Quote from: Arcavum on April 09, 2013, 02:46:07 PM

Remember, all governments need us to need them. If we can function independently, then there's no need for government. *The whole military/police argument is a sad excuse* Again, fear is just the government's way of manipulating us.

You haven't met a lot of humans, have you?

Overall humanity needs these institutions to function at the level we do.
If there was no military or police we would live in chaos.
Of course it would all be rosy if everyone agreed with your particular set of ideologies but in reality only a small group of people will.
Most people will have different sets of ideals and these ideals tend to change depending on the situation a person is in.
Most people will say that stealing is bad but if they have no food i think most people will consider stealing food.
So to protect society from ignorant egoism we need something that prevents your neighbour from robbing you without you needing to create a wall around your premise and arm yourself. And military/police do a good job at this.
Fear is part of the way governments are manipulating society and its pretty effective in stopping a lot of chaos.
Of course i also think that they go too far in some places but that doesn't negate the fact that humanity cannot operate this stable on this scale without these power structures.
I, for one, am pretty happy that in my country i don't have a real fear that someone will kill me in my house for a can of food.
To me the situation feels so stable that i don't even feel the need to posess a gun. I don't need that kind of protection.
This, in turn, gives me a lot of happy time where i don't have to think about the terrors of other people.
I can't imagine that things would be this stable if there was no overarching force that applied the law.

But maybe you have a solution to offer to humanity.
So let me propose a typical human situation like they have played out for hundreds of thousands of years.

Group A has a resource that group B needs to survive but they don't want to give it up.
Group B doesn't have anything economically valuable for group A.
Group B now wants to pillage group A to get at the resource.

How would you prevent this invasion without any military or police?

Imagine the USA dissed its army and all its weapons 30 years ago.
What do you think that would have done with the position of north korea?
I can tell you, the USA would be a suburb of Pyongyang.

So all i'm saying is that , despite the problems, we actually need the overarching force to enforce the rules of the game we happen to play.
There is no other way to get organized into such a complex society and have it not fall appart at the seams.
Without the global force we would naturally diverge into several parts that will all independantly compete for the earths reources.
I can tell you that with the current level of technology this competition would be far worse than anything humanity has ever seen.
I mean, sure you can start a little club of people that shunt violence. But that doesn't force other people to put down their guns and so if those other people want to abuse you in some way they will be able to do so. If you do not take a weapon in the hand you stand no chance against an average fellow human being.
So to even survive as a viable economical group of pacifists you will need an army to protect yourself from being raped by non-pacifists.
It is how humans operate and it is why stability is reached only under these circumstances.

I think it is possible to get to some sort of good compromise tho.
If a government assures certain basic needs then most of the unguided demand from the population will be luxury in nature.
Not many people are willing to fight over a better version of something they already had so that dampens a lot of the real aggression in populations.
(nothing promotes a revolution as effectively as empty shops).
What is left is a game for acquiring luxury goods.
And that's fine but needs to be capped.
The amount of resources any individual can take out of society needs to be capped.
The ammount of resources any non-human entity takes out of society needs to be monitored and democratized.
Then i think a lot of problems would be solved.
There would be a lot less need for the power structures to act.
At the same time the power structures would be unable to accumulate unnessesary power.