Why Obey The State?

For our final assessment in People and Politics we were asked to write an essay. I decided to write the essay of why we should obey the state. I chose this particular question as I initially thought that I would try and shake things up a bit, and try and find justifiable reasons as to why someone would indeed obey the state, however I found this harder to achieve than first thought.

The odds were stacked against me. I mean, come on, there are a million and one frickin' reasons as to why one should obey the state. Just think about it, for all the so-called "obeying" we do, we get a lot in return; a strong example of which can be seen in the NHS. If we did not obey the state then the NHS would be non existent. In addition to this, everywhere would be total chaos as there would be no police force in place and thus total anarchy would prevail.

Rousseau made the point that we need a governing body to protect us from humanity’s State of Nature (where we were before law and order) and thus that is why we should obey the state, to protect people’s property and interests, freedom and equality. From reading his work I found it very difficult to justify my own attempt at an argument for not obeying the state.

As much as I tried to start my essay by arguing that we shouldn't obey the state, the fact of the matter is we have to so that the world can function. Below is an extract from my essay as to why we should obey the state:

"However philosophers like to rephrase scenarios, the fact is that we can always find an argument within their own argument as to why one should obey the state, thus giving very good grounds as to why we should indeed obey the state"