Dear Julian,

The term "representative government" is only introduced in your last post, so obviously I had no previous chance to relate to it.

Obviously no such thing exists or ever did, so it's all hypothetical. Democracy too is just a myth, a propaganda attempt to sweeten the bitter pill of being ruled by an uninvited gang who call themselves "state", who never actually sought permission to control the lives of ordinary people.

If that's not a predator, then what is?

No, it's not the type of predator that kills you and eats your flesh all at once, but more like parasites who suck your blood constantly year in and year out.

Nobody likes predators, but what's the point of stopping smaller predators if that requires the introduction of a bigger one? How more so when, as you mentioned yourself, those smaller predators are not stopped anyway as you would hope, even when government is big, but instead feast and share our blood with the government itself. So if they cannot be avoided anyway, then at least have a smaller government with less mouths to feed - better still, let the lions and tigers of the Canberra zoo consume them for breakfast so we have none at all!

BTW, per your specific complaints, had there been no government:
* nobody could introduce GST.
* nobody would make you participate in or support the fighting in Vietnam or Iraq.
* there would be no "public assets" (as we currently understand the term) to plunder.

Yuyutsu, we need government and we need it to belong collectively to us all. Without government there would be no law, no protection of personal autonomy, no science, no medical knowledge, no transport, no civilisation – just a decaying anarchistic Mad Max world in which human life would be brutish and short. It wouldn’t last long. Predators would quickly emerge, enslave the unprotected prey, and set up a brutal dictatorship. Mohammed is the poster boy for such a mega-predator to emerge from a world without dependable structure or hope.

My preference, and probably most other people’s, is civilisation, law, the Enlightenment, human rights, language, real countries with borders. My own preference (though probably not yet most other people’s but history is heading that way) would also include no religion.

Dear Julian,

Whatever your preference is, you have no right to enforce it on others with different preferences. Doing so is barbaric violence.

I understand that a government is needed in order to achieve your goals, but then nothing prevents you from establishing a government of your kind of people alone, rather than a territorially-based one that forces itself on everyone who happens to live in some huge stretch of territory (such as this continent). You could then design such a government to belong collectively to all your people. Further, others who have varied goals (which could include a subset of yours) could establish their own governments over their own people, so that no-one who wants a government needs to stay without one.

Regarding predators, nothing prevents you from defending yourself and whatever group(s) or society(s) that you freely chose to belong to in accordance with your values. Nothing prevents you from making and enforcing your own rules and standards within your group(s); and from fighting against threats from those outside them. What is unacceptable, however, is to force your standards and values upon others that are not threatening you or your group(s), but only wish to live in peace side by side.

You mentioned that you value personal autonomy - then how can you live with the fact that your government constantly thwarts it?

Regarding religion, like a snake that sheds its old skin, people now seem to shed the shells of their old religions. It would be your misunderstanding to assume that they are disposing of religion altogether - they only discard some old casings that are no longer needed.

Back, back, back to pre-industrial, back to feudal, back to tribal, back to iron age, back to stone age, back to squabbling pockets of pithecanthropi, back to plankton. There are 23 million people in Australia and the number who want to embark on that path would fit in a phone booth. I'm satisafied to stay with the 23 million, bogans and all, rather than with isolated nut cases like the survivalists of Montana or "Prince Rupert" of Hutt River Province.

Meanwhile among the participants in society (society, which Margaret Thatcher and Yuyutsu would have wished to see dismantled) there will be conversations seeking working control of the state by the people for the people. We go back a long way (read Bertrand Russell's History of Western Philosophy and trace the growth of democracy within it). That's the path of conscious civilisation and it will always have a place for participants. The payoff for participation is a legacy. The payoff for nihilist kookery is lonely angst.

Dear Julian,

Your reply indicates that you have not read my last post (or otherwise prefer to ignore it).

There is a wide gap between the Soviet Union and nihilist kookery, with lots between.

You can have not one, but many societies.
You can even have those societies partially cooperating on those matters they agree on.

What you want is to have just ONE society - which must be YOUR society that shares YOUR preferences, to swallow and dominate everyone else, or at least everyone else who lives in this whole continent and surrounding islands.

You are even "generous" to allow others to vote in your democracy due to your confidence of getting a majority. Had your preferences been in the minority, then you too would be crying fie.

Ah, you mean multiculturalism. With the quasi-democratic state giving way to the vilest, most predatory theocracy since the seventh century, stimulating in faux confrontation the imposition of an overarching secret political police and a mass surveillance worthy of the pen of George Orwell. With defence against both superstates threatening to crumble before political conformism and blind failure to notice the trap of openness to closedness.

Little circles of opt-out kooks offer no impediment to this twin juggernaut. The mutually co-operating superstates will have these opt-out individuals and circles, like the Falun-Gong in the Chinese Police Republic and the Bahais in the Islamic theocratic desert, for breakfast.

The key to building and defending a shared space in which the autonomous individual can thrive lies in the centuries-old struggle between the Enlightenment and the counter-Enlightenment, with those not committed to the values of the Enlightenment opting for irrelevance at best. This is the context in which to study civilised society and the role of the state.