Imagine a group of people living before the advent of the state, or really even before any sort of organized society. Miraculously, these are people who manage to be born and grow up and make autonomous choices nonetheless, but leave that aside for now.
Let’s not imagine that, because there is nothing like a state or society yet, that there are no moral rules in place – that’s silly. There are certain general principles of right action that every normal person at least basically adheres to. No one is a moral saint, but if anyone is raped, or wantonly killed, or abandons an infant to exposure, or what have you, people are outraged.
One central moral principle in this state of nature is that we all have a right to feed and shelter ourselves. This is such a basic necessity of life that it just seems obvious to me, and if you don’t see it this way then I don’t think we can have a conversation. It simply beggars the mind that we could expect someone to starve herself to death or die of exposure when the means to avoid this are available to her.*
So, people begin to hunt, forage, and farm to feed themselves. Yay!
But, of course, not everyone wants to be a hunter/forager/farmer. So eventually some people say to each other, “you know, I am tired of how farming (let’s just say farming) takes up so much of my time, and anyway, you are a much better farmer than I am. What say we make a deal – I will spend my days writing epic poems, and you spend your days farming. At the end, I will recite my poetry to you, and you will give me some of the food you grow. Then we are both fed and entertained.”
Deal.
Over time, as farming techniques spread and people realize more efficient means, and see the advantages of consolidating their farming, we start to see mergers. Less productive farmers will turn their land over to more productive farming associations. Sure, there will be some people who continue farming even though they could do something else, just because they enjoy it, farming is hard, often tedious labor, so most people do not. Eventually each region is served by a dominant nutritive association that organizes farming throughout the region, having absorbed all the other farmers who matter. Everyone else spends their time writing poetry or whatever other socially valuable work that they do.
But eventually the dominant nutritive associations have to do something about the smallholders. Their small farms break up the associations’ ability to farm efficiently and effectively, and endanger the ability of everyone to be able to get fed. So everyone would agree that, will they or nil they, smallholders will eventually need to join the nutritive associations and should not be permitted to farm their own land, at least not if it interferes with the ability to feed the population well.
We have now achieved an ultraminimal state. The nutritive association asserts a monopoly on the production of food, as it must do to ensure that the growing population can get fed appropriately.
But now we have a problem. What about people who cannot or will not pay the nutritive association for food? Are they to starve? We can’t have them starting up as smallholders; we’ve got to do something else. This isn’t any deep ownership issue – we just can’t have them trying to grow food where other people are trying to grow food, because it won’t work. Or trying to stop the association from growing food on land they’re growing food on. We’re talking pure use-conflict.
Clearly the solution is to bring everyone into the nutritive associations. Those who can pay, but would prefer not to, must pay. For those who cannot afford to pay, since we’re saying we don’t want them trying to subsist on their own, we tax everyone to sustain them.
Would we go beyond this minimal state, where the only legitimate function of the state is to ensure that everyone is fed? It’s not clear that we would. For instance, would we engage in redistribution of violence, so that people who are near those who use violence could be protected by some state agency?
Well, the nutritive associations could deal with much of this already. Anyone who interfered in the production or distribution of nutrition could have nutrition withheld. That is, after all, one of the few cases in which violating someone’s right to be fed would be justifiable. You can’t swing a sword if you’re starving! Beyond that, while it is unfortunate that someone may die from violence, it is not clear that anyone – aside from the violent person – violates any of their rights by failing to intervene. People might voluntarily band together to, say, shame the violent, or protect those vulnerable to violence, but it’s not at all clear that this is a legitimate function of an organization that controls a legitimate monopoly on food.
* In case you are either satire- or Nozick-impaired, this is an analogue of the basic position that self-ownership plays in libertarian theory. My principle strikes me as just as plausible, and has an even hoarier pedigree in Hobbes.