There are entire neighborhoods where cops won’t even go. I live within a short drive of a couple. This is why even though American founders like Paine agreed government was evil, they knew that some government was necessary.
“Society in every state is a blessing, but Government, even in its best state, is but a necessary evil; in its worst state an intolerable one: for when we suffer, or are exposed to the same miseries BY A GOVERNMENT, which we might expect in a country WITHOUT GOVERNMENT, our calamity is heightened by reflecting that we furnish the means by which we suffer. Government, like dress, is the badge of lost innocence; the palaces of kings are built upon the ruins of the bowers of paradise. For were the impulses of conscience clear, uniform and irresistibly obeyed, man would need no other lawgiver; but that not being the case, he finds it necessary to surrender up a part of his property to furnish means for the protection of the rest; and this he is induced to do by the same prudence which in every other case advises him, out of two evils to choose the least. Wherefore, security being the true design and end of government, it unanswerably follows that whatever form thereof appears most likely to ensure it to us, with the least expense and greatest benefit, is preferable to all others.”
Thomas Paine
Common Sense
Thanks to human nature (no, people are not by nature "good"), some restraint is absolutely required. I prefer social contracts over govt (early America had very little formal govt above the county level for the 1st 150 years).
Paine's problem is that once he sanctioned govt, he had to find a way to pay for it. His later tract, Agrarian Justice, gave following generations the justification to steal from their neighbors through property tax. Bastiat had to deal with it in France 70 years later.
I like Thomas Paine.
Anarchy is stateless and leaderless, but not ungoverned.
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