Are you an anarchist? The answer may surprise you (2000) • Hacker News Board

Re: Are you an anarchist? The answer may surprise you (2000)

#151

Post by Mary-Jane » Sat, Sep 05, 2020, 2:26 PM UTC

murgindrag wrote: post #59

lucideer wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> this is a demonstrably false fairy tale Demonstrably how? > Why would you assume that we would act righteously in the absence of law? What is a demonstrably false fairy tale is that we don't act righteously when law enforcement is present. So asking what would happen in its absence seems irrelevant. > It is painfully obvious that we would act much worse under anarchy. Above you said it was "demonstrable" but now se…

> Demonstrably how? Tens of thousands of years of human history. Feuding warlords, and slaves, rather than everyone acting together in unity. > What is a demonstrably false fairy tale is that we don't act righteously when law enforcement is present. So asking what would happen in its absence seems irrelevant. Well, we don't have mass rape, looting, or murder. One really needs to compare scale. Democracy seems to be a…

> Tens of thousands of years of human history. Feuding warlords, and slaves, rather than everyone acting together in unity. ummm, both of your specific examples are actually examples of those with power abusing it.

Re: Are you an anarchist? The answer may surprise you (2000)

#152

Post by browserface » Sat, Sep 05, 2020, 2:27 PM UTC

vidarh wrote: post #107

browserface wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I get that you see it that way. I think that might be shifting the goalposts of anarchism in the face of criticism, and I suspect the appeal to "zero rules" can be brought back later in less critical contexts. But I appreciate the expanded perspective you've given me. So...voluntary association, but still having rules and organizing. OK, sounds alright. How is that different to the current global system? I mean it li…

All of this was there from the earliest conceptions of anarchism. The difference is one of degree. Moving to another country requires means to do so, and immigration procedures imposed on you by others that means inherently you have rules imposed on you wherever you go. It also involves the state you move from imposing rules on you that you have never been free to consent to, and a central aspect of anarchism is to e…

The degree seems to me to scale up. The sharehouse, the state. It's all the same thing. A sharehouse can be plenty coercive too. Parent - child ? Coercive. Personal relationships, they can be coercive too sadly. But "coercion" on the other side is just "the power of bad", it's psychology. Criticism and threats of penalties really do make people behave better. But it's complicated. Read "The Power of Bad".

And don't give me that complaints about immigration and means. An anarchist should be one for personal responsibility, choice, freedom and negotiation, should be able to bend reality to their will rather than complaining in the streets that it change, right? I guess I also wonder, what the hell do you replace the state with? I mean, states didn't just "magically appear" out of nowhere. They're born out of history of blood and death and suffering and overcoming endless civilizational challenges (Read "Why the West Still Rules For Now"), and I think there's a chance they're our current best solutions to the problem of organizing for stability.

If anarchism was a powerful personal philosophy, a couple rules and regulations would be not barrier. All is negotiation and anarchists are apparently adept at such. I don't get it. Sorry.

Why submit to the sharehouse bitch, but rail and wail against the state? I don't get it. It's the same dynamic. I think if you put the state on a pedestal over you, it's like a type of daddy complex where you are giving away your power. It's all just life. There's no getting around that's it's gonna be hard. Anarchists seem like they want to adapt and thrive, but then they're also complaining. I think their ideology has been misused and they're having an identity crisis.

I appreciate your responses and attitude and I'm not trying to be offensive to you. I'm tapping out of this discussion because I think it's a waste of time to discuss in this age, but I do appreciate your style. Best of luck to you both!

Re: Are you an anarchist? The answer may surprise you (2000)

#153

Post by peschu » Sat, Sep 05, 2020, 2:29 PM UTC

yodsanklai wrote: post #86

To me, anarchism is simply an ideal view which is the opposite of authoritarianism. We all sit somewhere in between these two extreme points of view. In that sense, one can lean toward anarchism, e.g. they value personal freedom and question unnecessary authority, but don't necessarily believe in a more extreme form of anarchy without government and so on.

anarchy is the opposite of hierarchy

I always wonder why nobody knows that. There are so much and long comments discussing this shit, but the simplest thing and explanation nobody seems to know or nobody wants to know.

Re: Are you an anarchist? The answer may surprise you (2000)

#154

Post by sudosysgen » Sat, Sep 05, 2020, 2:29 PM UTC

elgfare wrote: post #135

sudosysgen wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anarchism would also remove private property, and for it to work people would have to organize in ways to minimize social capital.

How do you do that though? There would of course be no enforcable private property, but ownership would not disappear as a (albeit nebulous) concept.

Anarchism would mandate worker ownership of production, in the principle that ownership only ever derives from use. So factories and the like would be cooperatively owned, which makes it very very difficult for one individual to amass seriously outsized amounts of material resources. Combined with monetary policy that increases the velocity of money, the issue is fixed.

As for personal property, under the principle that you've worked for and use your personal property and that it doesn't result in a master/slave relation, it would be intact.

Re: Are you an anarchist? The answer may surprise you (2000)

#155

Post by vidarh » Sat, Sep 05, 2020, 2:30 PM UTC

csours wrote: post #133

I don't understand anarchy. Take littering for an example. Would an anarchist system (oxymoron alert) have fines for littering? How about signs and a slogan? TV advertisements? Another example: I regularly volunteer at conventions. Somewhere between 90 and 95% of people follow the rules without much prompting. 5-10% of people don't... but I sincerely believe that without volunteers watching, that number would go up s…

Consider that your conventions do not require the power of law enforcement to be able to deal with most problems. You can self-organise to set rules, and show away people who refuse to comply.

