Vi er ikke staten. Staten er ikke oss.

Et argument som ofte går igjen blant sosialister (jeg har ikke noe bedre ord for dem som støtter/liker staten) er at vi, befolkningen er staten.

Siden vi selv har valgt våre representater er staten bare en forlengelse av oss selv.

Dette er historien vi blir matet på statens skoler, så at folk har dette bildet av staten er ikke så underlig.

For å forstå hva staten virkelig er anbefaler jeg alle å lese The Anatomy of the State av Murray Rothbard. Trykk her

For å vise hvor absurd denne ideen er når man trekker den til sitt logiske endepunkt:

The useful collective term "we" has enabled an ideological camouflage to be thrown over the reality of political life. If "we are the government," then anything a government does to an individual is not only just and untyrannical but also "voluntary" on the part of the individual concerned. If the government has incurred a huge public debt which must be paid by taxing one group for the benefit of another, this reality of burden is obscured by saying that "we owe it to ourselves"; if the government conscripts a man, or throws him into jail for dissident opinion, then he is "doing it to himself" and, therefore, nothing untoward has occurred. Under this reasoning, any Jews murdered by the Nazi government were not murdered; instead, they must have "committed suicide," since they were the government (which was democratically chosen), and, therefore, anything the government did to them was voluntary on their part. One would not think it necessary to belabor this point, and yet the overwhelming bulk of the people hold this fallacy to a greater or lesser degree.

Murray Rothbard er kanskje den viktigste libertarianske tenkeren de siste 50 årene, og alle hans verk er vell verdt å lese. Murray var en av grunnleggerne av CATO (ble kastet ut da han havnet i en krangel med Koch brødrene) og MISES institutet ble i hovedsak grunnlagt for å promotere Rothbards tanker.