How does one demonstrate that having no government doesn't automatically generate some other form of tyranny or overarching organizational process?

I don’t think he can. The state is by now so ubiquitous and so many dependant on it that its abolition would invariably lead to some form of tyranny as they scramble for new states. People would first need to shed statism as they did religion.

Interesting. How would we expunge statism from human behavior? Is it possible?

What do you say to the Amazonian, then, given that they have stolen their village “the commons”? They have no right to keep their village? — NOS4A2

I will say what they generally say, that they do not own the forest, they belong to it.

So this thread is just a guise for parroting Ayn Rand. Got it.

So this thread is just a guise for parroting Ayn Rand. Got it. — Mikie

Bullseye!

Yes, just ask. — NOS4A2

What, the whole planet? There's 7 billion of us. Through what mechanism ought we 'just ask'? One at a time?

Maybe I’m naive but I thought theft and robbery would be the last resort, so consider me surprised. — NOS4A2

There's no theft and robbery until there's property. We're discussing who owns what so we cannot already be thieving and robbing it can we? We have yet to establish who's property it is.

Why must you be governed? — NOS4A2

I think the question is misleading. You will be governed, one way or another. You're never going to get a cooperative anarchy. Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos with their private militaries will just make all the rules. Anti-statism is a pipe dream.

So the only question is which kind of government is best. I would rather have a democracy than the neo-feudalism that your position would inevitably lead to.

-"Why Must You Be Governed?"
Environmental Challenges and Behavior of Individuals members affects the survival and flourishing of social species. That alone introduces the need of a center for Decision Making and Problem solving.
The important question is now "why must we be governed" but why we insist on using Pseudo Philosophical "solutions" to govern our societies.
I mean we have far more capable and modern systems to address behavior and problems.
Governing is the process of imposing rules and laws on populations. Laws are the "solution" we came up with when we don't really have a real technical solution for a problem.
The way we currently organize our societies is really primitive and it has failed miserably.

I just wrote the same thing (almost), my only objection is that you don't always need an agent to govern others. You can have a system that serves those goals, like i.e. Science methodologies and standards of evaluation serving the goal of acquiring knowledge.
Sure we need people to guard the method, but they can not change the criteria or evaluation methods by which we accept Knowledge claims.
This is not true for our current Pseudo Philosophical governing systems. The goals are set by Constitutions but the people who "guard" the process, constantly change the criteria and methods arriving to results that are in direct conflict with the goals of a society.
i.e. Constitutions around the world talk about equality of citizens but our economic systems ignore that and excuses are used by some to gain even more (crisis).
The results are against the goals we are trying to achieve through governing our societies.

That’s a misleading answer because it avoids the question outright and quickly enters fantasy. Elon musks private army will be of humanoid drones while Bezos’ rockets will look like dicks. They will maraud around the world spreading freedom while searching for weapons of mass competition. Public armies are controlled by democracy and history proves they have never taken or destroyed any property.

There's no theft and robbery until there's property. We're discussing who owns what so we cannot already be thieving and robbing it can we? We have yet to establish who's property it is.

I thought it was the superior man’s property.

That’s a misleading answer because it avoids the question outright and quickly enters fantasy. — NOS4A2

That anarcho-capitalism could work is the fantasy.

I never said it could. Why do you personally need to be governed?

So this thread is just a guise for parroting Ayn Rand. Got it. — Mikie

They do share the ethos built on the centrality of the ego. But Ayn is cool with institutions like Banks to keep her money. You need a government for that. Handshakes, winks, and nods just won't cut the bacon.

I’ve never read Ayn Rand. That’s the hilarious part of the accusation.

I never said it could. — NOS4A2

You said this, which seems to be a description of anarcho-capitalism:

Sure you can. Private schools, private roads, private insurance, private firefighting, private healthcare, private charity, private armies, ….the model of voluntarily exchange for such services has been in effect since time immemorial. — NOS4A2

The reality is that without some sort of centralised, democratically-elected regulator these private industries will effectively be the state by another name, making all the rules, with little to no accountability, and will likely lead to even more poverty, oppression, discrimination, and suffering.

People would first need to shed statism as they did religion. — NOS4A2

They do shed statism when the state system collapses as it did at the end of the Bronze Age and when Rome fell. What follows is a dark age where warlords roam around destroying everything and paying for allegiance with loot.

