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/sarcasm -- (to be read in the voice of Sir Humphrey Appleby) I, for one, rely on my government to perform all those vital, but tragically under-appreciated se

/sarcasm -- (to be read in the voice of Sir Humphrey Appleby) I, for one, rely on my government to perform all those vital, but tragically under-appreciated services done selflessly and at great sacrifice, and all for the public good. Our top Whitehall mandarins do so much to pre^H^H^Hdeserve their salaries. The fabulous residences for the ambassadors, senior diplomats and other political appointees -- all those social events on the diplomatic circuit -- absolutely essential for our collective well-being. The unending sole-supplier cost-plus contracts given to the private contractors with the largest revolving door -- where would the nation be without them? The quangos and consultants, lobbyists and contractors -- our newly publicly-owned financial industry - the whole system -- not to mention the only middle class that we have left -- would suffer so very terribly without the kind patronage of a friendly state to steward and protect them. /sarcasm

pron 13y ago
I don't understand your point. You could probably say the same about your family. The fact that something is not working as well as it should does not mean it's not essential. I mean, would you prefer feudal lords? Because that's what we had before central government, and that's what many corporations would like. Do you want to be ruled by Google? By Walmart?
- throwit1979 13y ago
  Do you want to be ruled by Google? By Walmart? Why is the default assumption by Statists that if the government won't rule us, corporations will? A novel concept that people may want to attempt to grasp is that there could be no rulers, and as such, there's no need to make up a fictitious "new ruler".
  - unimpressive 13y ago
    >A novel concept that people may want to attempt to grasp is that there could be no rulers It seems to me that the fastest way to evaluate this idea is to look at how an organization is propelled to statehood in the first place. If incentive structures support states, they will exist.
  - Nursie 13y ago
    And this will last for approximately five minutes until a new ruler establishes themselves either through resource monopolisation or through pure threat of force. And they will never be short of toadies. Why is the default assumption by libertarians that if the government is brought down, human nature will suddenly, completely change?
    - anovikov 13y ago
      My view of libertarianism is that it's not a movement to 'fight government'. It is just a system of views that once productive forces of society achieve certain level, government at least as we know it will become redundant. And there is little 'new ruler' can do to establish himself if people don't need a ruler.
      - Nursie 13y ago
        >> And there is little 'new ruler' can do to establish himself if people don't need a ruler. How charmingly naive! I don't know that people have needed a ruler at many times in history, but there has always been one. A power vacuum almost always results in war, revolution almost always results in war... basically humans like war and leaders. I don't think that will ever go away. We're tribal animals. Even if people don't need a ruler, leaders will arise, and some of them will recruit violent men to force their will on others, growing into warlords. Factions will fight each other, people will die. Better, IMHO, to have a codified power structure that seeks to eliminate or at least mitigate these flaws.
        anovikov 13y ago
        Well, if there is little government can do to control (like people using p2p currencies on a massive scale and encrypting their communications), and with production structure not suffering from possibility of monopolism (which we are close to having now), how will the government exercise their control? Of course we will always have some sort of government, but over years, it will become more and more irrelevant, not able to control/regulate things it claims to.
  - mikeash 13y ago
    It's the assumption because it's how things have always happened. Do you have an example to the contrary, of any significant group of humans living without rulers for any significant amount of time?
  - 6d0debc071 13y ago
    > A novel concept that people may want to attempt to grasp is that there could be no rulers, and as such, there's no need to make up a fictitious "new ruler". Do you want to run the country? Do you think you have the time to run every aspect of the country? If you don't, then you need to delegate the authority to run those things to others. And then the people who are doing those jobs become the rulers in those areas. And those areas are going to have to work together, at which point you get hierarchies and people similar to managers and fairly rapidly you end up with what we'd call a government. If you believe there's a better way to run things, then start a company that works in a more egalitarian manner and scale it. As I understand it though, companies that work even vaguely like that have never scaled well beyond a few hundred people at most - i.e. Dunbar's number. If you want to solve the problem of people needing a government there are serious questions about complexity and conscientiousness (do people even want to run their own affairs?) and how people are meant to work together when they can't know everything about all the areas they'd have to oversee without empowering others even if they just did that as their full time job. So, my answer to why do I think people need rulers is, essentially, that equality doesn't seem to scale well to the sorts of problems that a country would have to address at the moment - and, implicitly, that anywhere that decides not to be a country anymore is going to get walked all over by anyone that decides to still be a country.

