There is definitely a thick, deep, wide current of "gov love" in pop culture, and it's good to question it. It's expressed in movies (and TV shows) where government representatives solve problems for the common people. Those reps can be cops, James Bond, S.H.I.E.L.D. agents, or what have you. They are the heroes, the saviors. In these narratives, the government heroes swoop in to protect the weak from being preyed on by the strong.

And yet there is no shortage of stories that highlight the incompetence, corruption, and even out-right malicious intent of government, even popularly elected ones. So it's not one-sided, at least.

In my view, what's missing from all such arguments is any kind of frame of reference. The anarchist claim is unsatisfying, to say the least, that the governments role is to maximize individual expression. To me, the best possible world is not the one where people can express themselves. Specifically, the best possible world is the one which can colonize other worlds. And it could very well be that dictatorship would work for that purpose (but I hope not).

Why is spreading life beyond earth so important? Because without doing that, in the long run, life will end. And that is the closest I have come to having an article of faith: that we humans are the stewards, and the hope, of all life on earth. Unless we act, every living thing is doomed in the long run. (Of course, the question arises: what if we colonize other worlds successfully? What then? To which I answer: let's cross that bridge when we get to it.)

With that frame, one can start to answer the question "Is Anarchy right?" The answer that I come up with is: probably not. We have a lot of problems with the way the US gov is structured, and particularly problems with how the judicial branch oversees the executive and holds it accountable. That important check seems to have degraded at virtually every level of society, federal, state and local, and I believe represents the greatest societal challenge we face. But is it a problem that is inherent to democracy, and something only something like anarchy can fix?

Society is a lot like a life-raft, making high density human habitation possible. Laws are the framework that any government provides and constitute the lowest level interface you must support to participate in the maintenance and growth of the life-raft. Basically: Don't speed. Don't kill people. Don't steal stuff. Pay your taxes. If you do these things, you're mostly going to be okay.

The real craziness starts with regulation, particularly when that regulation doesn't fit the popular view of what that regulation is or what it's purpose is. The three big national regulators that people think about when it comes to "government interference" would be the FDA, the FCC, and the SEC. We find it problematic when these organizations actively stop (and punish) small entities looking to compete with larger ones, often for arbitrary and clearly corrupt reasons. There is a revolving door between industry and government that is difficult for non-specialists to penetrate. But it is my view that these battles must be fought, and leadership (which starts with the President) must pro-actively root out corruption and misapplication of the law. And the best place to start with that, is simplicity. We need a profound reduction in the size of the legal corpus. Adding a rule that, for the next 20 years, Congress must repeal 2 laws for every law pass would be a good start.

In any event, my point is that I don't think anarchy could lead us to the highest goal of human society, the colonization of other worlds. Authoritarianism, as distasteful as it is, is handy for large-scale, complex tasks like that. I don't like it. But I don't see another option.