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With decent education, strong cultural transmission of a tradition of liberty, backed up with technical reasons for the curious, those tribal instincts can be checked quite enough for people to live like civilized human beings, respectful of their neighbors' rights and tolerant of their differences, most of the time.

I agree with your statement, but I think you're setting the bar very low: it's has been achieved by various societies over the past 10,000 years or so. The problem is that in each case, the achievement was temporary, because people revert to a tribal mentality which is at once socialistic and belligerent. The US is well on its way in the same direction.

True civilization is a long way away. By "true" civilization I mean one that's at least as civil as the US, England, Egypt for much of its history, ancient Iceland, etc., but which also survives for an appreciable length of time--say, at least 1,000 years--without reverting to socialism or totalitarianism, and without being destroyed by external enemies.

Since as you say, perfection is unattainable, I won't subtract points if this "true" civilization is cruel to foreigners (as Icelanders were), allows slavery (as Rome and every other example, including England and the US, did), or has some other such imperfection. So let's say that private property rights are sacrosanct for most of the population, but not necessarily everyone.

I have no fondness for utopias, libertarian or otherwise.

I don't believe one will be achieved, certainly not within our lifetimes and without divine intervention. However, it would be a false dichotomy to suggest that, since we can't have utopia, today's society must be good enough. It's seriously defective.

I think this is quite possible, because I mostly see it around me, barring a few things like state education, or the Kelo decision. Those things, we can live with for the meanwhile, and we have a framework for fighting them peacefully.

I disagree, because historically freedom doesn't ebb and flow. It steadily diminishes. Once in a while, a nearly miraculous revolution occurs, and substantial freedom is achieved somewhere--but even in those cases, it resumes steady decline immediately. The Whiskey rebellion demonstrates that freedom was being undermined during the term of the very first US president, and it's been steadily downhill since.

"The problem is that in each case, the achievement was temporary, because people revert to a tribal mentality which is at once socialistic and belligerent. The US is well on its way in the same direction."

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"I disagree, because historically freedom doesn't ebb and flow. It steadily diminishes. Once in a while, a nearly miraculous revolution occurs, and substantial freedom is achieved somewhere--but even in those cases, it resumes steady decline immediately. The Whiskey rebellion demonstrates that freedom was being undermined during the term of the very first US president, and it's been steadily downhill since."

The early US involved slavery of black people, and genocide of Indians. Until fairly recently, difficult or mentally slow people could be sterilized against their will, and couples had to take blood tests before they could marry. Home schooling, in very recent memory, was illegal in most states.

We've corrected a great deal, largely by deciding to follow, instead of flaunt, the structure laid out in the founding documents, and also largely by using US constitutional mechanisms (legislation and amendment, not misinterpretation by elite fiat) to fix flaws. Yes, we've lost a fair bit of ground as well, but the picture of a fundamentally downhill trajectory toward tribal instincts needs to seen in context of the above, apparently uphill, strides. It looks like ebb and flow, at the very least, on the surface. At any rate, I don't particularly think it is plainly obvious that we are degenerating into tribalism. I think we've always had a good bit of that, and now have more or less in certain areas. Maybe now more tribalism in certain structurally crucial areas, I don't know.

The current system may yet fall, maybe in the next few generations. I don't think the tribal mentality alone will be the cause, but, instead, that mentality working in conjunction with other factors. This is a significant distinction - your system seems to have it that the tribal mentality will always drag everything down into savagery. I think that variations in cultural content ("liberty liberty liberty!"), different structures of cultural transmission (no government-run schools), and detail of economic structures (money system in particular - Pharaonic Egypt, 3000 years (with a few blips), supposedly ran on barter*), work with with these tribal instincts in different ways, and play a real role in making or breaking the civilization.

If I remember correctly, many of the US founders didn't even expect this system to last this long. My thinking on this is that the good thing to do, if collapse does happen, is to learn by experience as much as possible, and work to make the tradition of the US Constitution survive the forces of anarchy and tyranny that will no doubt be powerful in the setting of recent collapse.

I'm not of the Egyptian mind that everything goes steadily downhill after the initial reign of Osiris, nor am I a believer in this idea's various Greek and American incarnations (the idea of 1787 being the height of America, and the time since primarily as downhill, I see in this vein). I don't think the facts back up this idea universally unless you look at them expecting them to, and I think the instances in which the facts don't back up this idea are instances to study and learned from. Further, I think this idea tends to resign people to slow collapse, and dissuade them from doing the hard work necessary for keeping a good system going (nominating people like Alito off the bat for SCOTUS, for example), or for fighting against the forces of tyranny and anarchy, when and if they arise, in order to found a decent system.

"True civilization is a long way away. By "true" civilization I mean one that's at least as civil as the US, England, Egypt for much of its history, ancient Iceland, etc., but which also survives for an appreciable length of time--say, at least 1,000 years--without reverting to socialism or totalitarianism, and without being destroyed by external enemies."

I don't know how far off "true" civilization is. If we can keep what we have going, it is "here". Encouraging people to think that the current civilization is currently simply doomed (instead of informing them that certain flaws will doom it if nothing is done to fix them) just means encouraging them to resign themselves to the current flaws, and to the eventual chaotic (and likely bloody) period of collapse, instead of working to identify and change those flaws.

If the flaws do cause the collapse of what we have, then, rather than resign themselves to thinking of "true" civilization as "a long way away", I would hope people would fight anarchy and tyranny in order to re-implement the US Constitution, or something similar (perhaps the US Constitution but with a few tweaks to fix some particular aspects, like those in the educational system and money system, that contribute most to its instability).

"Since as you say, perfection is unattainable, I won't subtract points if this "true" civilization is cruel to foreigners (as Icelanders were), allows slavery (as Rome and every other example, including England and the US, did), or has some other such imperfection. So let's say that private property rights are sacrosanct for most of the population, but not necessarily everyone."

The more people for whom you deny property and bodily rights, the more people you cut off an opportunity to make important, unique, and beneficial contributions to sustaining and bettering the civilization. So, no. Perfect isn't attainable, but better than slavery and cruelty sure is. Civilizations may well survive the sorts of imperfections you discuss, for thousands of years even, when their neighboring civilizations are in a similar state. When you are, say, fighting an arms race with the USSR, you'd better be damn sure that any kid with what it takes to contribute substantially to defense technology isn't having his mind rot on somebody's plantation, and isn't killed on the street for having a face the locals don't like. A good way to do this is liberty. These two sides, individual and civilizational, are on the same coin. This is, if I'm not mistaken, the major insight of "neoconservative" foreign policy, and has been since at least the Reagen years.

--------- * (According to a Dr. Brier. I am a bit suspicious, my guess is that it more ran on grain or other key agricultural goods as currency. This would interestingly differs from metal money, as well as fiat money, in having a direct popular use, and (I assume) an inherent expiration date. I suspect these features imply a good deal less possibility of money system corruption. I haven't looked far into this, though.)