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Comment by pekk | Hacker News Reader

Not quite as naive as believing that every problem works itself out as long as the government goes away.

Not quite as naive as thinking that the belief that every problem works itself out as long as the government goes away is anything more than a strawman for the libertarian position.

Break that apart just a little more. Except if it was your goal to write something hard to understand.

   (Not quite as naive as     
      (thinking that
          (is anything more than 
             (the belief that
                (every problem works itself out as long as the government goes away))
             (a strawman for the libertarian position))))

I don't think "no government" is libertarian, that's anarchy.

Anarchy isn't utopia, but on the balance, I consider that real governments (not the platonic disinterested central coordinator) introduce more problems than they solve.

Not every problem is caused by the government, but that doesn't mean they can be solved by government, nor does it mean that they warrant having a government in the first place.

To further your idea, I believe there needs to be a healthy balance of both. Blanket statements, policies etc tend to raise more problems after the solve the initial problems it set out to solve.

Take my username- Fdanconia pays homage to Francisco d'ansonia, one of the protagonists from Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged. It reminds me that I used to think "pure capitalism and no government" was an answer. Now, I believe that a healthy mix of both regulation and competition is essential to our society.

Could you give some examples about what kinds of problems a governmentless society can't solve that a government could?

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