On why states exist and why both ancap and statist explanations are wrong

The statist thinks that state exists because some public good needs to be done through coercion.

The ancap thinks that the state exists because statists believe it is needed when it is not needed.

Both of these opinions are wrong, because both of them use the wrong mental model. And this mental model says that something like the state was intentionally created at some point to accomplish something that was generally perceived as necessary by something like society.

That is a creationist view that people like Locke and Hobbes formulated 400 years ago and you are still thinking along these lines.

But the state was never invented. The state is just an equilibrium that emerged from the economics of violent trade.

Since the dawn of time people could acquire wealth by producing and/or voluntarily trading it, or by stealing from and or extortionating others. If some people have the means to take it from others, at a cost that is below the expected benefit, then you will expect some of that to happen.

But violence begets violence, and the costs of using violence can grow a lot if a lot of people are in the business of violence instead of in the business of herding sheep or harvesting wheat.

It makes sense them for any group that gets sufficiently powerful and organized to kind of ban every other competitor from the area they control. And it makes sense for them to leave some of the wealth produced by the people they exploit so that they don’t starve and that they grow more productive.

That’s it. That’s how every state happened. Nobody asked for the state. It just occurs because violence has its own economic dynamics. It’s not invented to build roads or to take care of the poor people, and it only does those things now because over time that became part of the equation of holding and pertuating their power to tax the work you do.