# I Wish We Could Elect Absence of government **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [September 11, 2014, 7:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-wish-we-could-elect-absence-of-government/698151 "2014-09-11T07:58:12Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![Telemark](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/telemark/32/372_2.png) [@Telemark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Telemark)\ **Post date:** [September 15, 2014, 6:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-wish-we-could-elect-absence-of-government/698151/61 "2014-09-15T18:39:31Z")
> [@DrCube](#): > > Enlightened warlords over the years have realized giving people a modicum of choice, and the illusion of “say” in their governance (as well as plenty of bread and circuses) makes it a lot easier to hold on to their wealth and power. Who are these warlords who control my local school board elections? > [@DrCube](#): > > But we can’t just be satisfied with a present that’s better than the past. We must also strive to make the future better than the present. I would argue that it’s better now for more people than it ever has been. There is always room to get better, but not by tearing down the things that have made the most positive improvement in our lives. ---
**Author:** ![Johnny\_L.A](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johnny_l.a/32/1084_2.png) [@Johnny\_L.A](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johnny_L.A)\ **Post date:** [September 15, 2014, 7:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-wish-we-could-elect-absence-of-government/698151/62 "2014-09-15T19:08:22Z")
> [@WillFarnaby](#): > > in a given society, that society will be better off without a monopolist provider of law and coercion. OK, so without laws, what’s to prevent a monopolist provider of law and coercion from taking control? (Pssst… Don’t look now – I SAID not to look! – but ruling power in our ‘representative democracy’ is pretty much private corporations and the men who own them.) ---
**Author:** ![Sitnam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/6a8cbe/32.png) [@Sitnam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sitnam)\ **Post date:** [September 15, 2014, 7:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-wish-we-could-elect-absence-of-government/698151/63 "2014-09-15T19:21:05Z")
Ronald Reagan was wrong, the most terrifying words in the English language are: There is no government and I’m here to kill you. ---
**Author:** ![DrCube](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/a3d4f5/32.png) [@DrCube](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrCube)\ **Post date:** [September 15, 2014, 7:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-wish-we-could-elect-absence-of-government/698151/64 "2014-09-15T19:23:31Z")
> [@Telemark](#): > > I would argue that it’s better now for more people than it ever has been. There is always room to get better, but not by tearing down the things that have made the most positive improvement in our lives. That’s my point. People assume for some reason that anarchy is destructive. But it is about creativity and progress, not destruction and reverting to primitive hut-dwellers. In my opinion, it’s the next step after democracy. No freedom -\> some freedom -\> the most freedom. If you think anarchy is all about making it easy to rape and murder, you’ve watched Escape from New York too many times. ---
**Author:** ![DrCube](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/a3d4f5/32.png) [@DrCube](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrCube)\ **Post date:** [September 15, 2014, 7:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-wish-we-could-elect-absence-of-government/698151/65 "2014-09-15T19:26:32Z")
> [@Johnny\_L.A](#): > > (Pssst… Don’t look now – I SAID not to look! – but ruling power in our ‘representative democracy’ is pretty much private corporations and the men who own them.) And what giant, $4 trillion tool do they chiefly use to wield that power? ---
**Author:** ![wolfpup](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wolfpup/32/10618_2.png) [@wolfpup](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wolfpup)\ **Post date:** [September 15, 2014, 8:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-wish-we-could-elect-absence-of-government/698151/66 "2014-09-15T20:53:41Z")
> [@DrCube](#): > > Government _is_ the warlord that won out against the others. They _are_ the strongmen with guns who won the scuffle. Sounds like someone can’t distinguish between a representative democracy and a tyrannical dictatorship. The difference is quite foundationally important. > [@DrCube](#): > > I don’t know what an anarchic society would look like, because it will require evolution, not revolution. My guess is that it would look a lot like today, in that social disapproval will sway people’s actions far more than any legal entity on a day-to-day basis. Police, military, infrastructure, healthcare and fire services will probably have some private, voluntary analogs. “Social disapproval” is a powerful factor in shaping behavior, but in no society in history has it ever or will it ever be a substitute for the rule of law. As for “private” police forces and fire departments, it’s been done – perhaps you’ve heard of Academi, formerly Xe Services, and before that, Blackwater, and perhaps