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Comment by snitko | Hacker News Reader

Sometimes people take The Matrix quite literally, while it is actually a very good metaphor for government and democracy. Morpheus hints at this very transparently in a couple of monologues:

Morpheus: The Matrix is everywhere. It is all around us. Even now, in this very room. You can see it when you look out your window or when you turn on your television. You can feel it when you go to work... when you go to church... when you pay your taxes [grins]. It is the world that has been pulled over your eyes to blind you from the truth.

Neo: What truth?

Morpheus: That you are a slave, Neo. Like everyone else you were born into bondage. Born into a prison that you cannot smell or taste or touch. A prison for your mind.

So what Neo later sees are endless fields of human beings being grown for the very purpose of obtaining energy from them. Still don't see what's going on here?

And then later in the training program he tells Neo this:

Morpheus: The Matrix is a system, Neo. That system is our enemy. But when you're inside, you look around, what do you see? Business men, teachers, lawyers, carpenters. The very minds of the people we are trying to save. But until we do, these people are still a part of that system, and that makes them our enemy. You have to understand, most of these people are not ready to be unplugged. And many of them are so inured, so hopelessly dependent on the system, that they will fight to protect it.

And indeed, I see that all over again. Even if you hint to people that maybe we don't really need a government to live our lives in peace, at the very best it is suggested you go to Somalia. The very idea that maybe the dearest leaders of whatever country you live in don't actually care about you doesn't seem to be able to penetrate people's minds, even though time and again they lie and abuse their powers. Those who hint to this idea are called radicals and extremists, even though it is not them, but the elite in power, who have a stake in this whole game.

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The system being better than the alternatives and the system caring about you are two different things.

> The very idea that maybe the dearest leaders of whatever country you live in don't actually care about you doesn't seem to be able to penetrate people's minds, even though time and again they lie and abuse their powers.

Really? Because the prevailing opinion with people I speak to is that politicians are bastards, and that's replicated here. In fact, politicians are very rarely looked at in a good light. People dislike what we have! What's the approval rating of Congress?

Your rhetoric is the same I see time and time again. People need to "wake up" and see that the system is terrible, and they're so stupid for not seeing it. People do see it, we've got well past that point. The idea that there are significant problems with the way we run countries is painfully fucking obvious. You're not smarter than everyone else for seeing that there is corruption, or that people lie. These revelations are not new, they're not anything different from what we've seen for thousands of years.

The problem is nobody has a good plan for what else to do.

> Even if you hint to people that maybe we don't really need a government to live our lives in peace, at the very best it is suggested you go to Somalia.

Well it's a good point, we can point at countries without democratic-ish rule and they're often really terrible places to live. I get to complain about MPs spending expenses money on duck houses on the internet because I have reliable infrastructure and enough money to buy a computer and an internet connection. I'm not worried about a group of teens in the military coming in and raping my wife.

> Even if you hint to people that maybe we don't really need a government to live our lives in peace

We don't, not if everyone is nice. But "wouldn't it be nice if everyone was nice" is the kind of political plan I'd expect from a 5 year old. Unless you have a concrete suggestion, something better than "not this", then you have nothing to add to an incredibly important conversation.

"What's the approval rating of Congress?"

There's an old saying, I dunno who said it first: People hate congress, and love their congressman.

That may not be as true these days...there's a pretty big disconnect, and a big part of the issue is that nobody votes because nobody believes it makes a difference (because it doesn't). At best you get to choose the lesser of two assholes.

Really doesn't apply in California.

> Really? Because the prevailing opinion with people I speak to is that politicians are bastards, and that's replicated here. In fact, politicians are very rarely looked at in a good light. People dislike what we have!

Well, they dislike individuals. And that's to be expected, because they do shitty things when elected and people start noticing this over time. Yet they keep voting, hoping the next guy is going to be better and also because "the wrong lizard might get in" to use Douglas Adams' words.

> The problem is nobody has a good plan for what else to do.

Maybe you don't need a plan. Maybe you just need to get rid of the cancer which is government and let free people live as they please. Free market enterprise, no matter what horrors we've been told about it, doesn't seem to have a tendency to go to wars with countries every decade and kill millions of people. Not because the actors in it are noble, but because they wouldn't be able to finance those horrible things with the money they stole from others.

> We don't, not if everyone is nice. But "wouldn't it be nice if everyone was nice" is the kind of political plan I'd expect from a 5 year old. Unless you have a concrete suggestion, something better than "not this", then you have nothing to add to an incredibly important conversation.

I have a suggestion. Free market and no government would be nice, but for reasons mentioned in the Matrix I can see many people would be very reluctant to believe it could actually work.

> Yet they keep voting,

Voter turn out rates show many people just don't bother to vote.

