From the White-PillBox: Part 3
The most influential foundations of State legitimacy are quickly losing power.
To explain this White Pill will require some clarity on a few fundamentals. These explain the importance of indoctrination as the key reason the public perceives the State as legitimate:
- For the State to persist, people must self-comply. The State relies on the majority perceiving it as legitimate. If this was not true, explicit totalitarian dictatorships would simply keep everyone in slave-like bondage. Brute force, after all, is much simpler than a complex democratic structure. But explicit dictatorship is unsustainable; the cumulative power of the majority could easily overwhelm the State. Self-compliance virtually eliminates this risk.
- Self-compliance, by definition, only happens if people want to comply. It would never occur to a person to perceive a thug or criminal gang as legitimate. The State is simply a massively bigger gang. People accept State rule by being indoctrinated into willing self-compliance. They must be convinced the State helps, rather than harms.
- Indoctrination works best when the State leverages the biggest influencers. The best path to maintaining a deception of that magnitude is for the State to get help. Thus the State highly favors and influences academia and the major media, institutions that dominate the culture1. These institutions thereby do the heavy-lifting of indoctrinating the public.
Academia’s role
Public education has served the State well, indoctrinating generations of children for over a century. By targeting the young, the State helps secure a future of adult compliance. Moreover, higher academia rewards its intellectuals with power and validation that they would normally have to earn in a purely voluntary culture. The influence of these intellectuals legitimizes the State in innumerable tangents across society.
The major media’s role
Both paper and electronic media grew into giant corporate structures over the past century. This was made possible by their relationship with the State. For example, in the 20th century the State controlled radio and television spectrums, limiting licenses to the politically connected. The news media eventually evolved only three major networks.
The State-media relationship is self-reinforcing: the State’s perceived legitimacy is broadcast unceasingly; while the media serves a captive audience and thereby grows and consolidates, relatively free of competition.
The White Pill: their crumbling influence
It cannot be overstated how quickly the educational systems and major media are themselves losing legitimacy and influence.
Humans can only make so many choices, given their limited time. As technology expands, choices expand. We are witness to an acceleration of technological improvements, and thereby choices, unlike any in history.
Improvements in educational choices are crowding out traditional education. For example, private methods of education and home schooling are on the increase; the Internet is making a wide range of entrepreneurial options available to young adults. As alternative choices increase, the slow, lumbering educational systems of the past become less viable (for example, educational degrees are becoming less meaningful in the marketplace).
As the public shifts its choices away from public and higher education, they are less propagandized about the legitimacy of the State.
The major media’s influence is declining even more rapidly. Technology has expanded the number of alternate news sources exponentially. These alternatives compete, innovate, and bring consumers ever more content and choices.
Moreover, the dwindling number of people who do rely on big media tends to be older in age; this is highly significant for the coming decades. It portends a time when there will simply be no major media to promote the legitimacy of the State.
Conclusion
Factually, traditional education and the major media are declining in influence. While they are incentivized to promote the State, their growing alternatives, numbering in the millions, have no such incentive.
In the trend towards decentralization of education and media, the State is losing its major means of propaganda.
The inevitable decline in the State’s perceived legitimacy is underway.
I consider these the key institutions that the State relies on to persuade the majority of State legitimacy. Clearly many other areas are highly influential, such as health care and entertainment. But so long as academia and the media do their part (and remain culturally ubiquitous), the State would persist even if the other areas were neutral regarding the State.
I have not mentioned the banking system. If academia and the media are pillars supporting the foundation of the State, control of banking can be seen as the bedrock that supports the pillars. I will reserve the topic of banking for another White Pill essay.