[geeks] Liber-fascism

[der Mouse]

>> The farm you cited as an example works only because there is a
>> government, with its threat of deadly force backing it, preventing
>> the local brigands that would otherwise overrun your farm from
>> existing.
> Actually, that's where you're wrong.  The local law enforcement is
> useless.  [examples]

I'm not defending LE in any particular place; I'm talking about general
principles.  I'm sure there are plenty of places - many of them in
countries that pride themselves on rule-of-law - where local LE is
operationally hamstrung or nonexistent.

But they are by no means the kind of thing I was talking about.  They
are minor compared to what happens where there is no law (or LE); if
they started to get truly lawless, larger governments would step in.
The only really lawless places are the ones where the state itself is
approximately nonexistent, so there pretty much is no "larger
government"; Somalia is the only current example that comes to mind.
(Indeed, I note there's current debate as to whether other countries
can justify considering themselves collectively a "larger government"
in this sense and stepping in there.)

>> Indeed, the local brigands - and the banding-together of people to
>> defend against their ilk - are the first rudimentary governments.
> Banding together in a common defense is a far cry from what we have
> now.

Agreed.  But so is the population involved.

> Indeed, many of those founding documents claim that governments
> derive their power solely from the consent of the governed.

Ultimately, they do.  Governments that don't have the consent of the
vast majority of their people rarely last more than a lifetime or so.

> I've yet to explicitly give my consent.

Indeed.  This is one of the things that most bothers me about modern
government: it is based on geographical location and covers many people
who have never given consent and who realistically have no way out.

This is, to some extent, understandable, since many of the things
governments exist to regulate and limit are heavily based on physical
proximity.  I also don't see any alternative I think would be better,
so, even though it bothers me, I don't talk about it much.

And, as you point out, it's not clear that informed consent is even
possible in many current jurisdictions.  I can see lots of alternatives
to that, though I don't see any good way to make the transition to any
of them.

> And the US is really just the crazed end of it all.  Do governments
> really get smaller anywhere?  In a number decades, all governments
> either end up in this form of madness or in military defeat.

Yeah.  I don't know _what_ to do about that.  As necessary and
inevitable as goverment seems to be, it does tend to run to excess.

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