[RodericDay]

Parent post said:

> One might suspect that all our beneficial habits would break down if there weren't an almighty parental figure lying in wait to punish us

I interpreted this in the vein of a libertarian "we don't need a nanny state". And so I assumed that the person was thinking of the USA as a "permissive society in harmony" and of something like North Korea as an "less permissive society in disarray", as opposed to Sweden as a "less permissive society in harmony".

And so I wanted to challenge the notion that the USA is "permissive".

[jessaustin]

I'm at least as confused by your comment as you were by mine. b^) On a spectrum of permissiveness, I would have thought we could safely place USA between DPRK and Sweden? I'm happy to consider arguments against such an arrangement... Of course, the idea of a spectrum is also a bit flawed, since there's more than one axis to this.

But we were talking about coercion and authority: GP seemed unable to imagine taking decisions without them. I wanted to point out that most of us are already doing that, to some extent. I hope that in the rest of my life I'll see some progress: more decisions based on personal preferences rather than authority and coercion. To that end, I'm an anarchist. That is, I oppose arbitrary authority.

[snrplfth]

Okay, then I agree with that. And I would add that its non-permissiveness is a big contributor to its disharmonies.