I really want to write a longer piece on this, but I don't know when I'll have the time. Philosophically, I am an anarchist: I believe that the existence of government is inherently unjustifiable and contrary to human rights. Practically, I'm a minarchist, because you have to work within the world of the possible, and that is, to a large degree, what's possible now; it doesn't look like we're going to get rid of governments any time soon, so we might as well make them as small and as good as possible.
Government is force, by its very nature; if it did not use force it would not be what we call a government. Accepting the existence of government means accepting the use of force as a way of dealing with issues, which I thought we were generally against. I do agree that sometimes it's difficult to solve issues any other way, but that doesn't make government
good, it makes it dangerously seductive, because when all you have is a hammer, etc. And when you look at the history of how governments actually behave, I am skeptical of the idea that they solve any problems than they cause.
I do want to pick a nit with something, though -
Warren wrote:Because whoever controls the biggest and most guns is the government even if you chose to call it something else.
Not really, because a government asserts a monopoly on the use of force in (usually) a geographically distinct area, while a Hypothetical Most-Heavily-Armed Group doesn't necessarily do so. To use an example, a government pretty much always asserts that it
could legitimately make you get a license for your dog, even if it doesn't currently require dog licenses, but a HMHAG doesn't necessarily make any such assertion.
I sort of feel like a sucker about aspiring to be intellectually rigorous when I could just go on twitter and say capitalism causes space herpes and no one will challenge me on it. - Hugh Akston