[Keith]

Originally Posted by Brutha

The question is not how would a certain system ideally work. It is about who would a system work in practice.
You say, ideally a anarchy would work.
Then I say, anarchy wouldn't work in practice.
Then you say but if there weren't any problems anarchy would work.
Without problems any system would work.
Systems that deal better with problems have the advantage over those that do worse.

Obviously discussion must, to some extent, be hypothetical since I don't have a society at my beck and call to experiment with. But I'm certainly not saying that a society without a central government (SWCG) needs an ideal world to work. I'm saying that in practice a centralised government (even a 'representative' one) creates a lot of problems and that I suspect that in practice a SWCG (if set up the right way) would create less problems in the first place.

Systems that deal better with problems only have the advantage over systems that do worse if they have to deal with the same number of problems. If a SWCG is only half as efficient at dealing with problems but results in a society that produces a quarter as many problems then it's the better system.

Since prevention is better than cure I've focussed this discussion on the preventative benefits of a SWCG (ie. elimination of the toxic effects of centralised government). That doesn't mean that SWCGs doesn't have their own effective problem-solving techniques, though.

P.S. Note that I coined an acronym rather than continuing to use the term "Anarchy". The term “Anarchy” narrows the focus more than I intend. eg. Direct Democracy falls within the category of SWCG even though it would not be considered Anarchy.

P.P.S. re: your sig Telekinesis