Because many people don't feel like it changes anything for themselves. People everyday vote with their money and their decisions in life and reap the results. They feel that what they do changes life around them. Voting had never affected themselves and most people are always angry at something that government does or doesn't do and can't do anything about it seriously. They all see crazy activists and how it's hard for them to gain anything from the system. That's why people don't vote.

I get what you're saying. However without a government you are simply relying on people to be good and fair to each other. I don't know how long it's been since you last checked the people state of affairs, but no matter how bad you think politicians are or greedy government is, the majority of people out there wouldn't pay taxes to fund education, roads, hospitals, law enforcement etc unless forced to do so.

Of course they wouldn't. And why do you think that is? It's because they don't get good value for their money. People still need schools, right? Therefore, schools will be built. People still need roads, therefore roads will be built. People still need healthcare, so it will be provided. The only question is at what price and of what quality - the answer to it being at the quality and prices the market wants it to be provided.

Then, of course, there's this argument that the poor will not have enough to get those things. Well, let's look at other industries. Have low cost airlines made flights accessible to almost anyone? Yes they have and this happened only after the industry was deregulated. Or do only rich people have cars? Or anything, really? Why is it such an impossibility that private protection companies and private schools and private healthcare can be cheap and accessible?

And to address your other point:

>However without a government you are simply relying on people to be good and fair to each other.

And with a government, everyone relies on people in that government to be fair and good. Except that when they are not, you can't stop paying to them.

To have a free market, you need a government, if only for 2 things: enforcing contracts, and defining and enforcing private property (yes, defining: you need to decide what to do with the not-at-all-obvious kinds of "intellectual" property, such as copyright, patents, and trademarks.). And to do just that, you need some kind of system, which will need people to run it. Full-time civil servants (that means taxes), or part-time volunteers, something.

Oh, and while we're at it, since our world revolves a lot around money we should define and enforce a monetary policy: who gets to create and destroy the money, and how.

And by the way, people are not fully informed, perfectly rational agents that can solve NP-complete programs in polynomial time. You will have market failures, and will probably need a way to deal with them as they come up. (Not dealing with them at all is also an option, but then, natural monopolies may eventually grow into Super-corporations, Neuromancer style —not the best kind of governance if you ask me).

While we may not need the kind of government we have right now, we do need some kind of governance. Because if you have none, well… the world won't dissolve into chaos, but some forms of governance will emerge anyway, and they won't be of your choosing.

There is no shortage of genuine and detailed proposals for societies without government. People tend to mock and dismiss them immediately without any real consideration, generally with the argument that it's impossible to have anything else or that it's not perfect, but it's the best we can do. And this fits The Matrix metaphor perfectly: the state very deliberately and explicitly seeks to make people dependent on the states and to convince people of the necessity of having a state.

Care to give examples?

> The problem is nobody has a good plan for what else to do.

There are plenty of plans, if one is willing to listen (anarchism). It's not the lack of plans that is the problem, it's people not having the guts to let go of what we have now. Constant indoctrination, since childhood, with the idea that is the best we can do is also a significant factor.

> I'm not worried about a group of teens in the military coming in and raping my wife.

The lack of official, internationally recognized state apparatus is not the reason this happens. For overwhelming majority of people, if they woke up the next morning and realized the state is gone, I'm pretty sure their first thought wouldn't be to go out on the street and start shooting. Those few that would are not deterred from such behaviour in the presence of state either.

> But "wouldn't it be nice if everyone was nice" is the kind of political plan I'd expect from a 5 year old.

It's not about people being nice. It's about creating a system where there is no reason or incentive to be bad, a system where it doesn't make sense to be bad to others. But even if people are somehow inherently bad, isn't it logical to not want a system where such people can rule over you?

Right, but... what if the reality is that there's a mix of better and worse-intentioned people in government, as well as emergent structural inefficiencies and competing ideologies?

I understand that we need a good narrative to comprehend the world, but I think we can do better than the "government = bad" one. The truth seems like it would be more nuanced.

How would you help punch of people? Why would you? Why would you imprison them and tell them it is for they own good. So that some of them do not turn evil and kill rest.

Keeping people in prison, saying that if they are let out of prison, fear and danger will emerge. But if you want to leave prison on your own, you are shot.

There is no one who cares about you, if he is looking for power to control you. Eat, shit, reproduce, obey. Ah yeah, vote something, haha.

The thing to look at is incentives. What behavior the system incentivizes? People are elected for some n years and it is very difficult to fire them even if they don't keep their promises and are doing a crappy job. More importantly, they take away taxes by force from the population, then redistribute those money and pretend they are doing something useful. "We built those roads, we gave you education". Yes, except you didn't. When you take someone else's money by force, for whatever reason, even if you intend to give it to the poor, it is theft. But when a government does it, it suddenly becomes taxes. It can be argued that in a democracy people generally agree that taxes should be payed, but when you actually ask people whether they want to fund wars and NSA spying, turns out they really don't want that. It is sold as a package and people are tricked and forced (whichever is needed) into financing horrible things with their own money.

