If freedom is humans’ ultimate purpose, how could it be that individuals are born into a system in which they willingly submit their freedoms to a state?

For most of history, all humans were nomadic hunter-gatherers. Agricultural communities developed about 10,000 years ago when humans began domesticating plants and animals, enabled by technological revolutions and favorable climate.

Trade ties began increasing, and the first advanced human settlements started to emerge. From there, tribes united to form city states, kingdoms, empires and republics, leading to the growth of governments and stratified societies. Legal texts and constitutions emerged to define the code of conduct between citizens and sovereigns.

Social contract theorists have often sought to explain why rational individuals would voluntarily consent to give up their natural freedoms to obtain the benefits of political order.

It must be that humans perceive order as more favorable to the uncertainty of anarchy. As such, states can be thought of as free men contracting with each other to gain security in return for subjecting themselves to the “tyranny of law and civilization”.

Providing means of subsistence in exchange for taxation is a core feature of all states. States pool resources of a population together, and in turn are supposed to provide security, support development and fund infrastructure and public goods.

Enforcing the right to property is a fundamental aspect of states. Without a state, public resources that are rivalrous and non-excludable can be overexploited and result in a tragedy of the commons.

The need for a state inherently leads to a paradox. Humans enter into social contracts to preserve their freedom. However, any state strong enough to maintain law and order could become too strong over time, thereby posing a threat to individual liberties.

Thus originated the struggle between democracy and autocracy, between centralization and decentralization, with the pendulum often shifting between the two across phases of history, based on a variety of social factors.