@thesotiris 2 November 2025 more from that month

The dumbest objections against statelessness #15 "I just don't see how society can function without government"

The ‘**argument from incredulity**’ fallacy presumes that someone’s stubbornly persistent disbelief in a particular subject, or their admission of lack of comprehension of it, is somehow a valid argument. No, your incredulity, or your lack of comprehension and imagination — especially as a consequence of your refusal to learn — is not a valid argument. Your comprehension or approval is not required for an idea to manifest, or for the laws of economics and human action, for that matter, to be demonstrably and predictably valid. These concepts are valid regardless of your “approval”, and they don’t need your permission, your faith, or your existence to keep on working. https://mises.org/library/book/human-action **Fallacy after fallacy** Yet, for centuries, we have been stuck in this ‘appeal to incredulity’ fallacy of “*I can’t believe society can run without a centralised totalitarian* *authority*”. This then gives rise to an ‘appeal to tradition’ fallacy loop, and the laughably erroneous assumption that somehow “*the state is the* *best system* *we’ve got*”, this ad hoc fallacy that should be motivation enough to keep looking for other systems zealously: https://sotiris.substack.com/p/authority-is-a-bluff https://sotiris.substack.com/p/the-dumbest-objections-against-statelessness-0fd If this laughable “system” of centralised, violence-based government is the best system we’ve got, then you shouldn’t rest until you find better ones. If you rest in complacency in this evil monstrosity, this abusive **democratic system of** **slavery with velvety chains**, then you are complicit and as guilty as the state and all its wars, theft, corruption, atrocities, and “elite” pedophilia that always seems to come with those corrupted and mentally crippled by positions of power (the most unnatural and deleterious thing for humans to possess). https://sotiris.substack.com/p/the-state-is-the-devil https://sotiris.substack.com/p/you-are-a-slave https://sotiris.substack.com/p/redefining-civilisation https://sotiris.substack.com/p/psychological-profile-of-the-ruling The way most people are psychologically conditioned today, statelessness is impossible. I admit this, even though I know that government is completely unnecessary. History shows that we as a species have been thus far incapable of maintaining stateless systems of self-governance. The moment one government falls, it is instantaneously displaced by another one. The vast majority of people need government, which for them is a way through which they hope to receive special, undeserved privileges at the expense of others. This is really why people need government, not “social order” or other bonkers justifications they make up to chastise their support of evil government, and thus perhaps sleep better at night. https://sotiris.substack.com/p/government-is-an-unnecessary-evil https://sotiris.substack.com/p/the-government-should https://sotiris.substack.com/p/why-you-want-government https://sotiris.substack.com/p/the-source-of-all-evil **Belief matters. Belief manifests.** When the vast majority of people are conditioned to believe that child sacrifice to the sun gods, or that slavery and female genital mutilation are “for the **alleged** greater good of society,” then guess what: you’ll get societies that do just these things. When the vast majority of the population is conditioned to believe that socialism is supposedly “the best system possible”, you get decades of communist dark ages in large parts of the world. https://sotiris.substack.com/p/islamic-feminism-and-muslim-matriarchy https://sotiris.substack.com/p/the-great-evil-of-the-lesser-evil https://sotiris.substack.com/p/the-roman-empire-was-socialist https://sotiris.substack.com/p/the-scourge-of-moralism And these **inefficient, ineffective, and inhumane systems of slavery** are sustainable until enough generations pass, and the demographics of brainwashing conditioning start to shift. When democracy was first introduced in Athens, it was because enough people were exposed to philosophical scepticism and had thus abandoned their mental caveman conditioning, the false notion that “*there must always be a king for peace*” or “*there can never be social order without a tyrant*”. Had democracy been introduced 100 years earlier, or in a different region, it would have been laughed at and discarded, the way voluntaryism/consentism is treated today. https://sotiris.substack.com/p/on-voluntaryism And although democracy is just a scam, a masked tyranny, an oppressive system with necessary extra steps to create the illusion of freedom, it was still a step in right direction, since