Finally, you see, if a politician does a bad job, he still gets paid and keeps his job at least until the next election. If a private company messes up, people leave in droves and it goes bankrupt.

There might be some good people in the government, who truly believe they are doing some good. That doesn't make the system good and they have zero chances to make it a good system.

I don't think this supports that the government is bad or inherently bad, its just inefficient. The question you have to ask yourself, can you run a country (not even America, take a small country first like Belgium, less than a 10th the pop. of America), and can you run that country efficiently.

Like it or not, most government systems humans have invented so far are woefully inefficient and provide perverse incentives from time to time. However it seems our current democratic/republican system works the best, if not on any objective scale, but for the fact is the most relatively stable and proven.

Now, anyone can see that our current government has issues, much like the ones you pointed out. And most people have known that for ages, the hard part is can you devise a better system, and how would you go about testing it without ruining a generation? How do you go about minimizing corruption. Sure the "lets-all-live-in-the-forest" and "burn-down-the-institutions-and-the-rich" route is nice and ideal, but its a pipe dream that will fall apart instantly (some people like to point out examples of small villages living without electricity and money - but you simply cannot scale that "lifestyle" to 300 million people).

I'm not a political philosopher or an economist so I won't assert that the system we have now is greatest and you are wrong. I just want to see more expanded thought on the idea that "politicians are crooks and we should get rid of the system."

Why do you need to "run a country"? What does it really mean? What is it about a government that only it can do certain things, while private enterprises and persons are claimed to be incapable of accomplishing it?

But the fundamental question is not whether we can make our system better or worse. The fundamental question is, is it okay to steal from others? When government takes taxes, it steals. You may call it a "perspective", but if I disagree to pay, you and I know very well I'm gonna be at the very least intimidated by the government agents and may possibly go to jail. If all people in a given country indeed agreed that taxes are good, you wouldn't need to enforce collecting it, you would just let people donate, like on kickstarter. If, however, some disagree, you can't claim it's fair simply because the majority is sort of okay with it. The majority supported a lot of horrible things throughout history, yet now we don't see them as being on the right side of it.

If you drive on public roads without paying your taxes, are you stealing? If your car gets stolen and you ask the police for help, are you stealing?

If you don't want to pay your taxes, leave the country and build your own, with roads, running water, infrastructure et. all. If you find you need outside investment to "bootstrap" your new country, then you may end up paying dividends to your investors just so you can have running water - how is this any different from taxes?

Okay, you might say - but why don't we let private companies manage roads, infrastructure, and others? You should ask yourself, do you really want a company whos job it is to maximize profits to be running these basic services? We already have a couple examples of how privately run institutions with perverse incentives can ruin peoples lives.

Lets look at the prison industry, which is now private. They benefit from the free labour of prisoners indirectly giving them an incentive to have as many people as possible in prison. As a result America has the worlds highest incarceration rate by a wide margin[1]. Often these people are in prison for reasons illegitimate. While these people are in prison they also represent an innumerable net loss to the actual economy. These are people who could be getting educated or running higher worth jobs.

It shouldn't be a stretch of the imagination that running a country - managing the resources and happiness of millions of people as well managing relations with other countries as represented by millions of other people is an incredibly complex task. Simply boiling down "taxes = stealing" is too simple and naive to actually strongly consider.

[1]http://www.prb.org/Publications/Articles/2012/us-incarcerati...

Why would you say that something inefficient is not bad? To me, "inefficient" and "bad" are pretty close to synonymous, at least in a context where input energy is limited and costly.

Gasoline engines (like the ones in a car) will only ever have at maximum 30% thermal efficiency. That means for every dollar you spend, 70 cents of your dollar is doing nothing.

However despite how inefficient an engine is, academia, industry and the military pout millions of dollars every year to increase modern engines efficiencies by .1%.

So is inefficient bad? Well its wasteful and we have worked very hard to reduce that waste, but it will never be physically more than 30%. However I would call a modern lamborghini engine "bad". With the tools and knowledge humans have at the moment lamborghini has managed to produce an amazing engine.

Same goes for the government. Yes there are holes and I'd imagine there are people working to fix these holes. But is the government today objectively bad? Are we blindly driving ourselves to wall. I think its hard to say. Its easy to say that the government should do x, y, z and all our problems would be solved, but that is easier said than done. Modern human society is exceedingly complex. So to say the government is "bad" would require more knowledge on modern human society that is currently even possibly, just like to say if an engine is bad you would need to be an expert on engines. However just like I can say 70% of an engines energy is wasted on heat and is therefor inefficient, the government is also inefficient in a similar matter, without at all being "bad"

> When you take someone else's money by force, for whatever reason, even if you intend to give it to the poor, it is theft. But when a government does it, it suddenly becomes taxes.

