| Pure fantasy. And not even of the interesting self-consistent kind. " Individuals may make agreements between them without any involvement of a 3rd party." Sure. But, say there is a disagreement between the parties? What then? "Enforcing agreements does not necessitate a State enforcing them." The 'State' is a label for a whole host of human activity. One of those activities is to act as arbitrator for agreements between parties. Arbitration would be without meaning without means to enforce the decisions reached. "To live by rules that I consented to, and not to initiate force on another individual except in self-defense." That sounds exhausting. Do you really want to spend your energy, and everyone else's energy in any interaction whatsoever that you happen to have with them negotiating the rules for that interaction, /then/ getting on with the business at hand? (with the one a priori rule that you seem to agree with is that no one should physically force someone to do anything). You might not believe this but these rules and laws were not set up to bend people to some terrible overarching will but as a means to lubricate human interaction. Without them almost every thought would have to be directed at confirming that every part in your environment that is human or ever touched or affected by any person living or dead meets your expectation. For example: Say you want to leave your home to check your mail a half a block away. First, you would have to get out of your home. Good luck. There were no building codes and the frame (which you could not see when you bought the house) has been built with roofing nails and has rendered your doorway a parallelogram. You were able to rip the door off its hinges and now you step outside. YOu are assailed by the smell of your neighbors new hog farm in their frontyard and the vision of them having sex in full view of your porch (they didn't agree with the vulgar display laws). As you walk down the street that is littered in garbage thrown out by passing motorists you almost fall into a sinkhole caused by another neighbor digging their own tunnel between their house and their meth lab across the street. Just then you notice that the end of the street is blocked off and the mailbox has been torn from its base and lying in the middle of the road on fire surrounded by a group you've never seen before. I guess you won't be getting your mail today. This would never happen under your 'everybody comes to their own individual agreements' system because the human condition would not advance so far as to have things like houses with frames, sidewalks and farms. It is an impossible burden which is why things like government or the 'State' as you like to like to pejoratively call it came into being. |