>> I think that best government is least government
Ok. That is literally an extremist view. It is too easy a mantra. Exactly how little government would be too small? I personally think the IRS should be funded, so to the FBI, EPA and military. Other people think otherwise and would be happy to do away with all those agencies. But to say that less is always better is to wash one's hands of the conversation, to abandon the hard task of working out exactly which services society wants and needs from government. Less always seems better until you actually need something.
I'm quite fond of the NWS; one the one hand there's no particular reason it must be a government body; on the other hand that frees them from "performance metrics" and the need for hype ... but doesn't insulate them, either.
"best government is no government" would be extremist. I submit that "least government" is a reasonable view that admits there are positive functions of government in society, even if they are "all the other options suck worse" judgements where "positive" is "least negative".
On the contrary. It's a bold claim that there should be a government with any size at all. The modern nation state is a relatively recent invention. There is no reason why it among all possible forms of organization or unorganization should be the global optimum. What's more frightening to me is that it would be a local optimum - a corridor of thought impossible to reverse course on once decided, and always preventing us from reaching a more perfect form of governance or ungovernence as the case may be. I'm not here to discuss the benefits any particular form of governance, that's irrelevant to the idea of only having local information in an governance optimization landscape.
All known human societies have government, even the most primitive tribes, so I'm not clear what your point is. I was just reading about the The Tripolye Culture giant-settlements in Ukraine, from 7,000 years ago, who seem to have had something like a democratic government:
The confusion you're experiencing is because I specifically mentioned "modern nation states" and you responded with "even the most primitive tribes." If we stick to the same topic, it might be more clear.
> Whatever form of organization you want to invent for a society, that will be a form of government.
What is the name for this ideology? It feels like it's the political version of Mark Fisher's Capitalist Realism, but I've never seen it given a name before. I am of course interpreting this through a Bergerian/Luckmannian lens[1].
1. Specifically by way of "reification is the apprehension of the products of human activity as if they were something other than human products - such as facts of nature, results of cosmic laws, or manifestations of divine will." p 106 TSCoR http://perflensburg.se/Berger%20social-construction-of-reali...
Ok. That is literally an extremist view. It is too easy a mantra. Exactly how little government would be too small? I personally think the IRS should be funded, so to the FBI, EPA and military. Other people think otherwise and would be happy to do away with all those agencies. But to say that less is always better is to wash one's hands of the conversation, to abandon the hard task of working out exactly which services society wants and needs from government. Less always seems better until you actually need something.