The “function” of government

[note: probably an obvious point to most people]

Sleep

When I was younger I was interested the the question “why do we sleep? What is the biological function of sleep?” This is a more mysterious than one might naively guess, for the past 150 years scientists have put forth many theories of the function of sleep. But for every one of those theories, some of the specific observed facts about the biology of sleep don’t fit well with it.

At some point I realized that the question “what is the function of sleep?” relies on a confused assumption that there’s one only one function, or rather that “sleep” is one thing, rather than many overlapping processes.

A more accurate historical accounting is something like the following…

Many eons ago there was some initial reason why it was adaptive to early animals to have an active mode and a different less active mode. That original reason for that less active mode might have been any of a number of thing: clearing of metabolic waste products, investments in cellular growth over cellular activity, whatever.

But once an organism has that division between an active mode and a relatively inactive proto-sleep mode, the later comes to include many additional functions. As the complexity of the organism increases and new biological functions evolve, some of those functions will be more compatible with the proto-sleep mode than with the active mode, and so those functions evolve to occur in that mode. Sleep is all the biological processes that happen together during during the relatively inactive period.

On might be tempted to ask what the original purpose of the inactive mode was, and declare that the true purpose of sleep. But that would be yielding to an unfounded essentialism. Just because it was first doesn’t mean that it is in any sense more important. It might very well be that the original biological function that sleep evolved around (like a perl around a grain of sand) has itself evolved away. That has no baring on an organism’s evident need to sleep.

Government

Similarly, I had previously been thinking of states as stationary bandits. States emerge from warlord using violence to extort wealth from productive peasants, and evolve into their modern form as power-conflicts between factions within the ruling classes rearrange the locuses of power. I think this is basically right as a (simplified historical accounting).

But reading a bit about economic history, I have new sense of it being kind like evolved subsystems.

Yes, the state starts out as a stationary bandit, but once it’s there, and and taken for granted as a part of life, it is (for better or for worse) a natural entity to enforce contract law, provide public goods, run a welfare state, stimulate aggregate demand, or run a central bank. There’s a path dependency by which the state evolves to take on these functions because at any given step of historical development, the state is the existing institution that can most easily be repurposed to solve a new problem, which both changes and entrenches the power of the state, much as each newly evolved function that synergizes with the rest of sleep reinforces sleep as a behavioral pattern.

The difference

But unlikely in the case of sleep the original nature of the thing is still relevant to it’s current form. All of the later functions of the state are still founded on force and the use of force. Doing solving problems with a state almost necessarily requires solving them via, at some point in the process, threatening someone with violence.

In principle, many, maybe all of those functions could be served by voluntary, non-coercive institutions, but since the state, given it’s power, is the default solution, many problems get “solved” via more violence and more coercion than was necessary.

That states have additional layers of functionality, some of which are arguably aligned with broader socitey, doesn’t make me notably more positive about states. Rather, it makes them seem more insidious. When there’s an entity around that has, by schelling agreement, the legitimate right to use force to extract value, it creates a temptation to co-opt and utilize that entity’s power for many an (arguably) good cause, in addition to outright corruption.