pron 13y ago

I don't understand your point. You could probably say the same about your family. The fact that something is not working as well as it should does not mean it's not essential. I mean, would you prefer feudal lords? Because that's what we had before central government, and that's what many corporations would like. Do you want to be ruled by Google? By Walmart?

throwit1979 13y ago
Do you want to be ruled by Google? By Walmart? Why is the default assumption by Statists that if the government won't rule us, corporations will? A novel concept that people may want to attempt to grasp is that there could be no rulers, and as such, there's no need to make up a fictitious "new ruler".
- unimpressive 13y ago
  >A novel concept that people may want to attempt to grasp is that there could be no rulers It seems to me that the fastest way to evaluate this idea is to look at how an organization is propelled to statehood in the first place. If incentive structures support states, they will exist.
- Nursie 13y ago
  And this will last for approximately five minutes until a new ruler establishes themselves either through resource monopolisation or through pure threat of force. And they will never be short of toadies. Why is the default assumption by libertarians that if the government is brought down, human nature will suddenly, completely change?
  - anovikov 13y ago
    My view of libertarianism is that it's not a movement to 'fight government'. It is just a system of views that once productive forces of society achieve certain level, government at least as we know it will become redundant. And there is little 'new ruler' can do to establish himself if people don't need a ruler.
    - Nursie 13y ago
      >> And there is little 'new ruler' can do to establish himself if people don't need a ruler. How charmingly naive! I don't know that people have needed a ruler at many times in history, but there has always been one. A power vacuum almost always results in war, revolution almost always results in war... basically humans like war and leaders. I don't think that will ever go away. We're tribal animals. Even if people don't need a ruler, leaders will arise, and some of them will recruit violent men to force their will on others, growing into warlords. Factions will fight each other, people will die. Better, IMHO, to have a codified power structure that seeks to eliminate or at least mitigate these flaws.
      - anovikov 13y ago
        Well, if there is little government can do to control (like people using p2p currencies on a massive scale and encrypting their communications), and with production structure not suffering from possibility of monopolism (which we are close to having now), how will the government exercise their control? Of course we will always have some sort of government, but over years, it will become more and more irrelevant, not able to control/regulate things it claims to.
- mikeash 13y ago
  It's the assumption because it's how things have always happened. Do you have an example to the contrary, of any significant group of humans living without rulers for any significant amount of time?
- 6d0debc071 13y ago
  > A novel concept that people may want to attempt to grasp is that there could be no rulers, and as such, there's no need to make up a fictitious "new ruler". Do you want to run the country? Do you think you have the time to run every aspect of the country? If you don't, then you need to delegate the authority to run those things to others. And then the people who are doing those jobs become the rulers in those areas. And those areas are going to have to work together, at which point you get hierarchies and people similar to managers and fairly rapidly you end up with what we'd call a government. If you believe there's a better way to run things, then start a company that works in a more egalitarian manner and scale it. As I understand it though, companies that work even vaguely like that have never scaled well beyond a few hundred people at most - i.e. Dunbar's number. If you want to solve the problem of people needing a government there are serious questions about complexity and conscientiousness (do people even want to run their own affairs?) and how people are meant to work together when they can't know everything about all the areas they'd have to oversee without empowering others even if they just did that as their full time job. So, my answer to why do I think people need rulers is, essentially, that equality doesn't seem to scale well to the sorts of problems that a country would have to address at the moment - and, implicitly, that anywhere that decides not to be a country anymore is going to get walked all over by anyone that decides to still be a country.