| VAMatt said: I don't have any plan to get rid of dictators. While I support all efforts to bring about freedom in any and all areas, I'm more worried about casting off the chains that bind me, my friends, and my family. |
Not all governments are the same, if you're too cynical to admit that, then this angle of the conversation is pointless. You seem to be not only against government, but against collective action in any form, which is just mindbogglingly cynical. You have no practical plan to eliminate the dictators of the world, and seem to ignore even recent history. Europe is free because we killed dictators. We directly established dictators on purpose in South America, so obviously that made them less free, but more recently we've helped establish democracies. Tunisia is now a fairly stable democracy, one of very few happy outcomes of the Arab Spring. But your utopianism seems pretty insincere given that you have such an "every man for himself" attitude. You don't care if the world is free, you just want anarchy for yourself and your family, you even admit it. Even I could appreciate a world without government, but I'd still want institutions of collective action. You're too cynical for that. All the small states you mention exist in Europe and the free world. Russia doesn't invade them because they'd have to go through NATO and the European Union. Having alliances like that works and allows for small states like Monaco or Andorra. But you don't care about them really. If the EU, NATO, and UN dissolved tomorrow and Russia invaded Europe, the only thing holding them back from invading Monaco would be that Monaco is full of crazy rich people that could probably buy Russia off by agreeing to pay tributes like with kings in medieval times. Other tiny states like Kosovo would stand no chance. They're in the middle of the Balkans, and from the standpoint of a dictator, Putin would be foolish not to try to conquer the entire Balkans in a world where there was no UN, EU, or NATO to protect them. But again, you don't care, and it shows the emptiness of your ideas and ideals. Why should anyone want to pursue your anarchism when they know that dissolving all governments would just leave them ripe for invasion by the dictators that obviously wouldn't follow suit? They're not as naive as you are, thinking that they can secure anarchy for just themselves, their friends, and their family, when Russia and China are right around the corner and won't care about their desire for freedom. It boils down to this: the only kind of government that can be dissolved is a democracy. If you dissolved every institution with the democratic ability to be dissolved, all that would remain would be dictatorships, and a bunch of disorganized people unable to oppose them. If you want to achieve your anarchic utopia, at the very least wait until all the dictatorships are gone. From there, then you could slowly dissolve larger states into smaller ones. Like how Catalonia wants to separate from Spain. And over enough time, eventually you could dissolve things down to towns and cities. It could be done. But it would need a plan, not naive utopianism and selfish cynicism. If you want anarchy just for yourself and those you personally care about, gather them up and move to an island or start a small community in the wilderness. If you want to be connected to the rest of society though, you'll just have to get used to the fact that most of us like to combine our efforts for the greater good, even if it comes at short term cost to us with no immediate benefit. Alternatively you could start a movement to try to get everyone that thinks like you to move to the same state and take over its government, maybe a large state with few people, whom already hate government, like Wyoming, and just vote to dissolve the state and choose to live in anarchy. The federal government would probably send the military to reestablish order, but then you don't seem to believe in invasions so maybe they just wouldn't for some reason. Of course, this would take collective action and political and civic participation, so I can't see you doing something like that. Guess you're just stuck paying taxes and complaining about it then.