you’ve heard of the private fire deparment watching a house burn down because the owner hadn’t paid his dues. Or the gross miscarriages of justice perpetrated by backroom deals between judges and the operators of private prisons looking to bolster their revenues. And private health insurance has been discussed to death in many threads here, resulting in an abomination in the US that is the most expensive in the world, staggeringly ineffective, and leaves 45 million uninsured and a good number of the rest bankrupt. Yeah, those all sound like terrific libertarian ideas – privatize everything! :rolleyes: > [@DrCube](#): > > That’s my point. People assume for some reason that anarchy is destructive. But it is about creativity and progress, not destruction and reverting to primitive hut-dwellers. In my opinion, it’s the next step after democracy. No freedom -\> some freedom -\> the most freedom. If you think anarchy is all about making it easy to rape and murder, you’ve watched Escape from New York too many times. Here’s the thing. “Freedom” isn’t in itself the end goal of a civilized society, it’s merely one of the many beneficial consequences. The measure of a successful society is the extent to which it allows us to live happy and fulfilled lives in an environment of peace and justice, compassion and enlightenment. Personal freedom is merely an outcome, one of the many values of such a society, but it’s neither an absolute nor its sole driver. Freedom also has a zero-sum nature because any society is a community of shared resources: thus, for instance, your freedom to make all the noise you want or pollute the environment interferes with my freedom to enjoy peace and quiet and live in a clean environment, so it must always be circumscribed by reasonable limits and never treated as either an absolute or an overarching end goal. It has always been thus and always will be, regardless of what new political systems we invent. No doubt we will find ways to improve the functioning of representative democracy, but anarchy sure ain’t it. ---
**Author:** ![Johnny\_L.A](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johnny_l.a/32/1084_2.png) [@Johnny\_L.A](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johnny_L.A)\ **Post date:** [September 15, 2014, 8:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-wish-we-could-elect-absence-of-government/698151/67 "2014-09-15T20:58:14Z")
> [@DrCube](#): > > And what giant, $4 trillion tool do they chiefly use to wield that power? And you seem to be against doing anything to take that tool away from them. ---
**Author:** ![DrCube](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/a3d4f5/32.png) [@DrCube](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrCube)\ **Post date:** [September 15, 2014, 9:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-wish-we-could-elect-absence-of-government/698151/68 "2014-09-15T21:42:57Z")
> [@Johnny\_L.A](#): > > And you seem to be against doing anything to take that tool away from them. No, you’ve got that backwards. Most of the responses in this thread have been of this sort: “We can’t get rid of government, because we’ll just have another government again – probably more oppressive than the one we’ve got – with a bunch of violence in between as people fight for control.” Fair enough. You’ve convinced me that we can’t just burn the constitution, dissolve the government and then go about our lives as before. But that’s not what any reasonable person would advocate, so it’s not very convincing. “A period of violence and crime before another shitty government is installed” is not anarchy by any definition of the term. ---
**Author:** ![Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/7cd45c/32.png) [@Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Elendil_s_Heir)\ **Post date:** [September 16, 2014, 12:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-wish-we-could-elect-absence-of-government/698151/69 "2014-09-16T00:18:38Z")
I would’ve written, “A period of violence and crime before another, _much shittier_ government is installed.” ---
**Author:** ![eschereal](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/eschereal/32/18939_2.png) [@eschereal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/eschereal)\ **Post date:** [September 16, 2014, 1:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-wish-we-could-elect-absence-of-government/698151/70 "2014-09-16T01:02:37Z")
The way things stand right now, less government is rather exactly the opposite of less government. If we reduce the government effectively to impotence, what replaces its function are the large businesses that more-or-less already run the country. Unless there is a plan to deal with the top-heavy private sector, reducing government will have a non-positive result. ---
**Author:** ![Johnny\_L.A](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johnny_l.a/32/1084_2.png) [@Johnny\_L.A](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johnny_L.A)\ **Post date:** [September 16, 2014, 5:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-wish-we-could-elect-absence-of-government/698151/71 "2014-09-16T05:03:50Z")
> [@DrCube](#): > > No, you’ve got that backwards. . We need regulations to counterbalance the plutocracy that threatens the country, but you seem to be calling for less regulation. ---
