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richardhutnik on 21 September 2012
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thranx said:
richardhutnik said:
badgenome said:
Mr Khan said:

That's called teamwork.

I'm pretty sure it's called dependency. See also: unsustainable.

And you aren't dependent?  EVERYONE in a modern society is IMMENSELY dependent.  This happens when people end up specializing in things, and decide to not do a lot of things for themselves.  The issue is not dependency, but what people can do to contribute.  The teamwork mentioned is needed and people need to contribute so there is enough to go around.  Without an ability to contribute, it does become unsustainable.  

If you don't think you are dependent, then get off the Internet now, and go mine all the resources that the market produced so you can get on here, create your own language, and everything else civilization provides, and fend for yourself.

Civiliztion does not eaual government. There is no need to be dependant on the government. It seems that is always the argument used by those who are for governemnt. they act as though nothing can be done with out the government and that society only exists with government backing. that is not the case.

It can not be teamwork when people are forced to help. Forcing peoiple to do things that they should be doing out of the goodness of their heart will only lead to resentment of the leechers, and than an excuse to not help others as it "the governments job" both of which we see now.

Show me an example of a functioning civilization that doesn't have government as part of it?  Unless you are anarchist, you believe that government is needed in some form.  The debate is over how much government is needed and its role.  Again, as I have wrote prior, government works, and that is the problem.

The issues with anarchy is that people haven't found a way to make a "out of the goodness of their heart" argument work, in order to get what is believe is needed is done.  What eventually creeps in is coersion to some degree.  This has been shown scientifically via research, in what is called "the public goods game":

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_goods_game

You can do more research on it, but it was found that having players punish other players for not contributing (aka, engaging in coersion) resulted in more contributions, and more public goods available (call this the common framework and glue of society).

If you also want to try a game, where the goal is to score the most points, and optimal play on an individual level and group level produce the best results, but where players usually won't (aka, no governance in the game), feel free to try The Quitting Game, with -1 point penalty for each round you stay in the game:

http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/128512/the-quitting-game

That is a game I created out of observing what I saw happen around Occupy, which had absolutely no form of governance and leadership on top, which lost to the coersive power of government, with law enforcement kicking them out of a park where I was.

In the end, people will normally agree with the following, regarding government and taxes to pay for it:

http://www.quoteworld.org/quotes/6696

"Taxes are the price we pay for civilization."
  --  Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.