denis bider

Xara woke up one day, back when she didn't yet know she was a gardener. She thought her garden was a field, and she didn't much tend to it. So the field had some flowers in it – those that were hardy enough to grow; and it also had a lot of weeds. She liked to take walks in her field, enjoying the flowers she found. She ignored the ugly weeds, and cursed at the nasty ones that scratched her.

The weeds pestered her a bit, the nasty ones even more so. She thought that she should tend the field, from time to time, but the task seemed so much harder than the problem. She tried to pluck a weed here and there, but almost as soon as she did that, it seemed another one popped up. And the nasty ones, oh boy. They were easier to avoid.

This day though, she would find something different. In the corner of her field, she found a new flower. It was more beautiful than anything she'd seen, with vivid blossoms and mesmerizing leaves. She had seen plenty of decent enough flowers; but they…

There are well-meaning people who like to question everything, who go around with ideas like:

"Hey, why should Government Guy be able to do things others can't? The very concept of government is oppression. Why do we need authority? Anarchy is freedom!"

Government exists (1) to serve as a mechanism of coordination, and (2) to prevent arising of a worse, more oppressive authority.

Authority, in general, is emergent. Wherever there isn't authority, one will arise. Not because people want to be oppressed, but because (1) coordination services are needed, and (2) there is no authority in place to prevent another from taking power with force.

In this sense, a situation without authority is in disequilibrium, whereas a situation with authority is in a local equilibrium.

Situations that are truly without authority are hard to maintain, and hard to get work done in. For an example, consider how long it took someone to invent Bitcoin, the first authority-less currency (or more…