And my rejoinder is that we did figure it out, our solution, broadly speaking is government. You anarchists can't except this because you don't like the solution and the solution having the broad backing of society undermines your volunterism. But among people who have thought about the issue government is still an attractive option to many.
If we abolished the 'government' we could never have a single society the size of the United States. We'd revert to village sized societies or city states. Eventually governments would be formed in those smaller teritories, and at that point we would be faced with the problem of keeping the peace between all those little states.
Government has arisen in every single society I've ever read about, back to ancient Egypt and the fertile cressant.
As you have already admitted, governments have the popular support of the governed.
Anarchists say, ok, tomorrow, we'll get rid of the entire government and at that point we'll just come up with a better system! We'll invent a better way of policing, a better way of maintaining clean water, a better way of keeping the poor fed, a better way of providing healthcare, a better way of building highways, a better way of protecting the environment.
Yes, government makes mistakes. The led in the water of Flint is just one of them. The difference is that a government can be held accountable by engaged and informed citizens. If citizens choose to be unengaged and ill informed, this is there fault.
Your decentralized anarchist collectives couldn't be held responsible for anything that went wrong. Who would fight those massive Californian fires? Who would come up with the money to pay those people?
Saying the answers to those questions aren't important enough to speculate on before you throw out our current system is the weakest part of your argument. Right now we have a system that works imperfectly, but I've never seen a perfect system in my entire life.
And from my perspective a lack of perfection isn't a reason to scrap an entire system.
For me to believe that getting rid of a government is a good idea, you would need to convince me that the replacement system would provide better versions of all the things the state already provides.
In a previous post I asked about policing, and someone said "Oh, well, we could just have private detectives, couldn't we?" And its like, sure we could but who woud solve murders of the poor? Who would pay those private detectives to solve the cases no rich people cared about?
P.S. Remember to upvote high quality replies. I don't necisarily mean mine, but upvoting replies encourages discussion.
RE: What's the best critique and argument against Anarcho-Capitalism?