alt Hacker NewsWell, governments are coercive forces with a total monopoly on the legal system and the use of violence. Perhaps monopolies being bad is reason enough? There are the hundreds of millions (billions?) of people murdered by governments throughout history, including the many atrocities modern governments are committing today, which is almost surely reason enough. And then there are the philosophical arguments against political authority, called philosophical anarchism, which can be quite convincing.
It seems the onus is on the other side to justify the state, and that we should't be trying to find alternative solutions to the problems it attempts to solve.
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Since monopolies make stuff scarce and expensive, you basically want free market for violence, it should be be cheap and abundant?
And all the DDoS and crytocurrency extortions and scams should extend to meatspace too, and you would be okay with it because it's supposedly still better than what govts do?
In a democratic society, government is the representative of the people.
It is also the only entity powerful enough to stand up to other monopolies, businesses, which are dictatorships without any democratic control.
There will always be a power structure. I'd prefer one I can vote out.
The fundamental flaw in any type of libertarian / anarchist thinking is denying the reality that power will always be concentrated somehow. The libertarian fantasy would result in neofeudalism, if theres no state to stop it.
But in a democracy, you at least have input! Google is also a coercive force with no real checks on its power, but it doesn't care about anything you have to say. That's the difference, that's it, right there. The answer to abuse of power is not to just unleash raw power, its to subordinate and restrict it. That's what government is for. When you find yourself arguing that power you participate in is bad and shouldn't restraint power you have 0 influence in, that's when it's time to wonder if they've gotten to you.