Statism or Anarchy?

Is it necessary to involve ourselves in Statism or is Anarchy a better alternative? States have been known to abuse their powers over a given region to extort money and rights from its citizens. They essentially becomes minions of the Overlords and bend to the will of their master.

Anarchy is intent on ending this, intent on bringing about real freedom and real choice. Letting free markets reign, and letting people be people. However, is it really? Why did government exist in the first place if Anarchy was so successful? Was it through ignorance of pre-historic people who were deceptively led into this union of Society or was it a failure?

I have much trouble believing that it is simply because of ignorance. I think people's ignorance of Anarchy is profound and that belief is the statism that is rampant in today's world is far too profound,as well. However, I believe in micro-statism, in that there should be laws and regulations over things like fraud, but that private sector can more than deal with poverty and retirement.

The Commonwealth of Iceland, which is as close as any recorded nation as come to a successful "Anarcho-capitalistic" society has been. It had a very weak government, it wasn't even central, and the only real part of government was the court system that was more of a "he did this" than to indict anyone on anything. It worked, up until other nations began to find political intrigue and desire to destroy the nations fabric from within.

These were the problems with the Articles of Confederation, which again were a loose set of laws binding the nation together but, not actually being a central government. It wasn't nearly as successful as Iceland and political intrigue already had begun. Especially, considering it was in a much more interesting part of the world.

In any case, I think micro-statism, with soft central government is what we should strive for and not Anarchy which would devolve into a much worse situation. I think the founders had been on the right track, anyway.