[piekvorst]

Courts, police, and the army are proper. That's government. The difference is what kind of government. A proper government holds a monopoly on retaliatory force, it acts after someone initiates force or fraud. It doesn't dictate your screw size, battery compartment, or production method before you've harmed anyone.

[roboror]

Are there laws and lawmakers in this scenario?

[piekvorst]

Yes, to settle disputes. The purpose of these laws is the protection of individual rights, not consumer “rights” or any other special “rights” that belong exclusively to one group or race and no other.

[vrganj]

...why? This sounds incredibly arbitrary.

[piekvorst]

It's not arbitrary. It's called the distinction between retaliatory and preemptive force. Retaliatory force requires a victim and evidence of causation. Preemptive force has no objective anchor, hence arbitrary by definition. You can't jail a man for a crime he might commit tomorrow.

[vrganj]

What im saying is that this distinction is arbitrary. Running a society isn't all about punishing crimes. That's just one minor aspect of a states responsibilities. Standardization is another, arguably more important one.

[piekvorst]

It's far from minor. To ban physical force from social relationships, people need an institution charged with the task of protecting their rights. People's rights can only be violated by physical force. To prevent this, the government's only solution is to hold a legal monopoly on the use of physical force.

If this vested power remains unchecked and unlimited, the government will violate the rights of its own citizens. That's why we should limit its power to retaliatory use.

Standardization is a very valuable asset, I don't deny that. But:

1. Standardization is not limited to forced standardization;

2. It's better to live in a world not fully standardized than to accept the premise that it's right to violate rights for a good cause. The "good cause" shifts the question from "should rights be violated?" to "what kind of violation do you want?" Once we accept that, we lose to totalitarianism. A man who says "let's violate a tiny fraction of rights" would lose to a man who declares "let's violate rights of thousands."

[vrganj]

There's more to rights than just physical force.

How do you account for the right to clean water and sanitation [0] without state infrastructure, just as an example?

It feels like you care a lot about violence and force, at the expense of (imo) more important issues societies face.

[0] https://www.unwater.org/water-facts/human-rights-water-and-s...

[piekvorst]

If people without an access to clean water want it, the proper route is to trade with those who do, not victimize them. There can be no right that involves sacrifices of one man to another.

Trying to wield sacrifices at the point of a gun (by an official or legislator) is the most important and disturbing modern issue. It paves the road to all actual social conflicts, unrest, and misunderstanding.