tyrants realised they needed to play theatre, to gaslight and appease the people who would never again tolerate overt tyranny; only covert tyranny instead. Today, most people understand that slavery is wrong, even though **the enforced extraction of the vast majority of our income through violently imposed taxation is slavery in all but name**. A few centuries ago, most people would not be able to visualise a world without properly named slaves — they wouldn’t be able to believe that society would function without plebs doing all the work. Their incredulity was proven by history to be misplaced: society could function more efficiently and effectively without human livestock. Yet, they would have presented the same fallacious “arguments” we hear today against stateless voluntaryism: “*But how can a society function without slaves? People will always have slaves. We can’t have social order without slaves. Slaves will always exist*.” Perhaps they were right about the last part, that there will always be slaves… Maybe we deserve nothing better. https://sotiris.substack.com/p/every-single-argument-against-statelessness ***People tolerate anything if they believe it’s justified. So, they tolerated being taxed to the bone so that useless government officials can spend millions on needless luxuries at the expense of the taxpayers’ children.***

As a result of this ill-founded belief in statism, today we have **soft slavery** with extra steps: taxation, schooling, victimless “crimes”, police monopoly on legalised violence that is inevitably abused. https://sotiris.substack.com/p/why-pay-taxes-if-they-can-print-all https://sotiris.substack.com/p/how-school-damaged-your-mental-health https://sotiris.substack.com/p/the-best-argument-for-statelessness **Democracy is just tyranny with extra steps, the illusion of choice, the fantasy of freedom.** But it is precisely this fact, these needed extra steps for deceiving people, that proves that the conditioning of the population is what determines the sustainability of a system of governance. If **those “in power” feel the compulsive need to deceive us with propaganda** and schooling-induced brainwashing to believe that we aren’t slaves when we in fact are, then this proves that they need this conditioning; otherwise, their system collapses. (Yes, **most of your labour goes to taxes** that are wasted on wasteful spending that no market organically demanded, as well as embezzlements and war, with only a tiny amount going to low-quality healthcare and basic security and infrastructure that are given, not because of state “benevolence”, but are instead granted only to maximise slave yields). https://sotiris.substack.com/p/healthcare-without-government https://sotiris.substack.com/p/punishing-criminals-in-the-absence

If those in power need us to believe that we have a democratic voice — even though we are forced to choose between two identical candidates that were chosen for you, with **vague promises that they aren’t legally obliged to carry out** — then we prove how the dominant mental conditioning of a population is the determining factor of which system of governance is tolerated, and even justified; even if that system is as inefficient, ineffective, and blatantly corrupt and retarded as “democracy”. https://sotiris.substack.com/p/the-case-against-voting Remember, the Soviet Union was sustainable for decades, even though communism is perhaps the most inefficient, ineffective, and retarded system of governance imaginable. If you deliberately seek to create the worst possible system of governance, for shits and giggles, you come up with communism. Yet it was sustainable because enough people believed in it enough, or were afraid of brutalising “authority” enough. When enough people lost their faith in and fear of communism, communism collapsed… but it was hastily replaced by **the scam of “democracy”, the loosening of the collar for the slave to breathe just a little, and thus imagine he’s free**. Yes, voluntaryism/consentism can work **if enough people believe in it enough**. Any system of governance that is successfully applied is **belief becoming reality, a self-fulfilling prophecy**. The current occupants of Earth are lost. They are so “hopelessly dependent on the Matrix” that they will fight tooth and nail to protect it, even though it is their abuser. Stockholm syndrome works that way. https://sotiris.substack.com/p/stockholm-syndrome-explained **The state relies on your psychological conditioning** Conditioning begins from a young age. It’s when children are robbed of their natural scepticism, their questioning, their desire for independence. Children are conditioned to revere perceived “authority” because of their autocratic parenting: “*Do this because I say so!