Why are people so affraid of anarchy?

[The Grand Nudger]

Most of our roads were built by private companies as well.  We needed a government for the same reason that Croatia needed a government, to achieve the same ends.

[FatAndFaithless]

I'm far too tired to wade through the density of this discussion. I'll leave it to you all.

[FlatAssembler]

You seem not to realize that you need to pay way more money to have public roads than to have private roads. To have public roads, you not only need to pay maintaining a road, but also you have to pay the politicians doing, well, nothing, most of the time.

[FatAndFaithless]

You seem not to realize that you need to pay way more money to have public roads than to have private roads. To have public roads, you not only need to pay maintaining a road, but also you have to pay the politicians doing, well, nothing, most of the time.

I'm not surprised that a kid from a former Soviet-bloc country has a pessimistic view of governance, but jesus open a book.  Governments have done plenty of great things in plenty of countries, and just because some have acted shitty in some situations doesn't mean you just chuck out literally every law and go every-man-for-himself-I-got-mine-and-if-you-can't-get-yours-then-fuck-you.  Grow up.  

Done for real this time, promise. 

[FlatAssembler]

Look, I realize that most of the political ideologies have too much apologetics for me to refute all of it. But nearly all of them are based on a single premise: that laws and law enforcement help prevent crime. What's the evidence for that? Common sense, as I've explained a few times, tells us exactly the opposite:

Government isn't actively trying to protect us. It only intervenes when a psychopath has already murdered someone. And then they put him not to a place where he will rehabilitate, but to a place from where he returns with even more psychological problems, which made him murder in the first place. For all we know, they could in fact be making things worse.

I have no idea why people say that government somehow prevents violence. Look at the human history. More power concentrated in fewer individuals always means more crime. There was so much crime during the communism and nazism. And in the Middle Ages, the knights were bossing everyone around, yet you couldn't safely walk the streets because of the criminals.

[Cyberman]

When has a government ever done a good thing? I mean, sure, politicians usually have good intentions, but when have their policies ever achieved what they were intended to?

Like, a greatest hits list - specific to one country or government in general?

Well, I'd call the creation of the NHS one of the greatest happenings in our country's history, whatever succeeding Governments may have tried to do with it.

[Thumpalumpacus]

This doesn't void my objection, firstly, because Hindenburg had been operating under emergency powers since 1930 without Reichstag reproval, and secondly, because there's a big difference between appointment and election, your protests notwithstanding.  

Your comparison is stilted at best. Hitler was appointed. Trump wasn't. Sorry. It was no democratic process that placed Hitler in power. It was the exercise of decree.

The fact that the Reichstag didn't vote "no confidence" prior to the Enabling Act which mooted even the appearance of democracy in Germany does not obviate the fact that Hitler was not emplaced by any vote. There was only six weeks between his appointment and that act, six weeks occasioned by the Reichstag being fired up and scapegoats being hunted.

Let us know when this has happened here. Until then, your comparison is overdrawn.

The difference is not a really a qualitative one. Hindenburg was elected.  Appointing hitler through article 48 was part of the authority granted him by the constitutional system under which he was elected. The constitutional system empowers the reichstag to void the appointment by a simple majority.  It did not do so.  Hitler would not have won an election outright, but he certainly would have won a sizeable plurality of votes.   It was his ability to command a plurality that recommended him for the constitutional article 48 process.

Trump too won through a constitutional mechanism, just like Hitler.   The fact that the mechanism happen to operate at the same time as an election does not make it more democratic than a mechanism that is part of the democratic framework but not part of an election, at least not if by democratic one means what it has come to mean since democracy has trumped the republic as indication of enlightened exercise of popular will. Trump won neither majority nor plurality. He won through a parallel mechanism that is republican, but not democratic in itself.

Yes, and Hitler is neither Hindenburg nor Trump. And an appointment is not an election.

Hitler was not elected. End of story.

It was his ability to command a plurality that recommended him for the constitutional article 48 process.

Not so fast -- it was more a matter of Hindenburg having run out of suitable candidates who were willing.

[Catholic_Lady]

I just don't understand how allowing someone to sell or to buy their own business is unfair to people with less money.

It's a good thing that no one was making that claim then.

Ok, well then I'm still totally confused lol. Chuck said "it isn't owning a business that's the problem, it's the buying and selling of it". What exactly is the problem with capitalism then if it isn't that?

[The Grand Nudger]

You seem not to realize that you need to pay way more money to have public roads than to have private roads. To have public roads, you not only need to pay maintaining a road, but also you have to pay the politicians doing, well, nothing, most of the time.

How would anarchists go about building those more expensive public roads?

[KevinM1]

I like how he completely ignored me once I brought up Medicare and Medicaid. Pretty hilarious, actually.