Is There a State?

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In our view, a state is an organization in which there is a strong elite which controls what happens more or less and taxes the masses. That's a state. So when income flows from the masses to the central state it could do stuff with this income such as provide law and order,. But other times it's going to provide what economists mean by public goods. And that's actually an important question. Why is it that following the Nolithic Revolution, we see the rise of these complex hierarchies and states?

Since at least Adam Smith, the common wisdom has been that the transition from hunter-gathering to farming allowed the creation of the State. Farming, so went the theory, led to agricultural surplus, and that surplus is the prerequisite for taxation and a State. But economist Omer Moav of the University of Warwick and Reichman University argues that it wasn't farming but the farming of a particular kind of crop (but not others) that led to hierarchy and the State. Moav explains to EconTalk host Russ Roberts storability is the key dimension that allows for taxation and a State. The conversation includes a discussion of why it's important to understand the past and the challenges of confirming or refuting theories about history.