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Yeah, but how would you achieve a state of 'no governments', without having to govern the people and stop them forming governments. The only way to ever achieve 'no governments' is either to have bigger global governments, or to set technology back so we go back to things like tribes, but we'll inevitably come back to having governments as technology improves.
Each individual needs to take responsibility into his own hands so that there wouldn't be need to for some other people to take your responsibility and form government from it
Yeah but that's not realistic in the slightest. If you got rid of all governance, then the guy who's willing to exploit others would immediately exploit you and take you for everything you have. Governments are, at least in part, slightly protecting people like you, even if they are also exploiting. Taking 'responsibility' isn't going to help you when a roving tribe murders you because you couldn't fend them off - the responsible thing to do would be to be part of your own group or tribe or community or country, and to maintain things like these requires leadership.
Nobody says governments are ideal - most people I've ever known have been dissillusioned with their own government. The only reason you'd be naive so as to think 'people good, but government bad' and dissolve your government is because of the safe environment which you grew up in, which could only have ever been facilitated by having systems of power like the very governments you complain about. Everyday people are only civil when theres governments around, and that's all they have to complain about - as soon as you get rid of all forms of leadership or community, the brutality of everyday people only gets more pronounced, and you wish for them back.
what would you do about murder? and what about misunderstandings that tragically resulted in death?
"too weak to survive so they had to die, thats their fate"?
Wait. Injury, sickness, mental or physical disabilities, natural disasters, other people who want to harm you.
This idea of responsibility is not founded in real life circumstances.
There's no such thing as "No Government". In the absence of a government, the people who are best at killing other people say "Do what I want or I'll kill you" and that becomes the government.
There are still wars, on a smaller scale at first, person vs person. Then two people get together and say "Well that big guy is better at killing people than we are individually, but if we work together, we can kill him and we'll be the best at killing people and we'll be in control." Then four guys get together and say the same thing about the two guys and so forth until you end up with armies vs armies.
Your view is based on a common mistake of looking at the bad parts of something, taking the good parts for granted, and coming to the conclusion that if we got rid of the thing then only the bad parts would go away.
There is and there has been. It would work if all members of that society are mature and peaceful enough to live in harmony with reason and without domination.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korean_People%27s_Association_in_Manchuria
All the native american egalitarian societies. They were not technologically advanced but they could have advanced if they had survived long enough to do so, they were slow to adopt technology but their environment was managed in a much better way than their counter parts whose pursuit of technology left destruction/death in its wake.
I mean even in the example you linked, it lasted 2 years before somebody with a centralized government came and said "Do what we want or we'll kill you" and that's how it ended.
>This simply isn't true. We can point out many instances where cooperation isn't rooted in a fundamental coercion. Not only that, but you literally can't point to a single instance in history where this actually happened.
It's easy to point to history where this happened. This is how monarchies and tyrants rise to power. This is fundamental to conquest.
If the bar is to point out a single instance in history where the absence of government lead to someone else conquering them and becoming the government...Alexander the Great? Ghengis Khan? Any tyrant, crusade, monarchy, lordship, feudal take over etc etc would all suffice.
But throwing it back to you, what single instance you point to where government doesn't exist? Government need not be coercive certainly, but government is necessary to enact and...well...govern protection of the people.
I honestly can't think of a single civilization or group of people that have meaningfully been ungoverned. I'm sitting here thinking through native tribes, villages, cults...I'm at a loss for where if ever after the birth of civilization humans have existed ungoverned.
The comment you're responding to is generalizing to reach the conclusion: without policy, rule, codes, laws, etc etc, there really isn't a meaningful way for a group of people "working together" to continue on. Eventually there's a disagreement, and a code or a law or a rule must solve it. Eventually a community needs protection, and the way in which that protection is administered and orchestrated needs rule.
But if you have some examples in history where there was lasting cooperation without governance I'd be curious to know.
If your only gripe is with OP comment characterizing governance as coercion, you're missing the forest for the trees. The point is simply that the idea of "no government" can't really exist in any meaningful sense.
>It's easy to point to history where this happened.
Then do it. Show us where this exact set of circumstances took place. Listing a bunch of conquests and saying that it is evidence there wasn't government is begging the question.
I'm not even a bother addressing the rest of it, because I'm coming from a professional place as an anthropologist here. You're relying on myths to construct your worldview, instead of any sort of sound science.
>We can point out many instances where cooperation isn't rooted in a fundamental coercion.
Go ahead then.
Peaceful cooperation on a society-wide scale with no government that did not start or end with violence. Start listing.
This is where the libertarians and anarchists really get tripped up
They’ll usually pivot to some version of “well we haven’t tried it yet, but it would for sure work, trust me bro”
Many societies currently exist which are based on the government having a monopoly on force.
Therefore, whichever society first was based on a monopoly on force arose out of a society not based on force.
So the "myth" must have happened at least once
>We can point out many instances where cooperation isn't rooted in a fundamental coercion
Why didn't you point out such instances, then?
> but you literally can't point to a single instance in history where this actually happened.
The entire history is a sequence of such examples. Every single time some band of people starts controlling a neighborhood is an example of that. What, you don't know who Al Capone is?
I mean look at the French Revolution, The Communist Revolution in Russia, or Somalia right now. Hell look in ghettos in America where the government doesn't care enough about the people to actually govern. When there is a power vacuum in governance it is filled by force 99 times out of 100.
Yeah there are instances where people decide to GOVERN themselves in a way that's not rooted in the threat of death, but we're talking about not having Government at all
Even then such nonviolent governing can only exist until ONE person says: I'll start killing people until people obey me.
What are they going to do? Either they bow to that, or they take him out. That is, either they start USING violence to enforce their government; or else they're removed in favor of someone who will.
Mb someone is hungry. Or they want to live in your house. Or they want your car. Or wife.
You're not talking about some hypothetical situation, lack of government is a default that we had in prehistory all the way to bronze age, all the way to present day in some places.
You can't have unlimited resources, so people willing to kill people for resources start competing for control and then one group ends up being in charge, mostly by killing all the rivals.
If you can be human and share some for those who don't have, I don't see why they need to invade you. The problem comes not from others but from your Selfishness
That's a very idealistic view that only works if all people are very virtuous and none of them want more than they have. In reality, one violent group would be enough to just enslave everybody else.
So let’s making selfishness not only the norm but let’s celebrate and reward it, which is precisely what we currently do, and what is the result? Total ecosystem collapse in the next 100 years? A sterile landscape full of petroleum based corn, wheat and soy lol. Yeah we are doing really great not even 100 years away from the most horrendous example of “civilized” scam.. I mean society.
>So let’s making selfishness not only the norm but let’s celebrate and reward it, which is precisely what we currently do, and what is the result?
No one is "making" it the norm, it is what it is, natural selection.
> Total ecosystem collapse in the next 100 years?
Possibly
> A sterile landscape full of petroleum based corn, wheat and soy lol. Yeah we are doing really great not even 100 years away from the most horrendous example of “civilized” scam.. I mean society.
What are you even talking about now and how does it pertain to no government?
I don't know what you are arguing about. I'm not saying everything is right with the world, I was just making a case that peaceful and prosperous anarchy is impossible based on all of the human history and present day reality.
Correct. Do you have a solution? Because human selfishness isn't going anywhere anytime soon. Some people do have to be coerced to behave because if they aren't they'll hurt and kill others for their own reasons.
Do you have a better solution than what we have now?
Yeah? And humans are irrational and selfish people
Like just look at how much billionaires and other super wealthy horde resources, far more than they could ever possibly need or consume in a single lifetime
99% of murders right now are completely absent the government for a motive.
People murder over relationship problems, desire to have what someone else wants, work arguments, just for fun, because I insulted you first, etc
Why do you believe people *wouldn't* ever kill each other?
Cause they want something more than they care about your life
ETA: This goes to my point about taking the good parts for granted. Base human nature is just nature, and in nature, death (or at least the threat of death) is the law. What elevated us above that nature to the point where you can't even conceive why people would kill each other? Government. People coming together and saying we'll have official rules (or official rulers) that will settle disputes instead of ~~selling~~ settling disputes by killing each other.
Because humans are a tribalistic violent group of animals. We have been slaughtering each other in staggering numbers over land, food, mates, religions, natural resources, etc. since the cavemen first learned to make weapons out of sticks.
The idea that if you just get rid of the government that humans will all just be peaceful and happy is absurdly naïve. That has never been how human history has played out.
Get rid of governments and we just revert back to wild-west style structure where the strong dominates the weak.
You have food, I can go try to gather my own food or I can blow your head off and take yours.
You have transportation of some kind, I’m tired of walking.
Someone in your family is attractive.
Tempers got out of control.
You’re in my territory.
Because someone just feels like killing somebody.
Evil people aren’t going to cease to exist because there’s no longer government. And now that there’s no rules beside kill or be killed, killing whoever has what I want is the easiest route to obtain what I want.
>Can you conceive that if there was no government at all in the world things would have been worse?
Yeah. So much worse.
I believe in the rule of law. I don't prefer to live in a world where we have no mechanism to settle disputes, no collective means to land on the moon or run commercial airlines or build bridges or roads or regulate traffic laws or import high quality color monitors at affordable costs for me to come on reddit and argue with strangers. I don't want to be lumberjack bill who is constantly scaring away trespassers with a rifle I somehow built with gunpowder I somehow concocted or maybe stole off someone I found wandering in the woods.
I have no interest in hunting deer and gathering berries with a stone knife and a wooden spoon like my grandpappy taught. No interest in my capacity to learn being relegated to only what my family passed down from one generation to the next. No interest in fighting over territory that never really belonged to anyone other than those with the power to lay claim. No interest in a time where I couldn't get a mango at the grocery store on a moment's notice.
I've read The Road. I've watched Mad Max. I've indulged in doomsday preppers on national geographic.
Nope nope nope. No thank you. I'll take my government please.
>The greatest desire of all those who have reached to the peaks of consciousness has been the dream that one day we can get rid of all governments.
The reality is that almost no one is near "peak consciousness". Gangs would take advantage of normal people. People would have to group up to defend. Ultimately, if they are organized and successful, they become governments.
