I agree with the filth and the miseries caused through what you see as government. Only, I would call it "non government". It's not because the political elite is corrupt that one doesn't need a government, but precisely because it is corrupt that one needs one.
It is also the case that a government is needed, when there isn't actually one in office. Instead of working as it should, words and texts are being produced. Instead of leaving physical public structures such as water, fire and soil management to the experts in the field and on the water, one pretends that there is no physical matter. Instead of protecting people and material things - through a sensible budgetary effort - terms and buzzwords are protected. This is not real work, it is the simulation of activity. This is "non-government", but not "government".
If the world was not so interconnected and countries not so dependent on each other, nation states would not exist and a national government would not be necessary because people would not be travelling by plane and mass transport.
But since they do, and since goods are transported by air and water and railways in masses, and since goods reach the world market as a result, you can't just say that you don't need a national government. Someone will want to discuss the issue of importing and exporting large quantities of gas, oil and other commodities with you and will want to contractually negotiate the quantities for your nation, as well as international construction projects like pipelines. You'd want these nations to make a safe deal which lasts decades, and not until the next non-governor comes along.
If you leave it all to the ‘free market’, no one will stop an oligarch or a conglomerate from sinking their shark teeth into your country.
They tried it with Russia when the Soviet Union ended. Putin prevented that. Trump tries the same, but has a much harder job and maybe he lacks the skills and intelligence.
Unless you have no substitutes which gives the single individual the same quality and quantity of energy and electricity you need, you are dependent on having gas, oil and other essentials coming from foreign countries. In a modern world, you cannot isolate yourself, you need partners on the international level. Just for the sake of the big ones I mentioned, and I would like to add uranium as well, since atomic power plants need them to run.
Unless, you want go back and de-industrialize, do not drive a car, do not heat, do not cool and start living as a farmer or something less, you need a strong government which is able to reign and is not so paranoid to see enemies all over the world. But which is not so naive to see friends everywhere.
What exactly do you mean when you say "government?" There are many structures within society whereby we govern ourselves and form mutual agreements with others. When I specifically use the word "government," I mean a group of people who claim a territorial monopoly in violence. This usurped power can only draw the corrupt and corrupt those who intend virtue. Corruption isn't a bug, it's a feature.
The megacorporations people use as bogeymen of capitalism exist because they are intertwined with government. Incorporation is a legal process for protection in government courts. They lobby government for subsidies, protectionist regulations, bailouts, sweetheart contracts, and ever other anti-market intervention people say stems from free markets.
It does not follow that trade necessitates governments. It's also historically inaccurate. Merchants developed their own codes and courts because national laws don't work for free trade. They obstruct and interfere and turn innocent people into criminals. However, governments usurped many of these mechanisms in order to legitimize their interventionist policies and enrich their cronies while proclaiming they were somehow protecting us in the process.
Nationalism is isolationist. markets are global. It is the web of market prices and exchanges which made possible the automotive industry, computers, trade, and the rest of the modern world you credit government in your correlation/causation error. Strong government mean bad laws and worse wars. Police states and prohibition are anti-market, anti-individual, and anti-liberty. Arbitrary government borders are an obstacle to peace, progress, and prosperity.
Let's stick to the facts:
The wish for both to cease to exist is a wish. Nothing more.
Let's assume that the people of a nation succeed in overthrowing their government. How would they do that? Through the use of force by the citizens themselves? Well, even if that succeeds, what then? Does that put an end to a government? Hardly.
A government threatened by the people would immediately deploy its military and the whole thing would be over as quickly as it began. The times when the mob overthrew the powerful, as in France, are over.
Nowadays, governments are overthrown by other governments through their intelligence agencies and terrorist organisations, working with them. They then replace the previous figures with those of their choice.
In all cases, you end up with a government again.
Since this is the case, and since governments, especially in the West, have allowed an internal power structure to develop that is neither committed to a national identity nor interested in the well-being of the people themselves, the only solution is for a new elected government to bring down this internal power structure. Instead of, as is usually the case, making this internal apparatus more favourable to itself, whether Democrat or Republican, in your case. Which would merely be a continuation of the growing dependence of this apparatus - also known as the deep state.
In practical and pragmatic terms, it means using its existing sovereignty and given access over the accounting system, access to the budget books and thus being able to press the buttons on the computers to freeze and stop transfers and dismiss staff who are linked to the deep state.
