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

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

#451

Post by nickthemagicman » Sat, Sep 05, 2020, 5:27 PM UTC

wholepicture wrote: post #351

nickthemagicman wrote: post #315

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What you mean is people need to be forced to do what you think is reasonable. As you think their reasons for doing things are irrelevant. This kind of thinking leads down a scary road because who is the arbiter if what is reasonable? 10 years ago it would have been reasonable to consider that marijuana is dangerous as all the experts and legal system backed that up. They were wrong. So you have to leave room for peop…

'No! I don't remember that nobody is better than anyone else' ? um P-:

That is definitely the debate that the Democratic side of the aisle seems to be making as well with the same amount of clarity and nuance.

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

#452

Post by geofft » Sat, Sep 05, 2020, 5:29 PM UTC

eyko wrote: post #156

geofft wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 cas…

> Your assumption is that we led happy and fulfilling lives before what we now call society, which is false.

No, that's not my assumption, and I'm confused why you think it is. I'm simply saying that I, right now, in our current state of society, am not driving a car to work or buying water bottles in my current happy and fulfilling life, and the only reason I did that previously (and might do so in the future) is because a corporation backed by our current form of government made it so that I needed to do that to have a happy and fulfilling life.

I didn't say anything about the state of humanity before modern society. You make some good points, but I don't think they have much to do with this particular discussion. You may well be raising a different good objection to anarchism, but it's not the objection I'm responding to.

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

#453

Post by geofft » Sat, Sep 05, 2020, 5:30 PM UTC

elindbe2 wrote: post #356

geofft wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Maybe. Or maybe a band of like-minded people get together, arm themselves and take over the "individuals leading happy and fulfilling lives", declaring themselves monarchs and killing all those who oppose them.

Sure, that's a reasonable objection to anarchism, but that's also not particularly relevant to the question of whether individuals on their own will harm our planet, I think?

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

#454

Post by username90 » Sat, Sep 05, 2020, 5:32 PM UTC

haroldp wrote: post #447

TulliusCicero wrote: post #354

> Anarchists are simply people who believe human beings are capable of behaving in a reasonable fashion without having to be forced to. It is really a very simple notion. This can sound reasonable when you think of it in terms of, " most people behaving in a reasonable fashion, most of the time". But anarchists don't want to eliminate hierarchical use of force for most cases, but for all of them. Any time I've heard…

For what it's worth, anarcho-capitalists substantially agree with this collectivist anarchist, but still consider police worthwhile for your edge cases. They just want to voluntarily pay for private policing instead of having a monopoly impose it.

I can't see private police existing as the main source of violence without the different private police forces waging wars over each other to determine who gets to police what district. I mean, in what way would private police be different from a Mafia?

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

#455

Post by sdfin » Sat, Sep 05, 2020, 5:34 PM UTC

sneak wrote: post #441

JacksonGariety wrote: post #427

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> we’re witnessing an unprecedented wealth transfer right now in the US Indeed. And it must be regarded as infinitely baffling that everyone is shouting "abolish the police" instead of "redistribute the wealth" ...

The police are the ones who are practically preventing the redistribution of the wealth. Without them, 1/30th of the vacant residential stock in the US would be filled with 100% of the homeless people in the US, for example. (There are approximately 35x as many vacant houses/apartments in the US as there are homeless.)

Would you eliminate private property? Or are you suggesting something different?

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

#456

Post by ozim » Sat, Sep 05, 2020, 5:34 PM UTC

baconandeggs wrote: post #418

zanny wrote: post #378

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Capitalism is fundamentally built on competition, it pits all participants against one another. It stratifies social bonds and breaks people apart because any cooperation represents unrealized exploitation. Its why people are so miserable en masse, hostile, and chomping at the bit for targets to attack and hate. Its worse in America because theres almost no socialism at all to raise the floor of society - the country…

> Capitalism is fundamentally built on competition, it pits all participants against one another. Life is built on competition, life pits all participants against one another. Resources are not infinite.

Resources are not infinite but human imagination is. We already produce more food than needed, there is hunger in the world, but not because of shortage but for multiple other reasons.

Main point is that humans are intelligent and we can choose where and how we compete or if we don't want to compete at all.