**Author:** ![septimus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/septimus/32/410_2.png) [@septimus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/septimus)\ **Post date:** [September 16, 2014, 12:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-wish-we-could-elect-absence-of-government/698151/72 "2014-09-16T12:49:09Z")
> [@WillFarnaby](#): > > Libertarianism is a system in which property rights are respected either through tradition, a strictly limited government, or competing providers of law. To simply say a place without central govt is a libertarian paradise lacks crucial understanding. Government is anathema to libertarianism in so far as it as an aggressor against property rights, nothing more. I’ve always been unclear about how extreme right-wing Libertarians(\*) understand property rights. (I don’t intend to prejudice discussion with the adjectives “extreme right-wing” but “libertarian” covers a broad range of thought. I once considered myself “libertarian” for supporting market enhancements like cap-and-trade but am now told that’s the antithesis of modern “Libertarianism” which is almost defined to hate all government.) Three cases have to be considered. [ul][li] The present world. I assume that Libertarians believe existing property rights should be “grandfathered in” when government withers away. The Walton family keeps their property. English landowners who trace their real estate through a long series of deeds back to the Conquest by William the Bastard in 1066 get to keep their land. Somalian landowners who trace their title to a landgrant by Ahmed the Warlord 5 years ago presumably get to keep their land for the same reason. Such “grandfathering” may make sense but is uninteresting.[/li][li] One can try to understand the origin of land rights in the real world. In England, title traces back to 1066 and has been preserved since _because of strong central government_. In some other parts of Europe, effective ownership often changed hands according to military force until roughly the 1500’s when property rights became effectively permanent due to … increased power of central government![/li] IOW, strong central government, rather than being detrimental to property rights, is prerequisite! [li] Finally, let’s consider property rights _ab initio_. Postulate a deserted island to which a few people are drawn by shipwrecks, perhaps as in _Lord of the Flies_. According to Libertarians, the first to arrive can claim much as homesteaders do – by using the land, farming, fishing, mining, etc. If the island is too large for him to use, a second shipwrecked man has no problem – he gets the other half of the island. But what if the first man is very industrious, harvesting fruit and other materials from throughout the island? In the Libertarian model, the scond man gets no land but must work for a salary. This may make sense, but is one reason many of us find the name “Libertarian” to be backwards. If _Liberty_ were the goal the later arrival would be _at liberty_ to gather fruit from the land “owned” by the first. Instead he must starve or become a slave. Assuming womenfolk etc., and that property rights are heritable, descendants of the second man might become a permanent lower caste to serve the first caste. _Come to think of it, this isn’t awfully different from the way ancient societies did function … before the rise of modern strong liberal governance._[/li][/ul] Naturally disputes will arise. “You didn’t homestead _that_ grove. Let me eat these bananas!” – “To the contrary, I harvested one pound of fruit from each tree per year, and that’s all it takes. Nevermind that I gave the fruit to my pet monkeys. They entertain me. You’d better start entertaining me too if you want fruit from _my_ trees.” What happens when there’s a dispute? In the U.S.A., with strong government, one appeals to, say, the Alameda County Clerk-Recorder’s Office. In Libertopia, if I pay Earp & Brothers Title Insurance for my ownership arbitration but you pay Have-Briefcase-Will-Travel, what happens? I assume Earp and Paladin will fight it out, but I’m unclear; I’m not a Libertarian. Even if a “central government” exists with land deeds as its main charter, does anyone think this will avoid disputes if competing police services are used to enforce orders? Comments from Libertarians? What am I missing? ---
**Author:** ![MrQwertyasd](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/9d8465/32.png) [@MrQwertyasd](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrQwertyasd)\ **Post date:** [September 18, 2014, 1:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-wish-we-could-elect-absence-of-government/698151/73 "2014-09-18T13:12:28Z")
> [@regularshow](#): > > Absence of U.S. government in our private households has been showing us that anarchy (defined absence of government) clearly isn’t chaos, and that anarchy can work outside of our private households. > > Discuss. Won’t discuss, I’ll just link to nice people getting on with each other. [http://www.peacefulsocieties.org/Society/Tristan.html](http://www.peacefulsocieties.org/Society/Tristan.html) ---
