Explanatory Scope
Here's an old post from the blog archives of Geekery Today; it was written about 8 years ago, in 2016, on the World Wide Web.
… all I’m saying is, the emergence of the modern nation-state is intimately linked with the emergence of the capitalist class and the organized violent defense of their interests,
may well be true; but even if true, I still think it’s a little macro-scale as an answer to a question like, Why do I have to pay $15 to get a mediocre hamburger at the JFK terminal?
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If $12 paid for the environmental externalities it might not be bad thing. $3 might pay for the violence against the defenseless on a micro scale, but it’s obvious the cost wasn’t swayed by the competition for the large class of mediocre Patricians interested in the organized animal trade. The human animals in most airports get ripped off in a ratchet/racket, no matter what they buy… but I still like you Charles.
I agree that people get ripped off at airport restaurants, what I’m saying is that if you want to understand *why* they get ripped off at airport restaurants, a global theory about the emergence of nation-states from capitalist interests is probably less explanatory than just pointing to the TSA cordon. (And if the tacit claim is supposed to be that the TSA cordon is only there because it hikes the cost of the burger at the burger stand, well, I think that’s probably wrong; states have reasons of their own for imposing that kind of full-spectrum security fascism.)