First off, I will say that anarchy on a grand scale was probably impossible prior to the existence of the internet.
Quoting this to stress this important point.
Besides that: great post Biomech! Please finish your book - "anarchy is not chaos" is something I might name my own book about that subject
I often find myself pondering the possibility, that maybe government and hierarchical power structures have indeed been inevitable and indispensable in achieving the level of organization and technological advancement we have achieved. Maybe. But this is why the internet is such a powerful and transforming invention. Thanks to its decentralized nature it allows for ways of organization and information flow, which have been impossible until now.
Now that we are equipped with tools to handle most if not all human affairs in a much more efficient, decentralized way, the old institutions can start to fade into irrelevance. Of course they won't just fade, they will be dragged, kicking and screaming, into the dust bin of history
And it will probably take generations.I don't know if it was impossible. It's just that government is an easy way of solving problems not requiring much thought. Or at least it appears that way on the surface, of course, when you look closely you find it to be incredibly inefficient at best.
So it might be that government has allowed people to be somewhat lazy in some regard and not explore alternatives to problems. Much in the same way that believing in God means people don't have to seek true answers to questions about existence. You could make the argument that if this is the case, then government has actually stagnated human progress. In it's absence we would have been forced to be much more creative in finding solutions to problems.
I would always be very hesitant to claim that government was a necessity at any point in time.