If all crime including murder is legal for 12 hours a year...

I just watched a movie called The Purge (released today, I believe).

It's about a future America where every year for 12 hours, all crime is legal and all emergency services are unavailable. So everyone loots, kills, and rapes each other!

Of all dystopian ideas, this is the least offensive to me. It solves a fundamental problem with the world, not through control, but through lack thereof.

The fundamental problem is, the human species has evolved to the point of inventing modern medicine and rule of law. Because of those developments, the species cannot evolve anymore, and will begin to regress, because EVERYONE, no matter how stupid or weak, survives and reproduces. Another problem with that is when there is no more modern medicine (due to pole shift, EMP, or other apocalypse), the species as a whole will be so dependent that it dies off entirely.

So, what do we do about that? Have some kind of creepy, controlling, eugenic government telling us who has to die? Make life "short and brutish" by returning to the stone age? No! Just leave people to their own devices every once in a while. That way, "civilization" remains in place most of the time and society continues to to be pleasant and modern, but the gene pool is continually refreshed.

This form of natural selection selects for two kinds of people. Those intelligent and specialized enough to become rich and afford good bunkers and panic rooms, and those who are strong, healthy, and can innovate and think on their feet.

It's not some kind of evil government control. It's all up to you and everybody has a chance. There are no rules to the game, except that weapons must be class 4 or under and you can only kill government officials class 10 or under. Anarchy is total freedom, but the problem with it is that it can't last. It always gives way to a new totalitarian government based on brute force. Except when it only lasts 12 hours...


Other benefits include:

-No overpopulation.

-No burden on society from incompetent people.

-Everybody has to be a survivalist. America would cope better in the apocalypse than any other country in the world.

-People get out all their pent up murderous feelings and save their revenge for The Purge, so the crime rates remain exquisitely low at all other times.

-Everyone appreciates the rule of law because they see what happens without it.