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Assange speaks truth. You cannot deny the fundamentals of the state are violence. The US speaks already of a capacity for instant global weapon strikes within the hour. You claim it is wrong to question the system, implicitly suggesting there is no alternative. But anthropology shows clearly that premodern societies had more free time, greater material and economic equality. (Try 'Debt: The First 5000 Years').

You attack a perspective, quoting on a tangent, without contributing anything meaningful except the notion that government can have value: but of course! Nobody denies this.

Assange and other politically engaged hackers like him seek improved systems of governance: greater protection of fundamental freedoms, greater availability of additional freedoms, greater truth and transparency.

Relax, nobody wants to topple your car and burn your house down.

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You claim it is wrong to question the system, implicitly suggesting there is no alternative.

No I didn't. How can you expect me to engage with the rest of your comment in any serious fashion when you just make up claims like this?

I read your "As if we lived in a halcyon utopia prior to that..." paragraph as implicitly denying alternatives to the status-quo of modern society. Apologies if this was not your intent; in any case, in that paragraph you have done essentially to Assange's views what I did with my comment to yours. Haha :) May we all live long and prosper; peace amongst all.

I'm not denying alternatives to it; I'm pointing out that absent a state people still employ violence to assert things like land and property rights, and usually in a more direct and short-term fashion at that.

> But anthropology shows clearly that premodern societies had more free time, greater material and economic equality.

I already disagreed with the grandparent comment, but I need to criticize this too: those metrics are terrible, and we shouldn't be looking to the past for the good old days.

Free time: only if you don't consider all the free time lost by all the people who died as children (extremely high premodern child mortality).

Material and economic equality: being equally poor is not really a solution anyone would like.

Well, the metrics could definitely use some work and context, but there is some real truth behind them. Up until the 18th century or so, non-state spaces existed in abundance, and given a choice between either being a subject of a sedentary state or being a person outside state control, you were nearly certainly better off by choosing the latter. Many people did, in fact, and there was a constant flux of people out of and into state spaces. It was only when technology became sufficiently developed that virtually everyone was subjected to the State.

But I don't think there are any humans who can live free from social constructs. Living in a tribe, or under a warlord seems like the antithesis of freedom in the sense that most are discussing here.

> we shouldn't be looking to the past

History informs the present and future. My point in bringing up anthropology was that the OP's implicit suggestion that there is no alternative is demonstrably invalid.

> being equally poor

I would also heartily recommend the same book to you. It's quite an eye opener.

> Free time: only if you don't consider all the free time lost by all the people who died as children (extremely high premodern child mortality).

That's only relevant if all those children died due to some specific form of government being in effect.

I don't at all disagree with you but for the benefit of the others I'd like to ask you, what do you mean by truth? (What do you indicate by the term of truth?)

edit: To say something is truth if it's true is too circular - as a definition it doesn't have matters that can be confirmed by others so isn't so helpful to convince them.

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