Government never has and never will be beholden to the people. When we put someone in a position of power, we become beholden to them. The whole idea that the people consent to being governed is ridiculous because we’re never given the option to vote against having a government.

Also, the measures necessary to enforce it at large scale would probably be unethical.

I believe what you are referring to there is a state. States enforce laws at a large scale. All anarchists oppose the existence of states.

Er, and who would enforce this?

It is everyone’s responsibility to oppose hierarchical authority wherever it appears. There are probably hundreds of ways to do this, and some methods will work better than others depending on the situation. The rapid response networks in Minneapolis are a great example of this.

Have you considered that the people were only given two options, bad and worse? The bad option wasn’t working out for people, so they decided to try the worse one, and now we’re here.

There are countless examples of the government ignoring popular demand. Extensive polling shows that most Americans support a wealth tax. It’s not going to happen because almost every politician is paid for by billionaires. Have you heard of super PACs?

But I don’t believe that human society at large is capable of existing without violence.

Agreed. Anarchists don’t claim to be able to eliminate violence. That would be almost impossible.

Also, I will tell you that you don’t know what you yourself are capable of until you’ve gone more than three days without food…

I also agree with you here. This is part of the reason anarchists believe there would be less violence under anarchy. Withholding food from another person would not be allowed, as that would be a form of hierarchical authority. Food is withheld from millions of people in our current system simply because they cannot afford it.

Here’s an interesting article on why the guillotine may not be a very good symbol of resistance. The TL;DR is that it’s always been used as a tool of state violence, and that you can’t get rid of billionaires by just killing them all.

https://crimethinc.com/2019/04/08/against-the-logic-of-the-guillotine-why-the-paris-commune-burned-the-guillotine-and-we-should-too

Direct democracy would be less hierarchical than what we have currently, but it’s still a hierarchy of the majority over the minority. So long as government exists, the decisions of the majority will be violently enforced upon the minority.

Unless of course you’re referring to direct democracy without law enforcement, but I wouldn’t exactly call that a government.

I agree that things would be better without shareholders, but wouldn’t government corruption still be a problem? For example, shareholders aren’t profiting from mass deportation or tariffs. These sort of abuses would still happen without shareholders because they aren’t motivated by profit, they’re motivated by racism and nationalism. The way I see it, we need to get rid of all coercive hierarchies, government included.

There’s also the fact that corporations greatly benefit from imperialism. You can’t have imperialism without the military.

Pure mercury is pretty safe, actually.
https://youtube.com/watch?v=DNpdMz0Cfv0&t=124