The Faulty Premise

what is faulty is the idea that authority is needed often at all.  Most governance takes place through legitimate concensus and this is not slightly anarchic.  We even need consensus to choose an authority figure usually against a real need..  The problem starts when any such authority deizes such power and ignores consensus.

The rule of twelve looks like local governance but is a consensus generator  and adjusts at need.

The parlimentary system does best simply because the house can upload new leadership to meet the challenge as we have watched in Canada.

in the USA we have a president suddenly taking on the authority of a king and no one seems able to stop him.  He is even drumming up faux threats.

The Faulty Premise

By eric

-April 4, 2026

https://www.ericpetersautos.com/2026/04/04/the-faulty-premise/

Government, it’s said is a necessary evil. Without it, there’d be – here it comes! – anarchy! And that would be even worse than the evil that is government. Or so it’s said.

But would it be so, in fact?

Given how evil we know government is, in fact, perhaps it’s worth looking into what anarchy might be – and whether it might be less of an evil than government.

First, though, we ought to be clear about the things we’re discussing.

What doe we mean by government? It is fundamentally the sole authority that legally controls an area (and the people within that area) via coercion.

The italics are used to emphasize two important things – relative to anarchy.

Government decides the extent of its own authority. There is no other (legal) authority to counterbalance the self-described authority of government. Jefferson and Madison tried to limit government not only by attempting to restrict it to enumerated (that is, specifically described) powers but also by creating a tiered – or federalized – system that would give some appeal contra authority within the structure of the authority itself. The House would balance the Senate and both would balance the Executive. Jefferson and Madison also articulated one further appeal – also still within the system. The states could nullify what the federal government decreed by ignoring what the federal government decreed or by refusing to enforce or allow its enforcement within the boundaries of the objecting states.

There was, of course, a more effective – and final – appeal that was ended by Abraham Lincoln. That of secession. It is a word that became a dirty word – on account of the outcome of that war, the victors always determining how the war is viewed by posterity. They made “secession” synonymous with rebellion – as if that were necessarily a bad thing. It is not generally considered a bad thing with regard to what the American colonists (some of them) did with regard to Great Britain but it became a very bad thing indeed, when their descendants attempted precisely the same four score and seven years later. Since then, the idea of rebellion has carried with it an inculcated smack of unwarranted defiance; i.e., it is taken as fundamentally (always) wrong to “rebel” against the authority of the government. That is, to reject its authority as illegitimate and thus, evil.

This gets us back to anarchy.

What doe we mean by this term?

It is taken by many to by synonymous with chaos – but that is a slander as well as misunderstanding, deliberately spread by the apologists for government. The word simply means the absence of . . . government. Once this is understood, one understands why the apologists for government do their damndest to inculcate the false association of anarchy with chaos. Most everyone dislikes chaos. This dislike is used to get people corralled into accepting the necessity of government as the only alternative to . . . chaos.

But anarchy is not chaos. It is merely the diffusion of authority, which is the only effective way to ward off the evils of government. It is effective because there is no single authority, which necessarily means there is always a way to check the abuse of authority. Consider the anarchy of a neighborhood. There are many homes in this neighborhood and within each there are rules for those who live within but these rules are only binding on those who live within – and those who live within are free to come and go as they like (excepting minor children, who remain under the authority of their parents until they are adults, at which point they are also free to come and go as they like). When you agree to enter the home of another, you agree to abide by the “house rules.” But you are not forced to enter – and you may leave, if the “house rules” are not to your liking.

If the neighborhood does not suit, there is always another neighborhood. And your old neighborhood has no power to compel you to abide by its way of doing of things. This competition is similar (and similarly salutary) to the free market competition that increases more and better alternatives in the sphere of economics. It works just as well – or would – if it were applied to politics. Jefferson and his sort tried to do just that, but their efforts ultimately failed because much as they tipped the hat to the concept of diffusing authority, they nonetheless based everything they tried to build on the foundation of government rather than anarchy.

The limited government they created worked remarkably well for four score and seven years – and to no small extent, pretty well even after the four score and seven years (and the repudiation in principle of diffusing authority) but it was inevitable we’d drift inexorably to a state of unlimited, because omnipotent, authority that brooked no alternative to its unlimited omnipotence. We find ourselves now subject to a dictatorship just shy of admitting it is precisely that.

Could anarchy be any worse?

Arguably, it would be a lot better – because while you still might have to deal with little dictators, the big ones would be nonexistent. The next-door neighbor is annoying – but not only can’t he tax you, you can legally resist his attempted depredations. Try resisting the government’s depredations.

You are a “criminal” if you do.

Thins would certainly be more interesting – in a good way – in an anarchical system. There would be a variety of things – of everything – that the mindset of today’s consolidated/directed/permitted populace cannot even begin to imagine. Things would get sorted out by a million private decisions rather than by diktats issued by a handful to millions. While – of course – it would be easier to some extent for bad people to do bad things, bad people would be much less able to do truly epochal evil things – such as genocide whole populations. We are trained to recoil in horror at the thought that it’d be easier to drive a car recklessly absent speed limits and enforcement of the same but also trained to not think about the millions starved/bombed into oblivion by the organized evil that is government.

Things would be different – and that would be more than just good.