What the state is not

The state is not a corporation, an association or a union, an organism, a political organisation (or institution), a service provider or a public sector. It is not a pawn, a cipher or a network. More precisely put, the state may appear to be any of those things (or all of them together) only because it is first and foremost is an information platform for its citizens. All of the above are appearances originating from its actual nature, which is an information processing infrastructure for its citizens. Once states were formed, as natural individualisation mechanisms as soon as any two humans started using language, all of the above appearances became possible—prior to that, this was not the case. In addition, the state is not the sum of its citizens or of its citizens' information processing. Finally, the state is not an actor or a structure—or, better phrased, it is both an actor and a structure at the same time (On the transactional state, see §09.00.05). Most certainly, and clearly, of course, the state is not (its) government.

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