If you really want to exist as a society of strong individuals (assuming that’s not already a contradiction in terms) in the absence of these constructs, you have to accept the very real likelihood that stronger individuals will be trying to rob and murder you. And organizing themselves into groups to do that more successfully

People organizing and working together is great.

People feeling they have a right to use violence to achieve their goals, not so much.

Edit: https://xkcd.com/386/

I will take this opportunity to to try to express myself a bit more clearly. I don't really expect to convince anyone of anything, but rather I would like to reach the few people out their that do resonate with me and my words.

Government is superstition just the way Santa is a superstition. You can call it an inter-subjective entity, or egregore, but ultimately it's not more real than any other imagined concept. It is perhaps a useful mental model to apply labels and titles to groups of people, or certain concepts, but it is also valuable to realize these are labels and models.

A government, as far as I know does not exist, insofar as I cannot interact with it as a single entity, or see it. If you look at this from an esoteric perspective, perhaps nothing is real, or it's all consciousness, or a simulation, or vibration of energy, however that doesn't change my lived experience of what appears real now.

I take issue with collective thinking, labeling a group of people with an identity, and then acting as if this identity is real. I don't have any animosity towards any other man or woman living in a different "country". I doubt many people do, and yet under the superstition of collective thinking, many people go to war, fighting against a "them" that someone did us "wrong", because we've been told so, or believe in large geopolitical movements. If every single conscious entity took a step back, and only acted violently in self-defense, there would be no war. There would simply be no reason to do it.

There are numerous arguments against this, such as "there will always be 'bad' people, so we need gang up and make sure they don't do bad things", and soon enough, there will be a group of people, believing they are the only people who can legitimately use force and violence, because they are stopping the 'bad people'. If you look at a history book, you'll find more death and destruction because of "governments" by a very long shot, and very little due to the few "bad apples".

The "Common Good" is another fallacy that leads to much suffering. How do we define it? We can use numbers, and metrics and "happiness surveys", and try to use left brain thinking to optimize for it, but ultimately "good" is in they experience of the individual conscious entity experiencing it. Trying to define it mathematically is taking away the agency and life of those who experience it, reveals a certain hubris and elitism that certain "experts" know what is best for everyone, for the "common good".

A book I recommend for those interested in what I'm saying is "The Most Dangerous Superstition" by Larkin Rose.

If you think I'm wrong, please continue to do so. I am supportive! I don't intend or expect to reach you.

but now you say: "People organizing and working together is great."

Which is it?

"Organization" vs "organizing"

I am not nitpicking. I am saying that as conscious entities, we act. We "verb". It's the labeling that I see as creating trouble.

I only see atoms dancing around. That doesn't make it a useful abstraction at the scale we are discussing. Government is just an abstraction over a group of people self organizing.

> People feeling they have a right to use violence to achieve their goals, not so much.

Agreed, but government monopoly on violence is the only system that seems to have stuck. I would prefer a system of anarchy where everybody just did the right thing, but I haven't seen any evidence such a system lasts more than hours. Maybe we have to eradicate the cultural training and distrust we have already instilled into ourselves too. I've sat down and worked out the "root philosophy" of our political opinions with as many folks who will sit still for it, and this smells like the "Libertarian presumption that people, removed from the system of control, would all act better" and being in active denial that their planed solution for nonconformity they can't handle is "round up a posse and threaten/kill nonconformists".

Right now, I'm looking for people with "naive optimism" who would like to see this world. There are a few of us. I'll share concrete details with those folks.

Libertarians don't believe anything resembling that.

Libertarianism requires a government empowered to use force to guarantee peoples' fundamental rights.

If you have more questions about what Libertarianism actually is, feel free to ask, as I am one.

If they don't, then the strongest horse in the area will decide.

Take your pick.

Governments do not grant rights. They either enforce or abrogate them.

As I said.

> The idea of multiple competing law enforcement apparatus within the same jurisdiction is not just theoretical wankery, either; it's actually been tried. Most notably in the Icelandic Commonwealth, which endured for 300 years.

Libertarianism doesn't specify the form of government, just the role of government.

My premise is more: "If people act better, and then perhaps we won't need a system of external control."

I will admit I dream of a world that may not be possible. However, I will continue dreaming, and act to see this dream come to fruition.

I do agree that there is a root problem with any existing power structure not being truely incentivized to reduce scarcity and then loose power, but that doesn't make the thanos solution more ok.

