Anti-government?

Is an anti-government sentiment beneficial? If by 'government' we mean the social compact that we have in society, or the organization that represents our common interests, then it seems a little silly to be anti-government.

For example, I recently started living in a situation where 'government' (community organization) plays a larger role. I am part of an internship program where we live, study, eat, discuss politics and play together. We share utensils and I personally am a fan of making as many ingredients part of the public domain as possible. Admittedly our dish towels can get pretty gross before someone gets around to washing them, and I do no better than the next person on that, but the happy community feeling and sharing efficiencies that we have outweigh the costs.

But 'government' often refers to the sovereign entity (sovereign=has final say) in a certain geographical area. That is what I mean by 'government' from now on. This type of government has a few key differences. The biggest one is that it uses force.

It's true that a club or church or company can exert social pressure, or even deny membership to those who violate certain rules. But avoiding those rules by opting out of those organizations does not require changing location, whereas fully escaping a national government's laws by emigrating can be quite costly, and sometimes nigh impossible unfortunately (see my Wall blog post).

The lack of ability to opt out is also what allows government programs to continue whether they are efficient or not. A well-working election system can theoretically fix these issues, but I think that a customer choosing to leave a company is a clearer and less complicated signal.

This inescapability is the reason our liberty is especially threatened by government.

In many ways, personal liberty is the absence of being forced from the outside. Thus, as the size of government increases, liberty decreases. An exception (hence the reason we want a government) could be when there are other outside forces (burglars, invading countries etc.) who would take away more liberty than the government, and are stopped by certain policies that the government upholds.

So perhaps a little anti-government sentiment is necessary to remembering government's threat to our liberty. Although I think the ideal is keeping government small while not hating on those who strive for the public good : )