It's fact that governments have committed atrocities. It's opinion that throughout all of history they have been the biggest danger. Maybe I even agree, though I would qualify it, but it's still opinion.
OK. My bad, you didn't advocate disbanding it. It wasn't an intentional strawman, just me being a bit careless.
OK. I see where you're going with this. I don't want that crap either, but I think it's possible to have a somewhat socialistic society without having totalitarianism. I'm not sure I've been clear, but I don't favor pure socialism. I also don't favor pure capitalism because I think that's anarchy and "right of might." We need to be somewhere in between. In fact, we are in between, but I think we need to shift a bit toward socialism.

LordFu, this proves nothing. All this shows is that government IS a threat to life and liberty, not that it is the largest.

First, you haven't even shown data of other sources of lost life, for comparison.

Second, even if you did, the fact that government EXISTS is already a deterrent to the other potential sources. I.e., we don't lose a lot of life due to foreign invasion in the U.S., but we might if we didn't have a government.

So you just can't cite these numbers and say that it proves that a country's government is the single biggest threat to the people in that country.

Why would you want to keep the capitialistic base?

Twentieth Century Atlas - Worldwide Statistics of Casualties, Massacres, Disasters and Atrocities.

DChristopher

So, what kills more people then? Again, I'm not advocating no-government. I don't understand why it keeps coming up. If a foreign GOVERNMENT invaded the U.S., it's still death by government.

Because I don't think pure socialism will work. Look at it this way: capitalism == individualism, socialism == community-ism. We are neither 100% nor 0% community-driven. If we removed capitalism, we would have to replace it, of course. The only thing I know of to replace it would be a society in which no one owns anything. I think that would quickly lead to nobody doing much of anything. Why work, when you get what you need anyway? With the system I would promote, you would get only the basic needs supplied to you. If you want more than that (most of us do) then you need to go work for it. The situation in America is very strongly tilted toward individualism, and I think we need to shift back the other way. So what I'm saying is, we should work for wages as now, but change the taxation system to a progressive one with no loopholes(!) and reform the way we care for the less fortunate. Primarily there are three things that I would like to see happen in the U.S. economically:

1. A fair taxation system
2. Universal Healthcare
3. Laws to prevent exploitation

That would be a start anyway. There are lots of other things I would like to reform that don't necessarily involve much change in the way money works.