I believe that some form of government is not only necessary, but inevitable. There have been a bunch of theories put forward that describe anarchical solutions, but I daresay nobody would like actually living in them, especially not at the population densities we have today.
I read a lot of local history, and the main road out by us is a perfect example of what a pastoral anarchy was like. Winton Road stretches from the Mill Creek on the north side of Cincinnati out to an unnotable crossroad about halfway to Hamilton, Ohio. It passed through a ring of greenhouses and small truck farms that provided vegetables to the city, but as you get further out, there was a pattern that developed: one rather large white farm house about every mile, and between these were fields.
Nobody planned it that way. It just happened. The houses were built before the Civil War, and a few survived as working farms until I showed up in the late 50's. A very few are still standing, but they are now ringed by subdivisions thrown up in the 60's and 70's. See, back then you knew everyone on that entire road. There were only a couple dozen families. Now? It's all cut up into quarter-acre lots, strip malls, and gas stations. Folks back then just did what they did, and there was not much to argue about. I was around to watch the last of those farms get swallowed up.
But they did have government. They had the Springfield Township government. They had the Hamilton County government. They took turns at these posts. They dutifully collected taxes from each other. They organized school districts, volunteer fire departments, and eventually zoning boards and police departments. This was not something that was imposed on them. They did it, because it provided them with what they wanted-- security, protection and order.
One other thing worth mentioning: It looks like an ideal pastoral life, but it wasn't. Those farmers brought 3 times the lawsuits to the courts as the average citizen today. There wasn't much to argue about, but they always found something. Folks were dying left and right of dread diseases. In fact, the town just to the west of Winton Road, was renamed Mount Healthy, just because it escaped the Cholera epidemic of 1850. Per capita crime was much higher than today, and if something bad happened to you out in the field, it was 15 miles by wagon to the hospital in Cincinnati, and Winton road was badly rutted and you had to navigate the big hill above Wooden Shoe Hollow to get there. I was around to see the bypass built in the early 1960's. It was a massive public works project that cost millions, but it allowed the folks along Winton Road to have a safe way to get to town.
