If a lot of people assume this, then eventually behaviour happens according to the expectation. Within Netherlands I assume the government is usually there to make things better (though there are exceptions). What is considered better might be completely different, but still, it's assumed to be better.

I've since have a few friends who work for a municipality. It's quite refreshing to notice that they're way more open to try and do good for everyone. Unfortunately there's more populism (ignore facts, just follow assumptions).

It seems better to actively ensure that people should be improving things to ensure there's an environment where bad behaviour is frowned upon.

Constant distrust and suspicion of power is crucial to a free and prosperous society. Politicians, officials and even private executives should never receive praise from the public, if they are doing good work the public should just shrug and say to themselves "yeah, ok, you're not horrible right now". Governments are never good, at best they are not actively harmful.

Except of course, when they are doing good.

Government is essential and its hard - attempting to juggle the needs and rights of diverse and disparate people. I get tired of the mantra that the people involved in government are inherently evil, bad, out for themselves etc. Many people who get into politics do so out of a true desire to make the lives of their fellows better - whether you agree with their stances or not.

>If a lot of people assume this

I come from Norway - by many assumed to be among the most human and decent countries in the world.

When a refugee storm hit Norwegian borders a few years ago, the cabinet assigned Antichrist herself, Sylvi Listhaug, to deal with it. It would not surprise me if Trump's advisers had her misdeeds (and results) in mind when they designed their current policy.

That's Norway - the country who hands out the Nobel Peace Price.

Do yo know how Norway gets rid of it's aging population? They thirst them to death. No assisted death option like in the Netherlands. Just unimaginable pain and fear at the and of life.

In Norway today, a man is serving life in prison for murdering and raping a 8 year old girl. He is innocent. Everybody knows he is innocent. But the Justice system is incapable of admitting mistakes - so he remains in jail.

I don't want to make software for governments. Because, even those who hand out Peace Prices and pretend to be soo accepting and liberal - even those commit unimaginable evil every single day of the year.

The former is almost trivially true, at least in the narrow reading supported by your examples, mostly a function of their size. The latter a vast sweeping philosophical generalization that is backed up by nothing.

All your examples show is that there are instances of them failing to live up to your ethical standards (which it seems I largely share). Would you rather have no laws than imperfect laws? No justice than imperfect justice?

[1] That would make it a non-sequitur that you would single out governments but are OK with individuals and corporations using your software.

Would you rather there was no government?

If people agree to "manage" something, you'll end up with something that acts very much like a <scarequote>government</scarequote>.

The issue with talking about "anarchy" is that it's very easy to slip into semantic word games instead of looking at the underlying concept of how humans behave.

One reason "governments" or "managing" happens is that the real world has finite resources that's simultaneously desired by multiple people. E.g. there's a desirable piece of land. Since more than 1 person wants that land and since multiple can't live in the same spot, a conflict occurs. This eventually leads to a subset of people that make rules for others to follow. Whether you call that subset a "government" or "leaderless anarchy with unacknowledged rule-makers (wink)(wink)" is academic. (This is related to the joke, "we are all equal but some are more equal than others.")

If we depend on abolishing the idea of "property" to support the implementation of "anarchy", it still devolves to semantic word games because humans will invent equivalent euphemisms to "ownership" such as "99-year leases" or "temporary stewards of this land as communicated by a God", etc. Whatever people decide to call the control of that land, it's functionally equivalent to "property ownership".

This "resource limit" pattern repeats itself in the digital realm. Theoretically, there can be 7 billion people each with their own cryptocoin of which mad_tortoise_coin is one. However, these 7 billion individual blockchains are not useful. On the other hand, if people want to converge on a single blockchain cryptocurrency (such as Bitcoin) with stable attributes, a governance model will have to emerge. There's no way around it. If we still insist that we can have "anarchy" in Bitcoin because people can fork it, you eventually get "governance_0002" emerging in bitcoin_fork0002. Nobody "owns" the entire Bitcoin blockchain but nevertheless, participants still want to own pieces of it via public/private key pairs.

The collection of behavior that trends into a <group> that's functionally equivalent to something called "government", and a <concept> that's functionally equivalent to "ownership" seems to be embedded in the human condition.

> These all can be managed without government should the people want it

You say this as if the predictions of a social theory are as reliable as those of Newtonian physics. I don't think they are. And because I know of no historical example of an industrialized society functioning sustainably without a government, I tend to doubt a theory that says it's possible. Because if it was, you would think somewhere, somehow, it would have been successful already.

Governments can only not exist when the population density is so low that people only interact when they want to and can cease interaction when they so desire. This is extremely low population density, and given the increased range technology gives us, there are very few places that have this low of a density, and even then it only lasts as long as the density doesn't increase due to some migration event.

It can be a government or a corporation.

Al least, in our democracies, you can decide the government with your vote.