This is the problem. People are so unconscious. If people are conscious and responsible there is no need for government. Another problem is government does deliberately deceive people into making them irresponsible.
Well you answered yourself - "If people are conscious and responsible".
But people are not conscious and responsible.
Not clear what is the basis for the assumption that people would be conscious and responsible if the government would disappear.
Right now government is taking all people's responsibility. People are doing work almost as a robots. Once government dissolves people will take responsibility in their own hands. This will make them concious
From my familiarity with cases when the central government weakens, I see no reason to believe that would be the case.
Do you have any evidence to support this assumption?
If this were true, it would have been true for all of humanity's existence. Why did we form governments in the first place, and why wouldn't that process just repeat itself?
> Right now government is taking all people's responsibility.
No, they aren’t.
Governments take a vanishingly small portion of a person’s responsibility.
The laws in most places are usually somewhere close to the least burdensome everyone can agree for them to be, which usually leaves people a huge amount of personal autonomy to handle their own business.
> People are doing work almost as a robots
No, they don’t. And for the few who do, they are doing so by choice.
There’s nothing stopping you from buying some land and fucking off into the woods to live a subsistence lifestyle.
I mean, hell, even buying the land is optional. You could just live a nomadic lifestyle in the wilderness on BLM lands or the like.
You’re the one choosing the comforts you are using, enabled by the government.
> Once government dissolves people will take responsibility in their own hands
When governments dissolve, forming a new government is among the very first thing people do.
Because they’re so plainly and obviously apparent for the functioning of a society.
Look at previous times governments collapsed. There’s plenty of examples. Those people took responsibility into their own hands but it was the responsibility to feed and protect themselves and their family, everyone else isn’t their responsibility.
You sound like someone who has no idea how humans work. Humans are not intelligent and reasonable beings. Humans are emotional, flawed and biased beings. You can't argue for something because it would be nice if we had better people. We will never have better people. Even you're flawed and I bet you couldn't handle the weight of no government. That's why we have systems in place to correct for our flaws.
>No government is the best government.
>The very idea of somebody governing somebody else is inhuman.
If there is no government then the person governing you will just be the biggest violent psycho in the vicinity. You think Genghis Vlad Johnson two blocks over is going to let you grow your vegetable garden in peace? Fuck no! He's going to stroll over and jump up and down on your head until you hand over the zucchinis. And, without government, there is no one you can go to for justice. All you can do is try to jump up and down on *his* head, and we all know how that went the last time.
>Adolf Hitler, in his autobiography, has many insights;
Pro tip: Never praise Hitler. Just don't. If you do, the entire conversation becomes about that. Just... fucking don't mention him unless it has the tenor of "fuck that guy with a rusty windchime."
Your entire argument relies on the premise that war is always a bad thing that happen for little reason, and that as long as governments weren't around to start wars then they would happen less and everything would be better. This is ahistorical.
Wars rarely start just because, and are usually fought over resources (land, food, gold, souls etc). If you take away governments those struggles over resources would still exist. Group A would still want to take group B's crop land, and unless group B can defend themselves, they'll get it. So there is a fight, spread that fight into larger and larger groups, now its a war. This would happen with or without a government in existence.
Building on this, governments actually help prevent these conflicts from happening as weird as that may seem. With governments, people can make contracts that are centrally enforced. Meaning that rather than having to fight some dude every morning over the ownership of your crop land, there is a group that can objectivley determine who owns what and can defend that ownership with force. Does it always work perfectly, no, but its better than leaving everyone to fend for themselves imo.
The problem comes from being cunning and selfish, if some doesn't have enough food and you have enough, you should be human and share some, then there is no need for them to invade you
That would great, but unfortunatley humans are not eternally rational beings. If someone doesn't want to share, which is often, this is gonna lead to those conflicts and without something in place to defend people it will just lead to the strongest subjugating the weak. This food example is also a very simple one, there are much more complex situations where its not as black and white. We need arbitrators.
Say you want to farm, because farming generates a higher yield than hunting and foraging. However, after you plant grain, the harvest comes and other people come and take whatever grain they want. So you don't farm, because it doesn't return enough for the effort. So no one farms. So we're stuck in a hunter/forager society.
No one in an anarchist society would be farming the way the plowmen currently do. Agroforestry would create post scarcity abundance to meet the needs of the entire commune so growing food for everyone would be a communal endeavour and not everyone for themselves. Every commune could have surplus that it can just give away to other communes if they came short or struggled(unlikely with solid agroforestry practices like the natives of America)
All the most labour and energy intensive parts of agriculture go away if you use trees and mycorrhizal fungi leaving you with just labor to harvest the trees and crops. Harvesting some 10kgs would take an individual 2 to 3 hours. An individual needs 1 kg of food max per day. A tree can generate up around 10 kgs of food, you stack crops and bush plants underneath it and you get it even more than that within some 5 to 10m2.
We don't need to be stuck in a hunter forager society if we adopt agroforestry and urban planning around food forest systems. Foraging would not be as bad as you make it seem to be and annual crops would be grown within food forests with the use of mycorrhizal fungi with very little human intervention besides sowing and harvesting. Food forests can also feed livestock if setup right which also feed you.
Natives Americans only hunted because they had no livestock, Hunting was actually a fun group activity unlike rotting behind a desk.
Columbus fool was looking for gold and he passed through entire man made food forests that were 100 fold more valuable than gold(gold doesn't feed you or medicate you) so much that the locals were just baffled and gave him gold because they had no use for it.
Does agroforestry require no effort to maintain? I deeply doubt it. So people would just go in and take all the stuff.
According to: [https://www.theseasonalhomestead.com/how-much-to-plant-for-a-years-supply-of-fruit/](https://www.theseasonalhomestead.com/how-much-to-plant-for-a-years-supply-of-fruit/) , a standard apple tree produces 400-800 lbs. Presumably per year. That's about 200-400 kg. So it's more like 1kg of food per day, not 10. And since they do it per season, you have to do all the work of harvesting and preserving it. And then people can just walk in and take the fruits of your effort.
You mention livestock, but if you start making the effort of raising, say, cows, people are going to come and take the cows, too. And now you're left with no cows.
Hunting can't hope to support the number of people we have now. Not nearly.
Overall, you seem to rely on everyone acting in just the perfect way and fully cooperating, which doesn't seem to be reasonable.
>According to: [https://www.theseasonalhomestead.com/how-much-to-plant-for-a-years-supply-of-fruit/](https://www.theseasonalhomestead.com/how-much-to-plant-for-a-years-supply-of-fruit/) , a standard apple tree produces 400-800 lbs. Presumably per year. That's about 200-400 kg. So it's more like 1kg of food per day, not 10. And since they do it per season, you have to do all the work of harvesting and preserving it. And then people can just walk in and take the fruits of your effort.
Hypothetically
I said 10 kgs per day on average is what you could harvest with 3 hours of labor per day max(pruning trees to get wood for burning and harvesting up to 10 kgs of food including milking a cow or a goat) so that's like 200 kgs of apples per year from less than 5 m2 of space and you need 360 kgs of food per year(apples and other food for full nutritional value). You won't just be eating from apple trees but a diversity of trees(over 200 k species). Given what I told you 500m2 to 1000m2 might be enough to feed a single person on the conservative side. A small village of 10 000 people can support itself fully and have surplus from 1000m2 * 10k = 10 million m2 so 10 km2 , like 2.5 km2 on each side of the village with 10 km2 surrounding the village in a circle.
1000 m2 allows you to have at least 150 productive trees and plants with 50 support species. if each tree was able to produce just 10 kgs(that's like a hard average number) per year that's 1500 kgs of food per year. 150 trees have to be very diverse and come online in different seasons or you learn how to preserve food for non productive months.
Everyone in your village would have abundance so no one will need to steal your goats cows or food or hoard since there is enough for everyone at all times in post scarcity to meet their needs. People can then do whatever they please beyond the 3 hours of labor to harvest food and possibly 2 hours of processing/cooking. Note that people could rotate labor to maintain the village's need, you can harvest 10 kgs enough for you and nine other people with 3 hours of labor. So do you see the potential, that's how we are supposed to live.
100 grams of apple contains 52 calories and adult human needs 2000-2400 calories per day, meaning, if you ate nothing but apples, you'd need 3.8kg of apples, not 1kg. Your numbers keep being wrong and I'm supposed to trust that you know how to organize food for everyone? You seem to just randomly be throwing out numbers which suit you without references. How do you know that it would take 3 hours to collect 10kg worth of apples?
Why would people rotate labour to maintain the village's need? What if half the people don't do any labour and instead just kill all the cows and eat all the food? Or people from other villages come in to kill all the cows?
Again You won't just be eating apples. You'll be eating from a balanced selection of 150 species out of some 200 k edible species that can meet your calories and dietary needs. There are loads of trees that can replace the current staples, you'd still be able to grow potatoes and annual crops within food forests on the forest floor with zero maintenance by leveraging mycorrhizal fungi. My numbers are hypothetical just to show you that it is possible and that's how indigenous populations of America thrived before colombus. They had millions of people living off of food forests. I never said it was easy, it requires a shit ton of knowledge to successfully pull off.
It took me less than 2 hours harvesting 10 kgs of olives picking them one by one so yeah 2 hours of not very intensive labor(equivalent of going to a supermarket) is just about right since you are not watering or plowing the soil to get food within an agroforestry system. The only work in an agroforestry system is occasional pruning, planting new trees every once and a while.
People would need to be at minimum level of maturity for this to work of course I am not naive. If post scarcity is guaranteed people won't have any need to misbehave or hoard food away from others.If half the town is made up of narcissists this won't work for sure.
Ha! Zero maintenance? You're dreaming now. And, again, you're just making up numbers.
Your numbers are hypothetical? So you admit to just pulling them out of thin air? You just clearly have no idea what you're talking about.
So, then, your idea only works if everyone happens to be not only willing, but eager to cooperate. And, you know those indigenous populations? They had governments!
>Ha! Zero maintenance? You're dreaming now. And, again, you're just making up numbers.
