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

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

#801

Post by natmaka » Mon, Sep 07, 2020, 4:47 AM UTC

Meekro wrote: post #793

natmaka wrote: post #748

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AFAIK (at least in most European countries) such robbers didn't attack villages, and people willing to travel tried hard to do it in groups (pilgrims, merchants). You now have nearly no way to escape your (Occidental) government. Wherever you go, whatever you do, whoever you associate with. If you really believe you can change the power-that-be by voting let's say we disagree.

Escaping your government is easy. There are plenty of places on Earth you could go that have essentially no (functional) government. People tend to run from these places, not to them.

> Escaping your government is easy.

It isn't, and technical progress (transport and communication means) made it more and more difficult.

> People tend to run from these places, not to them.

It depends. Historically see for example the Zomia ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southeast_Asian_Massif#Zomia ) , and some Spanish cities during the civil war ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarchism_in_Spain#Anarchist_p... ). For an ongoing case take a look at Rojava ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autonomous_Administration_of_N... )

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

#802

Post by vidarh » Mon, Sep 07, 2020, 6:59 AM UTC

murgindrag wrote: post #776

vidarh wrote: post #764

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An early premise of anarchist movements was that there are already someone trying to grab too much power , namely nation states. As such a large proportion of anarchist thought is down to how to organise and build bottom up structures with the intent of matching and being able to counter and destroy the power structures of nation states. Now ask yourself why you assume they'd be unwilling to build structures capable…

> Now ask yourself why you assume they'd be unwilling to build structures capable of resisting attempts to take power, when that is basically the raison d'etre for these groups. Not unwilling. Unable. Fighting against something rarely works to bring about productive change. Fighting for something is harder, but often does. refs: French Revolution. Animal Farm. Etc.

The French revolution brought about sweeping change across Europe in its aftermath. That the changes it brought were unpredictable is true, and that it took an aftermath that lasted for a long time to resolve the fallout too. But to suggest it didn't bring productive change is ludicrous.

And Animal Farm is fiction.

But if you're so sure it is unable, then it doesn't matter then - in that case these systems will never come to fruition, and so debating them is pointless.

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

#803

Post by vidarh » Mon, Sep 07, 2020, 7:06 AM UTC

Nursie wrote: post #772

vidarh wrote: post #765

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or states. As long as the concentration of power in the hands of nation states have been the foundation for most of the worst mass murders in human history, it seems quaint to worry that people arguing for making power shared and collective rather than allowing it to be concentrated will do worse.

In democratic states power is shared and collective. That's the point. They will do worse, look around you at wherever there is a power vacuum. What follows? Violence.

Power is concentrated and delegated top down. That's the point. If I want to withhold consent to be policed a certain way, I can't, even if I only e.g. live and interact with people who similarly want to withhold consent (nobody would suggest that I would have the right to unilaterally dictate the rules if I interact with others who don't share my views).

So the problem is that the power is not collective other than the power to vote for who the power will be concentrated with. There's a massive disconnect there where, e.g. if we go by US elections, about half the population at any point are ruled by a system they have not consented to.

That is not collective power, at least not collective and shared power of the people, but of a majority at most (even assuming representatives do what their voters want them to, which is also a dicey proposition). Nearly every government in the world tries to limit this tyranny of the majority by legally protected rights to secure the minority against government overreach too, but the fact that they need to demonstrates how flawed this model is.

You assume a power vacuum, but nobody is suggesting a power vacuum, but power mediated by consent, negotiation and bottom up delegation rather than top down coercion.

As long as you're assuming a power vacuum, you're arguing against a strawman.

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

#804

Post by natmaka » Mon, Sep 07, 2020, 8:28 AM UTC

bena wrote: post #760

natmaka wrote: post #709

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why can't they establish their cooperation rules between them, using existing static material (contract templates...) if they want to, without any third-party (for example a government) being mandatory?

First, who enforces the contract? Second, it doesn't really matter. Two people working together is pretty much politics. It's government. It leads there. Cooperation requires coordination.

> who enforces the contract?

In any healthy small community everyone tries to, in order to keep a good reputation. In case of misunderstanding any third party appreciated by both parties may act as a judge/referee. The need for a government, especially central, only arises when the group isn't anymore a community but a large set of (on average) loosely related and interacting persons.

> Two people working together is pretty much politics. It's government. It leads there. Cooperation requires coordination

Coordination nor politics doesn't imply any government.

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

#805

Post by natmaka » Mon, Sep 07, 2020, 8:34 AM UTC

perl4ever wrote: post #756

natmaka wrote: post #740

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For a gov employee "being reasonable" may mean "respect the chain of command, obey, apply the orders", and when the Great Leader isn't "reasonable" this may quickly and massively lead to Bad Things, as seen for example in the USSR, in Nazi Germany, Cambodia... Befehl ist Befehl https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superior_orders

Being reasonable may mean following rules when contrary and/or corrupt orders are given. That is something that happens that has enormous value.

When there isn't any fixed hierarchy (governments...), bad/selfish people don't amass power (counting on non-reasonable people who will blindly follow their orders) so everyone else can actually handle them on equal terms.

