Re:[OT]Governments was: [FT] UNSC (emotional rant), etc etc etc...

>Absender: siefertma@wi.rr.com
> > One could go on about the fact that governments didn't 
> > spontaneously generate... they were created by people for good 
> > reason, and we (collectively, if not individually) choose to keep > 
> them there.
> 
>     Ah.. but I didn't create my governemnt.  
By what procedure do you suggest to do that if not by some kind of 
election process ?

> And dispite my  participation in the electorial process, I don't
> statistically have much of a say.

You will be hard put to 'statistically have much of a say' in a nation 
of close to 200 million people. Perhaps you should emigrate to Andorra? 
Or get your county to declare independence ?

> > One could say that by choosing to live in a state that has 
> > taxation, you buy into that social contract.  If you don't like 
> > it, get out.
> 
>     Contract?  I don't remember signing any contract.
> 
>     Besides, saying "if you don't like it, get out" is a pretty
> "maifiaesque" response.  I should have to put up with the laws of a > 
society, no matter how wrong they are, or find somewhere else to 
> live?

The proper response should be to work to get the rules changed if you 
don't like them. Of course if most other people are happy with the way 
things are, you may not get far.

> > One could say that the benefits of government are clearly 
> > demonstrated by the fact that we don't live in caves, we have 
> > lightbulbs, etc.  The benefits of no-government are quite clearly > 
> demonstrated by certain portions of our world in recent history.  
> > Say, mid-1990's Somalia.
> > Mogadishu.	Rule of the gun.  Great place to live...
> 
>     The lightbulb wasn't invented by government, but a entrepenuer 
> by the name of Thomas A. Edison for...dare I say it... PROFIT. 
> Indeed, much of what we call "progress" is the result of "greedy" 
> capitalists who sought to make money.

Adrian didn't say anything for or against capitalism or profit. You are 
responding to what you imagine his ideas to be.

A free-market/capitalist economy needs a stable political environment 
and the rule of law to work. Look at anarchic places like the Somalia 
quoted above, or Albania, or Russia or... Foreign investors shun states 
with poor governance with good reason. You have to bribe a lot of
people, 
you need 'security services', and if you cross the wrong people you
still 
may lose everything (even your life).

>     As for anarchism...  I'd like to think that most rational people 
> neither want to rule nor be ruled.  

Now, there are many kinds of 'Rule', from the guaranteed-rights, 
rule-of-law, elected-governments of stable democracies, over the
less-stable 
emerging democracies in, say, Eastern Europe, over relatively mild 
dictatorships such as used to be common in Latin America, to
totalitarian 
dictatorships such as Nazi Germany, the Soviet Union or North Korea, and

such blood-thirsty caricatures as Idi Amin's Uganda or Khmer Rouge 
Cambodia. 

All normal people prefer a stable and free state to one of the nastier 
ones. And it is our duty to take care that our country stays in the 
healthy range.

But I think most thinking people prefer a reasonable government to no 
government, precisely for the reasons discussed by Adrian.

> However, a sizable number of people on this planet are not so 
> driven.  For whatever reason (money, religion, ideology, or just the 
> plain, naked, lust for power) people feel it necessary to exert 
> power over their fellow  man.  

That's precisely the reason democratic governments with 
balance-of-power institutions are designed the way they are. They
channel that 
ambition, giving power-hungry people something to strive for, but hedge
them in 
by giving all people a say in the matter and by  distributing the power 
among many wolves.

Such rows as the recent troubled US presidential election are a case in 
point. You may or may not like the result, but having Gore and Bush 
fight it out in the courtrooms is certainly preferable to having
Democrats 
and Republicans fight it out in the streets with automatic rifles. 

Greetings