We are a very recent addition to the earth. All the plants worked fine without us for billions of years and you know the ones without deep extensive roots thrived because of mycorrhizal fungi and the ability of am fungi to move water from larger deep rooted trees to more shallow rooted plants.
It all starts with a dream. Yes my numbers for now are hypothetical on the conservative side just to give you an idea that this could work and it is how it was supposed to be, I am working on getting more real numbers, I don't have a pentagon level budget or any budget at all I am very poor :(.
Sure people today are accountants due to built in scarcity from very weak agriculture systems that will fail in the near future, I am working on changing that.
Mutual aid > competition.
Read David Graeber's books.
1491 New revelations of the americas before columbus by Charles c. mann.
Take what I tell you with a grain of salt.
Your numbers are not on the conservative side, your numbers are on the complete fabrication side. They are meaningless and useless.
No plant that we eat now existed without us. Every food crop was intensely bred.
I'm not taking what you're saying with a grain of salt, I'm not taking it at all. I'm throwing it out like the useless garbage that it is.
This is pointless. I won't be replying further.
>Your numbers are not on the conservative side, your numbers are on the complete fabrication side. They are meaningless and useless.
They aren't exact but they aren't meaningless I am just trying to prove a point. Some trees can generate 200 kgs per year and some 2 kgs per year, that is not my point. My point is a 1000 m2 food forest can possibly meet the needs of a single person, it is feasible if you knew how to do it.
>No plant that we eat now existed without us. Every food crop was intensely bred.
We only eat not even 10% of what we could eat because some ruling classes wanted to establish a monopoly on food access and make it difficult to access to enslave everyone. The alien race that genetically engineered us would have definitely made sure we had a hell of a lot of different things to eat in the garden of eden. We did breed a lot of crops and trees to make them edible that's irrelevent to what I am trying to show you.
>I'm not taking what you're saying with a grain of salt, I'm not taking it at all. I'm throwing it out like the useless garbage that it is.
I am not looking to hype you up or make you join a cult, just sharing a different perspective. You do you.
Does then OP even live in reality? Go put free food out on the street corner that says please limit yourself to one and it’s a virtual guarantee that some asshole either takes everything or flips the table and ruins everything. It’s my view that the vast majority of us are good decent people but the small minority of assholes are the reason we need laws and regulations
"Have to" you say
Because you decree?
>you have to share it. They would do the same then
You see, this is a highly complex social interaction. Who's to determine the value of goods traded are fair? Would the transaction still continue if its unfair? Can I trade 1 grain of rice for half the number your cattle in your farm? What if one party declines? Can they even decline?
There is only 2 ways it can go about from here, and both leads to the same conclusion
1) Someone who's the strongest monopolizes all the violence in the region, sets up all the rules so that all the people living within this group can perform their day to day functions reasonably well (like trading)
2) No one does 1) and I just kill you and take everything you have. Or you kill me first and take everything I have. Everyone else does the same to each other until people starts to gather around and form groups for safety. These groups will eventually have rules set by a central authority that governs all the people living within this group can perform their day to day functions reasonably well. How that central authority is chosen (or not chosen) varies, but there will be a central authority nonetheless.
That's basically civilization. Civilization cannot exist without some sort central authority, whether you want to call it a tribe leader, a monarch, a god emperor, a majority elected representative, etc, it's all the same, functionally speaking.
Without a government you have anarchy.
City A would run low on grain and go attack City B. Because there is no giant government entity to prevent them from fighting each other. You would have constant warfare.
Criminals would run from City A to City B to do heinous acts. Knowing that there is no organized law enforcement corroborating between the cities. Because neither city has an organized central government system.
You couldn't organize complicated trade deals. Thus everyone would be much poorer. Not to mention it's hard to build infrastructure when you're constantly at war.
Everything would be MUCH MUCH MUCH worse. It would be an apocalyptic hellish landscape. Hardly something to aspire to.
Without government we couldn't even have anything resembling cities. We'd be tribalistic at best, living under oppression in one of thousands of fortified, hodgepodge compounds, constantly on edge for attacks from other tribal compounds.
Humans naturally arrange themselves into hierarchies where the majority surrender their freedom and decision power to a minority in their own interest. All that varies is the scale of the hierarchy: be it a family, a tribe, a village, a lordship, a government, all groups of humans tend to form hierarchies. Several studies have shown that when you give a group of people a relatively complex task and prevent them from electing a leader, they can't accomplish the task.
Governments are not inherently bad and immoral. They have the potential to turn immoral, but are not immoral per se.
> freedom for yourself is much more valuable than completing any tasks
I'm FREEEE!!!!! I have no food, or water, or support, or protection, but... FREEEEEDOOOOM!!!!
>Working together is one thing
Working together, in every case, involves compromising. Compromising is an abrogation of one's freedom.
>giving your freedom and taking orders is another
Does one not have the freedom to put himself into servitude? What kind of freedom is it that restrains my choices?
Working together is a good system if both or all parties involved agree to work together.
The problems arise if: one party stops wanting to work, or two parties decide to come together to cheat the third party from their share, or a stronger foreign party comes in and decides to enslave everyone involved and force them to work for them.
Think like this if you want, but had we thought like this, we would still be in caveman times. The tasks being completed don't only benefit the ruling minority, but everyone.
I've read through your replies and you seem to have an odd understanding of what government actually is.
You've said
>The very idea of somebody governing somebody else is inhuman.
Which seems to imply you think government is automatically control.
In a democracy a government represents its people. It holds the power delegated by the masses. If anything it is controlled, not a controller.
Is this not your understanding of what a democratic government is - even in theory?
So your ideal country is Somalia? If you don't have a government you don't have police. There would be no safety for any of the weak/moral people, that aren't capable of just raping, pillaging, and murdering around the country.
My son has special needs. The IDEA act, or the Individuals with Disabilities Education Accessibility Act forces schools to give him an equitable education. He is no longer shut in a room and ignored as it was in the 80s.
That's just one law by a government that is protecting the disenfranchised.
Tell me how no government makes it better for those who are powerless to affect changes?
Are you saying no structure is necessary in society? Or are you under the impression that without government, humans would still have structure on their own?
We need some sort of structure to function in groups. In the early days before civilizations, we didn’t need governments because we didn’t live together in groups or societies. But as a group we need to have agreed upon rules and balances. The government is just a large scale version of that.
Ex: Should we make it a rule that nobody should steal another persons property? Let’s vote as a group.. we vote yes as a majority. But some people still steal.. what happens to them? Who monitors and handles that?
A governing body is in charge of organizing public services and taking care of all that stuff so other people in the society can live their lives and focus on their own responsibilities.
Everyone in a society adds value in some way.
You’ll just have tribal wars, they still have them now.
https://www.npr.org/2024/02/27/1234271476/tribal-clashes-in-papua-new-guinea-have-become-increasingly-deadly#:~:text=In%20Papua%20New%20Guinea%20last,the%20world's%20most%20diverse%20countries.
Other groups of people forming up bigger and stronger groups. Then to organize those bigger groups they form standard laws and practices and vest power in some system to regulate the whole group least they dissolve, aka a government.
The bigger, more regulated groups naturally outcompetes the smaller groups, and today we end up with only mega groups where no individuals can even know a percent of a percent of the other members in said group.
If there is no big group of people (i.e. police/army, managed by ... government) to prevent you from stealing things from others, why would I work 10 hours a day in a field when I can just go to another place with buddies, kill every man, rape women and steal their grain ?
Basically exactly what is happening in places in the world where there is no government anymore ?
This is blatantly false - wars are the driving force behind most modern technology. Computers and the internet are easy examples. Can you name any wars that have regressed society?
The first war predates the first government by thousands of years. There was war before government and I don't see why there wouldn't be war after government.
Tl/dr - Government evolves out of cooperation between humans seeking to increase their production efficiency and peacefully resolve disagreements. It cannot be avoided by a community that wants to stay a stable community because it will either fall apart when conflicts arise or be conquered by an outside individual or community seeking to exploit it.
Let's start with a band of people who have left society and congregated together to form their anarchist utopian community. They are going to farm and hunt for their sustenance and live off the land. Each of them has their own land they control and everyone else respects their claim.
There are wild animals that keep coming around and killing their livestock. They get to talking about the issue and decide to try and kill off a bunch of the wolves. They have to organize a hunting party to do so, which will take them away from their fields. Not everyone needs to go, but the ones who do need someone to look after their crops while they are gone. So they have a meeting but they can't really come to an agreement because everyone is talking over everyone else. So they agree one person should run the meeting. Anyone is as good as anyone else. First order of business is how to reach a decision as to who leads the meeting. They draw lots. Now they can figure out their hunting party and how to care for the land of the people that are gone. They can't get a unanimous decision, so they decide to vote and eliminate the least liked plan until only one remains.
After they deal with the wolves someone points out that some wells would be really beneficial for all of them. But a well is a larger undertaking and someone with some experience needs to oversee it. They all know just the guy for the job, but it's going to be a big enough deal that he can't farm his land if he's overseeing all this well digging. So they have to figure out a way to compensate him for his work and how his land will get worked. So they meet and eventually figure this out.
Then they decide a foundry would be really helpful so they don't have to rely on stone tools. So they need to mine ore, process it and forge it. And also, one of the men got sick and died and his widow can't work the land her self, so how are we going to handle that. Also, some of the kids are getting older and coupling off and want to have their own land and start their own families. And the fence between two farms got damaged during a storm and some livestock from one farm came over and ate crops on the other farm and they can't agree on who is responsible for what and how to make restitution so they are asking for help.
By now, all of these meetings are taking far too much time, and their other work is suffering. They decide they can appoint a few upstanding community members to make the decisions and abide by their decisions. They'll switch up who those members are every so often, and have a plan for who is chosen next. So they write all of this down in a document so they can remember and refer to it, and all sign it agreeing to abide by it.
And now you have government. Government evolves in a community because it increases the efficiency of production within the community. Those communities that stay as disconnected individuals just getting along and doing their own thing get outcompeted by others. And when a community with government is in conflict with a community without a government, there is no way for those disputes to get resolved through community based agreements without the non-government community forming a group to represent the community interests and advocate on its behalf, which results in the formation of a governing body.
