Is the difference, in your opinion, scale?

We still have different state governments in the US and different country governments around the globe. Are you more confident in those because its larger groups of people deciding, and enforcing, what is right and wrong?

What the 'scale' appears to do, is to sugarcoat things which appears less hurtful for most people:

1)Eliminate individuals targeting other individuals at a personal level on a routine basis.

2) An officially worded notice, as opposed to some thug threatening at you.

3) Some written text that has has a resembles of order call the 'law'. To give an analogy consider why religions texts appeal to people. People have a lot of reverence for the written word including areas where IMO it should not be relevant: example marriage.

To highlight my point, if a thug were to go around extorting people for money verbally on a periodic bases which are _less_ that the taxes currently paid and provided _more_ services than the government then the targeted individual of the extortion would more resentful than he/she would have been of the government.

So is your argument here that the scale of governments, and their willingness to write down the rules they want to impose, is better mainly due to optics? I.e. we're better off with governments because someone has to be in charge and a government at least appears to be better intentioned thugs due to their use of a pen and paper?

Generally correct. Put another way the government to a large extent are thugs. No, I personally am not sure if we are better of with governments. I have lived in places with virtually no government and those places have generally been better than the ones with the government.

Scale and respect for institutions brings order. Anarchists remind me of one of two things, primitive villages trading with other primitive villages for supplies and goods or post apocalyptic tribes people living off a past of greatness until they become primitive villages trading for supplies and goods of other villages. Anyway that type of life is gone. As soon as a country like the USA goes "anarchist" everything falls apart and another country like Russia or China invades and enslaves the population

I'm not trying to propose anarchism here at all, and agree any shift from the world today to anarchy seems horrible in the short term even if its a long term utopia (trying to be as generous as possible of the upside there).

Respect for institutions is really a sticking point for me though. For one thing, they need to earn and deserve our respect. For another, if respect for institution is the goal then those institutions shouldn't need the power to impose their will upon us.

I don't need someone to that I have respect for to force my hand, and if someone does force my hand I likely won't respect them.