Bless!
When I was little, my dad always drilled something I've taken as fact into our heads
He asserted three things:
- No one can take care of us as we can ourselves, simply because we are always in our own company.
- We can only ever expect help from others in taking care of ourselves, because they also have themselves to take care off.
- We should thus never give ownership of our wellbeing to others, for they have their own issues to deal with.
It's since turned out, that he was exactly right in his assertions. Others will always try to help us, and we will always try to help others. That much is perfectly natural and human. For all our failings, we actually do quite like helping one another, or have you ever felt bad for helping someone? I wager not.
So, given this, given that we like helping one another, how can I then also suppose, that the nation states (and similar institutions) we are part of don't care about helping us, don't really care about our long-term health? Wouldn't that be a stark contradiction?
On a surface level, assuming that human institutions act like human individuals, we'd expect nation states and similar institutions to care about us as we'd care about others. Alas, institutions don't work like that.
Whilst every constituent functionary of an institution may very well care about us as they care about others, the institution as a whole follows other incentives, that depend on the institution, its context, and the vehemence of resistance against disservice to its constituents.
Let's take the example of nation states.
Depending on the beneficence of a nation state to its constituents, it would most aptly be described as something on a free continuum between a symbiont and a parasite. Most modern nation states are parasitic rather than symbiotic, simply due to system-dynamical incentives aligning thus.
A modern nation state has a monopoly on violence – where it is the sole valid judge, jury, and executioner in its own system of laws –, it has coercive taxation – where it's freed from the need to actually serve its constituents in any obvious or inobvious way –, and it has full control over the size and mode of taxes levied from its constituents.
With modern nation states, we've created a sovereign institution, which may use and abuse violence at its discretion, whilst we – its constituents – have hamstrung ourselves to only be allowed to voice our dissatisfaction with hollow word, which hold absolutely no coercive force. We've furthermore made it nigh impossible for this sovereign institution to be defunded and thus removed from power, should it no longer serve its constituents, as we mayn't hold back taxes without inviting violent retribution.
We may call our nation states democracies, but they are not governed by the people at large. Governance requires enforcing compliance, which requires at least the threat of violence. This may be uncomfortable for us modern people, as we've lost any and all understanding of how power works, is concentrated and distributed, and what it requires to maintain collective control of individual freedoms.
Great, but what has all this got to do with the disinterest of nations states in our long-term health?
As stated and described above, modern nation states are parasitoid. They are highly arbitrary, violent, and extractive institutions, which disallow us to use those same tools to defend ourselves against their arbitrariness, which they use to subjugate us.
A modern nation state is solely interested in maximising the amount of tax it can collect from each of its constituents throughout each of the constituent's lifespan. This isn't because the functionaries are all evil – though some certainly are –, but because the incentives for the institution as a whole are thus.
A modern nation state lives and survives off taxation. It can coerce that taxation at will and it will denigrate its constituents as terrorists, violent opposition, tax evaders, or egotists, if they ever dare challenge or deny it its self-appointed right to do so.
This is why retirement ages have moved back consecutively. This is why health care has become more expensive. This is why business is made with war and disease in modern nation states, instead of peace and health.
We as individuals all lose in war and disease, but the nation state only does so, if the amount of cumulative tax it can levy from its population base decreases, which isn't given and thus allows for a disjunction its own interests and incentives from those of the collective interests and incentives of its constituents.
You don't need to be healthy to be able to work. You don't need to live happily for a long time. To the modern nation state, you simply need to be healthy enough to pay taxes and live long enough to just about reach an ever-receding retirement age. It doesn't care a twit for what happens to your happiness, health, or longevity beyond this.
Okay... that's pretty dark, but is there anything, that can be done about it?
Well, I know someone, who's extremely interested in your happiness, health, and longevity. That someone is you. I'd also wager, that you'll find many individuals around yourself, which share that interest for the simple fact of their love for you. Put your health in the hands of the people, who are interested in it. Put your health into your own hands and the hands of those, who love you.
They and you care like institutions never will.
God bless,
Merlin L. Marquard