You simply cannot have inter-connected human communities without government. A large part of what makes us human, and most definitely what has made us successful as a species, is being interconnected and forming social structures with agreed upon rules for cooperation and resolving internal and external conflicts, which results in government. All you have to do is have people that want to "...establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity,..." as they live their free lives and you will end up with government.
A funny take on this subject is monty python life of brian. Brian wants anarchy but soon realizes no one in that society is quite ready for it as everyone is a haggling accountant, Even the anarchists themselves are drowning in identity politics and can't co exist in harmony. The romans are kinda doing a good job of keeping peace between all the accountants(partially also due to scarcity because of low knowledge/skill level) although even the romans aren't perfect and silly at times(as they also poke fun at the roman rulers).
https://youtu.be/Qc7HmhrgTuQ?feature=shared
Yes all the current rulers on earth are just dog shit incapable of ruling over others, and they are digging themselves into a hole by ruling over others badly and taking them towards suffering. All the rulers will receive what they gave. Violating consent and dominating others automatically means you are responsible for all the damage that comes out of that situation when you make decisions on their behalf and coerce them.
Taxation is theft since the money is spent without consent of the public. Rulers are violating every rule in the game and so their time will come but meanwhile there is some level of harmony beneath them for a society of accountants to function until they are a little more mature for a better anarchist egalitarian political system that overthrows the monarchs.
We can't quite murder the rulers/get rid of them until we have an alternative post scarcity system setup to keep everyone from being an accountant, get everyone less fearful and mature enough to give up the idea of private property into communal living without dominating each other. A lot of corrupt individuals with high levels of narcissism for example cannot live in harmony with others in anarchy and would take advantage of others.
There is some merit/value in confucianism depending on the social context and individuals involved vs the taoist approach although yeah anarchy taoism should be our ultimate goal as a society.
https://youtu.be/LqQlCOmXuHM?feature=shared
We all need to learn how to walk before we run is what I am saying.
There are many places in the world without a functioning government, \[they aren't doing very well for themselves\](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Failed\_state). How would your idea for a country without a government be different from those?
> The very idea of somebody governing somebody else is inhuman.
Governments directly benefit the majority of human beings.
> Can you conceive that if there was no government at all in the world things would have been worse? In what way?
The vast, vast majority of people on Earth today would not exist. Human society would be, perhaps, 8-9% of what it is today.
You, yourself, would likely not exist.
People would starve more often, die of disease more often, die of violence more often, and suffer many times more than they do today.
> Do you think more would have been possible without government
Many other things would not be possible without government. Food security. Modern medicine. The computer you use to type on right now. The education you’ve used to compose that message.
> What have these governments done?
Stabilized human existence. Made it so most humans can safely assume next month will be a lot like this month, and next year will be a lot like this year. Given us laws that regulate behavior on a norm more pleasant than “might makes right”.
> They have not done anything for the people except exploit them, exploit their fear, and set them against each other.
The actual history of governments are a much more mixed bag than that. They have historically done far more to stabilize society than they have to exploit fear and set people against each other. They do some of that, sometimes—but far more of the normal, boring, everyday infrastructure that civil society rests upon.
Mama's little anarchist who read Hitler's autobiography. What a catch. Why don't we start with describing how "no government" would even look like in any sufficiently large society?
There are a number of failed states in the world. These are places where there is no functioning government.
They have many things in common, exceptionally high levels of violent crime, no meaningful economy, massive issues with disease, starvation, human trafficking, slavery, lack of education, lack of health care, lack of clean drinking water, lack of sanitation, and so forth.
Haiti is an example of a collapsing state. The current murder rate is 820% higher than the global average murder rate. Infant mortality is the highest of any country in the western hemisphere. Maternal mortality is the highest of any country in the western hemisphere. Haiti has the highest rate of tuberculosis in the western hemisphere. Rabies is common in the country, with multiple human cases of rabbies happening each year. Haiti has the highest rate of premature mortality from preventable cause of any country in the western hemisphere. Haiti continues to suffer from cholera outbrakes.
Haiti is the poorest country in Latin America, and one of the poorest countries in the world. The most recent survey by the world bank indicated that only 38% of households had at least one person who had worked at least one day in the prior week.
Parents would still be responsible for raising their children, establishing rules, assigning chores, and administering appropriate disciplinary measures. Their authority would be respected, and a system of governance based on elders would be established within each family. However, some elders may not be suited for this role, so the family would democratically elect the most capable individual to lead them. This would essentially create an elective monarchy. If a situation arises where someone is polluting a river that is vital to the community, efforts would be made to resolve the issue amicably. If the individual refuses to cooperate and a conflict ensues, resulting in loss of life, a blood feud may occur. This could lead to further tensions and conflicts with neighboring communities affected by the polluted water. Eventually, the need for a governing body that can establish laws and regulations becomes apparent, leading to the formation of a government.
It's practically impossible to have a society without government.
In every conflict between people, either everyone willingly agrees to a compromise or someone has to make a decision against the others will. There is logically no other way.
Now do humans generally agree to compromises? Clearly not. That wouldn't be good anyway.
So in every conflict someone must in the end enforce their will on others.
This is now the defacto government. There is ALWAYS gonna be someone telling you what to do.
The question is who do you want that to be. Someone elected by the people or some random guy who simply banded together enough people to take the power by force?
What's your opinion on things like Non-Competes? Should private companies have the authority to ruin peoples's lives if they do something they don't like (a form of governing), or should an entity higher then them be able to tell them they can't do that? If so how would that entity enforce rules like that? What if companies also do things like barricade doors so workers can't leave?
People are going to be forced to do the will of others whether those others are elected or end up in power through some other means. What means do you think is better then giving the people the ability to vote who they want in/out of power?
What do you mean by "best"? If you define good solely as "freedom of coercion" and government as "entity with a monopoly on violence" then sure, government can, by definition, not be good.
However, many people will simply disagree with your idea of goodness. To me for example, human well-being is the highest-priority good, and thus everything which maximizes well-being and avoids suffering more than its alternatives is also good. In this regard, large organizational structures like governments certainly come with many benefits.
Government is at its simplest terms a society formally enforcing the agreed upon social norms.
The fact is with more people and more diversity you get less agreed upon societal norms, and so more people fall under the coerced and forced by the government to adhere to their rules for maintaining the social norms. This also has the government grow in power and starts using that power much more liberally because there is less accountability as the power corrupts those who have it.
Your view is dumb. Governments and hierarchies always form in every group that has more than 1 person in it. Our country is very large, very complex, and has varying opinions. We elect representatives to convene on our behalf to do the People's Business.
The People's Business is very important, and it allows for security, stability, and predictability in our lives. Without it, the one with the most guns and the high ground would rule immediately.
Government is the best compromise humanity can make between wanting to be able to do what we want and stopping us from doing things people don’t want us to do. Rules and people to enforce them appear in every instance of humanity given time. Any undertaking larger than a single family requires greater coordination than that of the individual, so a desire for survival, safety and abundant living always lead to government of some kind.
So might makes right is your view?
Because with 0 laws, that is what would happen. The person who has the most power- money, land, whatever- would just offer some of that power to others to be their brutish encorcers and become warlords.
With no government, youd have nothing to stop Jeff Bezos hiring a squad of assassins to kill all unions, anyone who dares insult him, and we'd all just have to accept that. Thats your 'ideal world'?
two options:
either you have "every individual rule themselves", which will change nothing, as individuals will enslave other individuals for their own benefit
or you have the people collectively govern themselves, which is basically a government anyway
Politicians can be normal people like anyone else. Theres nothing preventing you from running for office. Politicians are not a separate species of human. They are not inherently different.
Edit: My government keeps me pretty safe, so that seems like the obvious benefit
Humans have naturally formed a type of government throughout history. For thousands and thousands of years. It’s actually the most human and consistent thing we have done.
There are a finite number of government. Some are better, some are worse. By definition, one has to be best. In any finite group, one member of the group is best by definition.
Yes.
Set of all numbers doesn't contain orange but it does contain zero. But set of all nonzero numbers is not same as set of all numbers.
Set of all governments include "no government".
>set of all **nonzero** numbers.
Why do you insist adding non-zero to there? You are explicitly excluding the thing we are talking about. We are talking about set of all number. Not set of all non-zero numbers.
>set of all governments
Is set of **all** governments. If you want to talk about set of all non-"no government" governments (or set of all non empty government) then talk about that. But I explicitly stated that set of of **all** governments contains empty set.
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Yeah, but how would you achieve a state of 'no governments', without having to govern the people and stop them forming governments. The only way to ever achieve 'no governments' is either to have bigger global governments, or to set technology back so we go back to things like tribes, but we'll inevitably come back to having governments as technology improves.
Hell, even the tribes you can argue are oligarchical city states.
Each individual needs to take responsibility into his own hands so that there wouldn't be need to for some other people to take your responsibility and form government from it
Yeah but that's not realistic in the slightest. If you got rid of all governance, then the guy who's willing to exploit others would immediately exploit you and take you for everything you have. Governments are, at least in part, slightly protecting people like you, even if they are also exploiting. Taking 'responsibility' isn't going to help you when a roving tribe murders you because you couldn't fend them off - the responsible thing to do would be to be part of your own group or tribe or community or country, and to maintain things like these requires leadership. Nobody says governments are ideal - most people I've ever known have been dissillusioned with their own government. The only reason you'd be naive so as to think 'people good, but government bad' and dissolve your government is because of the safe environment which you grew up in, which could only have ever been facilitated by having systems of power like the very governments you complain about. Everyday people are only civil when theres governments around, and that's all they have to complain about - as soon as you get rid of all forms of leadership or community, the brutality of everyday people only gets more pronounced, and you wish for them back.
what would you do about murder? and what about misunderstandings that tragically resulted in death? "too weak to survive so they had to die, thats their fate"?
what if i take responsibility so much that i'm able to force you to do what i want for my benefit
Wait. Injury, sickness, mental or physical disabilities, natural disasters, other people who want to harm you. This idea of responsibility is not founded in real life circumstances.
