And governments cause even more undesirable violence and death via state-sponsored famine, economic collapse, genocide, war, all the way up to potential nuclear annihilation of the species... You've got this completely backwards. The question you should be asking is is government the only way to provide crime protection and prevention for society?
a. What was isn't what will be. We have agency. b. Culture changes. Government is in our heads as you just pointed out. When we desire something else the people can change it.
I think most people agree with anarcho-capitalists principles of freedom and nonviolence but for some reason they throw those ideas out the window the second their minds can't figure out how all of society should be governed. We say that is for free society to figure out.
And my rejoinder is that we did figure it out, our solution, broadly speaking is government. You anarchists can't except this because you don't like the solution and the solution having the broad backing of society undermines your volunterism. But among people who have thought about the issue government is still an attractive option to many.
If we abolished the 'government' we could never have a single society the size of the United States. We'd revert to village sized societies or city states. Eventually governments would be formed in those smaller teritories, and at that point we would be faced with the problem of keeping the peace between all those little states.
Government has arisen in every single society I've ever read about, back to ancient Egypt and the fertile cressant.
As you have already admitted, governments have the popular support of the governed.
Anarchists say, ok, tomorrow, we'll get rid of the entire government and at that point we'll just come up with a better system! We'll invent a better way of policing, a better way of maintaining clean water, a better way of keeping the poor fed, a better way of providing healthcare, a better way of building highways, a better way of protecting the environment.
Yes, government makes mistakes. The led in the water of Flint is just one of them. The difference is that a government can be held accountable by engaged and informed citizens. If citizens choose to be unengaged and ill informed, this is there fault.
Your decentralized anarchist collectives couldn't be held responsible for anything that went wrong. Who would fight those massive Californian fires? Who would come up with the money to pay those people?
Saying the answers to those questions aren't important enough to speculate on before you throw out our current system is the weakest part of your argument. Right now we have a system that works imperfectly, but I've never seen a perfect system in my entire life.
And from my perspective a lack of perfection isn't a reason to scrap an entire system.
For me to believe that getting rid of a government is a good idea, you would need to convince me that the replacement system would provide better versions of all the things the state already provides.
In a previous post I asked about policing, and someone said "Oh, well, we could just have private detectives, couldn't we?" And its like, sure we could but who woud solve murders of the poor? Who would pay those private detectives to solve the cases no rich people cared about?
P.S. Remember to upvote high quality replies. I don't necisarily mean mine, but upvoting replies encourages discussion.
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I think we are using different definitions of "government." We mean very specifically a monopoly on force that sustains itself via involuntary taxation. Legitimized initiatory violence and taxation are what we are purposing be eliminated, not people working together collectively in society. This is the the wool over your eyes.
You go on making huge assumptions that completely miss the moral argument we actually give a damn about. Who cares about the size of society? And why would freedom result in a smaller society anyway? In fact the opposite is clearly the case as the internet and trade are making us global denizens as we speak.
How engaged and informed does the average Chinese citizen have to be to stop government abuses of power? How informed and engaged did the people of Flint need to be to not be poisoned? Who will be held accountable for 18+ Trillion in U.S. debt and counting? Or all the blundering wars? No one. Ever. Contrariwise, how many businesses or citizens get away with such blatant abuses of power outside of government?
Nevermind that an informed and engaged citizenry is a pipe dream that imposes on everyone. I don't know about you but I've got enough on my plate as it is. I shouldn't be forced to waste my time and mental energies trying to influence rulers I never asked for. And I'm about 99% more engaged than anyone I know. Political apathy is completely logical from a results/time perspective as an individual. Ignoring this reality doesn't help or make the problem go away.
Ha. See, you are totally on board. Its just a matter of pragmatics. And I think this is most everyone honestly. Look, I'm not selling you anything. I'm telling you that if you want to impose on me with your idea of "society" you better be able to justify it. Just because I'm an anarchist (capitalism is a given in a free society) doesn't mean I want to flip a switch and pull the rug out from under society. I simply see these ideas as part of a long tradition of political philosophy that has been ongoing since at least the Greeks. There is no switch to flip. If we want less violent and corrupt systems governing society we have a long, hard slog to get there. Step number one for humanity is acknowledging there even is a problem with the idea of violently imposed states.
P.S. And one more thing: it isn't like there are not libraries full of ideas about every possible scenario you could envision in regards to how an anarcho-capitalistic society may function. Check out www.mises.org for a gateway into this subject. To me personally, the speculation of "how" is far less important than why. If you get the why, then you need to dig deeper on your own. You can only lead a horse to water....
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