I'd see taxes more like calling in a debt. It costs money to live here, you have to pay for that. You can't shout and scream "THEFT" when a hotel is trying to get you to pay for your stay, even if you don't want to use the TV yet still have to pay for it.

> "We built those roads, we gave you education". Yes, except you didn't.

I'm not sure which country you're from, but I'm guessing there are schools and roads funded by the state.

> Finally, you see, if a politician does a bad job, he still gets paid and keeps his job at least until the next election. If a private company messes up, people leave in droves and it goes bankrupt.

There are plenty of companies that do bad jobs and are still running.

> I'd see taxes more like calling in a debt. It costs money to live here, you have to pay for that.

What do you mean costs money to live here? I already pay my rent and utilities. When I walk or drive on public roads, it is only because it is a monopoly and I have no other choice. Do you think in the absence of government no one would build roads? Or schools? Or do you argue that it costs money to stay on a piece of land? Then maybe we should start taxing breathing the air as well.

> There are plenty of companies that do bad jobs and are still running.

Because there's a demand for that particular level of service, not because they force everyone to visit them and become their customers.

Except your friendly neighbourhood power or telecom monopoly.

You see, I live in Russia. Historically, up until recently, the telecom was a very unregulated industry. Government just didn't care enough. So do you know what am I paying for a 100Mbps connection and unlimited traffic? $10/mo. Do you know what I'm paying for an unlimited 3G and calls? ~$10/mo. And this has been the case for many years. No monopoly here. Monopolies only emerge when governments and companies start making sweet love to each other.

No monopoly in 3G? How do companies refrain from transmitting at each other's frequencies? No monopoly in telecom? How do they lay all the wire without permits and regulation? Or in good old days, can I dig up anywhere in Russia and lay wires directly to my customers?

You can't and it's precisely because government sets the rules where you can lay wires and which frequencies you can use. In Russia, this hasn't gone beyond that yet, that's why the prices are that low. In other countries, regulators are a lot less reluctant.

So Telecom was very "unregulated" because you agree with all the regulations. That's some interesting play of words.

The horrifying thing is a huge number of people do believe that without government there wouldn't be roads. Every libertarian or anarchist FAQ you find will have a response to the "but who will build the roads" question. Government has done an excellent job of convincing the vast majority of people of its indispensability.

It is a serious question. Until of now, no project of the scale of public works has been taken by any private cooperation anywhere in world. Although the incentive are clear (permanent cut on profit from all transportation), none of them have either the capital, the risk appetite or the power of taking land if so required.

Extraordinary claims require proof from the party making the claim. How do libertarian and/or anarchist propose that intercontinental freeways be built and maintained at the same cost as they are done by the US government?

> Until of now, no project of the scale of public works has been taken by any private cooperation anywhere in world.

I suspect one reason for that is that their primary competitor is government, which often has major advantages, like the legal authority to seize property right right of ways and virtually endless funds through taxation and debt.

I don't think that any proposals would claim that all things created by government would exist in a stateless society. Remember, it's possible to not have things like intercontinental freeways but to instead have more economically efficient solutions. The road system in the US, for example, isn't some example of "pure economic good." Freeways require people in cities to subsidize people in rural areas. They also are a massive subsidy to the automobile industry, and a disaster for the rail industry. It's conceivable that a much different (and more efficient) organization of society could emerge without the government creating what it judges to be the "best" public works.

The primary competitor, the government, has been set up by people explicitly to take benefit of the ultimate economy of scales, one where it is backed by the will and money of every single individual who believes in the Constitution which establishes and defines the role of the said government. These endless funds and the monopoly of force is given to it for explicit purposes of stepping in when the private group of individual are unable to get stuff done.

The interstate do not arise in vacuum, nor are they product of mere transportation concerns. They are product of very reasonable concern of quickly transporting war equipment and connecting parts of countries to one another, so as to facilitate quick movement of goods and people, adding their value to GDP. The rail industry is thriving well, doing its job as low cost goods carrier.

"It's conceivable" -- except no one has given good argument that thing which is so obvious has escaped human imagination for close to 10,000 years now, and all the places which are good approximation of said ideologies have people in utterly poor state.

> The primary competitor, the government, has been set up by people explicitly to take benefit of the ultimate economy of scales, one where it is backed by the will and money of every single individual who believes in the Constitution which establishes and defines the role of the said government.

Pardon the snarkiness, but did you learn that in public school? I ask, because I had those ideas unabashedly hammered into my brain my entire childhood in government schools. The problem is that whether someone consents to the actions of government empirically does not matter. Even the founding fathers either deliberately perpetuated this clever lie or managed to deceive themselves like a lot of Enlightenment philosophers. "The consent of the governed" and so on.

