How to Build a State

https://www.worksinprogress.co/issue/how-to-build-a-state/

by tnorthcutt • 6 years ago

57 65 6 years ago

In order for a state to succeed in the long term it needs diplomacy and international recognition.

jariel3• 6 years ago

It's odd how obvious much of this is, but the realisation I don't think hits most people, and the consequences are not very well taught in school.

1984 and those kinds of publications were written in an era wherein we were transitioning from 'small government' to 'large state entities'. Because we don't have 'small government' as an example in living memory, it's easy to believe, by default, that 'this is the way it always was'.

Particularly WW1 and WW2 which for the first time required 'the entire states machinery' to be involved, we really started to see what the full capacity of state coordination looked like.

The ultra authoritarian states of the last century - and some of this century, particularly enabled by technology, really have no historical parallel.

Monarchs always had a tenuous position, the rate of taxation was relatively low, mostly involving defence/offence and maybe a few castles here and there.

It should be added, that not until the Industrial Revolution were there enough surpluses to really do that much anyhow.

canniballectern• 6 years ago

Monarchs always had a tenuous position

I wonder how much of our modern idea of kings as supremely powerful dictators is just a result of posturing and good PR by past kings.

As a king, you'd be acutely aware of how tenuous your position was, and you'd be doing as much mythmaking as you could to prevent people from questioning your power.

jariel3• 6 years ago

I think it comes from modern English Monarchs who had a much more 'secure' role as quasi-Constitutional Monarchs.

And Disney, literally.

Torwald• 6 years ago

I wonder how much of our modern idea of kings as supremely powerful dictators is just a result of posturing and good PR by past kings.

Depends on how you want to look at it. Kings of ancient times where often seen as gods or god-like beings.

In the West and the Middle East these kings where well remembered through the religious sacred texts. It was part of the common knowledge, much like today Darth Vader.

A story like that of Jude would be known by virtually everyone and do much of what you'd term "PR".

In the Far East however, these mighty kings or emperors where in power in some countries up until very recent times.

IggleSniggle3• 6 years ago

While maintaining a huge entourage of musicians, jesters, and other entertainers is certainly expensive, it’s a far safer and probably cheaper projection of power and influence than maintaining a standing army who you can only pay practically by allowing them to loot.

WalterBright13• 6 years ago

The Civil War was the first industrial war, where the free market economy of the North handily outproduced and exhausted the unfree South.

disown7• 6 years ago

The north wasn't a "free market economy". It was a protectionist economy rife with tariffs.

As a matter of fact, it was the south that wanted a "free market" economy. They wanted little to no tariffs so that britain/europe would open their markets to their cotton/agricultural goods.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protectionism_in_the_United_St...

jariel3• 6 years ago

Both markets were very open by any measure.

There was no real central planning, few tariffs, few regulations, nobody was in charge or could make monopolies by fiat.

motohagiography2• 6 years ago

The author doesn't appear to have read DeMesquita (summarized with lots of gaps in the "rules for rulers" cartoon video), or about the Resource Curse economy, which are both about how states operate without the popular tax collection he refers to.

Monarchs just need to pay armies, and the easiest way to do that was to keep them conquering new territory and paying them off with the spoils.

If I were to start a state today, I would bootstrap it by seizing a small, resource rich area and use the money to subordinate other, remote and small independent territories and then reform them into international financial centres. You will need the tacit support of a super power, so finding a powerful coalition in one of those countries and offering them secure offshore holdings in exchange for political support and holding off competing powers seems like a play. Becoming the offshore banker for the up and coming opposition faction in a super power provides enough cover to continue to pay your army with your natural resources cash. Opposition parties are a goldmine that way, as they need to protect their assets and strategic funding from the ruling party. And the populace? Well, surely there will be enough cash left over for bread and circuses, and you can't underestimate how much loyalty a lottery system that lifts some of them out of poverty will buy. With sufficient randomness or at least a hidden mechanism, they'll keep each other in line so long as they've got hope. Who knows, maybe they'll even make or invent things that provide better income than the natural resources. If the reptilian cynicism of this has given you a wave of nausea, good, you're human. But probably not cut out for being an autocrat.

john-shaffer2• 6 years ago

Monarchs just need to pay armies, and the easiest way to do that was to keep them conquering new territory and paying them off with the spoils.

You "just" have to be one of the greatest military geniuses of all time. Easy.

Actually, this was an insurmountable problem even for Alexander the Great. His army simply got tired of marching all over the world, and demanded to go home.

r00fus• 6 years ago

Worked great for imperial Rome for a while - they let the the CEOs of the day (military generals) fight amongst each other and fight/conquer the Gauls, Franks, Teutons, etc. The generals and armies got to keep status and power if they brought the spoils back to Rome. Once in a while, one of the generals crossed the rubicon and the Senate called on the other generals to suppress that one.

