41–50 of 52 posts
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Machine guns are pretty handy for guerilla warfare. Tanks, not so much.
That was just an example. Others include: * helicopters * jet airplanes * satellites * artillery * light armored vehicles * unmanned drones etc. As a side note, I fucking hate HN's formatting.
Another problem with democracy: lets say there are 9 people and there are some dishes that need washing, one could propose a vote to make Bob always do the dishes every time for ever. If everyone votes in their best interest then Bob is screwed. Obviously this is not fair and people would hopefully have the sense not to do this, but you can't count on people to be "fair" or even know what fair is. This dilemma alread…
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When you say you are an anarchist, what exactly do you believe? For example, do you believe in a police force? My problem is this. I agree a utopian society is an anarchist society. But it seems to me that the only way anarchy can work is in a world where resources aren't scarce. As soon as resources become scarce, you have conflict. As soon as you have conflict, you need a way to resolve it fairly. I just can't unde…
> what exactly do you believe? This is something that I'm still actively exploring. I only have an understanding from a high level on all of this; the details are quite fuzzy to me. To give you some background, I'm coming from what's basically the a hardcore right-libertarian place. However, eventually, I've come around to realizing that the world is a bit more complex than "remove the rules and everything will work…
For example, someone decides to kick your teeth in and steal your wallet. Without police, what's your recourse? Vigilantism? What prevents a rising escalation of retaliatory vigilantism? Hasn't society been down this road, in both micro and macro scenarios, many times before?
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Machine guns are pretty handy for guerilla warfare. Tanks, not so much.
That was just an example. Others include: * helicopters * jet airplanes * satellites * artillery * light armored vehicles * unmanned drones etc. As a side note, I fucking hate HN's formatting.
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> what exactly do you believe? This is something that I'm still actively exploring. I only have an understanding from a high level on all of this; the details are quite fuzzy to me. To give you some background, I'm coming from what's basically the a hardcore right-libertarian place. However, eventually, I've come around to realizing that the world is a bit more complex than "remove the rules and everything will work…
I don't think it matters whether you like the police or not. What's important is the question of, if there are no police, then who or what will fulfill the role that the police currently fulfill. For example, someone decides to kick your teeth in and steal your wallet. Without police, what's your recourse? Vigilantism? What prevents a rising escalation of retaliatory vigilantism? Hasn't society been down this road, i…
I touched upon this a bit; I think that the police don't have as big of a deterrent effect as you'd think. Social structures such as "I don't want to get robbed, so I don't rob others" play a much larger role.
This is a large and complex question, and so I'm going to bow out to the FAQ, which has a pretty in-depth discussion of this topic: http://anarchism.pageabode.com/afaq/secI5.html#seci58
TL;DR, most crime wouldn't exist under anarchism, because many crimes simply aren't crimes anymore. There's no incentive for someone to steal my wallet, because a small piece of leather isn't really useful.
> Hasn't society been down this road, in both micro and macro scenarios, many times before?
We have, and we still haven't found a good answer. Are you saying petty theft is nonexistent today? Plenty of people still steal wallets.
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And then you see things like the absolute robbery of the American people via the bank bailout Minor fact check: the government has gotten back almost all the money spent on TARP. The current outstanding bill is fifty billion; even that much may drop to nothing by the time the car companies and AIG finish paying off. (Source: last night's All Things Considered.)
Hey, thanks for that. I'm not as totally up on all of that as I should be, because frankly, this is one place where I'm a bit of an idealist. I disagreed with the very concept of a bailout on the grounds that failure is necessary in a capitalist economic system; without the threat of failure, we have no incentive to improve. Frankly, the war is a bigger issue anyway.
Yeah, but widespread bank failures would have completely wrecked the economy, as in the Great Depression. The people worst hurt would have been the ordinary workers losing their jobs, not the bankers.
A better compromise would have been for the bailout to come with real pain for the banking execs—fines, or blacklisting, or at least compensation caps.
Frankly, the war is a bigger issue anyway.
Yes.
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That was just an example. Others include: * helicopters * jet airplanes * satellites * artillery * light armored vehicles * unmanned drones etc. As a side note, I fucking hate HN's formatting.
The US military has all of those things and yet the Iraqi resistance still put up a good fight.
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In this day and age, I think it would be corporations. The void left by no government would be filled by the second most powerful entities, and those are most certainly corporations. When I read "Market Forces" (scifi) I thought, very entertaining but completely unrealistic. In the absence of government, maybe not.
If there was no government, there would be no corporations. A corporation's power is dependent on the social framework a government creates. To give an example of what I mean, modern currencies are fiat, that is, they have value because various governments have declared them to have value. With the collapse of government, one of the chief sources of power for corporations, their immense liquid wealth, would become me…
If a national government decided to let an independent fiat currency be developed by an independent corporation, and all the other corporations, such as banks, agreed to use that fiat currency, that currency would have the same value: you need it to trade for your needs because you get paid in it.
It is not clear why trade could not continue in the absence of the federal government, as all the banks would probably be willing to lend to corporations with good credit, and they would probably continue storing their reserves in those banks.
In other words, I think you assume too many magical steps.