So, in this part, Widerquist and McCall lay down more data talking about various aspects of life for those outside of states, comparing various aspects and arguing against the hobbesian hypothesis.
In terms of social opportunities, things seem...better...mostly. They mention humans had less privacy, but were rarely lacking social interaction. If anything, they seemed constantly bombarded by it, to an uncomfortable degree for an introvert like me. And they didn't suffer from a lot of the mental health issues we face in our society. I've kind of known this to some extent for a while but a lot of our mental health issues are directly related to the problems of capitalism and the modern state.
Materially, you could argue that most people in stateless societies were worse off, but Widerquist and McCall also try to spin it in such a way to argue that there are some cultural biases that define that.
I mention this because I feel like sometimes they muddy the waters here to strengthen their points, or weaken the opposition's points. To be fair, yeah we do tend to have a cultural bias toward material acquisition that many hunter gatherer societies might lack, so it is a fair point, and given how they're arguing against the hobbesian hypothesis, the idea that stateless life is so intolerable that people run full speed toward states as the alternative, I guess it is valud. Anyway, yes, youre gonna have fewer luxuries in a stateless society. Of course stateless people might not miss them. But, stateless people often do not go without. I mean, Stateless societies have strong ethics toward the sharing of food and what they do have, so people rarely go without. And in a lot of ways, people lived better than in state societies. Agriculture actually increased the possibility of starvation and famines, because people were reliant on limited food crops, and if there wasn't enough to go around, people starved. meanwhile hunter gatherers were mobile and often traversed long distances for food, and rarely went without.
In terms of work effort, while hunter gatherer live is not a picnic, they did make a convincing case that they probably worked less. Most hunter gatherers worked around 40 hours a week, and this included ALL activities needed like hunting, gathering, and housework. Meanwhile in modern society we work 40 just at a regular job and then need to still work to keep our own houses in order. And early capitalist societies worked far longer. We have all of this increased wealth, but we keep people on a treadmill of never ending work.
Speaking of which, we have all of this wealth, but we still have poverty, with poverty forced on the worst of us, and that poverty is worse than what exists in hunter gatherer societies. At least many in hunter gatherer societies normally didn't starve. They went to where the food and water was, and largely saw nature as abundant. Why grow crops when there are many fruits to take from the trees? And it's not like homelessness as we know of it now, where people are materially deprived of a place to live, in a propertyless society, nature is one's home and they can set up camp anywhere.
Health....eh....this is where it gets weird. Life expectancy, was low, like 35 (around my age), but that nubmer is an average, with it being brought down by high childhood mortality. People often lived to 70ish in these societies. And in some ways didnt suffer a lot of the afflictions we do in our current society like high cancer rates, diabetes, heart disease, etc. But honestly, Im not really sold here. Without modern medicine, everyone in my family would've died several times over. I wouldve died at birth, so would my mom. My mom would die again from falling when I was young, rather than modern medicine fixing her. I likely would've died at age 5 from pneumonia if I survived past birth. I would've died again at 17 from dislocating my leg, and again at like 19 from an infection. I mean, yikes. Ya know? So I look at this, and while yeah I understand how some people CAN survive to old age, I understand a lot of them probably wouldn't.
And again, die at age 70ish if youre lucky. Why? Because your body starts breaking down around that age no matter what shape youre in. Modern medicine can expand life a good decade or longer, maybe even 20 years in some cases (60 to 80 or 70 to 90). I'd argue a huge reason people eventually succumb to cancer and heart disease is because they outlived everything else. Eventually something is gonna get you.
Still, in hobbesian hypothesis terms, do they still have a point? The poor are so materially deprived by the property system it makes their chances of living worse.
In terms of freedom it has been successfully argued that people in stateless societies had more freedom. Complex societies inevitably lead to less freedom by default. And honestly, people were a lot more free in their work than they are in industrial society, where a certain model of work is forced onto them.
Heck, the chapter largely concludes that people don't flee stateless societies to join states, typically, history seems to show that people flee states to live in the stateless, and most people integrated into states have that done by force. THey dont choose to join states, states just end up controlling more and more land until there is nowhere else to go, and people have no option but to be a part of them. And that's where we're at now.
In some ways, those crazy ancaps were right all along. "I didnt sign no social contract". Of course I still maintain that their property rights system is not a natural right but something forced on us, and that they would inevitably recreate the state, either through their decentralized enforcement mechanisms taking the role, or the problem of states just naturally arising on its own again. I really dont think freedom can exist in a modern environment without some sort of state. At the very least, we need one for defense...against other states, so they cant come along and subjugate us. And that sad fact guides much of my political worldview.It's the reason Im so pro pax americana on foreign policy (again, it's the US, or it's china/russia, pick your poison). It's the reason i always saw anarchy as this weird naive thing.
And I know lots of people say "well if you dont like it go live in the woods", but modern humans dont know how to live in the woods any more by and large, so we are kinda stuck staying in states, even if we hate them. Because we dont know how to live otherwise. Not to mention any time any group would try it in a serious manner, theyd probably run into roadblocks from the current state system. Most good land is dominated and settled by states anyway. Most areas where people dont live, they dont for a reason. And any group large enough to break away would likely be put down. So we're stuck...living in states.
I honestly accept this as reality in my worldview and continue to do so. And if anything, there is a common trend here. States in the past 200 years are better than states have historically been. For most of their history life in states arguably has been worse than stateless societies. But in recent history, with material improvements via capitalism, and innovations like democracy, states have taken a more benevolent turn. They're not perfect. Widerquist would still argue that they dont fulfill the lockean proviso. He's probably right, but I do believe that states are a work in progress, and the way forward is further reform of them, rather than abolishing them and returning to monke. I will say I kinda respect anarchists a bit more after reading this book (only got the conclusion to go), but yeah, I still dont believe that ideology is practical at all. The solution is obviously further reforming states rather than abolishing them. To make them the best they can be. To try to improve them where they do, finally, fulfill the lockean proviso. And I think that's where Im gonna focus my efforts with my worldview and political ideology.
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