Trade
As human populations grew, the limited availability of resources became more obvious. The need for complex economies grew as human ingenuity, creativity, innovation, invention, entrepreneurship, and hard work produced more, better, and faster. Natural order complex economies inevitably involve money, trade, and markets. Rules evolved to justify the claims on property and resources. Claims became increasingly critical, and a system developed that settled processes peacefully. Property and property rights became essential for peace and harmony. The system set limits with the help of some negative rights.
Negative rights are the rights specified by a negative statement, like a person’s right to life, liberty, property, and happiness must not be violated. This is the logical method by which you never get blamed for doing something for yourself without stepping over someone else, aka victimless crimes. You get the blame only when you violate someone else’s rights. The straightforward principle that provides unbreakable peace is, “It is immoral to initiate force against someone else.” This simple one-sentence can replace all the mumbo jumbo of man-made laws worldwide that have made human lives hell for thousands of years.
Imagine a society in which, if not everyone, most people do not initiate force against others. How incredibly peaceful that society is going to be. Not initiating force means don’t kill, don’t steal, do not commit violence, do not hurt; no one is excluded from this principle. All the chaos in the world is because first organized religions and then governments without any logical justification excluded themselves from this golden principle. In our everyday lives, every decent human being understands that murder, violence, theft, and hurting someone is bad. But when it comes to the governments, they magically get the right to murder and steal. Commit violence and hurt people, the rights that no one has and must not have.
Governments’ rights to murder, theft, violence, and hurt people cause wars; the bloodiest phenomenon existing on this planet, theft in the name of taxation, throws people into cages for victimless crimes and hurts families around the world. It also sets a terrible example for younger generations and makes them believe that murder, theft, stealing, and hurting people might be okay under certain circumstances. Illogical exceptions and exemptions become broader and broader, leading to ever-increasing and unending chaos and violence. Once it gets the monopoly on the use of force, the state never stops gaining more and more authority and abusing it to the maximum possible level.
Throughout global history, organized religions and governments have caused unbelievable suffering for vague, unspecified, and ridiculous reasons like my God is better than your God. We enslave people on this side of the line, and you enslave people on the other side of the line drawn in the sand. Religions and governments are truly about divide, conquer, and rule. There is no survival and no growth for them without dividing the people. Unbelievably senseless and expensive rituals are invented to keep people in the loop and keep others out. You and us is what they thrive on.
The original design was genius, designed by gods in Sumeria, the oldest known so-called civilization. There was a religion which controlled the government. In government, there was a god. He or she issued a book that specified the codes, which must be obeyed unconditionally by all human subjects. Around him or her were other gods who helped him in keeping people enslaved. There was a temple that included priests who ensured that people were kept obedient to the “divine” law and rules. Temples were meant to teach unconditional obedience. Then, there was an education system in which gods mentored the most obedient humans in special skills and technologies, making them very effective partners in crime.
Of course, the gods messed up. They had an unending thirst for conquest, control, and power. They also had to spend more on purchasing obedience as human populations grew. This system of warfare and welfare ultimately collapsed under its weight. People got tired of them. So, they had to go in the background. They handed over power and control to the demigods. Demigods were part human and part gods. They were born when the sons of gods came onto the daughters of men. Humans initially accepted their rule, hoping these creatures, who are at least partially human, would be better than purely alien gods.
But demigods were almost just as evil as gods. Warfare and welfare brought them down as well. So, the kinship was descended to humans, and we got pharoahs. Pharoahs were sons of gods but predominantly humans. Humans had lots of hopes for human masters. They did not turn out to be much better than gods or demigods. Warfare and welfare again became the words of the day. Stealing from productive people and spending it on freeloaders was their way of doing business. So, as expected, logically, the results were the same again. Pharoahs fell and fell bad. The third phase of human slavery was over.
But it did not end slavery again. They repackaged, rebranded, and renamed the same old again and threw it back on us as the solution. The new version of the same old was called divine right. Divine right kings or queens were from families with royal blood, the blood of gods. Gods became unseen figures for the first time in hundreds of thousands of years. They completely ended direct interaction with humans. Although still on earth, God became someone in the heavens from where they originally came. Divine right was that the king represented the unseen god in the sky. We were told that they will fix it all. Now gods are out of the picture, divine right rulers were expected to be more sympathetic to humans.
Of course, they failed, too. The next versions of the same old Republics and democracies are rapidly failing as well due to the same two factors: warfare and welfare. The truth is that gods and their pawns are not sovereigns. Every human individual is the ultimate sovereign.