Any socialist etc. who studies history will point out that our permissive peaceful society exists with a lot of implied violence that is just made invisible or normalized.
American incarceration rates and health care tied to employer come to mind.
American incarceration rates and health care tied to employer come to mind.
So the fact that, upon trivial examination, a society is revealed to not actually be that permissive, is not evidence against the assertion that permissive societies are harmonious. I mean, I don't think RodericDay was saying that those two examples were impermissiveness that actually increases harmony.
> One might suspect that all our beneficial habits would break down if there weren't an almighty parental figure lying in wait to punish us
I interpreted this in the vein of a libertarian "we don't need a nanny state". And so I assumed that the person was thinking of the USA as a "permissive society in harmony" and of something like North Korea as an "less permissive society in disarray", as opposed to Sweden as a "less permissive society in harmony".
And so I wanted to challenge the notion that the USA is "permissive".
But we were talking about coercion and authority: GP seemed unable to imagine taking decisions without them. I wanted to point out that most of us are already doing that, to some extent. I hope that in the rest of my life I'll see some progress: more decisions based on personal preferences rather than authority and coercion. To that end, I'm an anarchist. That is, I oppose arbitrary authority.