WalterBright13• 6 years ago

History shows that being a free market country provides a huge advantage towards victory.

komali23• 6 years ago

How are you defining free market or victory? I'm not aware of any existent "free market."

maest4• 6 years ago

I would bootstrap it by seizing a small, resource rich area

That's probably a prerequisite, but the issue is, there is virtually 0 unclaimed land on Earth. You need to find some ways to avoid having larger nations stiffle you during the early days. So your options would be:

1. Use a remote island nobody cares about (or create an island in the middle of the ocean). There was an idea to create such a nation for media piracy reasons, I can't remember the name. An outlandish project where they'd buy an island, declare themselves a new nation and have very lax IP laws.

2. Find a political power void. Good candidates are places with little rule of the law and/or weak governments. Ideally a place where there is no well organised force maintaining peace. War-torn areas might seem to fit the bill, but are probably to volatile to work.

3. Go off-planet, if space colonisation becomes a thing during our lifetime.

Also, when it comes to creating a new nation, the CHAZ in Seattle is a great example in what _not_ to do. CHAZ was never going to work, but execution was so bad the problem basically took care of itself with virtually no involvement from the US govt.

john-shaffer2• 6 years ago

CHAZ was the Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone in the Capitol Hill neighborhood of Seattle, not Portland.

selimthegrim• 6 years ago

Biafra, Katanga and ISIS forgot about the superpower part.

motohagiography2• 6 years ago

A narco state is another option as well.

The alternative is to hollow out the institutions of an existing state using a movement. Takes about a generation, but you get an intact society with it. Game of Thrones' "Sparrows," are an example of it. You'd need a viral idea that people would seize upon and be willing to sacrifice themselves in service of it. They could teach it to kids so that it's all they ever knew, and as they matured they would inherit the reins of institutional power, and then use them in service of the idea. It's easier to get people to be against something than for it. I can't think of one off hand, but I suppose if you got them to imagine there were no countries, which wouldn't be difficult, and then not believing in anything strongly enough to kill to save or protect, and then no religion either, they could imagine living life in peace.

Anyway, not to solution it. Just saying, it's not as complex as the OP writes.

searchableguy• 6 years ago

Go off-planet, if space colonisation becomes a thing during our lifetime

https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Asgardia

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_micronations

awinder• 6 years ago

Was it the Pirate Bay? https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.thelocal.se/20070112/6076/a... I remember this but I felt like there was a floating boat nation plan too.

news_to_me• 6 years ago

I don't think Seattle's CHOP (née CHAZ) is very relevant here — it was a protest occupation, more in common with Occupy Wall Street than a serious attempt of any kind of secession. (Of course, participants' own ideas for what it should be were varied.)

brmgb• 6 years ago

Change the ressource rich part for a pre-existing deep harbor, swap the lottery for extremely cheap public housing and replace the somewhat far-fetched thing about an opposition party by the Western Block during the cold war and you more or less described the history of Singapore.

Animats• 6 years ago

OK, so how did the Romans do it?

jackcosgrove• 6 years ago

Rome conquered most of its territory when it was a semi-democratic republic. The Roman republican government was more popularly legitimate than many of its contemporaries. Even the early Roman emperors were quite weak within Roman society. It was not a dictatorship, although it became moreso over time.

The Roman tax system used delegation, where tax collectors were given a territory and a target, and any revenue over the target could be kept by the official.

And as motohagiography points out, the military as a bare-bones state can be sustained with continuous conquest where the potential spoils of conquest are used to gain military allegiance.

It's not a coincidence that the Roman Empire entered a period of crisis, that proved terminal, after it stopped expanding.

entropicdrifter• 6 years ago

It is notable, though, that the source of the word "dictator" did come from the Roman Republic, which would have the senate appoint a dictator for a term of 6 months during major war crises when they needed a unified front and quicker decision-making.

In fact, Julius Caesar was "dictator in perpetuity" of Rome when he was assassinated.

PTOB• 6 years ago

I would direct you to the excellent _Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire_.

AlotOfReading• 6 years ago

Are you referring to Gibbon's work? It's approaching 250 years old and every year of that shows. The most it's useful for is historiography and as a stellar example of 18th century writing. Please don't use it as a history book.

The Askhistorians book list offers more modern alternatives [1] and I'm sure a classicist would have even more up-to-date references.

[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/wiki/books/europe#wik...

