignty to governments?" In this essay, we answer this question once and for all. This is not a voluntary choice. Government is a natural corollary of competition. And since competition is a given in the natural world, government is also a given. Government is more like the weather. We know we’re going to get rain, snow, storms, floods, and avalanches. The question is not whether we should tolerate them, but how to deal with them.
Competition
What is competition? Competition is the real-world equivalent of information. In her recent book "The Science of Can and Can't," Chiara Marletto describes information as part of a system where there is more than one possible outcome. Computers use zeros and ones; DNA uses four different chemicals: A,G, T, and C, etc. Any system that has the property "either this or that" contains information. A system that only has one outcome has no information. North Korean elections don’t contain information because there is only one outcome. In order to contain information, a system has to allow for more than one outcome. The same applies to completion. Competition is when two or more parties have more than one possible outcome. Back in North Korea, there is no completion of the elections. Most systems on earth are in a competitive situation because there is more than one outcome. Suppressing competition is the equivalent of suppressing information. It takes energy and therefore cannot be done everywhere. In the history of human civilization, rulers, states, and fanatics have regularly tried to suppress competition. But it doesn’t work. Societies where competition is suppressed end up wasting resources exponentially to suppress competition and thus collapse.
Competition is the only form of civilization that can scale and sustain itself because it allows for the efficient flow of information about who should do what with what resources. Competition is precisely the thing that solves this problem. In other words, this is the definition of competition: "The thing that produces information about who should do what and with what resources," a form of cooperation that organically and without coercion produces this type of information. In order to understand this better, let’s contrast competition with Laplace’s Demon. The latter is an imaginary person or AI that has all the information about the position and momentum of every atom in the universe. Thus, the Demon can calculate precisely what’s going to happen next. Advances in quantum physics, and in particular the multiverse interpretation of quantum mechanics, postulate that the Demon cannot do his job in our particular universe. He might be able to do a precise calculation about all things happening in all universes, but let’s not go there now. Let’s just postulate that even if Laplace’s Demon had all the information about the initial state of our universe, it wouldn’t be able to efficiently organize the world. This is akin to the knowledge problem introduced by free-market economists such as Friedrich Hayek. Let’s assume the Demon has all the computing power necessary to compute everything. He still wouldn’t be able to organize the universe efficiently because he doesn’t have the necessary knowledge. Competition is better at acquiring the appropriate knowledge, and hence competition will always outdo any attempt by human planners to suppress competition. In short, competition is going to outcompete any other system of human organization.
Postulate 1
There will always be competition because competition will outcompete any other form of human organization.
From there, the need for defense emerges naturally. It’s inherent in the nature of competition that some people, states, or planets will do better than others. Inequality is a fundamental property of competition. Only one athlete can win the gold medal. The others won’t. Inequality is a necessary condition for completion. If you don’t have inequality as a consequence, you don’t have competition. Take two tribes on the deserted island and call them Left and Right. They compete for the only spot on the island that has shade. Right wins. They’ll defend their spot since Left will try to snatch it from them. Inequality leads to the need for defense. Thus, the need for defense is a corollary of competition, and since competition is fundamental to our existence, so is the need for defense.
Postulate 2
Inequality follows naturally from competition.
Postulate 3
Inequality leads to the need of defense.
No matter how far back you go in history and no matter what form of government you look at, whether it's ancient China, Persia, Egypt, Rome, Europe, or the USA, you’ll find different shapes of government, but the monopoly of violence will always be a characteristic of government. That’s because governments are in the business of providing defense, and defense is a winner-take-all market.
Postulate 4
Defense creates a monopoly of violence.
Postulate 5
Governments are providing defense and thus naturally acquire the monopoly of violence.
It’s important to distinguish between the argument that government has the monopoly of violence and the definition that government is the entity that has the monopoly of violence. The former states an observation, while the latter is a definition. Government is the entity that earns the right to violence due to its inherent duty to provide defense. Defense is a monopoly of violence, and government is a monopoly of violence.
Government emerges everywhere. Regardless of the geography, religion, and wealth of a society, Whether it’s in the Amazon jungle or on Mulberry Street in New York, any ecosystem will eventually evolve a government. The latter was famously ruled by the Mafia. I have a friend who grew up there, and he is full of anecdotes from his parents about how Mulberry Street was the safest place in New York because the Mafia made sure it remained so.
If government is not just an unfortunate outcome of power struggles (Lenin) or an avoidable evil (Hayek), but a necessary condition of life, the focus shifts to how to organize government. The discussion is not whether we want government or not, but what kind. So let's discuss this question. What kind of government do we want? In order to answer this, we start with first principles.
Government is an emergent property of competition, and competition is what happens when life exists. Hence, government is an inevitable form of life. It’s what happens when people compete and require defense. Defense is a monopoly of violence, and government is a monopoly of violence. Now that we have established that government exists because of the need for defense, we can tackle the question of what kind of government we want.
Obviously, we need the government to be able to provide defense. You can’t have a government without defense. Government without defense is not a government. What does defense mean?
Postulate 6
Defense is the first layer in Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. Even before shelter, food and water.
