Written by Nicholas Woode-Smith, ASFL South African Regional Director

Everything needs to be evaluated accordingly. We rate a knife by its ability to cut, a phone by its ability to communicate effectively and institutions by fulfilling their mandate. The success of anything is not measured by its by-products but by the fulfilment of its goals. This is especially important, for it means that we must not be deceived by false flags of positivity. We must remain focused in order to evaluate the true results of any action, project, product or strategy.

When evaluating states, we must not be coaxed into petty and irrelevant metrics. The purpose of states is unclear to many. For most, they are taken for granted. They are as concrete and irreplaceable as nature. For students of politics, states reveal themselves to be much less concrete and much more prone to interpretation.

What has persevered as one adequate interpretation of the state and its goals is that a state exists as a monopoly of force. Under this view, the state exercises a legitimate use of violence in order to protect its citizens from illegitimate violence and force.

This is culminated into what Locke and Hobbes called the Social Contract. Individuals living within a state enter into a relationship with the abstract state, giving up their right to enact violence in exchange for protection. If the state fails to live up to its end of the bargain, by demanding too much or failing to fulfil its obligations, then the people have the right to disobey it.

Then what is the goal of a state? It cannot be the monopoly of force. That is a right – a function. It is a means to an end but not the ends itself. To find the purpose of the state, one need only look at the Social Contract. The Social Contract describes the relationship as beneficial wholly to the individual citizen. The state exists as an organisation of individuals forming a compromise in order to maintain society. Ultimately, the Social Contract exists for the individual’s betterment.

Thus, the goal of the state is the protection and betterment of the individual. Any state action that goes against this runs the risk of causing a failure of the state’s goal. It doesn’t matter what other bonus objectives it fulfils, if it fails the individual, it fails its purpose.

In this manner, states all around the world are failing and have been since time immemorial. Rather than acting as the heroic watchman, meant to protect the weak, it acts as the bandit, burning and pillaging. States have enslaved their constituency where they were meant to help them. They have attacked where they should have defended.

Even in petty regulations, the state proves itself to not care for its primary constituency – the individual. I cannot access foreign payments as easily as I would like, because the South African Reserve Bank has created a draconian and stringent set of regulations to prevent South African access to PayPal. This has stopped me from receiving donations from my website and getting paid royalties for my book. In this way, the state has not protected me from violence, nor has it protected anyone else from any form of violence. It has merely stopped my own prosperity due to a petty need to be involved in all affairs, regardless of their relevance or legitimate claim to the context.

A good state should exist for only one reason. The betterment of its individual members. This does not mean welfare. This does not mean nanny state projects. This means the enabling and protection of freedom so that individuals with their own creeds and agency can pursue their way in life. It is not the business of the state if a willing American wants to send me cash. It is not their business if an adult want to smoke a plant. It is not their business if two adults want to form a contract where no coercion has occurred.

States have not become overbearing. They have always been so. The freest states in history were the most accidentally the weakest. If given the chance, many would have embraced authoritarianism. They just lacked the means.

The goal for the modern liberal, libertarian and free-thinker, therefore, should not be a return to a fictitious history, but a formulation of the new where the theory of the Social Contract is followed properly and where the citizenry are aware not only of their natural rights, but of the proper role and purpose of government. For it is not empire that a proper state should aim, but the success of its individual members – and that success can only be gained through the freedom to act, live and strive.