If only my country had functioning public schools, may be I would have learned that. And in any case, in what ways do you see consent of governed not mattering? Are you part of any local democratic organisation? Have you bitched about anything to your local alderman (assuming you live in a city)? How is that if my consent does not matter, the garbage picking became better when I bitched about it?

For sake of simplicity, lets talk about UK. If the consent of governed does not matter, why hasn't David Cameron taken all the land for himself, a la William the conquer? Was the history of past 1000 year just sham? Something people told themselves to drink the cool-aid? Did all the workers who rioted and all the people who fought and died on side of Parliament against the King stupid? Why exactly are these people living under lie? And how does that country, based on lies and shams, has a well functioning society where you can go from being born in poverty to governing the country in one life time?

And any ways, you still haven't answered the question. Why aren't there incredible large scale projects popping up in north Mali, where Caterpillar industry can go tomorrow and built awesome infrastructure? Surely we in democratic world have to face the tyranny of government in every step ... why haven't the more enlightened countries with little government shown us the way? And if everyone can be lied and manipulated, how is this perfect utopia of anarchy supposed to work?

I honestly cannot imagine how you can have even a small town function without a government of some sort, leave alone a whole country.

To me, it's pretty obvious that when you have a large group of people trying to live geographically close together, someone has to set up the rules, and make sure those rules are followed. Otherwise, there will be conflicts, because people will have different opinions about how something should be done, and some people will try to enforce their worldview on others. Whoever will have the power to resolve such conflicts is the government. That will be their job, and people will have to pay them to do this job.

What you don't see here is that if you have a government, it inevitably imposes the rules the majority agree with upon the minority who disagree. There is no way for the minority to do anything but wait until the next election and hope. So conflicts are not really resolved, but rather one side orders the other to shut up and do as they say.

A true resolution would be when both sides agree on the price. An simple example would be this:

I would like to throw a party on my lawn, but my neighbor disagrees. I really want that party though, cos it's my birthday, so I would go to my neighbor and try to convince him to let me have a party. I can see he wouldn't appreciate the noise so I would offer him something in exchange for his inconvenience: maybe I would let him use my bathtub for the next month, or maybe I would simply give him some money. If it wasn't just my one neighbor, but maybe 3 or 5 of them, I would have to convince them all and pay them all and that would make my party very expensive, so I would consider cancelling it.

Now on a larger scale, imagine you'd have various law firms, each protecting their clients interests and bargaining on their behalf. So, for instance, clients of one firm wouldn't like gay people to marry, while clients of that other firm, obviously many of the are gay, would be in favor of it. Even if we suppose that those who oppose gay marriage are the majority, they still probably wouldn't be able to outbid the minority here. That's because when people are asked to pay to teach others how to live, it becomes painfully obvious most of them are not ready spend their money on it.

Even your simple example of throwing a party breaks down in the real world. What do I do if my neighbor throws a loud party without asking my permission? Do I go and confront him? What if he tells me to f* off? Do you see where this leads to?

If he tells you to fuck off, there are numerous ways to get back at him. In the real world, you'd call your protection agency, which would in turn call his protection agency and they would settle the dispute for you (without actually going to war with each other, as some people would suggest). The difference from the current system would be that you wouldn't have a monopoly on laws and people would be compensated for their inconvenience.

In real world, your neighbor is the local warlord, and you cannot possibly summon enough amount of army to counter his army. The only guy who can stop him is the guy with bigger army somewhere in capital city, and he couldn't care less about you. Welcome to feudalism. History is rife with the system you are proposing, and it did not went well for humanity.

Can you summon enough amount of army to battle the global warlord which is the government?

Yes, if I can convince other, I can summon army of 100 million voters who can change the system overnight (well, once every 2 years) and make whoever they want their global warlord to be. The global warlord works for them, and not the other way round.

The fact is, people are happy enough with the system as it is, and they do vote out the "mafia thug" if he acts particularly bad. This global warlord requires money to maintain its strength and most people are more than happy to pay their share of taxes.

So wouldn't it be much easier to convince 100 people to act against your local warlord than 1 million people to act against the global warlord?

It is easier to control one entity that has monopoly over force and can be ruled by reason, than to control gazzillion small forces which are accountable to no-one. We also have these local warlords that you speak of. They are called the police and the mayor.

How can it be easier to control an entity that has a monopoly over force and that requires you to convince 1 million people instead of 100 for any changes to happen?

Also, ruled by reason, really? Same reason that helped it decide to spy on all people and kill millions in bloody wars all over the globe? I mean, it's not just the US. If you look at history, no criminal organization, even the most bloodiest and craziest one, can compete with an average government in how many people it killed, tortured or imprisoned.

The Mongols killed more people as fraction of living population that any government. The Mongols were also more close to your ideals of anarchy. May I suggest you to brush up your history?

