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Comment by n3rdy | Hacker News Reader

Lets just scrap the government altogether. We're all adults, lets act like it. We don't need to elect a bunch of people to tell us what to do and what not to do.

"Good people do not need laws to tell them to act responsibly, while bad people will find a way around the laws." - Plato

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I think Founding Fathers acted like adults when they established the government. They actually wrote quite a lot explaining why they did it, and a lot of it makes sense if you read it. Government is a service, and it makes sense to make it specialized just as any other service - because specialization makes it efficient, that's why you don't make your own car, you buy it. Government, however, is a very dangerous thing, so there are some ways to manage it so it does not kill the people or make their lives miserable (think about a nuclear reactor - very useful thing if you do it right, very very dangerous thing if you let it go wrong). Unfortunately, American citizens seem to be letting their government to grow way beyond the planned sizes and do what it was never meant to do and never is going to do well. They are getting their ample share of misery for that, unfortunately.

As for the Plato's saying, there's also another one - "Amicus Plato, sed magis amica veritas". I do not, of course, claim to be Plato's friend, but I hope truth still has the same appeal for me as it did for the great Greeks.

Specialization and services are great and efficient. I don't consider something a service though, when it is forced on me.

Unfortunately, that's how all the governments work, so far nobody designed a working model of concurrent voluntary jurisdictions. It would be nice to try but for that one would need to start from scratch, which is not going to happen in the US.

The alternative is that a bunch of unelected people will tell us what to do and not to do. That seems worse.

Governments are responsible for considerably more violence than individuals.

Can you give me some examples of violence that wasn't caused by any individual people?

Obviously it takes an individual to carry out the violence, but governments have been responsible for organizing mass violence.

The millions of deaths from war would have been extremely unlikely to happen unless orchestrated by a government.

The exception would be the mexican drug war, but even that could be argued to be caused by government enforced prohibition. Even so, the deaths caused by the cartels are low compared to deaths from wars and genocides that governments have carried out.

True. But does a better alternative to rule of law exist? Perhaps. I'd love to hear thoughts on this.

Better is arguable, but I really do recommend The Machinery of Freedom by David Friedman (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Machinery_of_Freedom) for an alternative. It's well thought out and very detailed.

I have to check it out. However, if the book really does argue from a utilitarian POV, it fails right there. Utilitarianism by itself is hardly the basis of any human's thought. Otherwise we'd all be vegans thanks to Peter Singer's "Animal Liberation."

Still, I'm not going to take Wikipedia's take on it. Thank you for the first book recommendation of the new year.

Sounds interesting, but I have doubts about utilitarian arguments too. Why not check out Rothbard's "For a New Liberty"? It's in audio form for free here:

https://mises.org/media.aspx?action=category&ID=87

Chapter 12. The Public Sector, III: Police, Law, and the Courts is particularly impressive.

EDIT: Here is Rothbard's amusing argument against utilitarianism:

"Let us consider a stark example: Suppose a society which fervently considers all redheads to be agents of the Devil and therefore to be executed whenever found. Let us further assume that only a small number of redheads exist in any generation—so few as to be statistically insignificant. The utilitarian-libertarian might well reason: “While the murder of isolated redheads is deplorable, the executions are small in number; the vast majority of the public, as non-redheads,achieves enormous psychic satisfaction from the public execution of redheads. The social cost is negligible, the social, psychic benefit to the rest of society is great; therefore, it is right and proper for society to execute the redheads.” The natural-rights libertarian, overwhelmingly concerned as he is for the justice of the act, will react in horror and staunchly and unequivocally oppose the executions as totally unjustified murder and aggression upon non-aggressive persons. The consequence of stopping the murders — depriving the bulk of society of great psychic pleasure — would not influence such a libertarian, the “absolutist” libertarian, in the slightest. Dedicated to justice and to logical consistency, the natural-rights libertarian cheerfully admits to being “doctrinaire,” to being, in short, an unabashed follower of his own doctrines."

If you look at government as a service, imagine if it weren't compulsory, and if competition were allowed.

This would solve many problems that are caused when government is a monopoly. If you can opt out, or conveniently choose another "service provider", it makes that service more accountable for its actions.

Even services like phone/internet providers would improve as a result, because those government approved monopolies would no longer be enforced, opening up competition in those sectors as well.

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