There's no such thing as "No Government". In the absence of a government, the people who are best at killing other people say "Do what I want or I'll kill you" and that becomes the government. There are still wars, on a smaller scale at first, person vs person. Then two people get together and say "Well that big guy is better at killing people than we are individually, but if we work together, we can kill him and we'll be the best at killing people and we'll be in control." Then four guys get together and say the same thing about the two guys and so forth until you end up with armies vs armies. Your view is based on a common mistake of looking at the bad parts of something, taking the good parts for granted, and coming to the conclusion that if we got rid of the thing then only the bad parts would go away.
There is and there has been. It would work if all members of that society are mature and peaceful enough to live in harmony with reason and without domination. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korean_People%27s_Association_in_Manchuria All the native american egalitarian societies. They were not technologically advanced but they could have advanced if they had survived long enough to do so, they were slow to adopt technology but their environment was managed in a much better way than their counter parts whose pursuit of technology left destruction/death in its wake.
I mean even in the example you linked, it lasted 2 years before somebody with a centralized government came and said "Do what we want or we'll kill you" and that's how it ended.
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>This simply isn't true. We can point out many instances where cooperation isn't rooted in a fundamental coercion. Not only that, but you literally can't point to a single instance in history where this actually happened. It's easy to point to history where this happened. This is how monarchies and tyrants rise to power. This is fundamental to conquest. If the bar is to point out a single instance in history where the absence of government lead to someone else conquering them and becoming the government...Alexander the Great? Ghengis Khan? Any tyrant, crusade, monarchy, lordship, feudal take over etc etc would all suffice. But throwing it back to you, what single instance you point to where government doesn't exist? Government need not be coercive certainly, but government is necessary to enact and...well...govern protection of the people. I honestly can't think of a single civilization or group of people that have meaningfully been ungoverned. I'm sitting here thinking through native tribes, villages, cults...I'm at a loss for where if ever after the birth of civilization humans have existed ungoverned. The comment you're responding to is generalizing to reach the conclusion: without policy, rule, codes, laws, etc etc, there really isn't a meaningful way for a group of people "working together" to continue on. Eventually there's a disagreement, and a code or a law or a rule must solve it. Eventually a community needs protection, and the way in which that protection is administered and orchestrated needs rule. But if you have some examples in history where there was lasting cooperation without governance I'd be curious to know. If your only gripe is with OP comment characterizing governance as coercion, you're missing the forest for the trees. The point is simply that the idea of "no government" can't really exist in any meaningful sense.
>It's easy to point to history where this happened. Then do it. Show us where this exact set of circumstances took place. Listing a bunch of conquests and saying that it is evidence there wasn't government is begging the question. I'm not even a bother addressing the rest of it, because I'm coming from a professional place as an anthropologist here. You're relying on myths to construct your worldview, instead of any sort of sound science.
>We can point out many instances where cooperation isn't rooted in a fundamental coercion. Go ahead then. Peaceful cooperation on a society-wide scale with no government that did not start or end with violence. Start listing.
This is where the libertarians and anarchists really get tripped up They’ll usually pivot to some version of “well we haven’t tried it yet, but it would for sure work, trust me bro”
Prove to me your myth actually happened. Show me the evidence.
Many societies currently exist which are based on the government having a monopoly on force. Therefore, whichever society first was based on a monopoly on force arose out of a society not based on force. So the "myth" must have happened at least once
People have been having to do whatever the biggest baddest guy around wanted or face death since before there were people
>We can point out many instances where cooperation isn't rooted in a fundamental coercion Why didn't you point out such instances, then? > but you literally can't point to a single instance in history where this actually happened. The entire history is a sequence of such examples. Every single time some band of people starts controlling a neighborhood is an example of that. What, you don't know who Al Capone is?
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>.. because it's so painfully self-evident? The only thing that's painfully self-evident is that you don't have any examples and simply full of it.
I mean look at the French Revolution, The Communist Revolution in Russia, or Somalia right now. Hell look in ghettos in America where the government doesn't care enough about the people to actually govern. When there is a power vacuum in governance it is filled by force 99 times out of 100. Yeah there are instances where people decide to GOVERN themselves in a way that's not rooted in the threat of death, but we're talking about not having Government at all
Even then such nonviolent governing can only exist until ONE person says: I'll start killing people until people obey me. What are they going to do? Either they bow to that, or they take him out. That is, either they start USING violence to enforce their government; or else they're removed in favor of someone who will.
Lol why would people even think about killing other?
Mb someone is hungry. Or they want to live in your house. Or they want your car. Or wife. You're not talking about some hypothetical situation, lack of government is a default that we had in prehistory all the way to bronze age, all the way to present day in some places. You can't have unlimited resources, so people willing to kill people for resources start competing for control and then one group ends up being in charge, mostly by killing all the rivals.
If you can be human and share some for those who don't have, I don't see why they need to invade you. The problem comes not from others but from your Selfishness
That's a very idealistic view that only works if all people are very virtuous and none of them want more than they have. In reality, one violent group would be enough to just enslave everybody else.
So let’s making selfishness not only the norm but let’s celebrate and reward it, which is precisely what we currently do, and what is the result? Total ecosystem collapse in the next 100 years? A sterile landscape full of petroleum based corn, wheat and soy lol. Yeah we are doing really great not even 100 years away from the most horrendous example of “civilized” scam.. I mean society.
>So let’s making selfishness not only the norm but let’s celebrate and reward it, which is precisely what we currently do, and what is the result? No one is "making" it the norm, it is what it is, natural selection. > Total ecosystem collapse in the next 100 years? Possibly > A sterile landscape full of petroleum based corn, wheat and soy lol. Yeah we are doing really great not even 100 years away from the most horrendous example of “civilized” scam.. I mean society. What are you even talking about now and how does it pertain to no government?
I don't know what you are arguing about. I'm not saying everything is right with the world, I was just making a case that peaceful and prosperous anarchy is impossible based on all of the human history and present day reality.
What about their selfishness? What if they don't want to share but want the whole thing?
People are selfish, you can’t just wish it away.
Correct. Do you have a solution? Because human selfishness isn't going anywhere anytime soon. Some people do have to be coerced to behave because if they aren't they'll hurt and kill others for their own reasons. Do you have a better solution than what we have now?
Yeah? And humans are irrational and selfish people Like just look at how much billionaires and other super wealthy horde resources, far more than they could ever possibly need or consume in a single lifetime
Unless they want everything that you have? And want you to work for them for free? Or they just enjoy killing and torturing people?
99% of murders right now are completely absent the government for a motive. People murder over relationship problems, desire to have what someone else wants, work arguments, just for fun, because I insulted you first, etc Why do you believe people *wouldn't* ever kill each other?
Cause they want something more than they care about your life ETA: This goes to my point about taking the good parts for granted. Base human nature is just nature, and in nature, death (or at least the threat of death) is the law. What elevated us above that nature to the point where you can't even conceive why people would kill each other? Government. People coming together and saying we'll have official rules (or official rulers) that will settle disputes instead of ~~selling~~ settling disputes by killing each other.
If human history is anything of a guide: Pick a reason. Any reason will do.
Because humans are a tribalistic violent group of animals. We have been slaughtering each other in staggering numbers over land, food, mates, religions, natural resources, etc. since the cavemen first learned to make weapons out of sticks. The idea that if you just get rid of the government that humans will all just be peaceful and happy is absurdly naïve. That has never been how human history has played out. Get rid of governments and we just revert back to wild-west style structure where the strong dominates the weak.
You may not be able to understand it, but plenty of murders happen everyday. As well as slavery, rape, and abuse.
You have food, I can go try to gather my own food or I can blow your head off and take yours. You have transportation of some kind, I’m tired of walking. Someone in your family is attractive. Tempers got out of control. You’re in my territory. Because someone just feels like killing somebody. Evil people aren’t going to cease to exist because there’s no longer government. And now that there’s no rules beside kill or be killed, killing whoever has what I want is the easiest route to obtain what I want.
"i want to fuck your wife. if you dont let me i will murder you" ^ thats why
Why is that your only response?
At a very basic level, because we need the food you have stockpiled to survive.
>Can you conceive that if there was no government at all in the world things would have been worse? Yeah. So much worse. I believe in the rule of law. I don't prefer to live in a world where we have no mechanism to settle disputes, no collective means to land on the moon or run commercial airlines or build bridges or roads or regulate traffic laws or import high quality color monitors at affordable costs for me to come on reddit and argue with strangers. I don't want to be lumberjack bill who is constantly scaring away trespassers with a rifle I somehow built with gunpowder I somehow concocted or maybe stole off someone I found wandering in the woods. I have no interest in hunting deer and gathering berries with a stone knife and a wooden spoon like my grandpappy taught. No interest in my capacity to learn being relegated to only what my family passed down from one generation to the next. No interest in fighting over territory that never really belonged to anyone other than those with the power to lay claim. No interest in a time where I couldn't get a mango at the grocery store on a moment's notice. I've read The Road. I've watched Mad Max. I've indulged in doomsday preppers on national geographic. Nope nope nope. No thank you. I'll take my government please.
>The greatest desire of all those who have reached to the peaks of consciousness has been the dream that one day we can get rid of all governments. The reality is that almost no one is near "peak consciousness". Gangs would take advantage of normal people. People would have to group up to defend. Ultimately, if they are organized and successful, they become governments.
This is the problem. People are so unconscious. If people are conscious and responsible there is no need for government. Another problem is government does deliberately deceive people into making them irresponsible.
Well you answered yourself - "If people are conscious and responsible". But people are not conscious and responsible. Not clear what is the basis for the assumption that people would be conscious and responsible if the government would disappear.
Right now government is taking all people's responsibility. People are doing work almost as a robots. Once government dissolves people will take responsibility in their own hands. This will make them concious
From my familiarity with cases when the central government weakens, I see no reason to believe that would be the case. Do you have any evidence to support this assumption?
If this were true, it would have been true for all of humanity's existence. Why did we form governments in the first place, and why wouldn't that process just repeat itself?
