The Reasons to Support a State

The two major functions that a state provides to the general populace are:

1. A justice system which protects a peaceful environment in which the rights of individual members are generally respected. Protection from external entities such as other nation states can be included in this.

2. A system of collective fiscal policy. This system provides general services and/or welfare which for whatever reason is not otherwise being currently provided by the free market.

The states ability to provide both 1 and 2 ultimately comes from the monopoly on "legitimate" violence. The former is enabled by the states ability to punish offenders in various ways including incarceration, and to use violence when they do not comply with punishment, and the public's view that this is legitimate. The latter is enabled by the collection of taxes, where non-compliance is punishable in the same way as a criminal offence (in fact it is considered to be one).

Assuming these are the main motivators of support for the state, then non-compliance with the state will not be widely sympathised with until those two functions can be provided without the need for a "monopoly on violence". It may be that they need to be provided with clear superiority, to overcome the inertia and tradition of the existing state.

Without providing these two functions in practice as opposed to theorising how they could be done, then the wider public will not sympathize with those who refuse to comply with state demands, regardless of how unjust state enforcement is. In that case anarchism and voluntarism will remain permanently a fringe on the edge of politics, unable to realise their goals due to the superior available resources of the majority willing to support or comply with the state.

Therefore, the focus of anyone who wishes to see the end of the state needs to be upon creating the equivalent systems above, to provide to the general populace the functions of the state without the means of the state:

1. A system of justice not dependent on violence for enforcement

2. A system of collective fiscal policy not dependent on taxes to function