Apocryphon• 6 years ago

From Byzantium to imperial China, there have been classical civilizations with bureaucratic administrative states.

ksdale• 6 years ago

But the question is how you make the jump from tiny warring fiefdoms to bureaucratic administrative states. Neither Byzantium nor imperial China sprang into existence as full fledged empires.

paganel• 6 years ago

warring fiefdoms to bureaucratic administrative states.

As a warrior at some point you realise that you need "learned men" that can grant you legitimacy through their writings/sayings and who at the same time can help you collect taxes from the masses.

For how things started in Western Europe during the Middle Ages see Adalberon, bishop of Laon [1], and his "oratores, bellatores, laboratores" triad:

He seems to be famous in French history because of a poem in which he made mention of (the) three orders in society : "oratores, bellatores, laboratores" : the clergy ("praying Church"), nobles and chivalry ("the fighting church"), and, third, the labouring people ("church of toiling"), the last one supporting the others, and all supporting the whole edifice of mankind. This idea was incorporated into the "three social orders" of the Ancien Régime in France.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adalberon_(bishop_of_Laon)

justicezyx• 6 years ago

Oscar Wilder's quote "“The bureaucracy is expanding to meet the needs of the expanding bureaucracy.” has an underlying truth, particularly in agriculture society: such society depends on a large population to sustain itself.

Prior industry revolution, agriculture is mostly a human-labor dominated activity. And the yield of the farm is mostly depends on the climate, and human-labor invested. Any small agriculture nation can easy get destroyed by a famine, or by an external roaming barbarians.

Naturally, the rulers and residents of agriculture society intuitively feel that larger population is more stable and stronger. You can see this from Chinese people and their culture. They naturally likes mingling with their fellow men more than western people in much larger scale. While at the same time, they actually do not have intimate personal-level relationship between each other, beyond their direct family members.

And to effectively manage a large population, without modern tech, demands a proportional bureaucracy.

Then that's the logic of expanding bureaucracy.

Historical China had always have this population boom and dwindle cycle on a massive scale. Records show in Han dynasty, the peak population is 50Mil, while in the 3-kingdom-era, it's 16Mil. Because the singular structure of the society is rather unable to innovate itself. And often they crack under their own weight, and got slaughtered by barbarians/foreign-invaders in an endless cycle (including the WWII).

And that's one reason a lot of Chinese citizens welcomed Trump's hostility: that's an effective pressure to force the nation to innovate. And we actually see the results, for so many years, China effectively did nothing to catch up the modern IC industry. I am not saying without Trump, China wont pursue the tech independence, though. It's just that the tenancy of the society is not as innovative as the west.

madhadron• 6 years ago

worksinprogress.co has shown up a couple times on Hacker News, and I haven't been impressed with the level of thinking any time I've examined it.

The historical stuff in this is tripe. Rome taxed extensively. Tax exemption was a thing tied up with military land grants in the last western empire. And then general taxation and bureaucracy emerged again well before 1500. I have a good book on this, but can't find it on my shelf right now...

Plus there are plenty of places where the governments are not as bureaucratic as they are today. Just not in the developed world.

komali23• 6 years ago

Rome also had grain dispersals, one of the things to go during a siege. This is well recorded.

I, too, was surprised by the article's claim that it wasn't possible to have a mechanism for organizing taxation. If sumerian priests could keep extensive ledgers tracking debt some gajillion years ago, why would a renaissance french king have any issues?

lifeisstillgood2• 6 years ago

tl;dr - Kings were like mob bosses, and ruled on their whim. Replacing them with Paliaments meant that one could not rule on whim but were forced to come to equilibriums (nash?) between many capos - and as they could not trust each other they had to develop bureaucrats to monitor and report and trust on their behalf.

In short design by committee might be bad but rule by committee helps.

The role of a merchant-friendly parliament is associated with British success in the 1700+ centuries - from hands-off rule of colonies that then can stand alone, to courts that were less under the capricous whim of rulers than many. It all seemed to have helped.

So I kind of disagree with the premise - a parliament based market and human rights friendly nation could have been successful at almost any point post 1500. All it took was to wrench power away from the monarch...

acephal2• 6 years ago

In short design by committee might be bad but rule by committee helps.
So I kind of disagree with the premise - a parliament based market and human rights friendly nation could have been successful at almost any point post 1500. All it took was to wrench power away from the monarch...

Which is exactly what Salvatore "Lucky" Luciano did in the early 30s when he had Salvatore Maranzano, the Capo di Tutti Capi, "Boss of Bosses", assasinated and proclaimed that La Cosa Nostra would be governed by a commission.

lifeisstillgood2• 6 years ago

Yes ... absolutely

One other thing worth noting - the members of Murder Inc (Lucky's murder squad) most of them rose to become head sof their own families. The lesson being - the power resides not in the money but the killing

not sure where i am going with that but it's dark

How to Build a State

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