The apologists for state violence always fall back on some form of social tragedy. Social tragedy is always used as a way to show the state as a source of security for some extreme circumstance. Some common examples are:
1) What happens if you are in need of some medical service you can't afford?
2) The poor will be without school.
3) The poor will be without food
4) The poor will be without housing
5) The elderly will have nowhere to go
Each of these statements is supposed to incite some sort of warming of my heart, which is supposed to lead me to changing my mind and advocating statism in these areas. But the state's apologists make significant errors that go unnoticed on the surface.
The statist makes the mistake of assuming having these things is a right and not a good. I will use schools as an example to discredit this assumption.
Education is what we should all seek, whether it happens in a classroom environment, experience in the world, or a library. Schools are buildings that have to be built and institutions that have to be managed by teachers and principals and others to provide instruction. There is no right to possess the labor of others. There is a right to seek it and obtain it as long as you don't infringe on anyone else's rights, but there is no right to force others to provide it to you. Educational statists who argue it is a tragedy the poor will not be able to attend school ignore the real tragedy of statism. The state provides schools by seizing money from people under penalty of the law. They essentially say "give us your money, or you will be thrown in jail. If you refuse to pay, and resist being thrown in jail, we will increase the amount of violence against you until we either force you to go to jail, or you are killed."
In my opinion, anyone claiming life's circumstances as a tragedy, and as a valid reason for statism argues for the worst tragedy of all; violence committed by one human against another.
If we truly want more houses for people, more health care options, schools... whatever it is, why not work to actually create more of it, rather than arguing for violence? Therein lies a second tragedy in statism. People, instead of working towards their stated goals of more homes and so forth, instead simply seek political solutions, which by definition is always a state solution, and therefore a violent solution. Of course, it's easy at this point to make the case that the politicians will use their new-found power to enrich themselves (for instance, bureaucrats eat up 70c of every 1$ spent on welfare themselves).
We live in a world of scarcity. People have to create everything we consume... our food, computers, houses, hospitals... all of it. These things do not come out of thin air like they do on Star Trek. Man has two options in getting economic goods; the economic and the political. The economic means is the method of creating. Selling whatever you can to trade for goods... whether it's your brains, your labor, or something someone passed on to you. The political means is the method of violence. It is the means of forcing other people to do what you want.
--Apologists for statism always point to some tragic thing that has happened or would happen without the state... and curiously it is always an attempt to show people as being the victim of scarcity. They ignore the much larger tragedy of statism, as statism requires the tragedy of people thinking actual violence committed against some humans by other humans is ok.--
Is it a tragedy that health care is not affordable to everyone? Well, it's sad to see people suffer, but health care services have to be produced. Their scarcity is a part of life.
Is it a tragedy that many pretend throwing someone in a rape room (jail cell) because they refused to give money to, or obey the wishes of someone else, is ok? I would say it most certainly is.
We all must deal with the reality of scarcity on this planet. Becoming smarter and producing more efficiently, finding new ways of doing things... these are all economic means which lead to the alleviation from scarcity. The political means, in practice, does not lead to the alleviation of scarcity. It leads to the spread of violence, immorality, and when there is nobody left to coerce, poverty.
So let's not be deceived when these apologists for violence try to use some form of social tragedy to strengthen their position. The deck is stacked in our favor; the emperor has no clothes.