Yes, ruled by reason. The same reason that forces them to withdraw from wars, same reason that checks military spending to less than 3% of human efforts, the same reason that maintains property rights for people to function, the same reason that can channel together forces to plant 200 million plants to stop the dust bowl .... and I can parrot on and on. Is the government perfect? Hardly, but it is in every way superior to lack of government, where my ability to maintain my rights depend on how big armies I can summon on my side.

Your tiny force of hundred cannot lead to change of any reasonable measure because there would be a person with an army of million. Always has been, always will be. I am not making stuff up just to argue with you. Feudalism is exactly the result of model you propose. When local security forces run by private party are supposed to enforce whatever any one pays them, it is just in their own benefit to merge together to form bigger force ... which goes on till the ultimate biggest force is run by a King at the center, and small forces run by local security guy. Now unlike trust busting which the government (ruled by citizens) can undertake, there is no one in your utopia who can stop security agencies from forming cartel. Again, brush up your English history (Or Russian history for that matter). When rules depends on who has more money in his pocket, ECON 101 rationale follows, forming ever larger security force accountable to no-one but itself ... enforcing not the rule of law, but whatever whims it wants to.

Mongols were a proto-state. The fact they didn't have a permanent territory means nothing. They had an hierarchical structure. The only thing that was different was that other "states" realized it would actually be much profitable and safer to sit in one place and tax the shit out of their own people (and possibly those they conquered) instead of running around the globe and robbing everyone indefinitely.

I think the mistake you are making is thinking that it's either a modern state which gives you certain benefits or some sort of medieval anarchy situation with warlords and lots of random violence. How about when you have 3 or 4 major protection agencies. You may think of them as governments, but instead they work within one country and everyone is free to switch to one or the other at any time. Those agencies sell laws to their customers want, resolve conflicts and enforce property rights. Why do you think such a competition would be worse than having a monopolist who doesn't even live by its own laws (Example: senator did cocaine? made a mistake. A regular person did cocaine: jail). Try to understand that the word Anarchy doesn't mean what you've been told it means. Anarchy simply means no state, but it doesn't mean no rules.

Oh, so it would be just like the 90s in Russia? Where you would pay your "protection agency" to "settle the dispute" for you, right? Are you old enough to remember how it used to work those days? What if my neighbor is a member of the protection agency? What if I don't have money to pay for my protection? What are you going to do?

Russia in the 90s wasn't absence of government. It was a curious mix of government and bandits, which, of course, continued into our days. Except that now it's actually much easier to identify the bad guys: they are wearing a uniform.

But the point is, you can't just burn a church in a village and expect people to become atheists. Which is an analogy for what happened with the USSR. People got their freedom, but they had no idea what to do with it. So it was gradually taken back from them again.

People got their freedom, but they had no idea what to do with it.

That's the truth right there. Vast majority of people already have more freedom than they know what to do with. Those people, if faced with a clear choice, would gladly trade some of that "freedom" for stability, security, and comfort in their lives.

If you remove a government from a society, it will quickly descend into chaos. Various armed forces will longer be held accountable for their actions. What do you think will happen? Anyone with a gun can become a "government". Now instead of one government, you have a thousand. Eventually, power will consolidate, and you will end up with a single government, back where you started.

I feel a bit strange having to explain these obvious things, it's like I'm talking to a 10 year old. Do you not realize that the societal order you're proposing has been tried many times since the beginning of civilization? It has never worked. Every time, some kind of power (official or unofficial) had emerged sooner or later (usually sooner), and eventually a some sort of a centralized government was formed. This happened every single time. If people could function without a government, surely we would have seen an example of that somewhere.

It's like going back to the 17-th century and saying, "surely, if a society could function without slaves, we would've seen an example somewhere".

The thing is, I realize a lot of people are not ready to be unplugged. That's fine. But there are a lot of people who share my views who would like to live without a government and who know how to do it. The problem for these people is that all the land is taken by states already. And, mind you, most of it is unused. It doesn't have to be some really good land, Las Vegas was built in the desert after all. I guarantee you, if such a land was made available, you would see an unprecedented migration of people and businesses into it and a huge economic boom. The reason it's not available is because states are mostly afraid that if they sell a piece of land to someone completely (that is, allow to secede) many more would follow.

It's like going back to the 17-th century and saying, "surely, if a society could function without slaves, we would've seen an example somewhere"

Ok, good point. The society without any government is possible in theory. It's possible that in the distant future, human civilization will evolve to some kind of government-free organization.

However, you are claiming that it is possible today. Let's say we completely remove all people from California, restore it to its wild prehistoric state, and declare it a government-free zone. Anyone can move there and do whatever they like. No laws, no infrastructure, no social services, just wild nature. The blank slate. Let's say a lot of all kinds of people from all over the world will move there and will want to start a new life. Also, for the sake of the argument, let's say no outside influence will be exerted on that land, it will be allowed to develop independently.

