Country, not State -- Government responsibility, not government power

The history of political philosophy is, in large part, a history of determining the best regime and how to deal with State power. The three main possibilities have been monarchy, aristocracy and democracy. Monarchy had the tendency to devolve into tyranny, aristocracy into oligarchy and democracy into mob rule. As a solution to the flaws of each individually, going back to Polybius, the idea of the combination of all three evolved as a means to balance power. Perhaps, now, we're at a point where the main consideration should be to question power itself and whether our ideas regarding the best "regime" should transition to ideas regarding the responsibility of governments and a redefinition of State. As long as power is the problem we're constantly reacting to its abuses and shifts in the balance of power.

It would appear to be a better arrangement to create a cooperative effort to strengthen the separation of responsibilities, just as a good manufacturing company works well between management, workers, finance, marketing, R&D, etc., and bad companies usually fail when there are turf wars and battles for power. Government should be seen as a service entity providing police and border protection, treaty negotiations, courts and other limited responsibilities which can't be handled in the private sector.

The old ideas of powerful States balancing the friction between monarchy, aristocracy and democracy is as outdated as hierachical, top-down, command and control structures in general. We need a government which understands its limited responsibilities and performs with the highest level of efficiency and competence possible, or we need to give up on the idea of government and experiment with private agencies based on contract. However, the reality of private arrangements, as Nozick suggested, would probably create the necessity for a minimal state, due to one agency becoming the best and most reasonable to use, so we should still try to minimize what we have and jsut change the way we think about State and government separation -- not so much to balance power, but to coordinate responsibilities.

A diverse country which agrees on the common goals of liberty and fairness could combine cooperation and competition in the way free markets work when left alone by those seeking unfair advantages and protected power over others. There are more problems created in relation to injustice, inequality, greed and envy within a powerful State with competing powers than there would be in a free market with a minimal government and a private sector, to the extent a free society understands the nature of responsibility and is willing to work toward common goals. The transition from government dependence to responsible freedom wouldn't be an easy transition, but easier than the consequences of government collapse under the weight of dependence and the subsequent authoritarian solutions.