Some roads have been built by government... not all where, and not all are even now. I'll posit that a significant number of Americans drive on at least one private road every single day. Chances are, if you live in any kind of suburban housing subdivision, the road right in front of your house actually wasn't created, and isn't maintained, by the State.
There are, of course, other privately built roads:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Private_highways_in_the_United...
Basically, the old (trite) saw that "I want roads, therefore we need government" is pretty much bullshit. Never mind the fact that one person's desire for a road hardly justifies their putting a gun in the face of everyone else around and demanding that they pay for said road.
Again.. we're hackers, we can do better. And I'm not saying I have all the answers, sitting here today. I'm saying that if we put our minds to it, we can come up with a way to achieve positive ends without resorting to violence. Why anybody on this thread would argue against that is hard to imagine? Are you people saying you like violence?
Isn't that true, though? I mean, the IRS doesn't send around a tax-person who carries a pistol or rifle or whatever, but the whole system is founded on the idea that "if you don't do what 'society' has agreed is the law, bad things (tm) can and probably will happen to you".
Paying taxes isn't optional in the same way that getting a driver's license is optional. So it's literally true that taxes are collected through the subtle but ultimately real threat of violence. Maybe you won't be executed, maybe you won't be beaten, but you will be made to do things against your will like go to jail.
Sure it's the extreme logical conclusion, but it's also the accurate one if you try not to pay.
Technology has come a long way in the last 1000 or so years. I suspect that there are new solutions to the problem that you describe. But they don't get explored because the State has a monopoly on violence and is very resistant to change.
Most of the time that's a good thing as it means that things get screwed up only very slowly. But it also tends to prevent things from getting better, too. Only the most egregious problems get solved.
Also, because most people consider the State and its monopoly on violence to be a perfectly adequate solution to the problem.
Then give a concrete example of such a solution. The current system (having a state actor) works more or less well in preventing power abuse by private entities. But shouldn't we wait with abolishing it until we have actually found a better solution?
No, wrong. Alternatives get explored all the time, and radical changes in the dominant role of social organization have happened over the 1000 year time period you discuss. You've anthropomorphized the abstract concept of the State improperly: the state is whatever entity or collection of entities taken together have a monopoly on legitimate violence, but the entities or collections which do that over time have changed quite rapidly -- the modern nation-state system is only a few hundred years old -- it is a fairly new model -- and there has been considerable evolution within that model (and its one that has been widely perceived as weakening in the face of evolving, powerful, non-nation-state actors of various types.)
When there's a technological revolution every 20 years or so, but a political revolution only every 200 years or so, I think it's fair to argue that the state is very resistant to change. I might see several technological revolutions in my lifetime, and no political ones.
And what he's saying is "The thing underlying the veneer is pretty savage, which taints the idea that everything is so civilized"
That's a point you seem to completely miss.
If the counter-point is that you can escalate the situation by attempting to resist the state's monopoly on violence, then sure. I concede that. I don't believe the thing underlying the veneer is savage. Quite the contrary.
So if you think you shouldn't have to pay taxes, because the state isn't a legitimate authority, it's quite likely that you'll end up dying.
Finally while taxes aren't collected directly by a person with a gun, failure to be sufficiently subservient while dealing with the state can result in your death. It's unfortunate that the state grants itself (in all its forms) much, much more privilege or leeway than any non-state actor would enjoy in a similar dispute.
In other words, if you fail to pay a debt to another citizen or non-governmental entity, it's usually handled much, much differently than failing to pay a debt to the government. That double standard definitely doesn't feel right to many folks, and I think that's a very reasonable point to make.
Yeah, maybe you could say "If you don't want to pay for a private road, don't drive on it. Simple as that." And exactly how do you plan to enforce the "don't drive on it" part?
And mind you, in an alternative universe where every road is private, a poor Joe who has to drive ten miles to work to feed his family will take the road, whether he can pay the toll or not. And if he finds using a gun is cheaper than paying tolls he will absolutely do so, because (in a society where the government can't point guns at employers' head and demand to pay minimum wage) if he doesn't he will be priced out by his neighbors who are willing to use the gun and drive cheaply.
It wouod surprise me mightily to find that the citizens of LA were funding public-access through-roads from the goodness of their hearts.
It's not a very plausible scenario.
Any entity worthy of the name government has a very simple way of visualizing the flow of cash in the economy: door to door searches. If the organized manpower for this does not exist, the government will have a hard time collecting taxes no matter how many technological shortcuts to the physical searching (like, say, property records on stone tablets) they use.