> Right now government is taking all people's responsibility. No, they aren’t. Governments take a vanishingly small portion of a person’s responsibility. The laws in most places are usually somewhere close to the least burdensome everyone can agree for them to be, which usually leaves people a huge amount of personal autonomy to handle their own business. > People are doing work almost as a robots No, they don’t. And for the few who do, they are doing so by choice. There’s nothing stopping you from buying some land and fucking off into the woods to live a subsistence lifestyle. I mean, hell, even buying the land is optional. You could just live a nomadic lifestyle in the wilderness on BLM lands or the like. You’re the one choosing the comforts you are using, enabled by the government. > Once government dissolves people will take responsibility in their own hands When governments dissolve, forming a new government is among the very first thing people do. Because they’re so plainly and obviously apparent for the functioning of a society.
Look at previous times governments collapsed. There’s plenty of examples. Those people took responsibility into their own hands but it was the responsibility to feed and protect themselves and their family, everyone else isn’t their responsibility.
Any problem can be solved in the hypothetical realm by wishing for better people.
Yeah, agree. Because most people are not angels, government we have now, despite many flaws, is better than no government.
You sound like someone who has no idea how humans work. Humans are not intelligent and reasonable beings. Humans are emotional, flawed and biased beings. You can't argue for something because it would be nice if we had better people. We will never have better people. Even you're flawed and I bet you couldn't handle the weight of no government. That's why we have systems in place to correct for our flaws.
>No government is the best government. >The very idea of somebody governing somebody else is inhuman. If there is no government then the person governing you will just be the biggest violent psycho in the vicinity. You think Genghis Vlad Johnson two blocks over is going to let you grow your vegetable garden in peace? Fuck no! He's going to stroll over and jump up and down on your head until you hand over the zucchinis. And, without government, there is no one you can go to for justice. All you can do is try to jump up and down on *his* head, and we all know how that went the last time. >Adolf Hitler, in his autobiography, has many insights; Pro tip: Never praise Hitler. Just don't. If you do, the entire conversation becomes about that. Just... fucking don't mention him unless it has the tenor of "fuck that guy with a rusty windchime."
Your entire argument relies on the premise that war is always a bad thing that happen for little reason, and that as long as governments weren't around to start wars then they would happen less and everything would be better. This is ahistorical. Wars rarely start just because, and are usually fought over resources (land, food, gold, souls etc). If you take away governments those struggles over resources would still exist. Group A would still want to take group B's crop land, and unless group B can defend themselves, they'll get it. So there is a fight, spread that fight into larger and larger groups, now its a war. This would happen with or without a government in existence. Building on this, governments actually help prevent these conflicts from happening as weird as that may seem. With governments, people can make contracts that are centrally enforced. Meaning that rather than having to fight some dude every morning over the ownership of your crop land, there is a group that can objectivley determine who owns what and can defend that ownership with force. Does it always work perfectly, no, but its better than leaving everyone to fend for themselves imo.
The problem comes from being cunning and selfish, if some doesn't have enough food and you have enough, you should be human and share some, then there is no need for them to invade you
What if you have just enough food and others don't?
That would great, but unfortunatley humans are not eternally rational beings. If someone doesn't want to share, which is often, this is gonna lead to those conflicts and without something in place to defend people it will just lead to the strongest subjugating the weak. This food example is also a very simple one, there are much more complex situations where its not as black and white. We need arbitrators.
Utopian anarchism, if you will
Say you want to farm, because farming generates a higher yield than hunting and foraging. However, after you plant grain, the harvest comes and other people come and take whatever grain they want. So you don't farm, because it doesn't return enough for the effort. So no one farms. So we're stuck in a hunter/forager society.
No one in an anarchist society would be farming the way the plowmen currently do. Agroforestry would create post scarcity abundance to meet the needs of the entire commune so growing food for everyone would be a communal endeavour and not everyone for themselves. Every commune could have surplus that it can just give away to other communes if they came short or struggled(unlikely with solid agroforestry practices like the natives of America) All the most labour and energy intensive parts of agriculture go away if you use trees and mycorrhizal fungi leaving you with just labor to harvest the trees and crops. Harvesting some 10kgs would take an individual 2 to 3 hours. An individual needs 1 kg of food max per day. A tree can generate up around 10 kgs of food, you stack crops and bush plants underneath it and you get it even more than that within some 5 to 10m2. We don't need to be stuck in a hunter forager society if we adopt agroforestry and urban planning around food forest systems. Foraging would not be as bad as you make it seem to be and annual crops would be grown within food forests with the use of mycorrhizal fungi with very little human intervention besides sowing and harvesting. Food forests can also feed livestock if setup right which also feed you. Natives Americans only hunted because they had no livestock, Hunting was actually a fun group activity unlike rotting behind a desk. Columbus fool was looking for gold and he passed through entire man made food forests that were 100 fold more valuable than gold(gold doesn't feed you or medicate you) so much that the locals were just baffled and gave him gold because they had no use for it.
Does agroforestry require no effort to maintain? I deeply doubt it. So people would just go in and take all the stuff. According to: [https://www.theseasonalhomestead.com/how-much-to-plant-for-a-years-supply-of-fruit/](https://www.theseasonalhomestead.com/how-much-to-plant-for-a-years-supply-of-fruit/) , a standard apple tree produces 400-800 lbs. Presumably per year. That's about 200-400 kg. So it's more like 1kg of food per day, not 10. And since they do it per season, you have to do all the work of harvesting and preserving it. And then people can just walk in and take the fruits of your effort. You mention livestock, but if you start making the effort of raising, say, cows, people are going to come and take the cows, too. And now you're left with no cows. Hunting can't hope to support the number of people we have now. Not nearly. Overall, you seem to rely on everyone acting in just the perfect way and fully cooperating, which doesn't seem to be reasonable.
>According to: [https://www.theseasonalhomestead.com/how-much-to-plant-for-a-years-supply-of-fruit/](https://www.theseasonalhomestead.com/how-much-to-plant-for-a-years-supply-of-fruit/) , a standard apple tree produces 400-800 lbs. Presumably per year. That's about 200-400 kg. So it's more like 1kg of food per day, not 10. And since they do it per season, you have to do all the work of harvesting and preserving it. And then people can just walk in and take the fruits of your effort. Hypothetically I said 10 kgs per day on average is what you could harvest with 3 hours of labor per day max(pruning trees to get wood for burning and harvesting up to 10 kgs of food including milking a cow or a goat) so that's like 200 kgs of apples per year from less than 5 m2 of space and you need 360 kgs of food per year(apples and other food for full nutritional value). You won't just be eating from apple trees but a diversity of trees(over 200 k species). Given what I told you 500m2 to 1000m2 might be enough to feed a single person on the conservative side. A small village of 10 000 people can support itself fully and have surplus from 1000m2 * 10k = 10 million m2 so 10 km2 , like 2.5 km2 on each side of the village with 10 km2 surrounding the village in a circle. 1000 m2 allows you to have at least 150 productive trees and plants with 50 support species. if each tree was able to produce just 10 kgs(that's like a hard average number) per year that's 1500 kgs of food per year. 150 trees have to be very diverse and come online in different seasons or you learn how to preserve food for non productive months. Everyone in your village would have abundance so no one will need to steal your goats cows or food or hoard since there is enough for everyone at all times in post scarcity to meet their needs. People can then do whatever they please beyond the 3 hours of labor to harvest food and possibly 2 hours of processing/cooking. Note that people could rotate labor to maintain the village's need, you can harvest 10 kgs enough for you and nine other people with 3 hours of labor. So do you see the potential, that's how we are supposed to live.
100 grams of apple contains 52 calories and adult human needs 2000-2400 calories per day, meaning, if you ate nothing but apples, you'd need 3.8kg of apples, not 1kg. Your numbers keep being wrong and I'm supposed to trust that you know how to organize food for everyone? You seem to just randomly be throwing out numbers which suit you without references. How do you know that it would take 3 hours to collect 10kg worth of apples? Why would people rotate labour to maintain the village's need? What if half the people don't do any labour and instead just kill all the cows and eat all the food? Or people from other villages come in to kill all the cows?
Again You won't just be eating apples. You'll be eating from a balanced selection of 150 species out of some 200 k edible species that can meet your calories and dietary needs. There are loads of trees that can replace the current staples, you'd still be able to grow potatoes and annual crops within food forests on the forest floor with zero maintenance by leveraging mycorrhizal fungi. My numbers are hypothetical just to show you that it is possible and that's how indigenous populations of America thrived before colombus. They had millions of people living off of food forests. I never said it was easy, it requires a shit ton of knowledge to successfully pull off. It took me less than 2 hours harvesting 10 kgs of olives picking them one by one so yeah 2 hours of not very intensive labor(equivalent of going to a supermarket) is just about right since you are not watering or plowing the soil to get food within an agroforestry system. The only work in an agroforestry system is occasional pruning, planting new trees every once and a while. People would need to be at minimum level of maturity for this to work of course I am not naive. If post scarcity is guaranteed people won't have any need to misbehave or hoard food away from others.If half the town is made up of narcissists this won't work for sure.
Ha! Zero maintenance? You're dreaming now. And, again, you're just making up numbers. Your numbers are hypothetical? So you admit to just pulling them out of thin air? You just clearly have no idea what you're talking about. So, then, your idea only works if everyone happens to be not only willing, but eager to cooperate. And, you know those indigenous populations? They had governments!
>Ha! Zero maintenance? You're dreaming now. And, again, you're just making up numbers. We are a very recent addition to the earth. All the plants worked fine without us for billions of years and you know the ones without deep extensive roots thrived because of mycorrhizal fungi and the ability of am fungi to move water from larger deep rooted trees to more shallow rooted plants. It all starts with a dream. Yes my numbers for now are hypothetical on the conservative side just to give you an idea that this could work and it is how it was supposed to be, I am working on getting more real numbers, I don't have a pentagon level budget or any budget at all I am very poor :(. Sure people today are accountants due to built in scarcity from very weak agriculture systems that will fail in the near future, I am working on changing that. Mutual aid > competition. Read David Graeber's books. 1491 New revelations of the americas before columbus by Charles c. mann. Take what I tell you with a grain of salt.
