Maximum Totalitarian State

Totalitarian state develops naturally. It is not even avoidable, but inevitable. Its not even a subject of debate, but it is something which even cannot not to exist.

Anyone not supporting totalitarian state government is declared by that government to be the enemy of country and people:

"As for speculators, the government is determined to enforce maximum prices even if we have to hang you all."

"We dont need any political freedom. We need freedom to work for the country. Not an inch of political freedom. In that sense, we are tyrants, dictators."

The reason why totalitarian state exists is simply because those people who want power and praise exist.

We see this in animal groups where stronger animals end up controlling weaker animals. They determine if others will eat or not, if others will have sex or not...

However, in animal groups, their power is very limited.

In totalitarian state, government power is much greater because government has much more resources to employ totalitarianism.

Thus, a simple logic follows:

P1. If animal groups end up being totalitarian even when their leaders have less power than human leaders, then human leaders with more power must end up being even more totalitarian.

P2. Animal groups end up being totalitarian even when their leaders have less power than human leaders.

C. Human leaders with more power must end up being even more totalitarian.

The only way to disagree with this logic is to claim that humans are much better than animals, which is obviously not true given all wars and oppressive governments in the world.

The logic flows naturally,

first by establishing that those hungry for power are the ones who get in power,

then following that those who get in power always seek to expand it, since they are hungry for power.

Further, those who have power to do something can end up doing that something. Thus, any power to violate rights has possibility to be used. The only way for it not to be used is if there is no will. Thus, in society, all that is necessary for rights to be violated is will to violate them by those having the power to violate them.

Even if one government is good, the next one wont be. It is simply very unlikely that every next government wont be interested in violating rights.

From this, two facts follow:

1. Every government has power to violate rights.

2. Eventually, a government will come into power that will violate rights.

There is no way to disagree with any of these two facts, no matter if government is majority or majority elected leader or party.

However, totalitarian state has a weakness which cannot be solved. The more rights it violates, the more it corrupts its own population and the more it teaches them that its okay to violate rights of others. This removes basic morality, and society sinks more into disagreement.

As number of violated rights increase, the number of justifications to violate rights increase, which in turn violates even more rights.

Thus, totalitarian state must eventually sink into poverty and crime, because when morality is removed and when respect for rights is removed, its not possible to at the same time have respect for rights. Its people must become more selfish because they are taught that selfish taking away of rights of others is good. Its people become detached from reality because their logic and thinking is detached from reality. This system cannot produce anything else but angry and aggressive people, because these are necessary to support such a system.

I'm looking forward to the AI state.

No it doesn't. The totalitarian state was foreign to the lived experience of most pre-modern humans.

For instance, the "universal patriotic education" wasn't a thing, because most people weren't educated and those who were received such from a school tied to a religious institute. Unless you were living in the Papal States or whatnot, there was some difference between clerical and secular authority. The king's self-interest was maximum self-aggrandizement, while temples existed to give glory to a god. Whereas one king inevitably grows old, dies, and passes the reins to his successor (or is violently overthrown), the gods were immortal and outlasted any one man, or one dynasty, or a whole civilization even. We can view this as foreshadowing the modern judiciary, which is separate from the executive/legislative branch and whose loyalty is to a higher constitution, which embodies an otherwise abstract higher law. Religions have always been a thing, and so there has always been a challenge to the unchecked power of a worldly monarch. This failed only where he claimed to be a god-king, or at least a priest-king, and if the latter then this implied a degree of subservience to an organization not totally under his control. Where the loyalties of the people are divided between church and state, or in modern terms the state versus the high ideas that the state purports to uphold, a needed prerequisite for totalitarianism will not materialize.

Also in pre-modern times, rule of law was weak and technology allowing for mass surveillance didn't exist. Penalties for breaking the king's law could be harsh, but this had to be weighed against the relative unlikeliness of being caught, depending on the manner of the offense. If you were caught, sometimes you could bribe your way out of trouble, or skip town and restart your life elsewhere, since communication over long distances was crude. Or perhaps the local magistrate, who enjoyed a tremendous deal of discretion in practice, just didn't care about punishing you even if he was technically required to. And of course, sometimes a count or duke would rebel against the king and there'd be a strip of land where the king's word is not law. If the king was determined to put you to death for capricious reasons and relayed this command to all of his subordinates, then you could take a chance that such a duke couldn't care less, provided you were able and willing to travel. Even today, many countries are unstable and the central government doesn't call the shots everywhere; for example, a Syrian who didn't have permission from a foreign government to leave Syria could internally migrate to Rojava or Idlib and so evade the Assad regime. Dare I say that a majority of the world's countries are still vulnerable to civil wars breaking out.

Yes, technology has been a game changer on many fronts, but it also gives us new tools to challenge established authority. In Europe today, a continent with harsh gun control laws, enthusiasts are printing the FGC-9 semi-automatic rifle from the comfort of their homes. These guns are being used in Myanmar to fight the military dictatorship, and successfully so. Technology can be used to pirate TV, movies, or computer programs. When corporate monopolies try to censor speech, those on the receiving end of the stick flock to alt-tech platforms (admittedly inferior to the big mainstream platforms but better than nothing). When the banks freeze an influencer's account because they don't want him getting donations because they hate what he says, he can open a crypto wallet. Chinese citizens have used VPNs for years to circumvent the Great Firewall. And so on.

Thats a great response. I enjoyed reading it.