the basic problem with the notion of government is displayed in the "massive show of force." only it can do that. but even worse than that, only it can subject you to the indignity of using your own resources to intimidate and/or shoot you. surely it is occurring to someone this evening in libya or or iran or china as the helicopter gunship riddles his mom's twitching corpse with bullets that he paid for himself that maybe this wasn't the very best idea we ever had as a species. we are all in a position where that can happen to us at any time, where people stand over us with a massive slaughter-machine at their disposal, funded by our ourselves. oops!

Comments

[CF Oxtrot]

Happiness is a warm gun.

(cue the bang bang shoot shoot)

[Stephen]

I can't even believe how far this has gone. It's astonishing and inspiring. I never saw this coming and doubted strongly its lasting power at the beginning. Simply amamzing.

[stillnotking]

Oops indeed. The 20th and 21st centuries have been effective at highlighting the repressive natures even of the most liberal and democratic governments -- liberal and democratic to a degree that was an historical outlier in the first place, judging by current trends. And there's no end in sight, because states easily crush stateless societies (a process that was mostly finished up in the 20th) and stateless organizations. WikiLeaks, the current ME revolutions etc. are great and I applaud them for fighting the good fight, but what's it going to amount to, in the end? Some churn at the top; the guns changing hands again.

[CF Oxtrot]

"...states easily crush stateless societies (a process that was mostly finished up in the 20th)..."

Except, ummm... errr... ahhhh... Vietnam. Kinda tough to beat the Montagnards and Cong there, wasn't it?

[stillnotking]

State-backed guerrillas, however loose their command structure, do not constitute a stateless society. The last true stateless societies, like the !Kung, lived in remote areas of no agricultural, commercial, or strategic value; even that didn't protect them forever.

[CF Oxtrot]

So we're now examining what is a "society," then.

Since everyone dies, why worry about whether you're in a "society" or whether you have a "state"?

I mean, if you're going to indict all "stateless" ummm... "societies" with impossibility of existence, it seems to me the impossibility really arises because people have finite lifespans. Not because they have, or do not have, a state.