[thesteamboat]

If you hold that all governments are unethical do you pay taxes, get mail, stop driving if pulled over by a policeman, etc.? Is it equally unethical for a government to provide for collective defense, collect taxes, enforce contracts, imprison people or to control borders?

If you're willing to admit that there are gradations to the inherent unethicalness of government actions then it's at least conceivable to grade them on the same ethical scale as every other group.

You have fundamentally the same position as someone who claims "there is no ethical consumption under Capitalism." There may be some truth to that worldview, but people have to live in the world where both governments and capitalism are the status quo. Both sentiments are broad enough to critique a large fraction of human society, and thus can be pulled out as a 'reason' for targeting any particular aspect one may instinctively dislike without having to put in the mental effort to determine why.

Secondly, you say Facebook has governance only over people who have given their consent. Taking second order effects into account this is clearly not true. Facebook was named as one of the "determining" factors in the Rohingya genocide by UN Fact Finding Mission. Negative externalities exist, and in practice they can be quite common.

[bryan_w]

> Facebook was named as one of the "determining" factors in the Rohingya

Not to make @noooooo point for him, but you're forgetting about the most determining factor in that, the actual government that was doing the genocide. Maybe he has a point about governments being unethical...