The State of Having Bread (and what an Economist and Biologist would say about it)

        We take a lot of things in our lives for granted.  Take this computer for example, it allows you to access the internet, save and edit documents, watch movies, and everything in between.  Technologically speaking, the human race is so evolved that such a creation could not arise out of the efforts of a single human being; we are in fact to the point where such a creation could only arise out of the collaborative efforts of a team of multidisciplinary workers with a single goal in mind - to develop said computer.

        Now in this day and age, the benefits of working in teams - whether its to develop a laptop or simply to understand some homework - is not news to anyone.  In fact, it seems that, in general, when human beings work together everything is much easier and nicer.  Just stop and think for a second - when was the last time you actually accomplished anything without the help of someone else?  This question is not meant to be sarcastic (I'm not saying that you're not an independent and successful college student, we know you are!), it is meant, rather, to address the fact that in today's society everyone takes advantage of the facilitated exchange of goods and services.  For example, you're a starving college student, right?  Feeling a bit hungry?  What are you going to do?  Well, you have a couple of options, including the option of making the food yourself!  So, if you were to do that, you'd probably go to the store and buy some of the ingredients necessary for your meal, right?  But wait... if you were to do that would you really be making the food all by yourself?  For instance, if you brought some bread to make a sandwich, you would realize that the bread you bought is not a product of your own efforts but that of someone else's.  Somewhere along the line, a worker in some industrial bakery made that bread for you so that it would be readily available to you in the store whenever you needed it.


        So what can we conclude?  First off, there's probably nothing better than commercially produced sliced bread.  And that's probably mostly because its so convenient.  But more importantly, we can conclude that if we didn't have the exchange of goods and services everything in life would be a lot less convenient.  You wouldn't be able to just whip out some cash that you earned working at your job in exchange for some of that tasty bread (I'm sorry if I'm making you hungry).  You probably see where I'm heading with this by now.  We have things so easy because we have a working economic system that allows these exchanges because everyone is willing to work together.  And the only way to accomplish this very efficient level of cooperation is through the establishment of something that facilitates it - ultimately, the establishment of a government.  That's definitely something that we all take for granted, and sometimes we should take a second to realize that not everybody has it that great.  What if, for example, we didn't have a working government?  What if no one was willing to work together, what would things be like then?

        In order to answer this question I'll start off by looking at our less evolved friends, animals and plants!  They obviously don't have any working governments established - I mean there might be things such as wolf packs which exemplify small little groups of animals working together, but of course nothing as high-level or
complex as the governments and economic systems that humans have established.  Furthermore, if you look in nature there are relatively few examples of mutualism between two species.  In other words, there aren't many species that work together for the benefit of both in the way that humans do.  Animals often fight over things that they want.  There's no trading or diplomacy as there is with humans.  All animals care about is something called self-preservation - they care about staying alive.  All their reactions to their surrounding are an attempt to preserve their existence.  This is, in fact, one of the characteristics of living beings - they react to stimuli.  For example, when you laugh at a joke you are reacting to the stimuli of the joke that is its absurdity.  When animals feel threatened they react with the fight-or-flight response in order to self-preserve.  All of these ideas are very comparable to something called the state of nature, a place without a government in which it is essentially every man, animal, or plant for itself.

Calvin and Hobbes in the comic strip "Calvin and Hobbes",
by Bill Watterson, were actually named after theologian
John Calvin and  philosopher Thomas Hobbes.

  The state of nature, which exists before government is formed, is examined by the philosopher Thomas Hobbes.  Before mutual contracts are formed between people in order to form a government, humans experience a state of nature in the same way that animals and plants do.  This state of nature is characterized by a constant state of fear, fear of others and knowing that others fear you.  No one is better off than any other, every human is equal in physical prowess and intelligence because everyone is basically just trying to stay alive.  You fight for what you want.  Remember that sliced bread you wanted earlier?  Now you can't merely buy it, if someone else wanted it too you would likely need to fight them for it.  This is the way in which a lack of government breeds violence and destruction into people.  Unfortunately, this state is not just a philosophical topic of discussion, it is real.  In countries like Somalia and Sudan, which are at the top of the Failed States Index the governments have failed and constant violence and fear ensues.  Whereas the state of nature is the state before the establishment of government, these countries represent a sort of unraveling of said government.  I could not even begin to imagine how hard these people have it.  Overall, I for one have my life endlessly easy in comparison.  In the end, we should realize that the privilege of having a government - the state of having a state - is much better than his mischievous little brother - the state of nature.