Defense is when you protect your people from others. It’s the protection of the body, property, norms, laws, and beliefs. This is a fundamental aspect of life. Every human wants this. It’s the first step in the Maslow hierarchy. Even Maslow himself didn’t see this. He put basic needs such as food, water, etc. in the first layer of his hierarchy of needs. But I’d argue that safety and protection are even more basic. What’s the point of food if you’re not free or get killed by an adversary? Unfortunately, history is full of examples of people living under severe liberty constraints such as slavery, imprisonment, or communism. Slaves have shelter, food, water, air, etc., but they don’t have freedom. Similarly, people living under fascist or communist regimes were given food and shelter, but their lives were severely constrained. Defense is a basic human need. Government provides defense. The key is to avoid slavery and incarceration, and government is in the business of protecting its citizens from those misfortunes.
So far, we have established that government is an inevitable emergence of competition, and its main task is to provide defense. Defense is the protection of the body, property, norms, laws, and beliefs. Government must be given the right and the tools to protect them. Any government that doesn’t have the means to protect bodies, property, norms, laws, and beliefs is not a government. Switzerland, for example, doesn’t have a government in that sense since the country really doesn’t have the means, tools, or even the mandate to protect its citizens from attacks. Ironically, Switzerland is one of the few countries that hasn’t had wars for a long time. Nevertheless, I predict that Switzerland as a form of organization will not last long and will eventually disappear because there is no government as defined here. But that’s for another discussion.
The Founding Fathers of the USA were given a monumental task: How can people govern themselves? At first sight, this is an oxymoron. Government means top-down. It means somebody has to defend others and thus acquires the monopoly of violence. If all people have a monopoly on violence, we have anarchy. That doesn’t work. So how can you design a system that allows for government (a monopoly of violence) without enslaving its own people? That was the task presented to the thinkers of the Enlightenment and the Founding Fathers of the USA. Their solution is the Constitution of the USA. I don’t want to dwell too much on the birth of the USA, but it’s my impression that this was a "zero to one event" in human history. A Black Swan moment that wasn’t supposed to happen because it’s so unlikely Just take one simple fact. George Washington could have been king, but he refused. What is the likelihood of that? There have been other such moments in the history of the USA, like, for example, when President Truman, for a short while, was the only man in the world who had the power of nuclear weapons. He could have enslaved the rest of the world since he had the global monopoly on violence at that point. But he didn’t.
Let’s get back to the Founding Fathers. Their task was to design a system that governs with the monopoly of violence but doesn’t enslave its people. They found solutions, such as the balance of power between the three branches of government. Unfortunately, the job is far from done. The key problem with today’s government is the danger from within. The US government has managed to rise to the top of the global food chain because it has allowed competition to flourish. It outcompeted communism, fascism, and Japanese imperialism. But today, the US is not able to fight much lesser opponents, such as Islamist extremists on the outside and authoritarian tendencies on the inside.
A government that doesn’t provide defense is not a government. Thus, this is an existential problem for the US. There are three key problems within the US that prevent the government from functioning as it should. First, there is the Military Industrial Complex, as described by President Eisenhower in his farewell address from the Oval Office in 1961. Second, there is the creation of the Federal Reserve and the collateral damage FIAT money is doing to the very fabric of the USA. Third, and probably most dangerous, is the Public Health Industrial Complex, which is gradually seizing illegitimate power across many areas of US society. The latter is much more dangerous because it consists of a decentralized web of rouge bureaucrats who have access to funding and expand their unauthorized powers in obscure but potent ways. The example of the unleashed powers of unelected bureaucrats in the wake of COVID-19 must serve as a warning signal. The US government, in conjunction with the Federal Reserve, wasted seven trillion dollars on so-called emergency measures. This is the single most extreme expansion of government powers and finances in the history of humanity. No other empire, rouge or legitimate, has ever spent this much resources on anything. Whether it was Genghis Khan, Julius Caesar, Henry VIII, Napoleon, or whoever, they all had some sort of limit on what they could spend on campaigns. COVID-19 brutally showed the toxicity of fiat money coupled with rouge bureaucrats and how they can overreach their powers and, by doing so, harm society. Imagine what seven trillion dollars could do for education or the development of sustainable energy. Instead, we wasted it telling people not to go to work. For Government to remain relevant and provide the basic needs of defense, we must reign in those three threats to US democracy.
Conclusion
Government is defense. Every society will eventually develop a government because that’s the entity that provides safety and defense from adversaries. The need for defense is a natural necessity arising from the inherent dynamics of competition. Every form of human existence will eventually lead to competition and, thus, the necessity for defense. That’s why defense is at the first level of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. It’s even more basic than food and shelter. Without competition and defense, there is no life. Therefore, the creation of a government flows from the first principle of human existence. The question is not whether we want a government, but what kind. To answer this question, it’s best to stick with the natural purpose of government, which is to provide defense. So the question is, what is the best government that can provide defense for its constituency under certain constraints? What are those constraints? First, the government has to provide defense without enslaving its constituency. Since government naturally has the monopoly on violence, it’s prone to enslaving its own people. This must be prevented. Second, government must prevent dangers from within, such as the Military Industrial Complex and rogue bureaucrats seizing illegitimate powers. Thus, government is an optimization problem where defense is the goal and liberty and efficiency are constraints. Democracy is one answer to this problem, and the Founding Fathers of the USA have done a great job at creating such an entity. But we are running the risk of derailing our foundations of liberty and financial stability, which have been the basic pillars of the USA since its birth in 1776. We must fight to keep this bastion of liberty healthy. Government is the problem. But we cannot do without Therefore, we must find leaders who can fix the government and bring it back to its natural purpose of providing defense.