**Author:** ![DinoR](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dinor/32/2821_2.png) [@DinoR](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DinoR)\ **Post date:** [October 25, 2014, 5:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-wish-we-could-elect-absence-of-government/698151/74 "2014-10-25T17:52:53Z")
> [@DrCube](#): > > I don’t know what an anarchic society would look like, because it will require evolution, not revolution. My guess is that it would look a lot like today, in that social disapproval will sway people’s actions far more than any legal entity on a day-to-day basis. Aside from the fact that there are people who are less susceptible to social pressure there’s an issue of imperfect information. Not everyone in my community will have knowledge about everything I do that produces negative externalities for them at my own benefit. They can’t pressure me effectively if they don’t know. Producing mechanisms that reduce privacy, and thus improve the information the community, counters the movement towards more freedom to at least some degree. An anecdote from long ago as I was growing up… there was a police “strike” where I grew up. It was more “blue flu” with rotating individuals who didn’t call in sick due to legal limits on stirking. The roads weren’t at the level of Mad Max. They were decidedly less law abiding. Social pressure was ineffectual since you didn’t really know the offenders. > [@](#): > > Police, military, infrastructure, healthcare and fire services will probably have some private, voluntary analogs. It’s a nice hand wave. I know you mention that you don’t know what the society would look like. Part of figuring out what it looks like is dealing with the classic issue of how to provide public goods with individual economic decisions. That is the free rider problem. Social pressure might work to reduce it some (Joe doesn’t have the “I support the army” sticker in his window given for paying his share for the militia this year…let’s scold him!) That social pressure needs to be at a level where the negative effects of pressure almost completely outweigh the monetary cost when you get to something like a military. There’s almost no individual benefit to funding it versus free ridingl; the odds of an invading army targeting just me and my property are tiny unless I am the equivalent of Osama Bin Laden. Externalities and public goods are two areas that I have yet to see either Libertarians or Anarchists adequately deal with to my satisfaction. ---
**Author:** ![UltraVires](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/ecccb3/32.png) [@UltraVires](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/UltraVires)\ **Post date:** [October 25, 2014, 7:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-wish-we-could-elect-absence-of-government/698151/75 "2014-10-25T19:27:05Z")
> [@wolfpup](#): > > Here’s the thing. “Freedom” isn’t in itself the end goal of a civilized society, it’s merely one of the many beneficial consequences. The measure of a successful society is the extent to which it allows us to live happy and fulfilled lives in an environment of peace and justice, compassion and enlightenment. Personal freedom is merely an outcome, one of the many values of such a society, but it’s neither an absolute nor its sole driver. Freedom also has a zero-sum nature because any society is a community of shared resources: thus, for instance, your freedom to make all the noise you want or pollute the environment interferes with my freedom to enjoy peace and quiet and live in a clean environment, so it must always be circumscribed by reasonable limits and never treated as either an absolute or an overarching end goal. It has always been thus and always will be, regardless of what new political systems we invent. No doubt we will find ways to improve the functioning of representative democracy, but anarchy sure ain’t it. I don’t think that anyone advocates “absolute freedom” in the sense that you are talking about. My freedom to play loud music must end when it keeps you awake at 3:00 a.m. I think we all agree on that. The other extreme is that, say, my freedom to say anything negative about President Obama’s policies must end because it harms society by making us look divided to terrorists in other countries. I think that nobody here would agree to such a restriction. The debate lies in the middle. Should people give up freedoms because of indirect affects on society. An opinion on seat belt laws is a good indicator of where someone lies on the issue. I think it is fairly well established that my failure to wear a seat belt, when combined with others who would fail to wear a seat belt without compulsion, would cause an increase in medical costs, much of which society must bear, and thereby cause an aggregate harm. Authoritarian types would think that curtailing my freedom to drive without a seat belt should be done for the greater good of society. Libertarian types would value my personal freedom to make that choice over the tangential relationship that this individual choice has on society in the aggregate. I lean more towards the Libertarian side in that individual freedom, in and of itself, is an end goal, because as we all make imperfect choices, not being harassed by a nanny state for your poor choice contributes to general happiness, even if it costs society somewhat in the long term. ---
