I love white people who are satiated by the blessings of good government that they can talk, without irony, about how they don't need government. I don't meet many anarchists from my part of the world...
The state of human nature is lawlessness and violence. The only thing keeping society from collapsing into the hell that people in those countries live with is the collective force of the majority asserted through government.
Anarchy sounds dandy until a bunch of people realize that in the absence of the overwhelming power of the state, all it takes is a gang of a dozen people to terrorize their neighbors, taking from them whatever they want. Morality doesn't prevent that. The only thing that prevents that is a bigger group of men, with guns. At first those groups of men were warlords, who eventually became kings, and ultimately we decided we should be able to vote for them. History of civilization in a nutshell.
It takes considerably more than "government". It takes a society, with culture and virtues and churches and economy and civic institutions and traditions. There many places in the world that have actual elections were those elections are used by some factions to abuse others. There are still more where decent democracies ultimately collapsed.
Democratic government, government by discourse and persuasion, is a remarkable achievement of a society. It is maintained and supported and continued by that society. There is nothing inevitable about it.
You're right that it does take more than government. The western world enjoys not just (relatively) good government, but a virtuous culture and people. But government by itself can be better than culture by itself. I'd imagine a lot of Iraqis miss the strong but dictatorial government under Saddam as compared to the weak but democratic government they have now. Basic security is a higher need (in the Maslovian sense) than self determination. That is the history of the world, after all. People embraced the kings that saved them from the petty warlords and criminals long before they instituted democratic government.
It shows this skinny nerd getting beat up by a tattooed thug. With a caption that says something like "This is your anarchist utopia: getting beat up like you were in middle school over and over and over again."
It was awesome (and phrased in a slightly more clever way than I can remember). I really wish I could find it again, but I can't seem too even after trying many times.
Maybe I'm sensitive about it. When I was young, in Bangladesh, we had a house in the capital city. It was surrounded by a concrete wall with broken glass on top and had an iron gate. We once had a bus full of robbers try to break down the gate. They harassed us for 30-40 minutes before the police finally came (apparently this story could have also taken place in Detroit).
I'm as skeptical of the Po Po as the next guy, but the alternative isn't sunshine and rainbows.
I love white people who are satiated by the blessings of good government that they can talk, without irony, about how they don't need government. I don't meet many anarchists from my part of the world...
The state of human nature is lawlessness and violence. The only thing keeping society from collapsing into the hell that people in those countries live with is the collective force of the majority asserted through government.
Anarchy sounds dandy until a bunch of people realize that in the absence of the overwhelming power of the state, all it takes is a gang of a dozen people to terrorize their neighbors, taking from them whatever they want. Morality doesn't prevent that. The only thing that prevents that is a bigger group of men, with guns. At first those groups of men were warlords, who eventually became kings, and ultimately we decided we should be able to vote for them. History of civilization in a nutshell.