[mmirate]

A steamroller is a steamroller; if all we have are steamrollers, then the only protection that $good has, is might. And I think most would agree that might shouldn't make right. That's why it's important to move away from needing global consensus on questions of law. Maybe even multiple courts could compete for customers in the same geographical areas. (But apparently the nonexistence of a monopoly in the dispute-resolution market - such a monopoly being the definition of "government" - is sacrilegious to most.)

[TeMPOraL]

That's an... interesting point, and maybe decentralizing law a bit would help create better societies (if people were free to move to where the law matches their beliefs), but we're talking infrastructure projects here. The kind that can require resources of whole cities to be completed, and that serve even more people. You can't avoid having to deal with many people somehow - either getting them all to agree, or overruling them by fiat.

> But apparently the nonexistence of a monopoly in the dispute-resolution market - such a monopoly being the definition of "government" - is sacrilegious to most.

It's not sacrilegious. It's just smart. A "monopoly in the dispute-resolution market", i.e. a government, is both a) something that groups of humans naturally gravitate towards as they grow, and b) an efficient solution to whole lot of problems of coordination between people.