Anarchists want more of that, and less of power imposed from above.

Proudhon, the father anarchism, was a mutualist - he wanted most functions of society to be contracted between people,the way a convention goer agrees to terms when entering a convention.

It's not no rules and no enforcement, but voluntary association and consent and stripping away coercion wherever possible.

Re: Are you an anarchist? The answer may surprise you (2000)

#156

Post by eyko » Sat, Sep 05, 2020, 2:32 PM UTC

geofft wrote: post #39

oxymoran wrote: post #11

“Anarchists are simply people who believe human beings are capable of behaving in a reasonable fashion without having to be forced to.” My anarchist sympathies want this to be true but this is a demonstrably false fairy tale. Just look at how we treat the planet and other living things in the presence of lawful order. Why would you assume that we would act righteously in the absence of law? It is painfully obvious th…

That assumes that the presence of lawful order makes things better, which is sort of the whole question this article is about. You can construct a pretty good argument that, say, absent the structures of "lawful order" around which large corporations grow, fewer people would be driving hours to work each day, drinking water out of plastic bottles, flying across the country on business trips, producing pesticides in B…

"I think most of us as individuals could lead happy and fulfilling lives and contributing to the advancement of humanity without any of that."

Your assumption is that we led happy and fulfilling lives before what we now call society, which is false. Bad harvest years would routinely decimate communities. Hunger also drove people to steal from others, many times violently (kill, rape, and ransack), and in the best case where they only stole your food, you were now left to starve because a famine affects everyone, and the victims were already on rations as it were.

Local spots of violence in the struggle for the very few resources that we had were very common place. As societies evolved, such conflicts for resources became more necessarily more complex (think bands, think small militias, think city-state armies, think all out war).

The main misconception I tend to see people have is that they somehow believe that our current condition is somehow different from the condition we were in. As if society was imposed on us and we became bad. We are society. Be it a community of ten or a community of a thousand. Good an evil are both sides of the same coin, it's just our nature.

Re: Are you an anarchist? The answer may surprise you (2000)

#157

Post by sudosysgen » Sat, Sep 05, 2020, 2:33 PM UTC

oblio wrote: post #134

__s wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately authority doesn't behave better in the presence of itself

True, but the real world is about compromises and lesser evils. Formal authority is quite often better than arbitrary, informal authority. And make no mistake, humans are social, their natural congregations are hierarchical.

I'm not sure this is true. Not only were humans very loosely hierarchical essentially until the invention of agriculture, but anarchism doesn't advocate for arbitrary and informal authority, but for limited in any authority at all unless absolutely necessary, in which case it must be directly kept in check.

Re: Are you an anarchist? The answer may surprise you (2000)

#158

Post by elgfare » Sat, Sep 05, 2020, 2:33 PM UTC

sudosysgen wrote: post #154

elgfare wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you do that though? There would of course be no enforcable private property, but ownership would not disappear as a (albeit nebulous) concept.

Anarchism would mandate worker ownership of production, in the principle that ownership only ever derives from use. So factories and the like would be cooperatively owned, which makes it very very difficult for one individual to amass seriously outsized amounts of material resources. Combined with monetary policy that increases the velocity of money, the issue is fixed. As for personal property, under the principle t…

> Anarchism would mandate worker ownership of production

Legitimately curious: How do you mandate anything in an anarchy?

Re: Are you an anarchist? The answer may surprise you (2000)

#159

Post by vidarh » Sat, Sep 05, 2020, 2:34 PM UTC

jkhdigital wrote: post #127

> Everyone believes they are capable of behaving reasonably themselves. If they think laws and police are necessary, it is only because they don’t believe that other people are. I believe this is missing an important distinction between two kinds of law: common and statutory. If anarchists had laws, they would be common law, which simply represents accreted experience and wisdom about dealing with human conflicts tha…

I completely disagree with this. Common law is still enforced. The issue is not the source of the law, but how the organ that enforces it gets the power to do so - whether it is imposed from above, or entered into by consent.

We already enter into agreements about which rules apply in situations not covered by law all the time.

The more you relegate to consensual agreements, the closer to anarchy you get,whether those agreements include 'refer to common law principles' or 'refer to this book of statutes'.

Re: Are you an anarchist? The answer may surprise you (2000)

#160

Post by anarch1c » Sat, Sep 05, 2020, 2:34 PM UTC

oblio wrote: post #144

anarch1c wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You seem functionally fixed cognitively. Sorry, anarchy is fire and brimstone! Mad Max living! Let’s go there! Does that feel better? Anarchism isn’t a thing. It can’t have one shape, and color. Like most things there’s nuance and philosophy to it that the popular memes, and a whole lot of popular writing, do not impart. Vague emotional colorings without functional concept. Anarchism is fine with collective social no…

> You seem functionally fixed cognitively. I don't even understand what this means :-) Does it mean that I'm rigid (obtuse?). Does it mean that I'm only focused on functional aspects (I also have no idea what this would mean...).

Good, less competition.