Justice

Would the world be better without governments?

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The world would be better without some governments, I think!

Thomas Hobbes once famously remarked that human beings attempting to live outside the boundaries of goverment would live lives that were "nasty, poor, brutish, and short." I'm afraid that actually looking at places in the world where the local governments are extremely weak or ineffective confirms Hobbes's point. Even if such places are perhaps (and only sometimes) less of a menace to other countries than they might be with a bad (corrupt, or aggressive) government, it seems implausible to say that such places are better without any government than they would be if they had a good government. In most cases, even a bad government is better than no government at all--though there are limits as to how bad a government can get before it ends up being worse for the people living there than no government at all. But where we find extremely weak and ineffective governments in the world, we also always find massive human suffering. Governments can be the cause of terrible problems, it is true; but they can also be very effective in solving problems. I would certainly rather live in a well-governed place than one in which there was no government at all. Anarchy (not as a theory, but when an actuality) ain't pretty and ain't nice.

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