Is Government a Necessary Evil?

Is Government A Necessary Evil? by William Gillis

William Gillis wrote:Is government a necessary evil?

I conclude that today, on this specific hour, it is.

Surely, were the governments of the world and all their popularly associated implements of control to suddenly roll up and disappear at this very moment, there would be a significant upswell in oppression. Without warning or preparation, there would be chaos and violence in the streets. Probably far less than you imagine, but a significant quantity nonetheless. Over the fledgling shouts of anarcho-syndicalist union organizers, anarcho-capitalist property-mongers and smug primitivists heading for the treeline, would be the sound of a people still completely wrapped in the psychosis of power. Bosses, gangbangers, social-democrats and warlords.

From one (or two hundred) violent monopolies, society would shatter into a million competing enterprises, each one more violent than the next.

Is government a necessary evil?

Today, on this specific hour, it is. Tomorrow, less so. Four months from now, even less. A century, a millennium from now? Surely not at all.

Of course if today should become tomorrow and yet the state of the world remain precisely the same, then government would, at that moment, be precisely as necessary an evil as it is today. If we should somehow drift into the future without doing a single thing to make it a better one. If we should somehow proceed without taking a single step towards making government unnecessary. …If four centuries should pass and yet somehow the conditions of our world remain precisely the same, then on that day government will be just as necessary an evil.

But the future is unwritten.

There is no guarantee that by tomorrow, the people of the world will not have shrugged off the disease that is our pursuit of power. Unlikely, to be sure. But for now, at least, we still have a measure of agency to make ourselves better people. The ability to build alternatives, inspire hope and expose the inherent weaknesses of those would-be warlords and social-democrats. And the capacity to eventually take such a small and fledgling step as abolishing government. Uncertainty exists.

And surely, extended out as much as four centuries from now, that uncertainty is more than sufficient to completely eclipse the world as it is today. So from our standpoint, while it may be necessary today, there is no reason why government should be considered a necessary evil for our grandchildren.

Even so, at the end of the day, perhaps government will remain just as necessary an evil as it was in the morning.

But it will be by no fault of my own.

Can you say the same?

I haven't read all this yet, Evan, and will... looks interesting. But this might a sort of place to put this info I just ran across (from John Michael Greer's 'The Archdruid Report' blog... which I highly recommned, btw :)

JMG's comment - "....Note to the capitalists among us; Adam Smith, in The Wealth of Nations, argued that government by an exclusive group of merchants was, of all forms of government, the very worst; I think he was quite correct..... ",

First, contrary to what most say, we do not have "a constitution," or "the constitution. Rather, we have fifty-one constitutions.

Those other constitutions are not mere window dressing. They represent the other checks and balances of which politicians and others rarely speak.

As stated in the tenth amendment to the federal constitution, all the powers, enumerated or not, not delegated to the federal government rests with the states and the people in them. That is, contrary to what even experts say, absent paradoxes, the U.S. Constitution is not the supreme law of the land in more ways than it is, for purposes of the powers and authority of the federal government.

Too, the fifty-one constitutions could be considered, at the least, prima facie evidence we cannot trust our public agents to always act in our best interests.

Clearly, any government is, as it's claimed to have been said to by one of the founders, "[g]overnment is not reason, it is force and, like a fire, it must be controlled."

We, since the first foot touched land on this continent, have had to deal with schemes of others that would result in our injury, death or the taking of what was ours.  

One man might stand up to another, but, against an entire nearby village, it's likely it would not go well.

To insure survival, we came together with others, to allow us to defend ourselves. To do this, we had to organize. To organize, we had to have agreements out of demands and compromises.  

As the means of travel improved, and the ability to wage war on others grew, it became important to be able to defend against greater and greater potential enemies. Accordingly, our defense organization grew too.


We are, of course, capable of learning. One of the things we learned was that the aforementioned compromises were a necessary part of succeeding in many things, including in building the aforementioned defenses.  

Often, agreements have little value with no means of enforcement. Without enforcement of an agreement, someone could consume their part of a barter agreement, then renege on their side of the contract. The solution is to not let go of the cow until the cage of chickens is in hand, or to have a means of enforcing the agreement. That means force, or other means of accountability, such as cutting off access to what the one violating the agreement wants.

Consider stop signs. They keep us and those we love, care for, or would do business with, alive. They keep people safe because we know ignoring them has cost. That cost could be our own demise, as a semi runs over the top of our tractor, or it could be because people come together to end us or punish us, or back someone we hired to do that.

Then there is the matter of commerce.  As getting from one place to another became easier, commerce grew, and so did the lives of those it touched. Roads were once just foot trails, Later, they became horse trails, then wagon trails and then, what we have today, graveled and paved highways.

These later things could not be done by one man. It took the combined efforts of many.  And the many could not all be cooks, or there would be little accomplished for the conflcts.

The Ursula K. LeGuin novel The Dispossessed (Wikipedia; Amazon) provides a charming depiction of an anarcho-syndicalist society. This doesn't answer whether government is necessary, but it's an excellent exercise.