Utopia Vs. Dystopia

       The word 'utopia', popularized in Thomas Moore's 1516 novel cleverly titled, Utopia, is commonly used when discussing a perfect society.  The original Greek meaning however is 'no place'.  Are all societies in pursuit of a perfect governance doomed to search for this 'no place'?  Perhaps it's just the existential musings of an idealistic philosopher like myself to hope that government can find that place.  Commonly seen as the counterpart to The Prince, Utopia involves a fictional island society in the Atlantic which is a pre-cursor to socialism and a supposedly perfect set of governing laws that allows for no private property and shared communal goods.  Passports, slavery and a lifetime of enforced celibacy if one is found to have engaged in pre-marital sex are just some of the 'utopian' features of the island.  While administrators, a prince and wise members of society make up a checks and balances type of governing body, Moore doesn't say much about government.  
      Machiavelli says much about government and how a ruling prince or republic should function.  Explicit detail and painstaking portraits of policy are painted by the Florentine, but in my understanding he never expects a perfect government to lead to a perfect society.  He says it does most of the work and allows for good governance but there's no guarantee from him, either in The Discourses nor in The Prince, of a formula for a perfect place to live.  This makes me ask myself, is government necessary for a perfect society?  Government seems necessary for any society to my knowledge and even in other works of utopian fiction, government is a key determinant of the quality of life.  We see dystopian societies such as the one depicted in Children of Men as authoritarian and suffocating to society, yet all over the world we see the collapsed governments and the ruins their society was left in.  Would one be better off forsaking society and living alone as a beast in the forest if government is dystopian, even though the quality of life may be 'solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short'? In dystopian societies we see people remain under the iron fist of absolute governance and forsake their freedom for 'security'.  When is the point that we cut our losses and run?

Also, (unrelated, but awesome) here's some KICK ASS utopian/dystopian literature you guys should check out when you're not taking four upper-division classes that each require two hours of reading (and your soul) a night. : D
We, Yevgeny Zamyatin
The Handmaid's Tale, Margaret Atwood
Spin, Robert Charles Wilson
The Woman on the Edge of Time, Marge Piercy
Childhood's End, Arthur C. Clarke
Alas, Babylon, Pat Frank