For centuries, humanity has built increasingly complex forms of coexistence to avoid violence, organize production and give meaning to life in common.  However, in the midst of the twenty-first century, paradoxically, those who should most understand the nature of the State, professionals trained to interact with it, responsible for certifying economic realities and sustaining public faith, educated citizens, seem to be the ones who most often ignore its essential function.

This ignorance is not harmless: it erodes coexistence, distorts the idea of citizen contribution and weakens the balance of the social pact. Many accounting and tax professionals, with honorable exceptions, have reduced the state to a “receiver of taxes”, an abstract and voracious entity whose only function would be to spend.

This impoverished and superficial image completely ignores the historical foundations that gave rise to the State, the reasons for its existence and the vital role it plays in sustaining social life. We are not dealing with a technical error, but rather with a profound cultural void that limits society’s ability to understand why it must contribute, what it receives in return, and what the consequences are of renouncing the logic of the common good.

The history of mankind did not begin with ministries, decrees or tax regulations. It started with nomadic bands and tribes that barely managed to survive. For tens of thousands of years, authority was not a separate apparatus from the community, but a collective response to the dangers of the environment.

The first form of state, before the word existed, was the need to order coexistence: defend oneself, coordinate efforts, distribute scarce resources, stop internal violence. That was the germ of the social pact, however, today a significant part of professionals and citizens do not know this foundational truth: the state is not an administrative invention, but a historical response to human fragility.

The state was created to allow us to live together without destroying each other. That is its original function and its reason for being, long before taxes appeared as an institutional form of financing.

The evolution of humanity from villages to large empires, and then to modern states, was marked by a constant process of specialization, delegation, and organization of power. Leadership structures were created: chiefs, kings, councils, assemblies, bureaucracies, parliaments, among others, because coexistence could not be sustained informally.

Collective leadership is not a luxury: it is a civilizing necessity. Each historical stage created a type of leadership and authority that responded to the material and cultural conditions of its time.

Currently, that role is fulfilled by the States, with all their legal, political and administrative complexity. However, many professionals who operate daily within this structure are unaware of its origin and function. They speak of the state as if it were an intruder, a competitor, an obstacle, an apparatus alien to society. They forget, or never learned, that the state is the contemporary form of organized group that protects coexistence and that its legitimacy depends on the social satisfaction it manages to produce.

This ignorance has a particularly harmful effect in the tax field. If professionals do not understand the historical origin of the State or its essential function, they will not be able to understand the profound meaning of the citizen’s contribution either.

To believe that the tax is simply “what the state charges to spend” reveals a childish and incomplete conception. Tax contributions are, in reality, the embodiment of the social contract: the collective decision to finance that which guarantees peaceful coexistence.

Without sufficient taxes and without the will to comply, the State weakens; and when the State weakens, coexistence breaks down. It is not necessary to look at extreme examples: it is enough to observe the growing inequality, mass informality, expanding crime or the loss of public trust in so many countries to understand that social contribution is much more than a procedure: it is the oxygen that allows society to breathe.

Here, a concept arises that I would like to clarify from the outset: social satisfaction is the strategic variable in the balance of the social contract. History proves this with convincing force.

When the community feels that the State fulfills its purpose, that it protects, that it redistributes, that it responds to essential needs, that it administers justice, that it guarantees opportunities, the natural disposition to contribute arises.

When society perceives order and legitimacy, the will to comply appears. But when social satisfaction declines and coexistence erode, when citizens see no results and feel that their contributions do not translate into well-being, the will to support the state collapses.

Then evasion, resistance, resentment, distrust and finally the rupture of the social pact arise. This is a simple but profound truth: peaceful coexistence is not an effect of the institutional order; it is the condition that makes it possible. And coexistence is sustained only when there is social satisfaction.

Many of the arguments I present here have already been developed in previous reflections, and I do not wish to repeat them simply for the sake of insistence, but it is necessary to note that the repetition has a purpose: ignorance about the origin of the state and the civilizing role of social contribution is so widespread, so dangerous and harmful to coexistence, that it is not enough to mention it once.

It is necessary to underline it, to return to it, to face it from different angles. A persistent misunderstanding must be fought with persistent clarity. Insistence is not redundancy: it is pedagogy in the face of a structural problem.

In this sense, a contemporary metaphor is useful for understanding the modern state: if society is an operating system, the state is its operating program, its essential software. It regulates interaction, manages conflicts, manages resources and ensures that the pieces do not collide with each other. Without this software, coexistence would become chaotic, inequality would overflow, violence would become widespread and social life would lose stability.

However, a large part of the citizenry, and unfortunately many professionals, are unaware of this architecture. They see the institutions, but do not understand the design; they observe the rules, but do not understand the logic; they pay taxes, but do not grasp their meaning. The most serious issue is that by not understanding the state’s software, they block the updating of their own system of social understanding.

The consequence is obvious: if you don’t understand why the state exists, you will understand even less why taxes exist.

The problem is aggravated when we talk about the poorest and most vulnerable sectors, often outraged or trapped in survival dynamics. Their ignorance is not their personal fault: it is the product of structural inequality, institutional neglect and lack of education. But its effects are equally destructive.

An uninformed majority can vote against its own interests, support leaderships that destroy institutions, reject contributions that are indispensable for its own well-being and, in short, undermine the social pact from within. That is why civic pedagogy, in particular tax pedagogy, is essential.

Without understanding the state, citizens cannot contribute consciously; without contribution, the state cannot sustain coexistence; without coexistence, society as a whole disintegrates.

A central conclusion follows from this: every tax contribution is, ultimately, a bet on the social order. It’s not a payment; it’s a membership decision. It’s not a burden; it’s a collective investment.

Compliance does not depend only on sanctions or coercion, although these are necessary, but on a deeper equation: perceived social satisfaction and trust in coexistence.

This message opens with a deliberate provocation: if the professionals who administer public trust and accounting do not understand the origin of the state or the meaning of social contribution, how can they claim to guide citizens or sustain coexistence?

The answer is obvious: they cannot. The ethical responsibility of the professional is not only technical; it is a civilizing mission. And their ignorance is not just an academic deficit; it is a threat to the balance of the social pact.

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(*) Metaphor that arises from a long intellectual and vital reflection on the origin of human coexistence and the function of the State as the architect of the social order.

Its development has been enriched by the company of ChatGPT, whose dialogue allowed us to clarify ideas, contrast them with political theory, and delve deeper into the evolutionary thread that connects social satisfaction, peaceful coexistence, and the balance of the social contract.

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