Topic: Do We Need Government? - page 4. (Read 6961 times)

You are so right.  Tell the Iraqis that it was all a bad dream and tell the Iranians they have nothing, absolutely nothing, to worry about. 

Sigh.

I don't think nation states invading other nation states is a serious threat anymore. Most of the wealth in modern society is not nearly invincible physical resources tied to land, as was the case in ancient times, or even factories or equipment which could be captured and salvages. Modern wealth is people - it is us, our skills and our relationships with other people that we work with. If you try to capture a country for profit, you'll find that the people there will be much more interested in putting IEDs under your tanks than working for you, and the only way to truly subdue a nation is to pretty much burn everything and everyone to the ground, and what's the profit in that?

yah those pesky non-libertarian neighbors as said.

they'd have to send out evangelists first 

It is one of the ironies that the "no state" crowd are all against their own state.  They seem to think foreign occupation would be far less unpleasant than living in a democracy.

Any "Weak Government" theory needs to deal with what happened to every other "weak" government society. They were overtaken by people living under systems with centralized power. (please provide a counter example, I have looked for an example extensively) This should also be applied to considering places like Costa Rica today. Could those libertarian communities exist without US tourism and protectionism? A well-functioning economy is not the only aspect of a society that needs to be considered.

Move to somalia and stop trying to ruin the country for everyone else then perhaps?

To protect us from ourselves apparently.

I think a better question would be:

What do we need government for?

Cool, like an economic version of gladiator battles for the civilised world to watch. Should be a cute experiment.

There are also economic free zones such as Hong Kong and ones that are going to open up in South America. We'll see.

Start seasteading

Do people still desire government? It seems so.

Do I need or want it? Nope. Can me and the people who desire little to no government get our desires met? Unlikely at this point.

One thing we need to determine is whether or not it's possible for competing force agencies to resolve most of their disputes in an orderly and timely manner. Additionally, it's important to determine the solution or restitution of the problem in a proportional way. An eye for an eye, being the worst case scenario.

Competition on force contracts, which depend on the interpretation of what is right and wrong, are the the most difficult environments to deal in. It would seem plausible that violence could escalate very quickly in situations where the majority of individuals have a large belief-variation in what is wrong and right. Those situations can degrade quickly to feuding and infighting.

In reality, we actually have a market for governments. They exist on a global scale between countries, and within those police states exist some private contract dispute arbitration firms. What's interesting is, none of the governments of the world are free-will choice. You cannot choose your form of security and arbitration resolution exclusive of the state. The state can step in and overturn any or all of your decisions at any time. If they didn't step in, would justice still exist (even in the case where the arbitration is patently one-sided and unfair) or would the market eventually find its way?

I'm gonna try to steer this back towards the main topic of the discussion (Do we need government?)... I don't necessarily agree with the OP on everything, but I think he is right when he says :


My point was simply to highlight the fact that government is not automatically "good" or even morally justified... The gender "equality" we see today is a recent change in our western societies. Racial segregation in various areas was legally enforced by the US federal and state governments into the 1970s.

Even as we speak, law enforcement is pepper-spraying peaceful OWS protesters, in violation of the law they are supposed to uphold.

The rule of law CAN and WILL be abused. At least, if a corporation is doing something bad / evil, I can protest by not giving them my money. I still have to pay my sale and income taxes to the government whether or not they are involved in an illegal war (the Iraq war), whether or not they are approving the use of torture (waterboarding) or unlawful imprisonment (guantanamo bay), or else, they will jail me (or shoot me if I offer resistance).

In that regard, it is best to be as limited as possible and if the free markets can find a solution to solve the government monopoly on violence, I am all for it.

We are talking about how to stop the domestic violence resulting in death, not how best to copy it.  OP suggests the answer is for the victim to move to a shelter and the community to ostracise the violent person.  I'm suggesting the police arresting the violent person is a proven better way of handling things.

I'm not sure what you are suggesting other than that there are bad countries in the world.  If you have a useful suggestion, please post it.

The Short Answer: YES

Government is a force of Nature... Humans will seek like minded people and form rules... these rules will be tested by others and nature. We tend to think we are "Smart." This is actually being dumb. Accept the boundaries in which nature has provided, although sometimes seemingly cruel ones, and work with those systems.

  Government is ruling by force or threat of force.... Has always been that way and will always be that way. Suppose Iran went with Flower Power instead of Nuclear Power.... They would be conquered in a day.

  The problem is with the application of force and when to appropriately use it. I follow the "Brubaker" and/or "Patton" model. In Brubaker's instance; "Walk softly but carry a big stick" and in Patton's "Only unleash the dogs of war in dire circumstances, then quickly cage them again".

If you find yourself disagreeing... Imagine only 1 family on earth. There is government. The Head of the Family rules by varying means but force and/or the threat of force is the predominant one.

In the natural world it boils down to 3 basics...

EAT
SLEEP
PROPAGATE

How well you do these things is where all the problems come in.

So, I propose that your question is not whether we need Government, but which form of Government is best. To answer that:

Capitalism is a natural process not a form of Government. Many confuse this. But think of it this way. Capitalism is trying to find the best and most efficient use of resources while achieving the largest gain. All forms of government do this no matter what they call themselves. Democracy, Communist, etc...

There will always be more poor than rich. That is a forgone conclusion. So the real question is, which form of government allows the the free flow of poor to rich and rich to poor with the least amount of barriers. Given a level genetic field of poor and rich.

BTW, my term of using Rich and Poor here only imply financial status. Personally I thing culturally rich systems can beat the heck out of financial ones. I.E. Bet the Amish are laughing their butts off at our "Recession."


The Bear.

There you go, you just contradicted yourself. Just because some idiot beats his wife doesn't mean that we all have to do it... Discuss.

Edit : As a bonus question, how is my previous post a logic error, when I only have stated existing and verifiable facts, while offering no logical reasoning whatsoever?

Logic error.  I seriously doubt the offender was acting in his capacity as a state servant when he beat his wife so to say the state was more or less culpable is to connect unrelated facts.

My experience is that its the police make the biggest difference.  The humiliation of arrest and being kept in the cells to cool down is a huge thing and a great many people are deterred by it.

Challenging the existing system is great.  But ideally we want to keep the things that work and improve society, don't we?

Logic error.  Just because someone somewhere does something stupid doesn't mean that we all have to be stupid.

Agreed.

Also, @Hawker, as I mentioned previously, some countries will allow, even encourage the beating of one's wife. When you say there are laws against this, this is unfortunately a broad generalization that is not true everywhere. It was still allowed in the US a few decades ago, and apparently still is under some old state laws...

Try to google dumbest laws... apparently it's still legal to beat your wife on the Court's step on Sunday in South Carolina... :-/