Curtis Yarvin - State Quotes

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[…] the state is simply a real-estate business on a very large scale.

Curtis Yarvin
Tyranny […] is essentially informal and unstable. At least in the modern era, they tend to evolve into juntas, which tend to evolve into oligarchies, which tend to evolve into democracies. […] With each of these steps, legitimacy and internal security increase, and the state becomes stronger and harder to overthrow. Unless Gaza is your idea of fun, a strong and secure state is a good thing.

Curtis Yarvin
In certain rare instances, systematic crime can be legalized, and thus become orderly. Indeed, if the state's orders are physically unenforceable, it should reconsider them. It cannot outlaw the moon.

Curtis Yarvin
You are probably used to worrying about the crimes of your government overseas, but not in this way. You have an eagle eye for the crimes of the Defense Department. When it comes to the crimes of the State Department, you have the approximate visual acuity of the average snail.

Curtis Yarvin
If you have a rule that says the state cannot be taken over by a church, […] the obvious mutation to circumvent this defense is for the church to find some plausible way of denying that it's a church.

Curtis Yarvin
Of course, since the government is sovereign, it can break its own laws any time it likes. But it will not do this unless it has a good reason, because the value of a lawless state is much lower than that of a lawful one.

Curtis Yarvin
Here is the Carlylean roadmap for the Misesian goal. Spontaneous order, also known as freedom, is the highest level of a political pyramid of needs. These needs are: peace, security, law, and freedom. To advance order, always work for the next step—without skipping steps. In a state of war, advance toward peace; in a state of insecurity, advance toward security; in a state of security, advance toward law; in a state of law, advance toward freedom.

Curtis Yarvin
Therefore, to establish any stability, the democratic State must manage public opinion. This is also known as manufacturing consent, and it typically involves a substantial system of official or quasiofficial education and/or journalism.
So a good way to see which faction holds real power in a democratic state is to look at which can get its people into influential roles in education and/or journalism.

Curtis Yarvin
In other words, our so-called democracy is dependent not on the wisdom of the people, but on the internal power politics of the official church. If these politics produce a political platform which translates to responsible and effective actions, the government will be good. If they don't, it will suck. Either way, we have consigned the state to an unaccountable conclave of bishops. Why this is an improvement on monarchy, or any other form of autocracy, is unclear.
This political architecture, an abortion by any standard, is commonly known as a theocracy. Oddly enough, the classic historical case of a theocracy is… wait, hang on, I'm forgetting… oh, yes! Right here, in North America. Under those strange people we call the "Puritans".

Curtis Yarvin
Democracy means that popular opinion controls the state; intellectuals guide popular opinion; ergo, intellectuals guide the state.

Curtis Yarvin
Thus applying libertarian principles of natural rights […] moves a state not toward the libertarian goal of spontaneous order, but away from it—i. e. toward chaos, defeat, and destruction. Because its enemies use artillery, and it doesn't. Its enemies do not bother with trials, and it does. Etc. Therefore it is weak, and cannot produce any order at all, spontaneous or otherwise.

Curtis Yarvin
All the great crimes of the recent past have been committed by states which portrayed themselves as profoundly ethical actors. Removing this mask, eliminating the ability of the beast to portray itself as good, uninstalls an essential module in this perverse system.

Curtis Yarvin
The Western governments of 2008 are red-giant states: they are as large as they have ever been, but also as weak as they have ever been.

Curtis Yarvin
The entire intellectual system of the West was corrupted by its twentieth-century connection to government. Public opinion reflects press opinion, press opinion reflects academic politics, and academic politics are driven by power-struggles in which the attraction of the state is clear.
The victory of Keynesian over Misesian economics, for example, is a classic case of this. Theories of economics which led to jobs advising the state were adaptive. Theories which didn't weren't.

Curtis Yarvin
The war in Iraq is an American civil war by proxy. The real prize of this war is political power in the United States. If the US military wins, the Republicans win. If the US military loses, the Democrats win. We saw the exact same thing in Vietnam, and given that, in general, the Republicans are the Democrats' punching bag, the result is pretty inevitable.

Curtis Yarvin