Guvment

Proposition One: The government exists to catalyze the solution to collective action problems.

Proposition Two: The government exists to keep us free.

Ergo, freedom is the solution to a collective action problem.

This torturing of logic has a point beyond the simple desire to hear it scream.

Individuals are not free in isolation, or at least that freedom from is only the most tawdry and basic form. Much more profoundly, when we combine and multiply our forces, we are free to create whole new worlds. The deepest purpose of government is to create the conditions of possibility for this freedom. That is why we keep it around as a night watchman to enforce our contracts, and even give it a day job teaching our kids; both free us to become collectively more than we are individually.

It is also why the most total form of government is simultaneously the least free; when catalyst become full blown crystal, all new possibilities have been foreclosed upon. We become locked, collectively, into a frozen parody of paradise, enslaved by a machine of our own making in which the individual has become nothing more than an interchangeable part.

Government is no different than religion or ethics or simple tribal ritual -- it's job is to seed the ground of the group, but only to seed. The flowers bloom on their own.