That's all government has ever been and will always be: a protection racket.
Eh, no.
I think it's usually an indication of sloppy thinking when someone makes sweepingly absolute statements about vague, abstract concepts with numerous and important differences in implementation.
> In the European tradition, the number 1 thing government protects is private property. There's a reason that deeds are recorded with the county amd that you must pay tax on real estate and that these are fundamental things local government does in even in the most backwater province where they may not even have a library system.
Most (but not all) people who make sweeping statements like the GP's are ideological capitalists, but capitalism fails without the government record-keeping and enforcement systems you bring up:
https://www.amazon.com/Mystery-Capital-Capitalism-Triumphs-E...
It's interesting to me that casual civics and history instruction spends so much time on the bill of rights, democracy, etc and yet the system of "private property" which to my eye appears even more fundamental than our constitution to how things work in our society is taken for granted.
A racket implies they're 'protecting' you from themselves. I don't think that's true.
If protection isn't important to you, you can give Somalia a try.
Unlike most of HN I'm not an expert on modern Somalian politics - could you describe more about how Somalias current central government only exists on paper?
so the ends justify the means? Even the premise is wrong
edit: That also includes being stable against competing systems. A utopia that is conquered in 5 minutes and replaced with a dystopia is not a utopia.
Just drop the pretension.
Edit: maybe I'm schizo-ranting, but in my opinion, this is a very sober/hyperconscious perspective, that should be had by everyone. Not this Plato's Cave bs, that we live in a 'free democracy' where nobody questions status quo, except a minority of right-left non-npc people.