What is the purpose of government?

So last night while listening to a friend gripe about the government meddling with the economy I started to wonder why we have governments at all. What drove the transition from dynamic party-gangs of woodland apes to roaming tribes of hunter-gatherers to static monarchistic civilizations to modern nation states?

"Why has government been instituted at all? Because the passions of men will not conform to the dictates of reason and justice without constraint." That's what Alexander Hamilton said in The Federalist. This suggests that the role of government is essentially a restrictor plate on human behavior, preventing us from treating one another unreasonably or unjustly. Fair enough, but don't we as individuals stand to gain more by doing whatever it takes to obtain an advantage over others? Afterall, natural selection favors the strong. Those with more money, power, influence, or land are the ones who have the best opportunity to pass along their genes, thus obtaining a pseudo-immortality.

Perhaps there's a lesson to be learned from bonobos, a subject of my other recent blog posts. Sexual assault and rape occur within chimpanzee society, however, not among bonobos, a very closely related species. Why? Because if a male bonobo tries to assault a female, the other females come to the rescue and proceed to beat the male silly. (Interestingly, the females form this defensive alliance essentially by performing lesbian sex on one another...) The result is a peaceful society with copious amounts of promiscuous sex. Thus, by establishing rules everyone benefits. The females avoid getting battered, and the males don't have to fight over sex. (They just get in line.)

Ok, so what does this little foray into primate porn mean from a perspective of governments? By subjecting one's self to constraints imposed by society that limit your ability to dominate others, you also protect yourself from reciprical behavior. Groups with a more advanced system of contraints (i.e., rules) would become more productive by allowing its members to work together more effectively, and thereby gain a survival advantage.

If this is true, then there should be come evolutionary pressure towards the ability to function within a set of contraints. Perhaps the legal system serves this role in a way? By executing or imprisoning those individuals who cannot accept the contraints given to them, we selectively breed more desirable individuals. Of course, it's not that simple, but a strangely fascinating idea nonetheless.

Obviously I need to do some more reading on this subject. The next step is to delve into the writings of Thomas Hobbes, a 17th century political philosopher, who apparently describes government as a means to avoid "a war of every man against every man".