You and I must have completely different views of the social universe. I have never felt threatened by the State, not because I think it is necessarily benign, but simply because it is all-pervasive. I can no more fear the State than I can fear the climate, or tectonic activity. I recognize its effect on me and my dependence on it, but it is not out to get me. It is simply there, and I must adjust to it. I am invisible to it. As long as I don't live in a police state where what I do is open to constant inspection and approval, I no more care about the State than I do about the weather. As long as the State treats everyone the same, it is not really there, as water is unknown to fish.

But the man I work for, and the man I buy everything I need for my day-to-day existence, that is something else. This is the man who decides whether or not I can earn my living, and how. It matters not what I know or can do, how competent or conscientious I am, I depend on his need for me in order to survive. I am replaceable to him, and he knows who I am, and the State works for him, through the police and the courts. THAT is power. Like the State, he is ubiquitous, he is indifferent to my needs but he holds true power over me. But he is not a distant bureaucracy, he is the central fact of my economic (read "social") universe. I never realized how totally he dominated my psychological world until I retired. I still deal with "The Man" as a consumer, but I no longer have to please him as an employee. As for my former relationship, to me, a rise in the cost of food or fuel is psychologically equivalent to a rise in taxes. It is something more I have to pay the Man, which Man is irrelevant. It matters not to me that one goes to the State and the other to the Economy. I cannot really tell them apart emotionally.

I don't really see the government and business as separate entities, certainly not as competing institutions. They are one and the same, and each blends imperceptibly into the other. Their so-called rivalry is really a sham, designed to obscure the fact that they are indeed in cahoots to get me. Together, they make up "society". Businessmen and politicians are indistinguishable to me. And I find them both, as a rule, distasteful.

This is why I find your concepts of "Statist" and "Statism" as inherently absurd.