Wild Hope, great questions. And great points, Magnaniman. Let me push these topics another step forward.
To address your first concern, about the loss of law enforcement as a deterrent to crime, sure, some people probably would take advantage of a situation where other people were completely unorganized with no means of protecting themselves. However, thinking of police as the only means of protection, and that security, as a concept, is only possible with a government, is silly.
I think that using community-organizing systems such as Cell 411 will allow people to feel - and actually be - secure against threats of violence or intrusion. However, this type of system
must be tried, tested, and virtually ubiquitous well ahead of the time they are actually needed in the instance of an economic collapse or any disruption to the current protection-racket paradigm. If a community is
not organized enough to protect itself, the only alternative is to hire private security. To me private security seems like a euphemism for mercenary, especially in a stateless society, but maybe that's not the case??
I think one of the major hidden costs of a peaceful transition would be economic upheaval. Without a government propping up and defending the major moneyed interests, they will collapse. In the short term, that will cause a large deal of unemployment, foreclosures, scarcity of resources, inability to distribute available resources, and other related problems. In the long term, those problems will be dealt with because the barriers preventing people from undertaking those tasks will be gone as well. However, there is a large potential for harm that must be addressed to prevent cities from collapsing into diseased, starving battle grounds.
So much to unpack here... barriers will be removed, but with total freedom comes a new level of responsibility. Questions will arise, like what type currency to use in lieu of the fractional reserve banking system. These matters must be thought out beforehand, by all people participating in the market.
At that rate, what about state governments? Impositions such as licensing, minimum wage, and sales tax are not guaranteed to go away even without federal law intact.
Another hidden cost will be losing a large degree of luxury that we currently take for granted. Our economy, like every empire, is based on slavery and military domination. Without slaves across the world to manufacture our goods, and resources stolen from other people, we will have to "tighten our belts" and learn to live with buying fewer fancy gadgets, exotic foods, and new clothes. I believe that we will be able to return to a comparable availability of goods over time, but the short term consequences of morality will be difficult.
Elimination of government does not guarantee moral behavior, although unanimous moral awareness is definitely something to strive for. What you draw to attention best in this citation, Magnaniman, is that rampant consumerism distracts the individual from what is really important in life. While consumerism itself is not a problem localized to just the USA, it's another paradigm I believe we as Americans are intellectually well-equipped to overcome with enough time.
Again this is all great food-for-thought, and exactly what we need to be doing on this forum. Great thread, although the subject line "Adam Fails" is less than optimistic.
Nonetheless, there is much to explore. Wild Hope's initial question really tips over the dominoes, here.
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