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

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

#231

Post by Nursie » Sat, Sep 05, 2020, 3:17 PM UTC

FranzFerdiNaN wrote: post #200

Nursie wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly this. It's a lovely dream, but humans are lazy, aquisitive, and many would sell their own grandmother to gain a perceived advantage.

This behaviour is most definitely promoted by capitalism, so I wouldn't be so fast to make it a general principle. In fact, all proof shows that humans are extremely cooperative and social when the going gets tough or disaster strikes.

Humans in general are, but a significant enough minority are interested only in power and aquisition. I'm sorry but this is a pipedream.

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

#232

Post by altvali » Sat, Sep 05, 2020, 3:18 PM UTC

sudosysgen wrote: post #190

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> anacistic organisations, charities and protest movement have done a lot for the environment. In fact they are the only ones that have done anything at all. This is not true at all. Protecting the environment isn’t just about actions like planting trees and buying up the occasional extra property parcel to dedicate as a land reserve. It requires government scale regulation to impose negative consequences on people a…

The anarchist argument is distribution of power. Take the example of pollution. Say you're an employee of a fossil fuel cooperative. Is it in your interest to continue polluting? Yes, because you after all own some of the ressources of that company and control it. So what is the anarchist solution? Well, it's in the interests of everyone to stop pollution, right? So you'd need people to come together, decide that pop…

> you might say that this is unrealistic, but for the government to do anything about pollution we needed hundreds of millions of people to protest

Hundreds of millions? The organizers of the biggest climate strikes (September 2019) estimated 7.6 million globally, and that's being generous. It's vastly cheaper, easier and more popular to enforce companies to reduce their pollution from their own funds than to pay to do it for them.

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

#233

Post by Enginerrrd » Sat, Sep 05, 2020, 3:18 PM UTC

oblio wrote: post #114

learnstats2 wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your assumption that people must behave better in the presence of authority - and therefore worse in the absence of it - is exactly the assumption that is under question.

They don't have to behave better in the presence of authority, they are forced to, that's kind of the point of authority :-)

That's funny, I see people behave badly even with the authority all the time.

In general though, most people behave mostly good. The ones that behave badly probably would under any social construct. The people I know that got into trouble with the law were the same ones with antisocial tendencies in grade school.

I don't believe that the threat of government enforcement really encourages a significant proportion of edge cases to behave better.

Due to some unique circumstances, I actually have had the opportunity to see what a relatively anarchist society looks like in low-density areas. It honestly works about the same as it does under more supervision. When the occasional real problems develop, people band together and act as their own police force. What there isn't is a bunch of technicality type laws banning you from doing things that don't affect others.

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

#234

Post by kotojo » Sat, Sep 05, 2020, 3:19 PM UTC

seibelj wrote: post #215

Al-Khwarizmi wrote: post #209

I have never believed in anarchism, as I don't believe that "human beings are capable of behaving in a reasonable fashion without having to be forced to". But with COVID-19, I am seeing more proof than ever. In my country (but I guess it's the same in most, except perhaps some Nordic countries) bars, pubs and discos only reduce seating or close indoor spaces when forced to by law, in spite of the evidence that they c…

In Boston the majority of everyone I saw wore a mask before it was mandatory. The shame was (and still is) very strong for those who don’t wear one. I see junkies (drug addicts) who don’t give a fuck but I assume that’s because they have given up on life. All normal people are wearing masks that I can see.

And for a counter observation I saw lines out of nail/hair salons and bars in Atlanta the day Kemp dropped shelter in place at the beginning of May. I'd say I see 1 in 8 people wearing a mask anywhere that doesn't explicitly require it, and then people mostly wearing them improperly otherwise.

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

#235

Post by oblio » Sat, Sep 05, 2020, 3:19 PM UTC

sudosysgen wrote: post #195

oblio wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Regarding humans being organized very loosely until agriculture personally I wouldn't consider that as a plus. We're on HN, just think about the pace of human development before agriculture and after. We were pretty much doing the same thing for half a million years and then in 10000 years: rockets in space! ;-)

Sure, but that still directly goes against the argument that humans are naturally hierarchical, because they aren't. And there are ways to have agriculture and industry and compounding scientific advancements without having rigid hierarchies, are there not?

They are hierarchical. All primates are. Agriculture just revealed the need for a level of social structure no other species on Earth could achieve before.

Regarding your follow-up question, maybe there are ways to achieve the same thing with a radically different social structure. The problem with social changes on this scale is that they are extremely disruptive. I'd rather reform and improve iteratively than rewrite the whole code base ;-)

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

#236

Post by elgfare » Sat, Sep 05, 2020, 3:19 PM UTC

sudosysgen wrote: post #225

elgfare wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I see. That's a big IF though if you ask me.

But is it? If an anarchist society was to come to existence wouldn't it be necessary beforethen for it to be largely accepted? And also, there are currently existing societies where that dynamic works, so I'm not sure it's that unrealistic.

> If an anarchist society was to come to existence wouldn't it be necessary beforethen for it to be largely accepted?

I guess so. THAT's the the big IF in that case :-).

> And also, there are currently existing societies where that dynamic works, so I'm not sure it's that unrealistic.

Really? Which societies?

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

#237

Post by Nursie » Sat, Sep 05, 2020, 3:19 PM UTC

fallingfrog wrote: post #45

Nursie wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly this. It's a lovely dream, but humans are lazy, aquisitive, and many would sell their own grandmother to gain a perceived advantage.

Nobody aside from hardened sociopaths would do that.

It was an exaggeration. But there are enough humans who are not interested in fair behaviour, but only getting ahead at almost any cost, that the idea of an unregulated world is laughable.

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

#238

Post by Nursie » Sat, Sep 05, 2020, 3:20 PM UTC

vidarh wrote: post #180

shadowgovt wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How many hardened sociopaths can an anarchy sustain before it either collapses or becomes a mockery of its own self-direction and mutualism principles?

Is it not a good thing if there are no structures in place for those people to abuse to oppress others? We've seen states captured by murderous lunatics time and time again. It seems having structures in place for those kinds of people to abuse has worked very poorly.

They will build structures. These structures are called gangs, and their leaders warlords.

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

#239

Post by vidarh » Sat, Sep 05, 2020, 3:20 PM UTC

andi999 wrote: post #208

prrls wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anarchy doesn't mean "absence of law". Absence of law is anomie. One is often confused for the other, but there is a slight difference. Anarchy is more about you and your community having the autonomy to decide your own rules, not a central authority. I believe "autonomy" is the key word here, not "law".

So I am playing a bit of devils advocate here, but then isnt the KKK a good example of Anarchy? The community agreed that part of the residents should not live there anymore, they made there own laws and tried to enforce them.

No, because the KKK itself represents a coercive power structure acting without the consent of those it attempt to enforce power over, which is inherently not anarchist.

If the KKK only tried to harass or harm people who had consented to be subject to them, then you'd have an argument.

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

#240

Post by sudosysgen » Sat, Sep 05, 2020, 3:20 PM UTC

elgfare wrote: post #227

vidarh wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mandate in this case is used in the abstract: in the absence of any system to recognise and enforce private property rights, and in the face of a society that sees coercion and aggression as pretty much the only things that are wholly and totally unacceptable, they cease to exist because they only exist in the first case through the state or other means of threatening force to enforce it. It would be more precise to…

Thanks. That feels like weird chain of causality. All the bad stuff only disappears when the systems protecting us from them are removed.

Because it just so happens that this system didn't happen in order to protect us, but just uses that argument to perpetuate itself.