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

#806

Post by sobani » Mon, Sep 07, 2020, 8:55 AM UTC

MacsHeadroom wrote: post #228

marcusverus wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> On the contrary, it' and indictment of the current law system, it has utterally failed to protect the environment and other living things. The fact that our laws have tried to protect the environment and 'utterly failed' is clear evidence that behaviour of individuals and corporations are not, by default, making good environmental decisions. The idea that these actors, who are bad stewards of the environment when l…

Counterpoint: The legal concept of fiduciary responsibility, and actual de facto laws, legally compel the board of directors and executives of for-profit corporations to produce profit for their shareholders. There are even special laws for officers of publicly traded companies that make this compulsion even more strict add additional criminal charges for failure. Now, obviously these laws aren't something most corpo…

> The legal concept of fiduciary responsibility, and actual de facto laws, legally compel the board of directors and executives of for-profit corporations to produce profit for their shareholders.

False. There are no laws that compel a company to produce profits for their shareholders. There is an economic _philosophy_ that argues that since the market economy is the bees knees, it follows that a company that has a higher profit is also 'better', but that does not make it a legal concept. [0]

Fiduciary responsibility in this case simply means that the directors should have the best interest of the company in mind. [1] In most cases shareholders want more money, so making more money is a natural result. But if there is a company whose single mission is to put a colony on Mars, then fiduciary responsibility compels the directors to only focus on that, even if such a colony would be less profitable than setting money on fire.

[0] https://www.investopedia.com/terms/s/shareholder-value.asp#t... [1] https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/fiduciary_duty

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

#807

Post by Nursie » Mon, Sep 07, 2020, 9:03 AM UTC

vidarh wrote: post #803

Nursie wrote: post #772

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In democratic states power is shared and collective. That's the point. They will do worse, look around you at wherever there is a power vacuum. What follows? Violence.

Power is concentrated and delegated top down. That's the point. If I want to withhold consent to be policed a certain way, I can't, even if I only e.g. live and interact with people who similarly want to withhold consent (nobody would suggest that I would have the right to unilaterally dictate the rules if I interact with others who don't share my views). So the problem is that the power is not collective other than…

We have power mediated by consent. You cannot have individuals opting out of a societal system of laws or murderers will do just that.

> If I want to withhold consent to be policed a certain way, I can't, even if I only e.g. live and interact with people who similarly want to withhold consent

What do you think countries are?

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

#808

Post by bufferoverflow » Mon, Sep 07, 2020, 10:27 AM UTC

natmaka wrote: post #804

bena wrote: post #760

Earlier quoted context omitted.

First, who enforces the contract? Second, it doesn't really matter. Two people working together is pretty much politics. It's government. It leads there. Cooperation requires coordination.

> who enforces the contract? In any healthy small community everyone tries to, in order to keep a good reputation. In case of misunderstanding any third party appreciated by both parties may act as a judge/referee. The need for a government, especially central, only arises when the group isn't anymore a community but a large set of (on average) loosely related and interacting persons. > Two people working together is…

And thus you invented government. As soon as you have an independent third party deciding who is right, that's your judicial branch. And then you will need the police to enforce the decisions of that judge/referee.

And then when you start having insane judges who rule that raping a child is perfectly fine, you will want to stop it, and thus you will invent your standardized laws.

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

#809

Post by TulliusCicero » Mon, Sep 07, 2020, 10:28 AM UTC

marricks wrote: post #517

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 find it hard to believe you've talked to any real anarchists, or at least listened to them. People like Noam Chomsky deal with that question extremely head on. Below is what I said on another comment... > Absolutely no form of government or system (anarchist 1000% included) will solve the problem of people being selfish or bad, all that anarchists contend (that I have seen) is that when there isn't those built hier…

I've heard the reasoning, it just sounds like utter nonsense.

> when there isn't those built hierarchies bad/selfish people don't amass power

This is where the reasoning falls apart. What stops them from amassing power?

The responses to this question always sound really convoluted and 'reach-y', ala, "people just won't, like, do that, maaaan!" or "others will stop them, in a completely non-hierarchal way without any explicit use of force".

There are TONS of situations in real life where people are nominally equal, but in practice hideously unequal. The way anarchists talk just reminds me of what some feminist movements discovered in the twentieth century: removing explicit power structures and hierarchies didn't put everyone on equal terms, it just made the power differences less transparent and regulatable.

Of course, anarchists are free to say whatever they want: the very fact that there basically haven't been any state-equivalent anarchist communities existing for a long time in recent memory means they're free to theorycraft to their heart's content. You don't have to grapple with any flaws if your system doesn't actually exist.

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

#810

Post by natmaka » Mon, Sep 07, 2020, 11:09 AM UTC

bufferoverflow wrote: post #808

natmaka wrote: post #804

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> who enforces the contract? In any healthy small community everyone tries to, in order to keep a good reputation. In case of misunderstanding any third party appreciated by both parties may act as a judge/referee. The need for a government, especially central, only arises when the group isn't anymore a community but a large set of (on average) loosely related and interacting persons. > Two people working together is…

And thus you invented government. As soon as you have an independent third party deciding who is right, that's your judicial branch. And then you will need the police to enforce the decisions of that judge/referee. And then when you start having insane judges who rule that raping a child is perfectly fine, you will want to stop it, and thus you will invent your standardized laws.

> As soon as you have an independent third party deciding who is right, that's your judicial branch

There IMHO is major differences between "a single government, dedicated to regulate" (which attracts people willing to control others, often letting the most unscrupulous gain power) and "any chosen third party".

Where most people are most of the time reasonable they will oppose insanity, if necessary forcefully.