--Margaret Thatcher

It's basically a 19th Century proto-existentialist analysis trying to explain "Why do people sacrifice their free will to abstract ideas, and should they?"

I have no desire to change the world, I just inform my personal decisions and benefit from understanding the truth.

If you want to discuss how to communicate for liberty, my email is in my bio.

Personally I enjoy my government roads, schools, fire service and all the rest.

Perhaps when you’ve grown emotionally, you’ll understand that government is people working together to achieve a common good. It’s flawed and easy to get wrong, it oversteps and overspends, but I’ll take that over "fully realised" adults living in a bear-ridden trash heap because they “took responsibility” for their own garbage disposal.

No, I'm pretty sure I got the point there.

I agree, government is just a bunch of individuals, and collectively we empower them to take action on our behalf, and they achieve things that without such cooperation would be hard to impossible. I don't believe the poster I replied to would concur, in fact a brief glance down their posting history shows this person believes governments should not exist.

To put this another way, I am NOT advocating for getting rid of governments, because a) they already don't exist, and b) right now, if we "got rid of government", let's say by somehow stopping all political, police, military and other activity, there most likely would be chaos, as many people like being told what to do, and maybe do need a imaginary father figure to make decisions for them and punish them if they do "bad" things.

People will never be 'ready' to stop abusing and taking advantage of others, without cooperative measures (governments) to restrict such activity, what you have is a recipe for mass violence and a return to warlords and feudalism as those who can raise the largest mob take the lions share of resources for themselves.

This is arrogant, and condescending, not kind.

If it is not kind, then neither is the original.

I didn't read it like that - I read it as the ability to self-govern requires great individual responsibility and emotional control. Whether this is the only way forward is up for debate, but I agree it requires an (unlikely?) level of public competence.

Every time we generalize it results in violence and conflict.

I am 100% supportive of people working together.

[1] Except for the fact that the West rugged self-sufficiency was only possible because the pioneers could call in cavalry to exterminate groups of people who posed a threat they couldn't handle themselves.

You say “show me a government and I’ll listen”; I say “Show me a superstition (and an explanation for in what sense you have shown me one), and I’ll show you a country (in the same sense).”

My pleasure. The United States was founded on libertarian principles (excluding allowing slavery to continue, this was fixed in 1865).

The result was the rise if poor people to the most successful nation in the world, and the greatest rise in the wealth of those poor people.

This did not happen in, say, South America, that was discovered and colonized at the same time. The Antebellum South also did not prosper under slavery and was crushed by the free economy of the North.

Other countries which embraced libertarian principles also experience a surge in their economies, like the German Miracle after WW2, same for Japan.

It certainly wasn't based on modern libertarian principles, or there would not have been much of a government in the first place.

It certainly pays lip service to freedom, but pre-dates the modern libertarian obsession with contract and property law as supreme above all others.

> libertarian obsession with contract and property law as supreme above all others

Contracts are always superceded by government laws under libertarianism.

If you want a book written by another actual libertarian, "Free to Choose" by Milton Friedman is a good start.

The neato thing about libertarianism is it doesn't have to be perfect in order to work. Since nothing about human societies can be perfect, this is fine feature. The more libertarian a country is, the better it runs.

Largely because when given the freedom to contract with whomever they want for garbage disposal, a lot of people just didn't.

You might want to make at least a few exceptions.

- - - -

You might be interested in the work of Moshé Feldenkrais

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mosh%C3%A9_Feldenkrais

He's a fascinating person in his own right, a physicist who was also the first Westerner to earn a black belt in judo.

> On the eve of the Nazi invasion of France in 1940, Feldenkrais fled to Britain with a jar of heavy water and a sheaf of research material, with instructions to deliver them to the British Admiralty War Office.

Anyway, his "Method" is a kind of direct physical intervention to dispel superstition in the nervous system, returning the person to a more high-fidelity self-model, which in turn develops the qualities you mention above: strength (physical, emotional and mental) and the ability to self govern, which then permits taking responsibility (i.e. you can't drive a car if the steering wheel and pedals don't work, eh? You have to fix the car first, then you can drive it.)

(I would normally link to the Wikipedia article on the "Feldenkrais Method" but unfortunately it has fallen in with the "Alternative medicine" woo-woo stuff, which then makes the Guerilla Skeptics come in and crap on it. I wish I was making this up but that's really what they call themselves. Anyway, if you're interested get a copy of his book "Awareness through movement : health exercises for personal growth" and try it out. https://archive.org/search.php?query=creator%3AFeldenkrais )