> > Government make laws and impose them on people who never
> *agreed* to those
> > laws and punish those who dare to act like a free person.  Can't get any
> > more anti-harmonious then that.
>
> Well, in fact you can.  You can go back to living without government.
> Government is people making laws and agreeing to be governed by those
> laws.

Government is, in practice, a small elite making laws that bind a mass. It
is very rare for all people who are going to be bound by a law to make the
law and agree to abide by it. When did you last have genuine input into the
formulation of a law by which you were to be bound? Voting for a
'representative' who you've never met and has never heard of you does not,
obviously, count.

> Social democracies generally work that way.

Social democracies are benign dictatorships - the enema is first warmed to
an agreeable temperature. Your definition of government assumes a society
where all have equal access (effective not formal) to all points in the
policy process ie: there is no group acting as a gatekeeper, nor holding
sway over what finally emerges. Norway, like NZL, does not function in this
way.

> Not perfectly, of
> course, and much improvement is needed.  But if what you are saying
> were true, there would be a lot more revolutions going on than there
> are right now.

The bullshit that is liberal democracy, the parliamentary system, so called
pluralism, the right to book a time with the council to have a street closed
to have a protest-rally, the ethos of western individualism - reinforced
through capitalism and the mad unquestioning scramble, sport on tele, all
provide the mass of 'legitimate' safety-valves to ensure that a
fundamentally dishonest system rarely has to face up to its own reality.
Societies with comparatively unsophisticated methods of control, eg
'repressive dictatorship', are more vulnerable to revolution because, being
crude an transparent, even an uneducated mass can work out that they're
getting the shaft. Western liberal democracy - transparent? representative?
responsive? it's a great anaesthetic.

> > He says that he is "not sure" if the society needs government.  Also, he
> > believes any authority(even those that are temporary, but government is
> > forever) needs to be justified.
>
> Why don't you put the question to him directly?  Ask him this:  Do you
> think the world population can live in peace and harmony with no rules
> of government at all?

Anarchism does not mean that there are no rules, processes, laws, bodies
charged with tasks, duties, obligations - it is not the absence of
organisation and order. Anarchism simply has a distinct way of creating,
administering and validating the 'bones' of society.

cheers

b