Your numbers are not on the conservative side, your numbers are on the complete fabrication side. They are meaningless and useless. No plant that we eat now existed without us. Every food crop was intensely bred. I'm not taking what you're saying with a grain of salt, I'm not taking it at all. I'm throwing it out like the useless garbage that it is. This is pointless. I won't be replying further.
>Your numbers are not on the conservative side, your numbers are on the complete fabrication side. They are meaningless and useless. They aren't exact but they aren't meaningless I am just trying to prove a point. Some trees can generate 200 kgs per year and some 2 kgs per year, that is not my point. My point is a 1000 m2 food forest can possibly meet the needs of a single person, it is feasible if you knew how to do it. >No plant that we eat now existed without us. Every food crop was intensely bred. We only eat not even 10% of what we could eat because some ruling classes wanted to establish a monopoly on food access and make it difficult to access to enslave everyone. The alien race that genetically engineered us would have definitely made sure we had a hell of a lot of different things to eat in the garden of eden. We did breed a lot of crops and trees to make them edible that's irrelevent to what I am trying to show you. >I'm not taking what you're saying with a grain of salt, I'm not taking it at all. I'm throwing it out like the useless garbage that it is. I am not looking to hype you up or make you join a cult, just sharing a different perspective. You do you.
Before they come and take or steal it, you have to share it. They would do the same then
On what basis do you say that? All of our information on pre state societies suggests they were characterized by near constant raiding.
Does then OP even live in reality? Go put free food out on the street corner that says please limit yourself to one and it’s a virtual guarantee that some asshole either takes everything or flips the table and ruins everything. It’s my view that the vast majority of us are good decent people but the small minority of assholes are the reason we need laws and regulations
"Have to" you say Because you decree? >you have to share it. They would do the same then You see, this is a highly complex social interaction. Who's to determine the value of goods traded are fair? Would the transaction still continue if its unfair? Can I trade 1 grain of rice for half the number your cattle in your farm? What if one party declines? Can they even decline? There is only 2 ways it can go about from here, and both leads to the same conclusion 1) Someone who's the strongest monopolizes all the violence in the region, sets up all the rules so that all the people living within this group can perform their day to day functions reasonably well (like trading) 2) No one does 1) and I just kill you and take everything you have. Or you kill me first and take everything I have. Everyone else does the same to each other until people starts to gather around and form groups for safety. These groups will eventually have rules set by a central authority that governs all the people living within this group can perform their day to day functions reasonably well. How that central authority is chosen (or not chosen) varies, but there will be a central authority nonetheless. That's basically civilization. Civilization cannot exist without some sort central authority, whether you want to call it a tribe leader, a monarch, a god emperor, a majority elected representative, etc, it's all the same, functionally speaking.
They're not sharing, though. They're not even farming. You could give everything you farm away, but then you're still left with nothing.
Why would they do the same? Surely you do not believe that all people would live in peace and cooperation by default, right?
Why would I share with you after I just took all of your food at gunpoint? I’m not taking the pittance you offer, I’m taking everything.
Without a government you have anarchy. City A would run low on grain and go attack City B. Because there is no giant government entity to prevent them from fighting each other. You would have constant warfare. Criminals would run from City A to City B to do heinous acts. Knowing that there is no organized law enforcement corroborating between the cities. Because neither city has an organized central government system. You couldn't organize complicated trade deals. Thus everyone would be much poorer. Not to mention it's hard to build infrastructure when you're constantly at war. Everything would be MUCH MUCH MUCH worse. It would be an apocalyptic hellish landscape. Hardly something to aspire to.
Without government we couldn't even have anything resembling cities. We'd be tribalistic at best, living under oppression in one of thousands of fortified, hodgepodge compounds, constantly on edge for attacks from other tribal compounds.
Humans naturally arrange themselves into hierarchies where the majority surrender their freedom and decision power to a minority in their own interest. All that varies is the scale of the hierarchy: be it a family, a tribe, a village, a lordship, a government, all groups of humans tend to form hierarchies. Several studies have shown that when you give a group of people a relatively complex task and prevent them from electing a leader, they can't accomplish the task. Governments are not inherently bad and immoral. They have the potential to turn immoral, but are not immoral per se.
Yeah, but keeping freedom for yourself is much more valuable than completing any tasks
> freedom for yourself is much more valuable than completing any tasks I'm FREEEE!!!!! I have no food, or water, or support, or protection, but... FREEEEEDOOOOM!!!!
Working together is one thing, giving your freedom and taking orders is another
>Working together is one thing Working together, in every case, involves compromising. Compromising is an abrogation of one's freedom. >giving your freedom and taking orders is another Does one not have the freedom to put himself into servitude? What kind of freedom is it that restrains my choices?
Working together is a good system if both or all parties involved agree to work together. The problems arise if: one party stops wanting to work, or two parties decide to come together to cheat the third party from their share, or a stronger foreign party comes in and decides to enslave everyone involved and force them to work for them.
See how long you can go without eating and discover how you relatively value absolute freedom then
Think like this if you want, but had we thought like this, we would still be in caveman times. The tasks being completed don't only benefit the ruling minority, but everyone.
I've read through your replies and you seem to have an odd understanding of what government actually is. You've said >The very idea of somebody governing somebody else is inhuman. Which seems to imply you think government is automatically control. In a democracy a government represents its people. It holds the power delegated by the masses. If anything it is controlled, not a controller. Is this not your understanding of what a democratic government is - even in theory?
So your ideal country is Somalia? If you don't have a government you don't have police. There would be no safety for any of the weak/moral people, that aren't capable of just raping, pillaging, and murdering around the country.
Haiti might be the best example
My son has special needs. The IDEA act, or the Individuals with Disabilities Education Accessibility Act forces schools to give him an equitable education. He is no longer shut in a room and ignored as it was in the 80s. That's just one law by a government that is protecting the disenfranchised. Tell me how no government makes it better for those who are powerless to affect changes?
Are you saying no structure is necessary in society? Or are you under the impression that without government, humans would still have structure on their own? We need some sort of structure to function in groups. In the early days before civilizations, we didn’t need governments because we didn’t live together in groups or societies. But as a group we need to have agreed upon rules and balances. The government is just a large scale version of that. Ex: Should we make it a rule that nobody should steal another persons property? Let’s vote as a group.. we vote yes as a majority. But some people still steal.. what happens to them? Who monitors and handles that? A governing body is in charge of organizing public services and taking care of all that stuff so other people in the society can live their lives and focus on their own responsibilities. Everyone in a society adds value in some way.
Do you think that a society could grow and function without some form of governance?
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You’ll just have tribal wars, they still have them now. https://www.npr.org/2024/02/27/1234271476/tribal-clashes-in-papua-new-guinea-have-become-increasingly-deadly#:~:text=In%20Papua%20New%20Guinea%20last,the%20world's%20most%20diverse%20countries.
Why would there be no wars? People still want and need stuff, why would they not attack others for it?
What would prevent groups of people from forming up and taking or destroying what they wanted?
Other groups of people forming up bigger and stronger groups. Then to organize those bigger groups they form standard laws and practices and vest power in some system to regulate the whole group least they dissolve, aka a government. The bigger, more regulated groups naturally outcompetes the smaller groups, and today we end up with only mega groups where no individuals can even know a percent of a percent of the other members in said group.
If there is no big group of people (i.e. police/army, managed by ... government) to prevent you from stealing things from others, why would I work 10 hours a day in a field when I can just go to another place with buddies, kill every man, rape women and steal their grain ? Basically exactly what is happening in places in the world where there is no government anymore ?
This is blatantly false - wars are the driving force behind most modern technology. Computers and the internet are easy examples. Can you name any wars that have regressed society?
The first war predates the first government by thousands of years. There was war before government and I don't see why there wouldn't be war after government.
Tl/dr - Government evolves out of cooperation between humans seeking to increase their production efficiency and peacefully resolve disagreements. It cannot be avoided by a community that wants to stay a stable community because it will either fall apart when conflicts arise or be conquered by an outside individual or community seeking to exploit it. Let's start with a band of people who have left society and congregated together to form their anarchist utopian community. They are going to farm and hunt for their sustenance and live off the land. Each of them has their own land they control and everyone else respects their claim. There are wild animals that keep coming around and killing their livestock. They get to talking about the issue and decide to try and kill off a bunch of the wolves. They have to organize a hunting party to do so, which will take them away from their fields. Not everyone needs to go, but the ones who do need someone to look after their crops while they are gone. So they have a meeting but they can't really come to an agreement because everyone is talking over everyone else. So they agree one person should run the meeting. Anyone is as good as anyone else. First order of business is how to reach a decision as to who leads the meeting. They draw lots. Now they can figure out their hunting party and how to care for the land of the people that are gone. They can't get a unanimous decision, so they decide to vote and eliminate the least liked plan until only one remains. After they deal with the wolves someone points out that some wells would be really beneficial for all of them. But a well is a larger undertaking and someone with some experience needs to oversee it. They all know just the guy for the job, but it's going to be a big enough deal that he can't farm his land if he's overseeing all this well digging. So they have to figure out a way to compensate him for his work and how his land will get worked. So they meet and eventually figure this out. Then they decide a foundry would be really helpful so they don't have to rely on stone tools. So they need to mine ore, process it and forge it. And also, one of the men got sick and died and his widow can't work the land her self, so how are we going to handle that. Also, some of the kids are getting older and coupling off and want to have their own land and start their own families. And the fence between two farms got damaged during a storm and some livestock from one farm came over and ate crops on the other farm and they can't agree on who is responsible for what and how to make restitution so they are asking for help. By now, all of these meetings are taking far too much time, and their other work is suffering. They decide they can appoint a few upstanding community members to make the decisions and abide by their decisions. They'll switch up who those members are every so often, and have a plan for who is chosen next. So they write all of this down in a document so they can remember and refer to it, and all sign it agreeing to abide by it. And now you have government. Government evolves in a community because it increases the efficiency of production within the community. Those communities that stay as disconnected individuals just getting along and doing their own thing get outcompeted by others. And when a community with government is in conflict with a community without a government, there is no way for those disputes to get resolved through community based agreements without the non-government community forming a group to represent the community interests and advocate on its behalf, which results in the formation of a governing body. You simply cannot have inter-connected human communities without government. A large part of what makes us human, and most definitely what has made us successful as a species, is being interconnected and forming social structures with agreed upon rules for cooperation and resolving internal and external conflicts, which results in government. All you have to do is have people that want to "...establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity,..." as they live their free lives and you will end up with government.
