"If men were angels, no government would be necessary." Alas, men are fallen beings with a selfish and corrupt nature; you can't build a society that doesn't take that into account.
Self-reinforcing social conventions, which still requires governments that use force to compel compliance against norm violations, work somewhat in homogeneous (racial, religious, ethnic, and wealth) societies. In the modern world, you have Iceland maybe, a few other places.
The US is heterogeneous today, though the American founding ideals worked somewhat as a proxy in the past. The more "diverse" the US becomes, the more tyrannical the government becomes as its used to force policy decisions on ever larger shares of the populace that disagrees with it.
"If men were angels, no government would be necessary." Alas, men are fallen beings with a selfish and corrupt nature; you can't build a society that doesn't take that into account.
Self-reinforcing social conventions, which still requires governments that use force to compel compliance against norm violations, work somewhat in homogeneous (racial, religious, ethnic, and wealth) societies. In the modern world, you have Iceland maybe, a few other places.
The US is heterogeneous today, though the American founding ideals worked somewhat as a proxy in the past. The more "diverse" the US becomes, the more tyrannical the government becomes as its used to force policy decisions on ever larger shares of the populace that disagrees with it.