The computers are located in official state buildings and are operated by official state employees. This technology and these buildings will not disappear by themselves. As long as both Democrats and Republicans did not take care of the books, because they each expected their own advantage from the existence of the deep state apparatus, the filth remained untouched.
Picking this gigantic mess apart will only work if you have an absolutely determined and fearless government that finally stops pandering, bowing and obeying this apparatus. That's what I mean by a ‘strong government’.
Whether we people on the outside want to agree in principle in our interpersonal and business relationships is completely irrelevant as long as the deep state operates unhindered and throws obstacles in the way of any business.
As it seems, the Trump team wants to fight deep state. It remains to be seen if they are going to succeed. It's a huge battle that needs to be fought. Whether or not they will waver, being tricked or seduced or influenced by their own vanity or other weaknesses and/or lack of knowledge and intelligence, is a question of the future.
Governments do not exist as something outside of the people claiming authority based on the idea. It has no more real substance than mythology. That is h people claiming government authority must act through violence and threats of violence to coerce others. There is no real consent or cooperation there.
Corporations are a legal fiction created under government law. Again, the people exist. their businesses with employees, buildings, material inputs, products, and services exist. Even shares of publicly traded corporations exist. But the corporation itself is an insubstantial thing.
Governments and corporations? Those are wishes.
I'm not calling for overthrowing government. I'm undermining it by arguing against its legitimacy. You cite the threat of violence. That is real,but does not justify government. If anything, it supports my case that it is an idea enforced by people who built it on a foundation of violence.
We're on a blockchain, technology designed to sidestep government control of money and censorship of media. HIVE is literally part of the process toward progress in spite of government violence and threats. Picking the mess apart isn't easy, but it is necessary. We begin by examining the ideas behind it.
You mention the Deep State. Do you really believe it's a bug, and not a feature? If we undermine the state, there is no Deep State anymore. If we pretend we can control the people who call themselves government, it just allows the Deep State to fester with a renewed veneer of legitimacy.
You can't effectively subvert it if you don't have the passwords to the computers that give you access to what's being decided over your head. And if you have no practical way to resist if you disagree with the government's decisions.
Can I ask you if you were disobedient during the plandemic? Did you say ‘no’ to every single measure that came up during that time? If so, was it the case that
I do.
And people also are split in how they see it. There is no unanimity to be found.
If you are a character who came to the top of a scene, and you do not like to have a shadow force giving you orders how to proceed within your top position, you'd rather would like to get rid of that shadow force instead of surrendering to it.
Trump is such a character. He likes to have power and so he sees it as a bug and not a feature. I would say that what he sees as a bug is way more influential than what the two of us see. Since he can create a movement and an atmosphere, which he clearly intends to do. So the question is still debatable, I think.
Undermining the idea of governmental legitimacy is the way we address the rest. Government relies entirely on public acceptance of this veneer of legitimacy.
Your questions about COVID are avoiding the root question, but if you must know, I never got the jab, and I worked for a small enough organization in a suitably less-authoritarian area that there were no mandates and no firings, but I had already taken precautions if that were to occur. Stored food, tools, departure plans, etc.
The 'Deep State' is the inevitable consequence of a territorial monopoly in violence which must maintain an illusion of legitimacy to secure public acceptance. Even before Woodrow Wilson really kicked off American technocracy, there were insiders and influencers in the shadows. Power draws the corrupt like moths to a flame. Representative democracy is a myth, and constitutional republics are papier-mache walls against overreach.
My question about the plandemic just made clear that there is no unanimity between people within a society. Btw, thanks for giving me an answer.
I did not talk about democracy but about government (or governance). Since large numbers of settled people must govern to keep things in order. Can you agree on the premise, that things do not sort themselves out just so?
I asked you about a different concept, about range and radius, for example. So far, the answer I perceive is that you are saying "everyone on his own" (thinking that you have a gun and a place to retreat when shit hits the fan). Now, while that may be a concept for some, it's a non option for others.
In a group of people in every day life you are always faced with those, who cannot defend themselves and with others who take advantage of that.
Do you agree that to govern such reality means that you organize police, courts and other institutions?
In oder to do that, do you agree that you need people who act as such and who in turn, need to be corrected and checked upon? You need an organization?