Please describe what is going to happen there in the next 100 years? What makes you think it will be different this time around than how it was 200 years ago?

Oh, no, I never said it's possible now. Or, to be precise, I never said it is possible at the current state of understanding of the world most people have. For most people, a state is like religion. If you burn a church in a village the villagers don't become atheists.

My point is that there are people who understand liberty and understand how to build a free society. They would like an exit. The problem, in my view, is that those in power wouldn't allow them such an exit, because as soon as others see them succeed, the state would lose its legitimacy.

You ask me, what is my solution to this? 1. Educate people about the evil and predatory nature of the state 2. Use Bitcoin. And that's all I have to say about the war in Vietnam.

current state of understanding of the world most people have

Your problem is you believe you understand the world better than others. You want to educate others, but even here on this forum, where people generally listen to reason, and are disillusioned with the government, you haven't persuaded anyone with your arguments.

For me, a state is not a religion. For me government is a service, and I'm fine paying for that service. I'm fine trading some of my freedom for security, stability, and comfort. I still have plenty of freedom left.

I honestly don't understand what are you complaining about. If you're living in Russia, and your life there sucks, just move to a country with a better government, with better laws, or with better whatever it is you're not happy about.

You see, it's not about Russia or any other specific country. Russia has a lot more freedoms in certain areas than European countries and the US. It's a matter of principle. As for believing my understanding of the world is better - isn't it what most people who are trying to convince others of anything believe they have? I mean, what kind of moron would I be if I tried to convince people of something I didn't believe myself? Oh, wait, I'd be a politician.

Also, I don't particularly enjoy running around and preaching. HN is interesting because some people here indeed listen carefully and actually read your arguments, sometimes presenting challenging questions.

This breakdowns tremendously in other situations, mainly because of imperfect information. Humans are notoriously bad at pricing things. Lets say I'm a very wealthy man and I'm also a serial killer. In your example, I assume I could just pay any amount of money to kill someone. I'm a wealthy guy, and I go around killing 8 year olds and paying the parents huge sums of money (10 - 20 million dollars, who would refuse?)

However, what is the real price of an 8 year old boy? Lets say I go and kill little Mark Zuckerberg. By doing so I have zapped almost 100B dollars from the economy and paid his parents 10-20 million. I'm doing a disservice to everyone by killing him, should I also pay everyone who Zuckerberg will make a future millionaire, how will I know this?

Even in your example, how does his neighbor know what the perceived cost of your action are? What if his property value goes down, because of your party and noise making? How will ever be able to calculate that cost? What if he has his elderly sick mother staying over the weekend? How does he put a price on his mother's piece of mind?

Price is subjective and only depends on your action. If you take a deal, it means you are satisfied with the price. There is no real price.

I'm pretty sure a large portion of society would bet against you if you decided to kill an 8 year old boy. You would never have enough money to outbid the society. It doesn't matter how much money you pay to the parents, the society would still be willing to put you in jail, since it doesn't want people killing other people, no matter how rich they are.

You can go right now to Liberia, hire enough mercenaries, and start killing bunch of people for fun if you want to. The entire society of Liberia wouldn't able to stop you from doing so. Let's see how willing they are in putting people behind jail. It is the ultimate paradise of weak government, one that cannot/will not protect its own people. On the plus side, you can avoid paying any tax.

So would the same thing happen in the US if people woke up tomorrow and realized there is no government and they don't need one? Because, you see, a weak/strong government says nothing about the well being of the people. You can have very strong governments, yet people would be suffering a lot more under those regimes.

How? Where are these mythical people suffering under good governments? These people who are enslaved by theft of taxes? As a rule of thumb, people living in countries with strong social democracies, with strong rule of law (enforced by strong government) are the healthiest, the happiest, the most well fed, innovators of science who have launched humanity beyond earth and touched the stars.

On the other hand, we have places with weak rule of law, where the governments are corrupts, or cult of personality places men above law. These are the places where people suffer, have little hope or freedom to progress and have constant boot of power pressed on their face.

If strong government is what is stopping the utopia, why is there no such utopia in Somalia? I am finding it very hard to match reality with your claims.

So why is there no utopia in North Korea and Cuba and Iran? Very strong governments there.

Because they are following a wrong way of forming a government, one where the rule of men trumps the rule of law. Even then, you can see degree of their progress. NK, with almost mythical god like rule form single person is way worse off than Cuba, where the politburo rules, followed by Iran, where the power is shared by large amount of clergy and secular government.

A good government is quite different than absence of any government, which the anarchist claim would lead to utopia. History and current situation are littered with examples of weak rule of law with practically no government. Why doesn't this fabled anarchist utopia rises there? Why does every time there is a power vacuum, some local warlord arises to fill in the gap? Why don't these mythical "good humans" just learn to live without ruling other and being ruled .... just as proposed by anarchist/libertarians?