The possibility of creating technology, universities, science, artists, philosophers, etc. only opens up when people adapt to the emergence of states again.

I thought it was the superior man’s property. — NOS4A2

No, I thought it was the superior man's property, you thought it was the property of the one who tilled it. Thus we disagreed as to whose property it was.

You were about to enlighten me as to how we resolve that dispute between you, me, and the 7 million other people who have a legitimate say in what you (or I) do with our piece of rainforest without any formal system of representation.

I’ve never read Ayn Rand. That’s the hilarious part of the accusation. — NOS4A2

There is a strong resemblance between your views regarding what amounts to the 'collective' and how that is opposed by an ethos of the individual as the measure of value:

Since a value is that which one acts to gain and/or keep, and the amount of possible action is the duration of one's lifespan, it is a part of one's life that one invests in everything one values. The years, months, days or hours of thought, of interest, of action devoted to a value are the currency with which one pays for the enjoyment one receives from. — Ayn Rand, Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology, Concepts of Consciousness

What I can gather from your exposition goes further than this ethos and calls for a change in the future world order, perhaps something along the lines of: The Sovereign Individual: Mastering the Transition to the Information Age

Or perhaps your view of the state as an ideology is a peculiar interpretation of Nietzsche's Genealogy of Morals

The way that you phrase it, 'why must you be governed' presupposes it is personal choice rather than a condition that is either necessary or not. You have yet to explain how this came to be a matter of choice

I don’t view the state as an ideology. I view statism as an ideology. Also, I do not nor have not called for a change in the future world order. I suppose my defense of basic human rights could be boiled down to the promotion of manners, in a Nietzschean sort of way. The state is the coldest of all monsters, and all that.

I just thought it was an interesting question. I think it is extremely rare that people think they need to be governed, as if they had no conscience, manners, or instinct. This so-called social contract is where all the egoism begins. It’s a compact made with oneself, after all: “I will be governed so that you will be governed”. Like Rousseau said, it involves the complete alienation of the individual, together with all his rights, to the whole community. If he has already submitted to this idea, signed the social contract so to speak, he goes too far in believing everyone else has done the same.

Since you mentioned Gasset, how he portrays the attitude of the mass-man towards the state implies a more self-seeking and egoist view than I could ever endure.

“He sees it, admires it, knows that there it is, safeguarding his existence; but he is not conscious of the fact that it is a human creation invented by certain men and upheld by certain virtues and fundamental qualities which the men of yesterday had and which may vanish into air to-morrow. Furthermore, the mass-man sees in the State an anonymous power, and feeling himself, like it, anonymous, he believes that the State is something of his own”

…

“The mass says to itself, “L’ État, c’est moi,” which is a complete mistake. The state is the mass only in the sense in which it can be said of two men that they are identical because neither of them is named John. The contemporary State and the mass coincide only in being anonymous. But the mass-man does in fact believe that he is the State, and he will tend more and more to set its machinery working on whatsoever pretext, to crush beneath it any creative minority which disturbs it—disturbs it in any order of things: in politics, in ideas, in industry.”

Honestly I agree with you. I am against being governed. Especially in this way. I feel that this type of govenement, the same you described, is only the control of individuals through fear, fear of being punished. Its morals aren't real as they are not based on free will. We behave correctly in a society because we don't want to be punished. I don't feel like this is the way I want to live, considering that human beings have their own internal morality and, especially as adults, already know how to live and how to behave.

No, I thought it was the superior man's property, you thought it was the property of the one who tilled it. Thus we disagreed as to whose property it was.

You were about to enlighten me as to how we resolve that dispute between you, me, and the 7 million other people who have a legitimate say in what you (or I) do with our piece of rainforest without any formal system of representation.

Only a formal system of representation could come up with something like the Enclosure acts or the Decree on Land. Someone mentioned the Amazon earlier, and one can watch the formal system of representation sell the rainforest to the highest bidder, while all traditional and tribal claims are disregarded.

The resolution to the dispute between you and I is inevitably violence. Your claims to my garden are unreasonable; you seek to destroy what I have built and use to sustain myself; you refuse any peaceful resolutions. You’ll just have to come and take it.

Well, that reply helps me distinguish your view from some kind of hyper libertarian credo.