Holocene extinction is mainly because humans collaborated in much better way than any other animal can. Life might be build on competition but we see how powerful collaboration is.

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

#457

Post by daxfohl » Sat, Sep 05, 2020, 5:35 PM UTC

TulliusCicero wrote: post #354

> Anarchists are simply people who believe human beings are capable of behaving in a reasonable fashion without having to be forced to. It is really a very simple notion. This can sound reasonable when you think of it in terms of, " most people behaving in a reasonable fashion, most of the time". But anarchists don't want to eliminate hierarchical use of force for most cases, but for all of them. Any time I've heard…

I'd be interested to see an application of sortition as a government principle. It's government by random selection, similar to jury duty, and was used by ancient Athens.

Wikipedia lists out the disadvantages, so nobody is claiming it's a perfect system. But I think it could eliminate many of the problems with modern "democracy", including gerrymandering, lack of diversity, distrust of "deep state", lobbying. Everyone would feel included, and I think that's important. A big part of our modern problems are due to the feeling of being left out: racial and religious minorities on one side, less-educated on the other, which creates the huge chasm of us-vs-them that shouldn't exist.

Plus it would make government boring again, so we wouldn't have this widening gulf between citizens on party lines and 24/7 smear campaigns on the national news. News would actually report news, imagine that!

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

#458

Post by jokethrowaway » Sat, Sep 05, 2020, 5:36 PM UTC

TulliusCicero wrote: post #354

> Anarchists are simply people who believe human beings are capable of behaving in a reasonable fashion without having to be forced to. It is really a very simple notion. This can sound reasonable when you think of it in terms of, " most people behaving in a reasonable fashion, most of the time". But anarchists don't want to eliminate hierarchical use of force for most cases, but for all of them. Any time I've heard…

Funnily enough, as an anarchist, I never heard before that removing the government (or hierarchical use of violence) would remove violence from the world.

There are plenty of ideas on how to keep law and order in an anarchic society. I recommend you to read The Machinery of Freedom (by David Friedman) or check out a summary here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jTYkdEU_B4o

TLDR: One way to keep order is having private law enforcement / private insurance you voluntarily subscribe to. This can be provided by multiple companies competing on the market. These entities can agree between each other on how to settle disputes, use a third party private arbitration system or physically fight against each other. A war between law enforcement agencies would be expensive and hard to predict, so I think these businesses would pick peaceful resolution over war.

How contracts are resolved by law enforcement agencies can become a selling point, letting consumers decide with their wallet what kind of laws they agree with.

Charities can collect money, voluntarily provided by citizens, and pay the fee required to protect people without money.

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

#459

Post by aoeusnth1 » Sat, Sep 05, 2020, 5:36 PM UTC

boomboomsubban wrote: post #388

username90 wrote: post #344

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My point is that voluntary donations isn't enough to run much at all, even for organizations that the worker is in control of. And a society needs roads. How would you ensure people pay for roads in an anarchist society? Would you have toll booths everywhere? That isn't economically feasible. Donations? As I said that isn't even enough to pay for a worker union, roads needs more than that.

Voluntary association, not voluntary donations. People need roads, when this problem is brought up they will be willing to pay for roads. If you are unwilling, you aren't part of the society anymore.

How does banishment from society work? What happens to people who refuse to leave and still use the roads?

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

#460

Post by SquishyPanda23 » Sat, Sep 05, 2020, 5:38 PM UTC

marricks wrote: post #424

runjake wrote: post #412

They lost me in the first paragraph with: “Anarchists are simply people who believe human beings are capable of behaving in a reasonable fashion without having to be forced to. It is really a very simple notion.” Having dealt with the dark side of humanity, there are lots of people who will not behave reasonably if left unchecked, due to one reason or another. And there are a lot of these people. Some of them lifelon…

I mean, flipping that on its head where does the "dark side of humanity" end up? Looking at all the police brutality, the Epstein's, the Koch brothers, the crappy politicians... I mean the crap really seems to float to the top of society. In a society without hierarchies, an anarchist society, you still have groups and communication and working together, you just don't have people above you telling you something is O…

> I mean the crap really seems to float to the top of society.

This is a somewhat bizzare argument IMO.

Even if you assume that sociopaths are over represented higher in the hierarchy, base rates force you to acknowledge that most sociopaths are at the bottom.