[dogscoff]

You mean we're going to end up living in a state of post apocolyptic anarchy? Cool, I'll have to watch Mad Max and Akira and The Stand again, just to remind myself how to survive. i don't remember the details but IIRC the important thing is to have lots of motorbikes...

Anarchy is a nice idea, and one distant day it might even be made to work in some bizarre form (think Culture novels- although technically that's more of a benign deified technocracy, but I digress.) However, as Krsqk points out, you are at the mercy of petty criminals and maurauding warlords kinda like in Xena warrior princess.

That said I do think that ignorance and discontentment would be less widespread in a society with no "big biz" and therefore rape/ murder/ drug abuse/ violence would also be reduced (although not eliminated by any means.)

The other major bummer with anarchy is that it would probably result in technology being set back several hundred years, because modern tech relies on complex business and production infrastructures that would be very hard to maintain in an ungoverned state. You'd have a few mad scientists and small-scale technology producers here and there, but by and large the world would start to resemble some kind of Amish Paradise.