In view of the real nature of government [an agency of institutionalized violence], why have the majority of men throughout history accepted and even demanded it? Perhaps the most obvious reason is that the vast majority of men have not developed much ability to generate or even to accept new ideas, particularly those radically different from the familiar ones comprising the cultural status quo. There have been governments as far back as recorded history reaches, and to picture, with some detail, how we would manage without one requires more mental effort than many of the people are willing to expend. Besides, that which is new, strange, and unknown is frightening, and it’s more comfortable to push the whole matter out of one’s consideration by simply declaring that it wouldn’t work anyway (“You Wright brothers will never get that contraption off te ground!”).
Government officials have used every possible tool to convince people that government is necessary. One of their most effective weapons has been government supported education, which brainwashes the young into patriotism before they are capable of judging for themselves and creates a class of pro-State intellectuals, whose ideas create a pro-State populace. Another trick has been to invest government with tradition and pomp and to identify it with “our way of life” so that to be against government is seen as being against everything which is familiar, noble, and good.
Another factor contributing to the acceptance of government is that a great number of people have a nagging, and usually unadmitted, fear of self-responsibility—of being thrown completely on their own resources. This goes far deeper than just the knowledge that with no government there would be no welfare checks or plush bureaucratic jobs. It is a deep fear of the responsibility and risk of having to make one’s own decisions and accept the consequences, with no ultimate authority to appeal to for guidance and to blame in case of failure. This is the reason for such cries as “We must have strong leadership in this time of crisis”, “We need new and better leaders,” and “God, give us a leader!” People who fear responsibility find it easier to call for leaders, even when those leaders may become tyrants, than to accept the risk and effort of looking for solutions to the problems that beset them (remember the “Heil Hitler” patriotism of Nazi Germany and the horror and atrocities it led to). Without a government to furnish this leadership, such people would feel hopelessly lost and adrift.
But even with all this, the majority of people might have accepted the idea of a government-free society long ago if they hadn’t been sold the notion that the only alternative to government is chaos. Government may be evil, they feel, but, after all, it’s a necessary evil.
Aside from the fact that there are no necessary evils, when one considers all the chaos governments have caused with their violations of men’s liberty, arbitrary interferences with the market, and wars for plunder and power, the assumption that government prevents chaos appears more than a little ridiculous. The free market is quite capable of preventing chaos, and would do so without violating men’s liberty or carrying on wars of aggression (…). The actual choice is not government versus chaos, but the chaotic rigidity generated by governmental aggressions versus the peaceful, evolutionary progress which naturally results from free men trading in an open market.
Government isn’t a necessary evil—it’s an unnecessary one.