The best form of government is no government at all.

This is tagged as libertarian, but I don't think that's correct. Libertarianism, as I understand it, accepts that government is a necessary evil. Wanting the smallest government possible is very different from having no government at all.

I suppose I should have tagged this Anarchism, but I am not able add tags.

I think tagging this as "Lbertarian" is ok; some Libertarians believe that a minimal government is necessary to protect property rights and contracts, others go one step further and believe that it's not necessary (or ethically possible) to forcefully monopolize a person's security.

Define government.

@Dave:

A government is a compulsory territorial monopolist of ultimate decision-making (jurisdiction) and, implied in this, a compulsory territorial monopolist of taxation. That is, a government is the ultimate arbiter, for the inhabitants of a given territory, regarding what is just and what is not, and it can determine unilaterally, i.e., without requiring the consent of those seeking justice or arbitration, the price that justice-seekers must pay to the government for providing this service.

Hans-Hermann Hoppe, "Government, Money, and International Politics"
http://www.univ.trieste.it/~etica/2003_2/hoppe.htm

but i respect this position

What is meant by "government"?

In the gargantuan industrial world, we can all certainly identify the modern state as "government".  But isn't a small town council also "government"?

I suppose that anything identified as the modern state, including the town council would be classified as government.

So does that include the town planners?

People should be allowed build whatever they want, where they want to?

I think people underestimate how necessary government is and just how big a mess any country without a government would be.

brim4brim, just as people eat what they want - who could rightfully, which means without force, prevent them from building or living where they want if they are the owners of their property?

I’m not saying that it’s not useful to build consensus with other people.

rightfully != without force

And all property is theft based on govt occupation of the land, anyway. The property owner just bought it from (chain of historical possession going back a number of years depending on your geography) some other person who stole it, by force, from whomever lived there before.

the government should

punish the evil
and
reward the good

that's really all...
but it must be there to do that
i don't think right now it does eneough rewarding of good
especily with all of it's punishing of good

In a perfect world, I would agree. But there are always people who will ruin it for everyone else. Everybody is greedy to some extent, and some people are just cruel and/or ruthless. Until everyone can govern themselves, a formal government will be required.

I fundamentally disagree with the assertion that the government has any business punishing evil people.

The idea that it should reward good people is even worse.

Perhaps you should list which 'evil' people should be punished, and which 'good' people should be rewarded. I'll write a list too. Can you guess how much overlap there will be? Imagine that disagreement magnified by the number of people in this country. If you wanna make lists of evil and good *acts* instead of people, we can do that too, and while it's likely to be less ugly, it's still going to be a holy mess.

digory, are you by any chance religious? Have you considered that it isn't the government's place to punish good and evil? Why don't you render unto Ceasar what is Ceasar's, and unto God what is God's, and let the government instead concentrate on protecting everyone's life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness.

Oh, my mistake. I overinterpreted 'the good' and 'the evil'. If I wanted to imply acts, I would have written 'good' and 'evil'. Serves me right for assuming the entire world has speech/writing patterns similar to mine. My bad.

Anyway, what I was driving at is that consensus morality is incredibly sticky, but more importantly, it isn't the government's job to enforce morality.

government's job is not to enforce morality or anything to do with good or evil; it has to do with enforcing certain rights & preserving certain liberties which may or may not be related to good and evil (though in fact most people would agree that violations of those rights & liberties are evil, it is important that government's job is independent of whether or not that's true).