>>509450332
I don't think the delegation of certain powers to the state (like criminal justice enforcement) necessarily produces a deficit of the attendant virtues in the population. Ideally the state's wielding of those powers would serve to increase those attendant virtues in the population, not cause them to atrophy. What causes the state's wielding of those powers to atrophy those attendant virtues in the population is when the state wields them unjustly, because people become cynical and apathetic when they try to exhibit those virtues only to have the state contradict them and suppress them by enforcing an unvirtuous social order which they're powerless to oppose. I.e.:
>Why should I bother trying to do the right thing if the state is just going to punish me for it? It's not worth caring about if I'm just going to be overruled and silenced
So the question then becomes "what causes the state to exercise its power unjustly", the ultimate answer to which I would again propose to be capitalism