What Even IS A Government
The Government, or "The State" is not a monopoly on violence, a monopoly on legitimized violence or even an attempted monopoly on violence.
Article version of this video: https://dannyduchamp.substack.com/p/w...
Support: / dannyduchamp
A few extra points that didn't make it into the final cut of the video but are still worth noting:
1. Some people distinguish between “the state” and “the government” in this kind of discussion, on the grounds that “government” may simply refer to any organization which governs anything in any way. However, in common parlance, people usually use the terms “the government” and “the state” interchangeably, so that is how I will be using them here
2. In addition to refuting the "monopoly on legitimized violence", the fact that self defense is legal according to the governments laws is also a refutation of an equivalent purposed definition of government: “a monopoly on legalized violence.”
3. Weber, and many others, use the word “legitimate” rather than “legitimized” in this context. I feel that “legitimate” is misleading because it implies that any act of government is actually morally legitimate, rather than just treated as such. In the effort of differentiating acts which are actually legitimate and those which are merely treated as such, I use “legitimized” to refer to the latter category.
--
tl;dr: 16:15
--
Danny Duchamp creates videos and essays on philosophy, economics and politics from a consequentialist libertarian perspective.
See More at dannyduchamp.com