so, every time i give my little anti-state spiel i get a certain stunning reaction. the spiel itself goes something like this. if there is any idea that has been demonstrated to be a bad one in the course of human history, it is the political state. take just the twentieth century. the incredible bloodlettings of the world wars are inconceivable without the political state, without the taxation and coercion that make possible gigantic military machines and vast armies. the culmination of these activities is nuclear weapons and the possibility of the complete annihilation of life on the planet earth. only the political state has the motivation or the resources to make such things and the idiocy to believe that it's in its own interests to do so. the twentieth century will be looked upon as the age of genocide. begin with armenians in turkey, forced collectivization of agriculture in ussr, japanese occupation of china, the holocaust, the killing fields, rwanda, chechnya, darfur: every single one of them requiring and deploying and driven by the incomparable resources and incomparable power and incomprehensible evil of the political state. ok, so that's what i say. then you - my students, my wife, my mother, my colleagues - reply: ok, but it's a trade-off, and the state has done many good things too.  like the progressive income tax! this is a tribute simply to the fact that we are utterly state-ridden, state-addled, that human life has become actually inconceivable without the state. otherwise, otherwise rational people would not be sitting there saying: ok, the holocaust, but on the other hand emissions requirements!