Source: Liberalism.org
by Michael C Munger
“In policy debates, some see state action as the obvious solution; others say the same about civil society and/or markets. But listen closely, and you’ll often find that everyone’s gone negative: They have lots of bad things to say about the other side, and not much in favor of their own. That’s the ‘pretty pig’ problem: We can all see the downsides — many of them quite real — with one system, and so we conclude, a bit too quickly, that the other one must be better. As I’ve noted before, that approach leads to disagreement without engagement, as the advocates on both sides ignore the problems of their own preferred system: The state I can imagine is clearly a good solution to the real world commercial system I’m immersed in, but that state doesn’t exist, and its powers are not stable or reliable.” [editor’s note: Nietzsche offered a neat, concise, and true “theory of the state” … “Everything the State says is a lie, and everything it has it has stolen.” – TLK] (04/22/26)
https://www.liberalism.org/p/yours-mine-or-ours-liberals-need-a-theory-of-the-state