[logicchains]

Anarcho-tyranny means a government that doesn't enforce any of the laws that protect people, only enforces laws that protect itself. So it's like the absence of a government in the sense that a government is supposed to be tasked with protecting people's life and property.

[anonym29]

Well that's objectively poor phrasing, then. 'Anarcho-' as a prefix refers to Anarchy, which refers to a society being in a state of not having authorities.

You could argue that having authorities that abuse their authority to self-serving ends renders that authority illegitimate, but by the admission of Anarcho-tyranny's own proponents (as a theory), they still recognize the existence of these "authorities", and just contest the governance decisions made by those authorities.

That's certainly a bad government, but to call it anarcho-anything is just downright confusing.

[GauntletWizard]

> Anarchy > a state of disorder due to absence or nonrecognition of authority or other controlling systems

Emphasis mine. The Government failing to recognize it's own laws and founding principles absolutely qualifies as anarchy.

Anarchy as a state(1) of disorder predates Anarchy as a form of government for a state(2).

[trinsic2]

If you want a real understanding of a word, look to its etymology.

Anarchy 1530s, "absence of government," from French anarchie or directly from Medieval Latin anarchia, from Greek anarkhia "lack of a leader, the state of people without a government" (in Athens, used of the Year of Thirty Tyrants, 404 B.C., when there was no archon), abstract noun from anarkhos "rulerless," from an- "without" (see an- (1)) + arkhos "leader" (see archon).

From 1660s as "confusion or absence of authority in general;" by 1849 in reference to the social theory advocating "order without power," with associations and co-operatives taking the place of direct government, as formulated in the 1830s by French political philosopher Pierre-Joseph Proudhon (1809-1865).

[sidewndr46]

This has been the default for thousands of years and I wouldn't expect any less from our current government.