I have given you examples of good working government, and pointed out what I don't consider to be the proper idea of government. Provide me with evidence of your utopias.

>> "We built those roads, we gave you education". Yes, except you didn't.

>I'm not sure which country you're from, but I'm guessing there are schools and roads funded by the state.

And the state is funded by... you and me. I paid for that road, that school, and so did you. Not one dollar was generated by the government. Hey, I'm all for paying for roads and schools and stuff, and am, in fact, willing to pay for it with my own money. I am willing to pay taxes, so that there will be roads to drive on and schools to learn in. So I pay for it (not that I have much choice.) But it is our money that pays for the roads and schools, not "the government's".

> I'd see taxes more like calling in a debt. It costs money to live here, you have to pay for that.

And what if I were to write a little poem here, charge you $100 for it, and show up at your house with guns if you fail to pay?

Why do you assume that the person whose money the government "steals" would have made any of that money in the absence of government? How would they buy and sell goods or services without legal tender mandated by a government, enforce contracts arising therefrom without a legal system that is a part of government, that your borders would be secure without a military and police force (or service) paid for by government, that you'd move yourself, goods, services, and information without transport and communications infrastructure funded by government?

We may assume that in the absence of government, we'd have the same economic station as we do, forgetting that that wealth we do have is the result of the whole economic system we have now, including the government, imperfect as it may be. Without government, you'd get to keep all of your income (all the income that the marauding bandit with a bigger gun than you lets you keep) but it would be far, far lower than the amount of wealth you now possess.

You could argue that you don't need a "government" for any of these things, that communities could come together and provide them without the "government" stepping in. Of course any administrative mechanisms the community puts in place to manage these will very quickly begin to look very like the "government" we despise.

Like it was said in some comment below, there is no shortage of ideas of how a society would work in the absence of government. Yet people mostly ignore them and ask the same questions again and again, not even willing to hear the answer. I recommend reading Murray Rothbard, David D. Friedman and Stefan Molyneux.

And I would like to answer one of your questions specifically: "How would they enforce contracts arising therefrom without a legal system" by pointing you to an Bitcoin-related idea by a friend of mine: http://blog.oleganza.com/post/58240549599/contracts-without-...

My qualms are not about whether such a society working starting now, since they would be building upon a foundation (infrastructure, ideas to founders due to education from public institutions, a generally prosperous society, etc.) already laid by previous generations, with the help of (or despite hindrance by) government institutions. I do wonder though whether some projects of grand scale that work for the greater good at the detriment of or discomfort of a disadvantaged few, e.g. roads or railway lines cutting through people's property would work in such a society, really (even now with eminent domain and coercion at work, the NIMBY brigade manages to block a large numer of such projects). One may say that if you offered a high enough price people would agree to sell the land, but there are many reasons people would refuse to let go (sentimental reasons, ancestors' burial grounds, etc.). I'll be the first to admit I'm ignorant about these ideas, though.

We don't need a good narrative to comprehend the world.

Furthermore, I think what you're doing here (and I say this only because I used to do the same, no disrespect) is trying to find an excuse to make the system look acceptable, with a potential to become better. That way, you wouldn't have to face the harsh reality and you wouldn't have to change your worldview and feel uncomfortable. So, Matrix is a nice movie, but it's fiction. The truth is that it's all complicated and not all black and white, so I don't have to worry about it... That's understandable. But dangerous.

I never said I don't have to worry about the state of the world.

If you look at the whole of human history, you'll see that government is a direct result of the human compulsion for power. Wherever there is an opportunity to assert power and dominion over others, someone will step up and take power by force or coercion.

Governments formed as those that took power needed a system by which to subjugate those within their territory and indoctrinate them to help expand their influence.

It took centuries for people to adjust those political systems to remove ultimate power from one individual and disperse it amongst many. The more people that have influence over the power structure, the less likely that it'll be able to do really evil things.

Our modern democracies are literally the result of thousands of years of evolution of our social contract.

If you think they are so bad, look at countries/places where the government has very little power to control its population. What results are militias and other armed groups that use force to exert influence and maintain power. This struggle is happening pretty opening in Mexico, for example.

If you were, today, make all government disappear, the world would become a chaos of small groups fighting for power. Over years/decades, groups would push out other groups, and gain larger territories. As size increases, the need to keep the population in line (to remain in power) would require those in power to maintain order through laws, police, and provide services.

Government is inevitable.

Well I thought this was another crazy fan theory but those quotes actually make more sense in the context of government than talking about the matrix. The choice of words doesn't seem like a coincidence.

>While it is actually a very good metaphor for government and democracy.

It is also a very good metaphor for social norms. Power people have over others by misleading them, lying to them, shaming them, threatening them, having something they want, etc. People create their own matrix to fit in, to adapt. People start lying to themselves, stop following logic and start to rationalize away bad feelings and bad ideas that hurt.

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