Anarchy is Best

Laws exist because the people who control the lawbooks see people doing something that they don't want happening. Blammo - new law. Throughout history the people who have controlled the lawbooks have ranged from theocrats to autocrats to democrats to dictators. Each is characterized by a particular modes of operation, politics and so on, but when the governing bodies have said "no" to a particular behavior, a law was created to declare that behavior as being out of bounds.

The first laws on the books are usually things like "Don't kill anyone." Most societies aren't interested in having a dwindling population. People are the most important component of a society. After all, no people, no society. And the law gets on the books right away because we all know that people commit murder for any of a number of reasons. Other laws address things like personal property, rights and obligations, etc. Pretty much all the stuff that ensures that a society doesn't collapse into anarchy.

Whoops. But anarchy is best! Anarchy is a society that has no government. That means no laws, no rules. Surely that equates to chaos and disorder. Unfortunately, it does. People remain people, all too often driven by animal passions that they simply cannot master. Those passions drive us to behaviors that are not helpful to the health of the society. As a result, the lawbooks get loaded up.

So how is anarchy best? Anarchy as a form of government can only be viable when all of the citizens of the society implicitly agree on behaviors that really are healthy for the society. If no citizen was ever tempted by their animal passions nor even reasoned desires to kill, then no law would be on the books about murder. Continue with that to cover every manner of behavior and you can eliminate all laws on the books. Everyone would instinctively behave in ways that reinforce the health of the society. That's why anarchy is a wonderful, though unachievable, goal.

In America, we're very keen on technological advances, yet those advances that give us such wonderful gains are also tempting us in new ways to do things that are unhealthy for our society. There are no laws on the books for painlessly desintigrating someone's skin. Yet if somebody comes up with a device that quickly and accurately removes the surface layer of any object (valuable in the world of materials processing), it could be misused for that very purpose. Is it an assault? Is it a theft? Nobody ever thought about the very notion of modifying someone else's body in such a way. Existing laws are going to have to be changed, or new ones will have to be formulated.

I wonder what could be done by starting from the base of anarchy (no laws), and then writing as few laws as possible that covers every possible temptation that a man can have that acts against the health of the society. Such an experiment would require that we understand two important things: what are the instincts of men, and what is a healthy society. When we focus on those two things and thoroughly understand them, we will have as few laws as possible. In time, we may be able to get down to one law: In all ways, act for the betterment of the society. It's not anarchy, but it's pretty close.