Would we need a government if society was truly educated?

The government is here because it makes decisions for us because we need to be governed. What if society was truly educated and had a system for maintaining their own way of communicating with other nations, having national laws, having our own rights, and, without the need of electing a few? What if we could make all of the decisions? Why can't we make decisions for our own nation? Is it that we are considered threats to national security so we can't make these kinds of decisions that regard foreign policy or national interests?

Yes, most likely. Regardless of how educated someone is there will always be people able to do more, for good or ill, with their education.
There will be someone who people will have in charge, someone to keep the peace, even if it only gets broken once in awhile.
Government, in one form or another, will always be in existance, wehter it's the old man in the hut at the end of the village or the several old men in the big buildings in their countries.
Just as their will always be people against whatever version of government, for whatever reason they may have.

Unfortunately, we are not that educated, and greed is still the prevailing sentiment among most in the world. I think that we have a responsibility to elect leaders who can and will take the time to understand the complexities of international relations and legal action and other issues that face us in the 20th century. We don't have time to govern ourselves because there is just too much to the whole affair. Most people don't even have time to look at everything that Congress does, much less really try to understand it.

reply to post by Frankidealist35

You say 'why can't we make our own decisions' you can, but you need a collective framework. Individuals cannot act against government decree - they would simply claim that you are breaking the law and arrest you. If however there was 1 million of you disobeying government decrees and you collectively and successfully defied court edicts... thereinafter you could make your own decisions about anything. It is called rebellion. They happen throughout history at times when leaders become too powerful. It requires that the people understand what is happening (most do not) and then a strategy that the majority are prepared to follow... no easy task.
In the UK such a group is forming now... if this is successful it will spread to the USA - keep your fingers crossed.

I don't think we'd need it in quite the sense you put it - i mean, we would certainly be far less dependant on the Government if we were truly better educated.

I think it's likely though people would still have one around, if simply for it's recognised asset to society as an administration.

reply to post by Frankidealist35


Unfortunately, you're mistaken. The government does not exist because everyone is too stupid to govern themselves, but because there are far too many people to fit into a townhall meeting and literally govern themselves.

Even if more people were more educated (whatever that means...plenty of 'educated' people are uselessly dumb and plenty of 'uneducated' people are so smart they didn't need 'education'), there are so many people that there would still need to be representatives to run the country.

Actually, this is exactly what John Locke was proposing when he presented his political philosophy. He said that the thing that distinguishes humans from other animals is the capacity to use reason (now, before the peanut gallery starts their caterwauling, he also said that the big problem is that most of us don't use reason). Reason is something that can be taught and if one had a society in which each person has been properly instructed, then government would no longer be necessary, except in the extreme cases of national defense and occasional internal abberations.

Because of this view, he advocated a society in which each person is given tools with which in a perfect world, each one would reach enlightenment. He was also instrumental in removing the death penalty for things like stealing a loaf of bread to feed ones family (which, in those times was a necessity for some), though the biggest influences on a reasonable criminal justice system were Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill. He was also the first "significant" philosopher to propose that a bad government should be removed.

Needless to say, he was the greatest influence in the formation of the American nation and many of his ideas were enshrined, if not in the Constitution, in the Declaration of Independence. Thomas Jefferson was his most significant admirer.

It is largely because of his insistence on the ability of people to learn that the US has the best public education system in the world (if you disagree with this, then why are so many people begging to come here for colllege?) and largely why we still have the trappings of a democracy (tattered as they are) and the insistence on the ability of every person in this country to succeed.