States and mutational load

"There is a great deal of ruin in a nation", said Adam Smith. He meant that a great deal of problems can accumulate without bringing down a great nation. This is a bit like genetic load (mutational load), where mutations accumulate in a population or dynasty, having a deleterious but not catastropic effect. Mutations are purged by sexual reproduction and selection, but a base level remains, and accumulates if selection is not strong enough. Eventually it does have a catastrophic effect.

The state can be an anti-evolutionary, entropic device. Its policies can cause a great deal of problems, none of which are individually catastrophic. It can devote a vast amount of energy to sustaining things which cannot sustain themselves. The state acts as life support for anti-evolutionary, unsustainable processes. Problems accumulate, but instead of self-correcting they are kept around by vast injections of free energy in the form of taxpayer cash. The state takes energy from the productive, self-sustaining elements of society, and transfers it to un-self-sustaining, parasitic elements of society. The state is the mechanism by which one part of society parasitises another. In a sense it creates the parasites.

In theory this could continue indefinitely, but in practice the parasitic part increases until the productive part can no longer sustain it. Collapse may occur. If collapse does occur, it will be greater than it would have been without state support. The state delays the collapse and makes it worse when it does happen.

The state is part of the process by which mutational load in the population is increased.