When Anarchy Would Be Better, You Know Things Are Bad

I am not an anarchist, mainly because most anarchists yearn to smash both the state and the natural hierarchical distinctions among people. These goals are contradictory and show anarchists to be useful idiots, for it is precisely the state that seeks to smash hierarchical distinctions and erase culture to pave the way for the "New Man," who has no cultural memory or sentiment but rather will serve the state as soulless automaton. In all honesty, pop culture already has done such an efficient job of destroying real culture that Western governments largely have succeeded in their mission. Even those anarchists who focus solely on smashing the state (e.g., anarcho-capitalists) offer no viable method to resolve civil disputes, fight crime, or enforce general laws in any population larger than a primitive tribe.

Some people take the final step to anarchy after stopping at the way station of libertarianism, concluding that limited government is an impossibility, but for me the formula for limited government is rather simple: foster the creation of multiple sovereign countries/governments so that none of them are very powerful and cannot afford to alienate their own tax base. So what if no internal system of laws can restrain government? As long as we make sure that external checks are in place, it makes no difference how powerful and abusive a single government becomes, for the natural balance of power will eventually assert itself.

All that being said, it's rather interesting to notice that sheer anarchy would be better than what we confront right now. Government supposedly exists to guard us from the predations of criminals and foreign enemies, but I ask you what assortment of criminals or enemies could possibly do what government does to us on a daily basis? Consider just some examples:

• Pilfer up to 40% (in European countries, even more) of your income every year.
• Steal vast additional sums of money by smothering interest rates.
• Regulate every aspect of your personal and economic life, regardless of whether you're disturbing anyone else, on pain of fines and/or imprisonment.
• Abduct your children and tell them to resent you and your ancestors.
• Attack, bomb, and kill people around the world, thereby inflaming millions of foreigners to hate or actively attempt to harm you.
• Abduct you and tell you to help attack, bomb, and kill people around the world.
• Force you to subsidize foreign invaders.

Thanks, but no thanks. I'd be much better off if the government retired and left me to the supposed depredations of criminals. This goes even if I were defenseless and not able to resist, which is the case with government; at least with ordinary criminals I could point and shoot.