Well, what both of us should have said from the start is that some have undoubtedly been more egalitarian than others. The fact of the matter is that some did indeed have chiefs and those usually had councils involved in governing. Peoples living in this part of the world (the “New World”) before the Europeans arrived certainly had the ‘final authority’ model.

The broader point is that in every human society that has ever existed there have been formal rules governing individuals’ conduct (however those rules were arrived at) and some sort of institutionalized enforcement of those rules. That, according to my understanding of your definition, is what you call government. Even if in some of the simplest human societies that ever existed some kind of ‘pure’ libertarianism existed, no more complex society has ever even attempted such a thing — which goes to my point about civilization.

I honestly can’t tell what you are saying in the other part of your comment, but I do know that any statement you make about me, as opposed to the subject at hand, only reveals something about you. People I disagree with always end up critiquing me as a person.

Your fundamental position, as I understand it, is that government is both unnecessary and evil. My fundamental position is that the existence of societies makes government, as institutionalized structures in the process of governance, inevitable.

Unless I have misunderstood your position — in which case I would welcome clarification — I am content to end it there.