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The focus on "the state" is mindless as the state is just the label du jour for human organization. If you do not like human organization that's fine, but organization is, and if you are human than the only thing worse than participation is abdication.
Abdication is to be acquiescent, it is a lazy, dishonest, most cowardly form of consent. Textbook slacktivism.
The same people do the same things throughout history no matter what it's called. We had a very weak federal government, no "gestapo", and the scenes were no different.
No state pictured here. Just a labor union mob fighting a private agency (Pinkerton). Funny how many anarchists would cry about Pinkerton just as they cry about the State despite it fitting squarely into the sovereign property rights framework. The same people bemoaning the state today would have created it mere generations ago for exactly the same reasons.
The distinction is around whether the organization uses market means or political (violent) means. You may not care about the distinction but that doesn't make it mindless.
Some people have a strong preference for peaceful relations.
How did the Kerensky preferences work out?
Preferences are nice, but don't mean anything when the choices are bad and worse.
Cherry picked examples aren't substitutes for arguments.
There are plenty of theoretical arguments for a stateless society and all the evidence we have suggests that less state intervention increases prosperity.
Contending with either of those points in a serious manner would constitute an argument.
Thousands of years of emergent behavior isn't a cherry-picked example. Lots of things sound good in theory, but that's no different than the 20 year old college indoctrinated Marxist shouting from their parents safety net.
It's not brave or insightful to say violence is bad, and needn't exist in an ideal world, there's nothing to argue with there... so the squeamish acquiescent abdicator argues only in the abstract with himself, with nothing at stake, an even more feckless reflection of his Marxist analogue.
less state intervention increases prosperity
Obviously, and history shows that the state intervention increases when people make the choice not to choose the bad over the worse. Abdication is still choosing.
It is different from the Marxist because we know the theoretical flaws in that, as well as the empirical case against. That's as poor of an example as you could have come up with and the rest is just substanceless name calling.
So, again, you've presented nothing like an argument.
The flaws in marxism come from reality, not theory, same is true of abdication. Marxists may even have a better empircal case as they actually set up hippy communes that functioned for decades and some still do. Private cities don't exist, because to exist requires a state and force.
I've made the argument that abdication is counter-productive, that history proves this. You on the other hand have zero argument... just feelings, like a Marxist.
They absolutely are borne out in theory. Mises engaged in an extended academic debate on this topic, where he articulated the Socialist Calculation problem. That was long before the abundant failures of communism in practice. Hayek's work on knowledge problems followed onto that.
Your ignorance of the arguments is not the same as their absence.
Abstaining from voting is definitely frowned upon socially. I think it's obvious that people shouldn't vote and often tell them so.
This ^^
Its one thing to deny the state is violent and pointing it at people will result in death. It's quite another to only seem to care when it's under the control by people you don't align with.
I have a problem with the state killing people. I also have a problem when people that desire a massive increase in state power to make things right in the world complaining about it when they aren't in charge.
Covid was not that long ago and I am sure many appalled by ICE were begging government agents to punish those not willing to get stuck with a drug or daring to gather with others voluntarily.
Also, this whole mess is why people talk about states rights. Let each state regulate itself and keep the feds out. But most lefties want the feds forcing states to do things they like.
We can't have it both ways. I'm tired of pointing this out. Objectively looking at conflicts seems too boring for most people.
The state is always ugly and violent. There’s nothing wrong with trying to point it away from yourself.