**Author:** ![tomndebb](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/b9e5f3/32.png) [@tomndebb](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tomndebb)\ **Post date:** [October 25, 2014, 9:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-wish-we-could-elect-absence-of-government/698151/76 "2014-10-25T21:32:42Z")
> [@jtgain](#): > > The other extreme is that, say, my freedom to say anything negative about President Obama’s policies must end because it harms society by making us look divided to terrorists in other countries. I think that nobody here would agree to such a restriction. Actually, we have had posters argue for that very point, (although I note that they only seemed to argue the point under G W Bush and have been noticeably silent on the point since the election of Obama, who, apparently, requires public criticism 😛 ). ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [October 26, 2014, 12:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-wish-we-could-elect-absence-of-government/698151/77 "2014-10-26T00:29:16Z")
> [@DrCube](#): > > That’s my point. People assume for some reason that anarchy is destructive. But it is about creativity and progress, not destruction and reverting to primitive hut-dwellers. In my opinion, it’s the next step after democracy. No freedom -\> some freedom -\> the most freedom. If you think anarchy is all about making it easy to rape and murder, you’ve watched Escape from New York too many times. The problem is it only takes one psychopath to ruin it for everyone. And seriously that really is the problem. You can have a society in which ninety-nine percent of the people are good kind-hearted people who aren’t looking to harm anyone. But the other one percent will be able to make the place a living hell. Unless the ninety-nine percent get together and make the one percent stop their bad behavior. And that’s when government starts. ---
**Author:** ![Trinopus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/2bfe46/32.png) [@Trinopus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Trinopus)\ **Post date:** [October 26, 2014, 1:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-wish-we-could-elect-absence-of-government/698151/78 "2014-10-26T01:23:47Z")
**Little Nemo** : Yep… This is the classic downfall of most utopias. Skinner’s “Walden Two” is a really nice place…until one little stinker learns that you can get your way by shouting at people, and maybe even hitting them. At that point, either he dominates the entire society, or else the society learns how to get two or more people to hold the stinker off, at which point “policing” has been re-invented. Soviet-Socialism – the withering away of the state – looks good on paper. But when a small minority of people – the Communist Party insiders – figured out how to harness the apparatus of the state, it did the exact opposite of withering away. The idea of limiting the government’s power is a good one; that’s what constitutional government is all about. But the idea of eliminating it is a sick fantasy. Whom do you trust enough to give the power to, to turn off that one last light switch? What’s to prevent him from keeping it for himself, and having uncontested control? Instead, having lots of people hovering around the light switch, arguing over whether or not to turn it on – “Daylight Saving Time!” “Nonsense; it’s dawn when you can tell a white thread from a black thread” – is a much better protection for the rest of us. ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [October 26, 2014, 4:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-wish-we-could-elect-absence-of-government/698151/79 "2014-10-26T04:55:23Z")
I’m a Lockean. I believe that most people are generally good. But not everyone - some people are generally bad. So I feel that democracy works. It allows the good majority to run things - which gives the good majority the power to act as a check on the bad minority. So you have a society which promotes the good and neutralizes the bad. ---
**Author:** ![marshmallow](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/df705f/32.png) [@marshmallow](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/marshmallow)\ **Post date:** [October 27, 2014, 12:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-wish-we-could-elect-absence-of-government/698151/80 "2014-10-27T00:17:18Z")
The solution should be dissolution. But we humans are really good at forming cooperative killing machines to serve our masters. We can’t take them apart piece by piece, so the next best hope is to gum it up from the inside. We aren’t too good at that either, apparently. The main problem with libertarianism, besides it being a parochial American conceit or pretending that property rights are an actual thing instead of just more social engineering like everything else they decry, is that it’s statist (despite its constant conflation with anarchism in this thread and board in general). Once you give the police guns and tell them to protect the general welfare you’ve given up the whole game. As an aside, this is one of the most dissident political threads I’ve seen on the Dope in all my years. Multiple posters are saying government – even the holy democracies – are equivalent to criminal cartels, without much pushback from the libs. Previously the edgiest I’ve seen here is democracy/capitalism is a fraud type stuff. What’s the matter, SAD arrive early? Too much bad cop news? Watching ISIS make their own little slice of heaven taking its toll? [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-wish-we-could-elect-absence-of-government/698151.md?page=3) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-wish-we-could-elect-absence-of-government/698151.md?page=5)