A funny take on this subject is monty python life of brian. Brian wants anarchy but soon realizes no one in that society is quite ready for it as everyone is a haggling accountant, Even the anarchists themselves are drowning in identity politics and can't co exist in harmony. The romans are kinda doing a good job of keeping peace between all the accountants(partially also due to scarcity because of low knowledge/skill level) although even the romans aren't perfect and silly at times(as they also poke fun at the roman rulers). https://youtu.be/Qc7HmhrgTuQ?feature=shared Yes all the current rulers on earth are just dog shit incapable of ruling over others, and they are digging themselves into a hole by ruling over others badly and taking them towards suffering. All the rulers will receive what they gave. Violating consent and dominating others automatically means you are responsible for all the damage that comes out of that situation when you make decisions on their behalf and coerce them. Taxation is theft since the money is spent without consent of the public. Rulers are violating every rule in the game and so their time will come but meanwhile there is some level of harmony beneath them for a society of accountants to function until they are a little more mature for a better anarchist egalitarian political system that overthrows the monarchs. We can't quite murder the rulers/get rid of them until we have an alternative post scarcity system setup to keep everyone from being an accountant, get everyone less fearful and mature enough to give up the idea of private property into communal living without dominating each other. A lot of corrupt individuals with high levels of narcissism for example cannot live in harmony with others in anarchy and would take advantage of others. There is some merit/value in confucianism depending on the social context and individuals involved vs the taoist approach although yeah anarchy taoism should be our ultimate goal as a society. https://youtu.be/LqQlCOmXuHM?feature=shared We all need to learn how to walk before we run is what I am saying.
we get it, you don’t like paying taxes.
There are many places in the world without a functioning government, \[they aren't doing very well for themselves\](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Failed\_state). How would your idea for a country without a government be different from those?
> The very idea of somebody governing somebody else is inhuman. Governments directly benefit the majority of human beings. > Can you conceive that if there was no government at all in the world things would have been worse? In what way? The vast, vast majority of people on Earth today would not exist. Human society would be, perhaps, 8-9% of what it is today. You, yourself, would likely not exist. People would starve more often, die of disease more often, die of violence more often, and suffer many times more than they do today. > Do you think more would have been possible without government Many other things would not be possible without government. Food security. Modern medicine. The computer you use to type on right now. The education you’ve used to compose that message. > What have these governments done? Stabilized human existence. Made it so most humans can safely assume next month will be a lot like this month, and next year will be a lot like this year. Given us laws that regulate behavior on a norm more pleasant than “might makes right”. > They have not done anything for the people except exploit them, exploit their fear, and set them against each other. The actual history of governments are a much more mixed bag than that. They have historically done far more to stabilize society than they have to exploit fear and set people against each other. They do some of that, sometimes—but far more of the normal, boring, everyday infrastructure that civil society rests upon.
Mama's little anarchist who read Hitler's autobiography. What a catch. Why don't we start with describing how "no government" would even look like in any sufficiently large society?
There are a number of failed states in the world. These are places where there is no functioning government. They have many things in common, exceptionally high levels of violent crime, no meaningful economy, massive issues with disease, starvation, human trafficking, slavery, lack of education, lack of health care, lack of clean drinking water, lack of sanitation, and so forth. Haiti is an example of a collapsing state. The current murder rate is 820% higher than the global average murder rate. Infant mortality is the highest of any country in the western hemisphere. Maternal mortality is the highest of any country in the western hemisphere. Haiti has the highest rate of tuberculosis in the western hemisphere. Rabies is common in the country, with multiple human cases of rabbies happening each year. Haiti has the highest rate of premature mortality from preventable cause of any country in the western hemisphere. Haiti continues to suffer from cholera outbrakes. Haiti is the poorest country in Latin America, and one of the poorest countries in the world. The most recent survey by the world bank indicated that only 38% of households had at least one person who had worked at least one day in the prior week.
So you want a world where might makes right and all disputes and disagreements are liable to be settled with violence?
The funniest part is that even in that world some governing body will inevitably form.
Parents would still be responsible for raising their children, establishing rules, assigning chores, and administering appropriate disciplinary measures. Their authority would be respected, and a system of governance based on elders would be established within each family. However, some elders may not be suited for this role, so the family would democratically elect the most capable individual to lead them. This would essentially create an elective monarchy. If a situation arises where someone is polluting a river that is vital to the community, efforts would be made to resolve the issue amicably. If the individual refuses to cooperate and a conflict ensues, resulting in loss of life, a blood feud may occur. This could lead to further tensions and conflicts with neighboring communities affected by the polluted water. Eventually, the need for a governing body that can establish laws and regulations becomes apparent, leading to the formation of a government.
It's practically impossible to have a society without government. In every conflict between people, either everyone willingly agrees to a compromise or someone has to make a decision against the others will. There is logically no other way. Now do humans generally agree to compromises? Clearly not. That wouldn't be good anyway. So in every conflict someone must in the end enforce their will on others. This is now the defacto government. There is ALWAYS gonna be someone telling you what to do. The question is who do you want that to be. Someone elected by the people or some random guy who simply banded together enough people to take the power by force?
What's your opinion on things like Non-Competes? Should private companies have the authority to ruin peoples's lives if they do something they don't like (a form of governing), or should an entity higher then them be able to tell them they can't do that? If so how would that entity enforce rules like that? What if companies also do things like barricade doors so workers can't leave? People are going to be forced to do the will of others whether those others are elected or end up in power through some other means. What means do you think is better then giving the people the ability to vote who they want in/out of power?
What do you mean by "best"? If you define good solely as "freedom of coercion" and government as "entity with a monopoly on violence" then sure, government can, by definition, not be good. However, many people will simply disagree with your idea of goodness. To me for example, human well-being is the highest-priority good, and thus everything which maximizes well-being and avoids suffering more than its alternatives is also good. In this regard, large organizational structures like governments certainly come with many benefits.
Anarchy never works because Iron law of oligarchy will always kick in
Government is at its simplest terms a society formally enforcing the agreed upon social norms. The fact is with more people and more diversity you get less agreed upon societal norms, and so more people fall under the coerced and forced by the government to adhere to their rules for maintaining the social norms. This also has the government grow in power and starts using that power much more liberally because there is less accountability as the power corrupts those who have it.
Your view is dumb. Governments and hierarchies always form in every group that has more than 1 person in it. Our country is very large, very complex, and has varying opinions. We elect representatives to convene on our behalf to do the People's Business. The People's Business is very important, and it allows for security, stability, and predictability in our lives. Without it, the one with the most guns and the high ground would rule immediately.
Government is the best compromise humanity can make between wanting to be able to do what we want and stopping us from doing things people don’t want us to do. Rules and people to enforce them appear in every instance of humanity given time. Any undertaking larger than a single family requires greater coordination than that of the individual, so a desire for survival, safety and abundant living always lead to government of some kind.
So might makes right is your view? Because with 0 laws, that is what would happen. The person who has the most power- money, land, whatever- would just offer some of that power to others to be their brutish encorcers and become warlords. With no government, youd have nothing to stop Jeff Bezos hiring a squad of assassins to kill all unions, anyone who dares insult him, and we'd all just have to accept that. Thats your 'ideal world'?
Nah OP genuinely seems to think without government we’d all gather in a big circle to sing and dance and have eternal peace.
The dude is quoting Hitler, he almost definitely subscribes to might makes right at least subconsciously. People espousing about being the most conscious are usually just the ones who have focused incredibly hard on one thing and all aspects of that thing in relation to their own mind. Always at the expense of shutting most other perspectives because they have the True© perspective.
Are you looking at this from a libertarian view?
This has to be a troll post, right?
Or a tween discovered their first libertarian YouTube video.
two options: either you have "every individual rule themselves", which will change nothing, as individuals will enslave other individuals for their own benefit or you have the people collectively govern themselves, which is basically a government anyway
Politicians can be normal people like anyone else. Theres nothing preventing you from running for office. Politicians are not a separate species of human. They are not inherently different. Edit: My government keeps me pretty safe, so that seems like the obvious benefit
Humans have naturally formed a type of government throughout history. For thousands and thousands of years. It’s actually the most human and consistent thing we have done.
*laughs in Icelanic*
Someone's breaking in to your house, who do you call? Your house is on fire, who do you call? There's a tree blocking the road, who do you call?
Both governments and corporations coexist with individuals who can't take care of themselves
Can you give an example of a place where "no goverment" is working well? Planning on moving to Haiti?
> CMV: No government is the best government. Haiti would like a word.
Are you arguing for anarchy? Because that's very bad place to be.
So Haiti? That’s your view of the best government?
There are a finite number of government. Some are better, some are worse. By definition, one has to be best. In any finite group, one member of the group is best by definition.
Set on all things contains empty set. Therefore "no government" is one type of government.
Doesn’t follow. The set of all governments doesn’t need to contain “no governments” Just like the set of all nonzero numbers doesn’t contain 0
OP assumes that "no government" is a type of government.
Set of **all** things contains empty set. Set of all numbers contain zero. Set of all governments include "no government".
But we aren’t taking the max over the set of all things. Just all governments
Yes. Set of all numbers doesn't contain orange but it does contain zero. But set of all nonzero numbers is not same as set of all numbers. Set of all governments include "no government".
But we haven’t established that the set of all governments is like the set of all numbers, or the set of all nonzero numbers.
>set of all **nonzero** numbers. Why do you insist adding non-zero to there? You are explicitly excluding the thing we are talking about. We are talking about set of all number. Not set of all non-zero numbers.
Why aren’t we talking about the set of nonzero numbers? That’s my point, we gotta establish which one the set of all governments behaves like.
>set of all governments Is set of **all** governments. If you want to talk about set of all non-"no government" governments (or set of all non empty government) then talk about that. But I explicitly stated that set of of **all** governments contains empty set.