Gyroscopic Investing

MachineGhost wrote: Without anarchy, there will always be legislative fiat and cronyism, as that is the nature of replacing the gun with the written word.  So are we to always accept the latter to avoid anarchy?  I'm all for an anarcho-capitalist utopia, but it'll require either a total control AI overlord or supremely mature human beings.  Neither one is remotely practical at the moment and I now prefer to be pragmatic since my lifespan is limited.

In the end, though, the most pragmatic thing you can do is to ignore the rest of the world and focus entirely on your own life and the things you can control, HIFFIAUW-style. Because hoping for "good government" seems as hopelessly utopian to me as hoping for enlightened Star Trek humans or a benevolent technocratic AI overlord. The governments that do seem to work well usually work less well than starry-eyed outsiders like to imagine and include a variety of unpleasantries (e.g. Singapore's use of public corporal punishment and imposition of the death penalty for drug trafficking or gun possession). On a societal level, if you really want to change things for the better, you need to change the people, not the laws. All the best societies in this world are populated predominately by high-quality people who are members of high-quality cultures. Such people demand better government and more social responsibility from each other.