I really can't see it as patently false. I think we all agree that there are examples of reasonably good and also of terrible governments. I can think of examples of places with no old-school governments at all that functioned for some time. Some were quite intriguing - say, worker's collectives in Catalonia during the revolution in the 1930s. On the other hand, there is the example of Somalia over the past 20 years. Before I continue, let me state this: on the Political Compass test, I seem to belong to the lower left corner. https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=32376.msg511390#msg511390 I tried in ~2002, and again this year - my position is rock solid. Ergo, I am not a proponent of "big" government, and I am definitely against a totalitarian government. Over years, and after experiencing in depth the liberal socialism of the former Yugoslavia, a civil war and a foreign intervention, United States, Canada, and various systems in Southeast Asia - I've come to conclusion that government was the only answer I could come up with that addresses some very practical problems of life. It's not ideal, but I couldn't come up with anything better. For example, I can't figure out how I would be driving a car or a bicycle around the city if there were no government to draw and enforce the rules of traffic. How would it work? Who would yield whom at an intersection? What would we do with dangerous drivers? Who's to say? These are not trivial questions. Of course, one can say how people would come up with rules "by themselves", but there would need to be some kind of framework for discussion, decision making, and even enforcement. And that, to me, is the government.

Much of the argument here boils down to semantics. I want to understand if you object to the big government, or simply to the bad government...?