The emergence of 'egoism' is where I question how the 'contract' is one that can be accepted or declined as an available option as you have described it. To have declined it at the beginning would mean continuing life lived as the 'natural man', antecedent to both ancient and modern societies. The life of the "mass man's" relation to the state is a modern problem. Rousseau, however, frames a theoretical origin of society in an inaccessible past.

That inquiry into the prehistorical brings out the contrast between such an initial contract and your speculation: "Perhaps the State is all that holds them from returning to some state of nature, like beasts." The ideology that supports a particular state is not the only form of association. If humans were dissolved back into a prehistory where all the agreements had to be made all over again, the 'statism' you describe would not be one of the options. The exchange for absolute liberty for life in a community could only be declined by a life of perfect solitude. We come back to where Aristotle said the only creatures that can live alone are either beasts or gods.

As the emergence from prehistory is not available to us as a given fact, speculation about it becomes a collection of origin stories. Rousseau's story intimates that there is something like a god in the natural man that is still alive even when in bondage. Locke speaks of an original politic that is available to us if we make the right conditions. Hobbes says that we only developed our better natures through association.

This conversation is reminding me that I haven't read Rousseau's Discourse on the Origin of Inequality in over twenty years. I am going to give it another go.

The conquest theory of state, as I believe it anyways, is wholly influenced by Franz Oppenheimer’s The State. It’s a refreshing deviation from the social contract theory. Anyways, thanks for the input and non-hostile discussion.

The pleasure was mine. I will check out Oppenheimer.

Perhaps the State is all that holds them from returning to some state of nature, like beasts. — NOS4A2

No, not like beasts. "Civilized" societies are more bestial. Statehood only took hold, it should be noted, in places where it could not be escaped.

The resolution to the dispute between you and I is inevitably violence. Your claims to my garden are unreasonable — NOS4A2

Well there you have your answer. You, apparently, do not need to be governed, but I do because my behaviour is unreasonable. As you said...

It’s always someone else. — NOS4A2

The utter stupidity of the question (as @Mikie has already pointed out) is that of course you don't think you need to be governed because you have your ideas of what right and wrong are and hopefully do what's right. The question of government is what you do with everyone else. Do you just (as you would) fight them, or do you come up with more peaceful ways of settling differences?

Most opt for the latter, using a system of representatives and agreeing that enforcing the will of the majority of those representatives is grim but necessary alternative to us all just fighting it out.

Your thread seems nothing more than another "wouldn't the world be great if everyone just agreed with me"

I don’t think you need to be governed. I think you’re an adult. I think your unreasonableness and propensity towards destroying another’s property is a silly ruse. Even your “system of representatives” would laugh in your face about your claims to my property.

You know I would choose peaceful resolutions because I suggested peaceful resolutions, but you wouldn’t accept and would run to authorities, like “most people”. You would prefer a third party, the monopoly on violence, to fill in where your own morals and conscience and deliberation wouldn’t. You need other men to do what you are unable.

I think your unreasonableness and propensity towards destroying another’s property is a silly ruse. — NOS4A2

Ah, back to the old "you agree with me really" argument. Your inability to imagine how other people might hold different views to you is your problem alone.

Even your “system of representatives” would laugh in your face about your claims to my property. — NOS4A2

As they would yours. Our current “system of representatives” tends to assume the holder of the appropriate legal document is the owner.

You know I would choose peaceful resolutions because I suggested peaceful resolutions — NOS4A2

You've suggested nothing of the sort. I asked you how the 7 billion people with a legitimate interest in the use of the rainforest might peacefully resolve their differences with the legal owners who are currently destroying it (by cultivation, ironically), you've given me absolutely zip.

You would prefer a third party, the monopoly on violence, to fill in where your own morals and conscience and deliberation wouldn’t. — NOS4A2

It's not my morals and deliberation they're standing in for, it's the strength of my arm. I'm 56, and though I'd give you fair clip round the ear, I'm going to need some backup to take your garden.

So...

The agricultural companies in the rainforest till the land and claim it thereby as theirs. 7 billion people, preferring oxygen to soya, claim "hey, we were using that just as it was". Now what?

But Reagan said “government is the problem.”

End of discussion.

Another fruitful thread with the sociopathic corporatist.