Of course they’re not. They demonstrated that amply during “covid”. Nobody was able to do anything to stop them - the courts refused to rein them in, even when it was obvious that laws were being broken. And apart from anything else, governments have enormous power to manipulate public opinion. They can make people believe all sorts of nonsense, and therefore consent to all kinds of atrocities.
If you assume that an election every four years gives people a measure of control, exactly how effective is that? “You wasted sixteen trillion dollars, you assholes, so we’re going to vote you out of office and replace you with a different party that wanted to spend twenty trillion dollars. How do you like them apples, eh?”
What do you do when the choice being offered is between this bad actor and this other bad actor?
How do you prevent a war by waiting four years and then removing the government that started it?
Your argument is complete nonsense. It would be nice if it were true - for example, if it were possible for the people to call for a vote of no confidence in the administration and replace it with a competent one - but in general, it isn’t.
I realise Communists struggle with ideas like “cooperation” and “mutual benefit”, preferring as they do the more reliable application of jackboots, but you may have noticed that people arrange public services all the time. Have you heard of waste recycling companies? Private telecommunications operators? Private medicine? And if people decide they don’t want it, then they don’t pay for it, and don’t receive the service. Of course, it would be wonderful if the government were providing these things. But the point is, they do not intend to. So you either go without, or you make your own arrangements.
Governments have a competitive advantage, especially with things like banking. However, in the (historical) instances where they screw things up despite having every advantage in the world, private enterprise takes over. It never works particularly well because it’s ad-hoc and opposed by officialdom. Far better, IMO, that we try to set things up before governments remove that final Jenga brick. Experimentation and evolution can proceed in a more benign context.
This is more to do with what people don’t want at the moment. Most people don’t want a war with Russia. They don’t want farmers driven off their land so that it can be handed over to bankers. They don’t want schools spending lesson time telling their kids nonsense about this week’s new genders. They don’t want their countries overrun by unknown immigrants with no skills and criminal intent. They don’t want local governments pissing away all their funds and going bankrupt. In short, they don’t want to be impoverished, indoctrinated, fleeced, and bludgeoned into doing things against everyone’s best interests.
Please don’t argue that I’m just making this up and it isn’t happening. It’s possible that you’re insulated from it by wealth, but for ordinary people it’s all very real and up close. There was a news report the other day indicating that people are extracting their own teeth in the UK because they can’t afford a dentist. It’s probably grossly exaggerated, because that’s the MSM these days, but I know from personal anecdote that access to a dentist in the UK is difficult to impossible.
I honestly have no idea what a “libertarian” is, or what you think it is. And it doesn’t matter. There are very few people who want what governments are doing now. In my whole life I’ve never seen as much fear and anger as in the UK today, and I get the impression both the US and Europe are in a similar position.
The question of “private armies” only arises in the specific situation where person A decides he is entitled to some fraction of person A’s wealth, and that it’s reasonable to extract that wealth by force. Ultimately, tax-and-spend societies depend on people recognizing that their contributions genuinely make life better for everyone; in other words, the force isn’t really needed. When people can see that their wealth is being extracted for the benefit of the rich, not society, they get ornery.
Most governments extract far, far more than they need to provide the services that people expect - about 50% of national GDP in Europe. And they don’t even provide the expected services.
There’s a magical thing called “capitalism” whereby person A provides something of value, and person B receives something of equivalent value. It works not because people are selfish, but because they also have empathy; they understand how their needs can overlap with someone else’s. That’s why Communists don’t understand it. They’ve got the selfishness nailed, but the empathy part is missing. I’m pretty sure a parallel economy is possible (and can be made to work better than the usual ‘grey markets’ in failed states). Those who want to participate can do so, and those who don’t can accept the barcode on their forehead, their CBDCs, and their cockroach-protein rations.
