Utopia

An interesting post on the impossibility of utopias at Empire Must Fall.

Every utopia fails. They fail because the consequences of their contradictions finally hollow them out and cause them to collapse, which is exactly how empires falls, and often by the same ultimate event: insiders turn traitors and throw open the gates to hostile outsiders. 

And yes, I do mean every utopia. The excuse is irrelevant; the results are the same: oppression, poverty, misery, and death- lots and lots of easily preventable, avoidable, and often deliberately-inflicted death. Its psychology is that of a willful child, insisting that it has to work despite how many times it previously failed. The politics that demand that Big Daddy handle it all, and make the meanies go away, stems from every last damned utopian scheme and scam ever attempted- and the solution is also the same: Let. It. Fall.

It's been said that Communism would work if all men were angels. The same has been justly said of Libertarianism (though at least that acknowledges individual choice and the limits of scope of knowledge). The obvious corralary has been "and if all men were angels, we would not need government."

I'm not sure that's true.

Even angels can war amongst each other.