No doubt this will be mostly incoherent babbling, but living in Mountain Home and before that in Salt Lake City, I have broken too often my fundamental rule against argument with ignorance. It is one thing to alleviate ignorance with education, and too much of my life was wasted in the attempt to do just that. It is quite another thing to engage in argument, if it can be called argument, with ignorance of the willful sort. I will have plenty of time to describe as I go along just what I mean by willful ignorance, but for the moment after conversations on everything from guns to climate control, I need an outlet where I can say what I really think, and I am anxious to get to it, mostly to clarify, for myself, my own thinking.
So, first, I believe that Hobbes had it fundamentally right -- that, without government, in the so-called state of nature, which prevails just under a gossamer thin veil of civilization and civility, it is essentially a war of all against all. I could refer to Golding's Lord of the Flies as a primer on what, for short, I will simply refer to as the "playground" -- that, without the paternalism of government, brute strength rules. I can elaborate on what I mean by "brute," but essentially, on the microcosm of the playground, the kid with the most brute strength rules through intimidation, and when intimidation doesn't work, through violence which helps insure that intimidation does work. We are all familiar with the bully and I don't know that I need elaborate, except to say that the bully needs a corresponding personality trait to fully intimidate, and that is a sociopathic ego-centrism and a lack of empathy. He (or she) wants what he wants and is perfectly willing to "do what it takes" to get it regardless of how it might impact on others -- "regardless" in the proper sense, without regard to the pain and suffering it might cause.
I admit to an autobiographical base for this belief. As a child coming of age, I was small and introverted, nearsighted and bookish -- a prescription for the attention of the bully -- and I received plenty of attention which always puzzled me. I preferred simply to be left alone, and had I been left alone, I would not have much bothered anyone, but I seemed to be born with an invisible target that illuminated under the gaze of the bully. I was not especially "timid," pre se, and I was willing to "fight back," but on more than one occasion, had it not been for the intervention of teachers, my willingness to "fight back" might well have caused me permanent damage. Willingness, even the most stubborn willingness, does not equate to the ability to fight back effectively and only a couple of raging attempts to fight back impressed that lesson on me. I got the proverbial snot kicked out of me. I was not especially "timid," but I was intimidated and the bullies that intimidated me, from all available evidence, just didn't care in the least in how it might affect me. If they were aware at all, it simply increased their sense of superiority and the pleasure they took in being the bully, not the bullied.
So, rule number one, if you believe "government" is the problem, and you wish to do away with government, whether in whole or in part, you must also believe that you will prevail (or have already prevailed) on the playground -- that you will be the bully, not the bullied. Please note, the imperfection of government I do not consider an excuse to abolish government. For reasons that I will come to, government will always be imperfect, and it will never be able to perfectly regulate human affairs once and for all. There will always be problems associated with the design and enforcement of regulation, and we will never achieve perfect efficiency or equity, but the alternative is the playground. Those calling for no or less regulation, I suspect, believe they have already prevailed on the playground. They are already the bullies. Of course they want to freedom, what I will refer to as a "positive" freedom -- the freedom to do as one pleases -- because they possess (or believe they posses, or believe they will possess) the means to fulfill their whims and exercise power over others.
The irony is this: in the world of perfect freedom, without government, the whims of the bully, the tyrant, become the regulatory force. It takes only three nano-seconds to come up with a plethora of historical examples to demonstrate that the lack of restraint leads, not to freedom for all, but to freedom for the few, to the subjugation and intimidation of the many.
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