{"id":40653,"date":"2019-11-25T01:00:28","date_gmt":"2019-11-25T06:00:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=40653"},"modified":"2020-07-06T10:40:57","modified_gmt":"2020-07-06T14:40:57","slug":"qotd-the-origins-of-the-state","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2019\/11\/25\/qotd-the-origins-of-the-state\/","title":{"rendered":"QotD: The origins of the state"},"content":{"rendered":"<blockquote><p><a href=\"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/QotD-thumbnail-400x400.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" style=\"float:left; padding: 0px 15px 0px 0px\" src=\"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/QotD-thumbnail-400x400.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"400\" height=\"400\" class=\"alignleft size-full wp-image-48672\" srcset=\"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/QotD-thumbnail-400x400.png 400w, https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/QotD-thumbnail-400x400-150x150.png 150w, https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/QotD-thumbnail-400x400-50x50.png 50w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 400px) 100vw, 400px\" \/><\/a> Taxation most likely began ten thousand years ago, when nomadic hunter-gatherers gave up their wandering ways \u2014 and the tools associated with them \u2014 settled down, and started growing crops and herding livestock, which requires an entirely different suite of tools than hunting. The hunter-gatherers&#8217; tools could be used as weapons because that&#8217;s essentially what they were \u2014 ask any mastodon \u2014 the farmers&#8217; could not. As a result, anti-productive marauders who had been held off by the hunters&#8217; tools (or the ability of the hunters and their families to escape and evade) took advantage of those who were stuck to the plots of land they had learned to farm with clumsy agricultural implements (which could not be wielded as easily by females, relegating them to a subordinate role for fifty centuries), and forced to to pay tribute to the bandits. Go take another look at the 1960 movie masterpiece <em>The Magnificent Seven<\/em> for illustration. The thieves eventually learned to call themselves &#8220;government&#8221; and the goods they stole, &#8220;your fair share&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>L. Neil Smith, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.ncc-1776.org\/tle2017\/tle946-20171029-02.html\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\">&#8220;What Would <em>Real<\/em> Tax Reform Look Like?&#8221;, <em>Libertarian Enterprise<\/em><\/a>, 2017-10-29.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Taxation most likely began ten thousand years ago, when nomadic hunter-gatherers gave up their wandering ways \u2014 and the tools associated with them \u2014 settled down, and started growing crops and herding livestock, which requires an entirely different suite of tools than hunting. The hunter-gatherers&#8217; tools could be used as weapons because that&#8217;s essentially what [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":35193,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[84,7,41],"tags":[924,1382,118],"class_list":["post-40653","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-government","category-history","category-quotations","tag-farming","tag-lneilsmith","tag-taxes"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/favicon.png","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-azH","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40653","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=40653"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40653\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":53038,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40653\/revisions\/53038"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=40653"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=40653"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=40653"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}