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

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

#611

Post by runjake » Sat, Sep 05, 2020, 9:05 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…

> 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 OK or how it should be.

Yes, and when it's bad guys, we call those groups "cartels" and "gangs".

When it's the good guys, we call those "governments". You necessarily need governments (and thus law enforcement and a military of some type) to fend off the bad guys and to maintain order (crime, settle disputes, etc).

As part of all that, be it the good guys or the bad guys, you need a solid leadership structure, or you end up with warring factions causing chaos or accomplishing nothing at all. Who is attracted to leadership positions? "Crappy politicians" and "the Koch brothers".

Anarchism, as described just doesn't work. Even in small anarchistic collectives of a dozen or so people, they inevitably start developing rules and leadership and governance structures.

Rather that abolishing the police and throwing away established systems, I would much rather strive toward iterative reforms of injustices.

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

#612

Post by Hoenoe » Sat, Sep 05, 2020, 9:07 PM UTC

A nice addition to this article would be https://thecorrespondent.com/443/brace-yourself-for-the-most...

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

#613

Post by tomp » Sat, Sep 05, 2020, 9:08 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 are extremely cooperative and social when the going gets tough or disaster strikes.

2020 being a great example.

Jesus, this whole discussion is such a shitshow. Every time I hear about anarchism I keep wishing someone would explain to me how it all works, I expected a lot from HN users, but all I keep reading is fairy tails with obvious holes the size of Mount Everest. Like, did anyone even consider to think how you'd resolve the obvious market fallacies (which, despite the name, have nothing to do with capitalist markets, but simply with humans / rational self-interested agents).

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

#614

Post by mempko » Sat, Sep 05, 2020, 9:12 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…

Most people arguing with anarchists don't have the imagination to see an alternative world.

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

#615

Post by jmnicolas » Sat, Sep 05, 2020, 9:15 PM UTC

Look at any real life anarchist experience (CHAZ being the latest example): after a few days / weeks of chaos, the first thing they do is recreate the services that a state provide.

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

#616

Post by leftyted » Sat, Sep 05, 2020, 9:16 PM UTC

cortesoft wrote: post #389

Here is my argument against anarchism as some alternative to what we have. We ARE living in the end state of anarchism. We know how people will organize when there is no existing coercive power structure; they will form themselves into groups with rules and laws and enforcement. How do we know this? Because it is what people have done, over and over and over, when in that situation. If all of the government were to s…

I think you're right. But I also think that "anarchists" are actually after the stage where people "form themselves into groups with rules and laws and enforcement". They don't really want anarchy, they want a "reconstitution".

And I can understand why. There seem to be limits on how much a society can change after its constitution. It can change, but over time it carries more and more baggage. In order for significant change, a society has to be reconstituted. There has to be a rupture, a new chapter, etc.

I think anarchists are instinctively seeking the potentiality, the excitement that comes with that rupture.

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

#617

Post by mempko » Sat, Sep 05, 2020, 9:17 PM UTC

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…

Or, maybe we act the way we do because of law. Law may restrict our moral choices.

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

#618

Post by tomp » Sat, Sep 05, 2020, 9:21 PM UTC

otherme123 wrote: post #174

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…

Taking littering: how littered is your home? Your work place? What about a Comercial Center? In an anarchy society, the littering is limited to your own property. Yes, you can live like a pig, as long as you don't litter properties of others. If you throw trash in other people property, you don't face a fine, but you will be expelled from the property and face a trial. In our current society, littering is a problem i…

> the littering is limited to your own property

The very idea of "property" assumes a government, along with property laws, courts and police to enforce those laws, taxes to fund them, and so on.

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

#619

Post by acituan » Sat, Sep 05, 2020, 9:23 PM UTC

brbrodude wrote: post #81

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…

This is where I see one of the most striking arguments for anarchist philosophy. That is: It takes, and it took, an immensurable ammount of violence to make the status quo, 'lawful order' is a very shaky concept there. From this perspective it's way clearer that the unbalances and the unlawlessness of a big chunk of the "order" are themselves the sources of so much messed up stuff we have to deal with and try hopeles…

> Maybe if there's one, for me, then it'd be that humans already come from nature with capacity for self-determination, conflict resolution, sociability, organization. All those other structures mostly hijacks that and messes it up with imbalances, most obviously by abuse of power, hierarchy being the main instrument for making that

What humans come from nature with doesn’t scale to the world and numbers we have built for ourselves (ie past Dunbar number). You can also train a neural net with pen and paper but can’t really build a product that can function in the real world.

All those structures are attempts at trying to test and train a particular architecture of collective intelligence that can scale to real world problems. Obviously all have failure modes and difficulties in innovating and transitioning, but they also have working proof of some degree of functioning. And the hierarchies they form are not caricatures of a tree data-structure, they are much more complicated topologies, because they are more emergent phenomena than conspiratorial captures.

Chomsky’s anarchism seem to define an end state without any prescription on transitioning or path dependencies in between. It also doesn’t have any demonstration on success with negative edge cases. If anything all utopias so far have devolved into dystopias, hence the hesitation.

Even with the most pleasant things in life we are prone to construal level fallacies. Going to Paris sounds awesome right now but my current excitement doesn’t match the moment to moment reality I will face; every minute of the long haul flight, the jetlag, sore feet from walking etc, I don’t even consider these. Our design documents never match our implementations. That is why I am wary of claims like “I can rewrite this system from scratch”.

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

#620

Post by tomp » Sat, Sep 05, 2020, 9:23 PM UTC

komali2 wrote: post #360

RandoHolmes wrote: post #358

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I regularly volunteer at conventions. Somewhere between 90 and 95% of people follow the rules without much prompting. 5-10% of people don't... This was my problem with the article. Yes, most people do act exactly as you say. But what if you get that entitled asshole who does actually cut in line? Because there are people out there who will do that. Now what do you do? Resort to mob justice? There's a segment of the…

This happens today, what do we do about it today? Are laws preventing mass shooters? Sociopathic killers?

Obviously.

How many mass shooters are there in the US? How many in the UK? Much less (there are mass murders, terrorist attacks etc. but not very many mass shooters). The difference? Gun laws.