There's no such thing as a "good government".
"Good government" is the same as a "good christian" - you can't see the evil because there are some cute old grannies like Sweden or Canada.
20 comments
There's no such thing as a "good government".
True.
@Doubting Thomas;
The ruling class wants you to believe that without their protection, nothing can stop the hells angels from raping your children. Your comment is free propaganda for them.
The only difference between a government and a hells angel chapter boss is percieved legitimacy of authority.
government, good or bad, is necessary. it's part of the human condition to live in social hierarchies --- anarchy doesn't scale beyond maybe a few dozen people, any larger a society than that and you'll naturally have somebody taking charge and telling the others what to do, because they'll just be too frustrated with the chaotic getting-nothing-done that is a bunch of humans with nobody in charge. most of the followers will happily follow orders, too, because they'll be just as frustrated themselves. that's the only seed you need for government to grow.
the only thing you can do is try to make your government as good a one as can be managed. and since it is necessarily made up out of humans, that is no easy task --- but so very worthwhile to your whole society if you manage.
If there is no government, then the result is not freedom and sweetness on sunlit uplands but the person with the most power seizing control. When that person isn't powerful enough to seize control alone, then they will seize control with a coalition of others or they will - whether they like it or not - share the territory with other effective users of force. There have been a fair number of countries in which government has collapsed in the last thirty years or so; none of them were replaced by happy communal anarchism and most featured violence. And the same can be said for the century preceding. The only way to survive in such a situation is to obey, fight or bribe your way through; the best you can hope for is benevolent foreign intervention. Under such circumstances, anarchist cooperatives get swept aside by force majeure.
More Anarchism? Great, I never tire of shouting at these fuckwits.
b] Dyz said:
And herein lies the difference.
Nobody promised you that the government would be there only for your ideas and to make you happy.
If you do not see any difference between a Hell's Angels boss and a government, I suggest some professional mental health care!
If you removed government people would simply create a new one to deal with practical issues like resource management, defense, community planning, and rudimentary criminal proceedings. Why do you think government exists in the first place? Brute force and the trappings of law alone couldn't create a sustainable authority and without consensus it is impossible for humans to function in the large groups they require to survive, and I'm not just talking on civilized level with industry I mean any kind of permanent settlement or association of individuals, including a family unit. People naturally defer to the ones who have good ideas and think clearly in adverse situations whether they make that authority official or not. Now following through after the establishment of government, that's another story. They often forget why they were put in charge by the people in the first place which isn't helped by the people becoming used to distancing themselves from authority figures.
There's no such thing as a "good government"
I give you Lorenzetti's fresco "Il Buon Governo". You can find it in the Palazzo Pubblico on the Piazza del Campo in Siena. It was painted around 1338. Yes, that was way back before the Beatles. And Sienna is in Italy, not a part of Los Angeles.
image
Confused?
So were we! You can find all of this, and more, on Fundies Say the Darndest Things!
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