I think the problem is most western societies is really that there is no accountability for wrong doings. If a politician promotes a law that has huge, negative consequences, she will not be held responsible in any way for those consequences. As long as she succeed in deceiving the public - she will win elections and continue to abuse her power. The same goes for the "foot soldiers" in the bureaucracy, justice system, health care etc.

If a prosecutor holds back evidence and lies to the court, to get someone convicted - it has no consequences for him even if that is later proven, and even if the sentence is nullified and the person released. The victim may suffer from post traumatic stress for the rest of his life. The prosecutor goes on with his misconduct. The same goes for judges. I caught a judge in Norway deliberately breaking EU law (denying a defendant to examine witnesses) - and he even admitted that to me after the trial - it was "convenient" for him to run his court that way. It was convenient for him to just ignore one of the core principles of the justice system - the right to a fair trial. He did this regularly, and as far as I know, he's still working as a judge. (I was shocked, and contacted the agency responsible for running the courts in Norway - who confirmed to me that he was indeed breaking the law - and then did nothing).

I am an optimist. I think governments can be fixed. But I don't think the politicians will have accountability for themselves, and their servants, as a high priority any time soon. In the mean time, I don't want their bad apples to use my free work!

and depending on hwere you are, you get bonus points added!

The "all government is evil" idea sounds ridiculous to me. Governments can be evil. Perhaps by their nature they will almost always do some evil. But evil in general, nah.

Though that ability is diluted as we make every little thing a national issue.

> they are by nature evil.

These statements are not equivalent. It does not necessarily follow that doing a non-zero amount of evil means an institution, or type of institution, is by nature evil.

You could easily say the same thing about individuals or any grouping of people; individuals "always do evil", therefore all individuals are by their nature evil? It's true only in a trivial sense, in that humans and human-created groupings are imperfect and will do a mix of good and bad.

My clause was a statement: Don't use my software - I did not make it for you.

The Microsoft employees wish to put restrictions in commercial contracts is interesting - and also scary. There are so many interest groups, and so many agendas, and so many views on whats right and whats wrong - that things could get really messed up.

I agree that governments by their very nature will do evil things, but governments are not a single entity with a single mind controlling them, but rather a sprawling ecosystem of individual parts where some parts diverge from the party line, just to be checked and put back into place by other parts. Sometimes those checks fail and the whole thing goes downhill fast. In the general case, however, governments as a concept have enabled a society that is better off and capable of building infrastructure and things that an each man for his own kind of organization would never have been capable of.

Why single out governments?

Corporations are accountable. They are accountable as entities, and as individuals (owners, managers, employees). If they do fatal decisions, the corporation may go bankrupt. If people act immoral, they may get fired. If they cheat, they may be caught and go to jail.

Corporations can also choose to act ethically - and, according to a recent Freakonomics podcast, actually benefit from that by attracting better employees :)

In USA, corruption is regulated by law... Politics is all about getting financial support and basically selling laws and policies to the highest bidder.

To shareholders, who are motivated by profit. Accountability is worse than useless if it holds you to account for the wrong things.

Governments are accountable to their populations, at least in democracies.

Example: If a border-patrol officer chose to follow orders and take an infant from her mother - because it's policy, he should be liable to criminal prosecution for breaking domestic and international law. Like any soldier in the field is. If a soldier choose to follow an illegal order and commit crimes against humanity, he risk prosecution. Police officers, migration officers, judges, prosecutors - they don't. And because of that, they do a lot of harm. Again, not all of the time, and not to everyone. But too often, and too much.

> Governments will always do evil.

> they are by nature evil.

Please either make up your mind or use less misleading language in the future. You made a strong, controversial assertion, which then turned out to be a pretty mundane belief upon challenge.

However, if the people abusing their powers (by evil intent, neglect or pure stupidity) are held accountable, and removed, may be the governments can become something I can live with, even mostly good.

Today, I think the balance is very much that the governments are on the dark side. Some more than others (yes China - I'm looking at you), but noone that I know well inspires any good feelings. I would not work for any of them. Even paying taxes feels deeply immoral.

Sure, but this is trivially true. Individuals will always to some degree do evil. Corporations will always to some degree do evil. Religions will always to some degree do evil. There are no possible groupings of humans that will not to some degree do evil.

> Today, I think the balance is very much that the governments are on the dark side.

An interesting observation, considering the proportion of (functional) democracies is higher than it has ever been. At what point in history were governments not on the "dark side"?

However, making such narrow closes would be impractical and stupid. When I faced this dilemma, I was suffering severely from post traumatic stress - caused by abuse from the Norwegian government. The thought of giving my work to them - to any government - was literally painful. Therefore, I put in a clause to block out the bigger evil. Not for anyone who has ever beaten a puppy or pissed on a grave, or who happens to have the Wrong Religion or sexual orientation.

When it comes to immoral corporations - I vote with my money. And of course - I don't work there.

The same is true of companies and any other large group of people.

Amoral entities do things that moral entities consider evil, but it's because they have no moral sense, not because they are actively immoral.

It's a great way to allow the evil to rule society.

you have a typo in your copyright.