*”, instead of “**Here’s why it’s in your best interest to do or not do this**”. https://sotiris.substack.com/p/the-cycle-of-abuse Submissive conditioning is further exacerbated through autocratic schooling, which forces children to attend via threats, never having any choice in what to learn and when and for how long, unquestionably obeying “authority” figures, forced in a prison-like environment where literal gangs form and prey on the weak, while a literal **Pavlovian school bell** ingrains obedience from a tender, malleable age. https://sotiris.substack.com/p/how-school-damaged-your-mental-health-f86 **Negative beliefs bring negative outcomes** **Since “systems of government” are concepts rather than concrete factual objects, it is the belief in them that determines their viability**. It is not knowledge of them, but instead, faith in them that sustains them, much like other concepts like ideals, virtues, morals, principles, values, identities, purpose, and meaning. Yes, voluntaryism **(decentralised, consent-based self-governance without any arbitrary state “authority”**) cannot work... today, just like abolition could not have worked in Ancient Rome... or in today’s Libya. Democracy could not have worked in medieval, religion-obsessed Europe, and the ideas of natural law or human rights could not have worked in the Ottoman Empire (they hardly work in Turkey even today). https://sotiris.substack.com/p/the-roman-empire-was-socialist-addendum **Predictions** For **voluntaryism/consentism** to work, humanity must first survive government’s self-destructiveness in the coming decades, when **technology in the hands of insanity-afflicted state megalomaniacs will make things very dangerous for the human species**. And for humanity to survive, each generation must treat the next with a bit more compassion, respect, and self-accountability than the previous one treated them. https://sotiris.substack.com/p/what-you-owe-your-children Peaceful, positive parenting, the avoidance of forced state schooling, and true, consent-based education, especially around the basic economics and human action (not Keynesian economics pseudoscience). https://sotiris.substack.com/p/how-to-build-your-childrens-self https://sotiris.substack.com/p/how-school-damaged-your-mental-health **Further objections** Is voluntaryism/consentism reliant on conditioning children to have a specific mindset? Yes. Then again, so is **democracy, socialism, fascism, monarchy, theocracy, and every other brand of totalitarianism**. **Consent-based, decentralised systems of self-governance are no more reliant on social conditioning than the unnatural concept of government, which relies on relentless authoritarian conditioning through systematic abuse** — that which makes people revere abusers and justify being abused when powerless, and to justify abusing when feeling powerful. https://sotiris.substack.com/p/stockholm-syndrome-explained If anything, government is even more reliant on conditioning, especially the evil kind: **systematic, traumatic abuse** that makes people believe in the false notion that “*might is right*”, and thus become subservient or oppressive accordingly. Through the state’s monumental effort to psychologically condition us, we learn that somehow “*only threats can get things done*”, which blinds us to a whole world of free-market negotiation, incentive-based transactions, and FAFO interactions. All consent-based systems of self-governance need is the absence of such submissiveness conditioning. **Violence is inefficient** If the prohibition era taught us one thing, it’s that violence begets violence, and actions have reactions; perhaps not in the opposite direction of the action, but at least equal or magnified in their chaotic dispersal. Good things cannot come from threats. If we want good (as we self-righteously claim we do), then we can only get social order through consent-based incentives, not threats by an arbitrary monopoly of violence (the state). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prohibition_in_the_United_States https://sotiris.substack.com/p/the-loudest-moralists-tend-to-be **One last thing…** The state fears unenforceable decrees because if people defy government long enough, then they understand that its “authority” is a bluff, just a house of cards. Fearing the toppling of its house of cards, the government then gives in. It recalls its unenforceable decrees, if it’s to salvage the other decrees. https://sotiris.substack.com/p/authority-is-a-bluff **The loosening of the recalcitrant slave’s collar ensures that the collar doesn’t break**. This is why governments occasionally “grace” us with limited hangouts, insignificant mini-concessions, and the occasional kangaroo-court show trial, where a fall guy is supposedly burned at the stake to appease the