"Everyone on their own”, I see as a concept of survival, not a concept of living and governing together.
Obviously you and I are not in favor of how power is currently exercised, but as far as I can tell, this form of abuse of power needs to be met on an equal footing. Those are big pockets, currently the only means to get to the places of power and influence them. Since it is reasonable to assume that you don't have a pocket in which you keep billions of cash, at least I don't, the only chance is to change the system to one that has bugs only and is not the very function.
Unless, one favors that the powerful need to be destroyed and murdered through violence (instead of using milder means), for which you'd need the command over the military or organize an army with equal forces - which is not what I would call a success. Or, you favor a reset, which is even more drastic (total destruction).
This view - to change the system from feature to bug - needs all the support it can get. But when people - amongst themselves and outwards through media and social media - complain and whine all day long, want the cake and eat it, too, cannot wait, change daily their minds, formulate never ending demands etc., those who might be willing to reduce the system to some bugs, might shrug off the populace voices and continue to do what is the most convenient.
Corruption is by no means a characteristic of the powerful. It is found at the bottom to the same extent as it is found at the top. As long as a population is unable to behave within the smallest natural unit - the family - according to rules that benefit it instead of disturbing it, destroying it, it cannot absolve itself of mistakes such as envy, greed and corruption, etc. If a populace wants a savior instead of wanting to mind their business, this society might fail in its undertaking to subvert the abuse of power.
We are always in the middle of a story and the outcomes are not certain.
First, you seem to conflate two distinct ideas. Government is a group of people who claim a territorial monopoly in violence, and this is consistent with even maonstream political science definitions. I would define governance as voluntary, consensual agreements between people to organize cooperation, economic exchange, and dispute resolution. The latter does not require the former. In fact, I argue that society operates through a web of decentralized organizing forces of interwoven consenting structures today, not because of government, but in spite of it.
Second, you persist in mischaracterizing my rejection of government as rejection of society. Individualism in its rejection of government coercion is not rejection of society any more than abolitionists rejecting chattel slavery were rejecting economic production. Your range and radius concept is completely irrelevant. To make another analogy, it's like asking how large a church parish should be. We have overlapping religions, denominations, and congregations interspersed with nonbelievers now in spite of the pervasive belief in the need for a single dominant religion even in Europe a couple centuries ago. If you can see why England does not need to enforce Anglicanism or Spain does not need to enforce Catholicism for society to function, then you can perhaps also see how that applies to other aspects of society, too.
You mention police and courts as essential, but you are ignoring the rampant corruption and abuse in government monopolization of these services now, the already widespread use of alternatives today, and the possibilities we could have. I can direct you to theorists and arguments in more detail if you like. As it stands, your position is no different from, "but without slavery, who would pick the cotton?"
Youu assume we need to resist government on their terms with money and power. Again, my tactic is to undermine it. That means discussing ideas with statists such as yourself in an effort to persuade you peacefully in contrast to the political method of coercion, and build alternatives to government systems. Cryptocurrency is one example of the latter now that governments have monopolized money. We overcome the state by building better options, not by seizing control of the established order. We need abolition of slavery, not kinder slavemasters.
Stating complaints and decribing problems with the systems around us is not "whining." That's a lazy cop-out to avoid the problem instead of discussing it. The Internet today is the equivalent of broadsheets and pamphlets 200+ years ago when people were discussing the problems of monarchy and empire. Would you have been a royalist or a liberal then? Would you have accused people of whining and rejecting society if they dared question the divine right of kings?
Corruption is absolutely characteristic of power. Lord Acton's famous quote states, "Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men, even when they exercise influence and not authority: still more when you superadd the tendency or the certainty of corruption by authority." Many other thinkers have echoed the same sentiment as well, and their reasons for reaching that conclusion are based on simple observation and historical analysis alike. Biblically, we are told David, the "man after God's own heart," even had a man killed so he could take that man's wife as his own purely because he could. We also have numerous psychological studies on the nature of authoroty and its destructive effects. The Stanford Prison Experiment and the Milgram Experiment are the most famous, but not the only examples.
When I switch from my phone to my computer, I can provide links to other sources and additional evidence if you would like. I know my conclusions fall outside the mainstream, but I arrived at them only after wrestling with a lot of preconceptions.