We already know from the previous chapter what economic and social effects are brought about by allowing a collective entity, to which the law grants the so-called legal personality, to play the role of an enterprise’s owner. It is clear from the considerations that the mere fact of adopting such a solution is sufficient for the described effects to appear, regardless of whether one analyzes – as in this work – an abstract model of the economy of a “stateless state” with a credit money system, or the economy of any real state with a real money system. The model only made it possible to discover the source of those behaviors and processes in the sphere of economy which in the real world acquire a pathological character. This source is the granting of the right to incur obligations to an entity that is a legal fiction, regardless of the specific state we are dealing with. This very fact caused the process of “coming down to earth” to begin with the introduction of legal entities in the form of capital companies into the model, but with the remaining assumptions of the model still being maintained, and in particular – the assumption of the existence of one, abstract legal system on a world scale, called the 'stateless state’ system.
Having known the social and economic effects of the existence of legal persons in the corporate sphere, let us now look at the effects of the existence and operation of another, more important legal person that is the subject of both national law and international law, namely, the effects of the state. These effects will be discussed in confrontation with the objectives that have been posed in previous chapters to the model system of the “stateless state” and the tools that have served this purpose.
It is worth noting that in the model of society called here the “stateless state”, which was described in Chapter 8, there is no entity that is superior over humans. This is because man does not need anyone to rule over him, that is, to order what he is to do at a given moment, or to forbid what he wants to do now. This results from the fact that man himself knows best what makes up the quality of life he wants to ensure for himself. The word “wants” should be emphasized here, because it determines how a person behaves at a given moment. If he is not physically active, it means that at this moment he does not want anything that requires such activity. If, on the other hand, he acts in a certain way, that is, he shows physical activity, it means that in this way he wants to achieve something. Both physical activity and physical inactivity are intentional behaviors, as discussed in Chapter 6. The goal of each of these forms of human behavior is to satisfy that need that will improve a person’s quality of life in the moment.
In addition to a person’s own actions, the quality of a person’s life is also affected by the actions of other people. Those of them that contribute to the quality of his or her life are something good, given for free. On the other hand, those that cause someone else’s quality of life to deteriorate are undesirable. Therefore, no one would want to be affected by such effects.
And precisely because in every human society there are individuals who, intentionally or unintentionally, harm others by their actions, there is a need for a system of law whose sole purpose is to protect every human person from such actions of others as violate his fundamental rights. Recall that these are the right to life, the right to own the results of one’s own efforts, and the right to shape the quality of one’s life according to one’s own preferences in a way that does not violate the analogous rights of others.
Such a system of law is the one described in Chapter 8. The only case in which this system permits coercion is in the enforcement of a conviction for violating the rights of others. Such a system is, of course, an ideal model that has never existed in the real world, and for that reason it can be treated as a kind of utopia. Nevertheless, it is certainly less utopian (if we allow for the gradability of the term) than all those projects that assume that all people, as rational beings, will one day rid themselves of the inclination to do evil to others and submit themselves voluntarily and without reservation to the rational rule of those who know how to govern justly for the common good of all. One such absolutely utopian system is that designed by J.J. Rouseeau in his work “The Social Contract”. The assumptions of this system are critiqued in the second section of the accompanying chapter here. Another equally utopian design is Rawls’ “Theory of Justice”, which will be discussed in Chapter 12.
Knowing what an ideal legal system protecting man as a person might look like, the essence of any real state, regardless of the time and place of its existence and the political system that prevails within it, can be seen and evaluated against its background. The conclusions drawn from such an analysis are not very edifying. Nevertheless, their validity can be questioned only if one manages to prove the premises wrong or the reasoning flawed. I invite you to read this chapter carefully.