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.
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.