Dilemma

I seems to me that some Americans have a "thing" about the "power of the state". Maybe its something to do with a historical but nebulous "land of the free" group psyche. To me its all a bit simplistic given the complex development of social systems which inevitably accompanies technological and industrial expansion. Maybe there is a cultural yearning to return to some Ghandiesque ashram existence out on the prairie somewhere like the Amish, but of course without their rigid rule structure !

I doubt that Americans, as a group, are any more or less concerned about the power of the state as anyone else. Certainly the domestic breed of anarcho-libertarians aren't yearning to live in an ashram. They want to live in a castle surrounded by an alligator-filled moat. Everyone else, on the other hand, can live in a mud hut for all they care.

Stupid, stupid, stupid . . . if you have a social contract, it's not anarchy. I suggest you read Thomas Hobbes' Leviathan, in which he has a lengthy discussion of the origins of society and government. I'm not saying he is right about all of it, but he raises some interesting points, such as that about the war of all against all. That's what true anarchy would be, and the devil take the hindmost.

Having a social hierarchy is as build into the human race just as firmly as it is in a wolf pack and for the same reasons.

Anarchism never will work as long as we are humans.