teo123 wrote: ↑Thu Sep 28, 2017 4:41 am
Violence is declining exactly because there is less government power.
The fundamental idea that violence declines with the reduction of governmental power is sound, and
should be quite obvious to everyone (unfortunately, the opposite is true). To say, "We need to grant power to a group of violent thieves and murderers, in order to protect us from violent thieves and murderers" shows a nigh-unto-unfathomable level of cognitive dissonance.
Government
must be immoral and violent, in all cases, because the very characteristic that makes it government is an exception from morality, and the enforcement of law via violence. If people would simply ask themselves the question, "Would it be morally justified for me to do the things that government does?" the logical disconnect would become apparent.
Would it be OK to personally insist that your neighbor pay for your children's schooling, under threat of violence? Would it be OK to storm into your neighbor's house, search for a particular substance, and if found, drag him to your basement and throw him in a cage; beating (and even killing) him if he tries to defend himself by resisting? Would it be OK to walk up to someone in the street, ask for a particular piece of paper, and if he cannot produce it, forcibly remove him from an arbitrarily-defined area under threat of violence?
If you do not feel you have the right to do these things, how can you "grant" the right for someone else to do them? How can you give what you don't have? How does going into a booth and pushing a button magically grant someone else an exemption from the very morality that you feel beholden to? It doesn't matter whether you think government is "necessary" because you're scared of what will happen without it; the very notion that government can justifiably exist is a fallacy. You seem to understand this, which is very encouraging.