masses, and renew the public’s misplaced faith in government. https://corbettreport.com/the-cia-the-ny-times-and-the-art-of-the-limited-hangout/ So, if what government enforces is what enough people already believe in, then why do we need government in the first place? Government can only enforce what most people believe must be done. Just like the almighty US government couldn’t enforce prohibition, no government can enforce what enough people believe should exist. When enough people want something enough, then it will happen, regardless of government, and without it especially. The “free rider” problem is a non-problem, and it certainly does not justify the use of state violence to force people to submit to something they do not consent to. Everyone with a free Gmail account is a free rider — let’s not mention the droves of welfare abusers from foreign countries, no less, who haven’t ever contributed to the welfare system at all. Let no one tell you that “the free rider” problem somehow justifies the existence of the state. It is not a real problem. It is only a problem when enough people **misguidedly believe** it is. https://sotiris.substack.com/p/why-the-west-is-ngmi-3 So, if most people already believe in a public good, then there is enough economic demand for it. Then, what is the point of government anyway? To force those meaningless few to comply as well? If most people want something enough to put their money where their mouth is and commit their skin in the game, then we can easily have laws without government. If there is not enough demand, then that thing should not happen, and any state enforcement of it is undemocratic and totalitarian. **There is absolutely no usefulness in centralised, threat-based governance**. https://sotiris.substack.com/p/laws-without-government And in the case of private business dealings, private standards, and even government corruption agreements, **we already have laws without government** enforced by nothing but **incentive**. Government is not at all necessary. At all. You still “*don’t believe society can work without government*”? **Recommended reading:** **Consentism*, Voluntaryism, and Voluntary, Stateless, Decentralised, Laissez-Faire Systems of Self-Governance in the Style of Rothbardian Austro-Anarchism** ‘Chaos Theory: Two Essays on Market Anarchy’ by Robert P. Murphy https://mises.org/library/book/chaos-theory-two-essays-market-anarchy ‘The Market for Liberty’ by Morris and Linda Tannehill https://mises.org/library/book/market-liberty ‘Democracy: The God That Failed’ by Hans Hermann Hoppe https://mises.org/library/book/democracy-god-failed ‘The Myth of National Defense: Essays on the Theory and History of Security Production’ by Hans-Hermann Hoppe https://mises.org/library/book/myth-national-defense-essays-theory-and-history-security-production ‘The Private Production of Defense’ by Hans-Hermann Hoppe https://mises.org/library/book/private-production-defense ‘The Privatization of Roads and Highways’ by Walter Block https://mises.org/library/book/privatization-roads-and-highways ‘Defending the Undefendable I & II’ by Walter Block https://mises.org/library/book/defending-undefendable ‘No Treason: The Constitution of No Authority’ by Lysander Spooner https://libertyunderattack.com/no-treason-the-constitution-of-no-authority-by-lysander-spooner/ ‘Let’s Abolish Government’ by Lysander Spooner https://mises.org/library/book/lets-abolish-government ‘Anatomy of the State’ by Murray N. Rothbard https://mises.org/podcasts/anatomy-state ‘For a New Liberty: The Libertarian Manifesto’ by Murray N. Rothbard https://mises.org/library/book/new-liberty-libertarian-manifesto ‘Power and Market: Government and the Economy’ by Murray N. Rothbard https://mises.org/library/book/power-and-market-government-and-economy ‘Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market’ by Murray N. Rothbard https://mises.org/library/book/man-economy-and-state-power-and-market ‘The Ethics of Liberty’ by Murray N. Rothbard https://mises.org/library/book/ethics-liberty ‘Human Action’ by Ludwig von Mises https://mises.org/library/book/human-action ‘The Enterprise Of Law: Justice Without The State’ by Bruce L. Benson https://archive.org/details/the-enterprise-of-law-justice-without-the-state ‘The Machinery of Freedom: A Guide to Radical Capitalism’ by David Friedman http://www.daviddfriedman.com/Machinery%203rd%20Edn.pdf ‘The Most Dangerous Superstition’ by Larken Rose https://www.amazon.com/Larken-Rose-Most-Dangerous-Superstition/dp/B00N4EGD8C ‘The Problem Of Political Authority’ by Michael Huemer https://archive.org/details/problem-of-political-authority-the-michael-huemer * Got the spot-on term ‘**consentism**’ from Christopher Cook. https://open.substack.com/users/124471591-christopher-cook?utm_source=mentions