The reasonable position is that the state exists to propagate and protect itself, which is made up of it's citizens, you included. This is just like any organism or organization works.
Like a company, that doesn't mean they will always make decisions that coincide with what you want or what you think is best. But, it DOES mean they have some goal to keep their people, on the whole, happy, because otherwise they no longer exist.
For example, yes the US government sucks in a lot of ways. The US government ALSO wants you to get an education, and they give it away for free. Because more educated people means a stronger economy, which is good for everyone. You might take this for granted, but: there are many countries where the population, as a whole, cannot read or write. Your literacy is the result of hundreds of years of work and has, essentially, been GIVEN to you. That's not something you just have by nature of being human.
If you were to put a name on your ideological position, what would it be?
It can't be liberalism, since that tradition considers the state separate from society, and the state's purpose to provide liberty to the latter.
Communists of the 'tankie' variety (i.e. 'authoritarian' rather than 'libertarian' or anarchist) believe the state is or ought to be made up of its citizens, but they are aiming for scientific industrial administration and would never describe the state as an organism.
The tendency that does describe the state in that way, is fascism.
If the state inherently wanted all that for its citizens, why have people formed unions and militant organisations and struggled to achieve things like common education and so on?
The state, as like a concept, doesn't 'inherently' want anything, because there's infinite ways to form a state. The organization of human being in which every person has a voice or say, does tend to operate in a certain way.
The main difference between the public sector and the private sector is that the public sector is somewhat of a democracy, and the private sector is much closer to a monarchy. Obviously our democracy is not perfect, but it's a lot better than "the dictator (board and CEO) makes the decisions, you are cog, please comply".
There's market forces to mitigate that, just like we can say there's foreign affairs to mitigate dictatorships in nations, but that doesn't work if you have a lot of power. Exhibit A: Russia. Russia was supposed to be discouraged from invading the Ukraine, but ultimately, there's nothing stopping the King from doing that.
Let's look at Tesla. Elon Musk is supposed to be discouraged from doing a Nazi Salute because free market, but ultimately there's nothing stopping the king from doing that.
For our government, it makes decisions with the coordination of thousands of people, many of them poor and will experience the direct consequences of those decisions. The further we stray away from that core principle, the worse it gets. Just in general, when we talk about human organization.
> But, it DOES mean they have some goal to keep their people, on the whole, happy, because otherwise they no longer exist.
Not really. The goal is to prevent people from being unhappy enough that they revolt. But so long as that is not a real possibility, the company - or the state - is quite willing to make the population less happy if that means more productivity that can be extracted.
The example you gave - free education - is precisely about that. The point of schools is not to make the people happy, it's to make the people productive. But, also, ideally to brainwash them into being "good citizens" (meaning compliant and not causing problems). It can even mean "happy", but that is not necessarily the desirable state of affairs from the citizens' perspective, either - e.g. in USSR under Stalin, the cult of personality was strong enough that many people were genuinely happy to participate in it, and genuinely sad when the guy finally died; but it wasn't actually good for them!
No, the fundamental problem with state is exactly that: it exists to propagate and protect itself, but you, the citizen, are not included. You are a resource, and your well-being and happiness is only incidental, not the actual goal.
The reasonable position then is to demand governance that is actually in the interests of those governed. And one can reasonably argue that the resulting entity is not a state.
> No, the fundamental problem with state is exactly that: it exists to propagate and protect itself, but you, the citizen, are not included. You are a resource, and your well-being and happiness is only incidental, not the actual goal.
Beliefs like that are self-fulfilling prophecies. People who believe in that often give up trying to influence the state and exclude themselves from its interests. If too many people do that, the state will not care about them.
There is a trade-off based on the size of the state. Small states are easier to influence and more likely care about their citizens. Politicians stay more in touch with other citizens, and the average citizen is more likely to know some politicians in their everyday life. But small states often make amateurish mistakes, because they are governed by amateurs without access to sufficient expertise on various topics.
Large states have an easier time finding the expertise they need. But they tend to develop a political class out of touch with ordinary citizens. Political leaders become powerful and important people who mostly associate with other elites.
I believe the ideal size of a state is in single-digit millions, or maybe up to 10 or 20 million. Like most European countries and US states.
