 What the State Is Man is born naked into the world and Needing to use his mind to learn how to take the resources given him by nature and to transform them For example by investment in capital into shapes and forms and places Where the resources can be used for the satisfaction of his wants and the advancement of his standard of living The only way by which man can do this is by the use of his mind and energy to transform resources Production and to exchange those products for products created by others Man has found that through the process of voluntary mutual exchange the productivity and hence the living standards of all Participants in the exchange may increase enormously The only natural course for man to survive and to attain wealth therefore is by using his mind and energy to engage in the production and exchange process He does this first by finding natural resources and then by transforming them by mixing his labor with them as Locke puts it To make them his individual property and then by exchanging this property for the similarly obtained property of others The social path dictated by the requirements of man's nature Therefore is the path of property rights and the free market of gift or exchange of such rights Through this path men have learned how to avoid the jungle methods of fighting over scarce resources So that a can only acquire them at the expense of B and instead to multiply those resources enormously in peaceful and harmonious production and exchange The German sociologist Franz Oppenheimer pointed out that there are two mutually exclusive ways of acquiring wealth One the above way of production and exchange he called the economic means The other way is simpler in that it does not require productivity It is the way of seizure of another's goods or services by the use of force and violence This is the method of one-sided confiscation of theft of the property of others This is the method which Oppenheimer termed the political means to wealth It should be clear that the peaceful use of reason and energy in production is the natural path for man The means for his survival and prosperity on this earth It should be equally clear that the coercive exploitative means is contrary to natural law It is parasitic for instead of adding to production. It subtracts from it The political means siphons production off to a parasitic and destructive individual or group and this siphoning not only subtracts from the number producing but also lowers the producers incentive to produce beyond his own subsistence in The long run the robber destroys his own subsistence by dwindling or eliminating the source of his own supply But not only that even in the short run the predator is acting contrary to his own true nature as a man We are now in a position to answer more fully the question. What is the state? The state in the words of Oppenheimer is the organization of the political means It is the systematization of the predatory process over a given territory For crime at best is sporadic and uncertain The parasitism is ephemeral and the coercive parasitic lifeline may be cut off at any time by the resistance of the victims The state provides a legal orderly systematic channel for the predation of private property It renders certain secure and relatively peaceful the lifeline of the parasitic caste in society Since production must always proceed predation the free market is anterior to the state The state has never been created by a social contract. It is always born in conquest and exploitation The classic paradigm was a conquering tribe Pausing in its time-honored method of looting and murdering a conquered tribe To realize that the time span of plunder would be longer and more secure and the situation more pleasant If the conquered tribe were allowed to live and produce With the conquerors settling among them as rulers exacting a steady annual tribute One method of the birth of the state may be illustrated as follows In the hills of southern Ruritania a bandit group manages to obtain physical control over a territory And finally the bandit chieftain proclaims himself king of the sovereign and independent government of South Ruritania And if he and his men have the force to maintain this rule for a while Lo and behold a new state has joined the family of nations and The former bandit leaders have been transformed into the lawful nobility of the realm