We need government or else we'd just kill each other

You have my sympathy, my friend. For some reason, the edit box on this forum sometimes refuses to accept focus for arrow-key and delete-key… when this happens, I Ctl+C, Reload, Ctl+V immediately to prevent this scenario. I just lost two solid pages of text a couple days back to the Evil Bitbucket in the Sky, whose chief minion is the Evil Mises Gnome Forum Software.

Clayton -

I’m talking about before the 1700s, Before the Crusades, before the Romans, Greeks, Egyptians and Mesopotamia, back all the way when humans were tribal bands composed mostly of families

Emotional appeal.

The family was essentially the first form of government.

Government requires coercion. Families are voluntary. You join families. Voluntary “governments” are not governments. They are voluntary societies. The whole foundation of his argument is rotten.

protection of those people within the group and to create societal order.

It seems like his argument is that the two are the same. Why does he include both?

formal societal structure, also known as government

False!

Here is his argument: Human nature is chaos, disorder. He thinks that government is order. Yet note that government has arisen while humans have retained their human nature. How come? Obviously, people do create order.

He must either concede that human nature is not disorder or that government is not order. Since government is a type of order, the only remaining conclusion is that human nature is not disorder.

Then you have others like the US, UK, France, and historically nations like Germany, HRE, Roman Empire, and so forth, who believe what is best for them is to acquire resources and lands from other people groups

This is caused by nationalism and non-free trade. Politicians in a country use nationalism to support non-free trade, using unsound economics to say that increasing the utility of other countries decreases the utility of their own country.

doesn’t it make sense to accept the reality

Emotional appeal. Watch:

Hitler: “The Jews are what is keeping us from obtaining a stable social order and they cause chaos among us and are greedy. Doesn’t it make sense to accept the reality that Jews maybe are not capable of order?”

See? He sounds so nice now!

He seems to think that police is the purpose of government. Then why isn’t he a minarchist?

Furthermore, he seems to think that there would not be police in a free society. There would be.

You can concede as many points to him as you’d like. But pin him down on this:

Government doesn’t prevent crime. Police does. What about police? 1) Physical presence 2) Threat of retaliation. Police would exist without a government.

If he thinks that human nature is crime, then why doesn’t the army enslave us? The answer? Values. Values are what keep us from each others’ throats. We genuinely believe that we shouldn’t kill other people.

I had written so much more and so much more eloquently. But it’s now last. AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA.

Clayton, I think it was my own fault that I lost the data. I accidentally unfocused and used backspace :frowning:

It’s not that man is evil by nature, but rather that man seeks what we can call “plus factors.” That is, to gain a value or to profit.

There are moral and and immoral ways to profit, and there are also evil values, but I’ll ignore evil values for now. You can profit in a transfer in which the other party to the transfer profits as well: known as free exchange. Or you can profit at the expense of another, which is an aggression.

Moral systems are necessary to serve as rubrics on actions as people choose them, and these systems, if rational, should be in line with the non-aggression principle and respectful of rights generally.

At whose expense?

Not quite, we only need a government to use force to end aggression within society, that is retributive and responsive force, never aggression.

Not so. But even if true, they would not need the government to do the forcing, as reality itself will force them to work to survive or die. Obviously, people aren’t lazy unto death.

And whose idea of the “right thing” will you enshrine into law? And what will happen to those who have a different idea of the right thing. Sounds like tyranny.

This is sort of true, in the sense that an anarchist society is not practicable. But neither do we need as much government as you seem to be suggesting we do. If we did, communist countries would be far more successful than free societies. But, as it turns out, free societies and self-directed effort far exceeds the productive capacity and wealth of a command economy with centralized governmental decision-making.

And what will happen to those who have a different idea of the right thing. Sounds like tyranny.

Careful. Same can be applied to minarchist or anarchist thoughts. Don’t argue against morals. Argue against specific morals. Show that others are logically derived. For example, a quick breakdown of why the individual is not owned by everyone equally:

If everyone owns an equal part of me, then to move from A to B I must obtain permission from everyone. This is in fact not only impractical, but impossible: for you to agree to let me move, you yourself would need permission from everyone else to use your vocal chords. This reasoning is circular and would immediately freeze us all in a state of not doing anything.

Sure, but when someone uses the words ‘authority figure’ and ‘force’ I worry about tyranny :stuck_out_tongue:

no idea… dear