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

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

#811

Post by learnstats2 »

tuesdayrain wrote: post #243
sudosysgen wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right, so you agree that it's better for you to have very limited power and exist without authority, in which case you'd have to confirm to most social norms or suffer consequences, than for authority to exist and for people like you to accede to it? Because in our system, if you were to accumulate enough authority it wouldn't be in your interest anymore to follow laws.

It's only better for me in an idealistic scenario where my local militia succeeds. If a bigger and stronger one comes around then my life could quickly become horrible.

I think it's very naive to think a local militia system of government would work like the game Top Trumps.

You'd still have a bunch of people thinking you are a jerk - the reason your life might quickly become horrible is because you've been a jerk to pretty much everyone by claiming that you need to rule them by force.

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

#812

Post by TulliusCicero »

haroldp wrote: post #478
username90 wrote: post #454

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Ancaps believe that street wars would be notably unprofitable, and competing "rights enforcement agencies" would quickly normalize their relations with one another, in the same way that we don't see Uber and Lyft shooting each other up. > in what way would private police be different from a Mafia? If you didn't like the service you were getting, you could stop paying for it.

I mean, street wars are unprofitable in the large to gangs, and yet they still happen.

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

#813

Post by TulliusCicero »

haroldp wrote: post #628
joseluis wrote: post #520

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry Mr. Gangster we are not gonna need your business protection services any more... Yes, I can see it now. What could even go wrong with the privatization of violence?

I mean... what you are describing as a worst case is actually the current system.

No, it's not. The current situation is not privatized. Police are beholden to government leaders, who are elected.

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

#814

Post by TulliusCicero »

haroldp wrote: post #654
mhuffman wrote: post #652

Earlier quoted context omitted.

... or protection for the rich only. Which leaves the poor to have to come up with other ways to get protection, which opens the door for a local "strongman", which turns into a type of government, rinse, repeat.

Poor people pay for their policing today, but don't get much for their money.

Yes, but they'd likely get even less from private policing. That the current situation is bad isn't a good reason to go and make it even worse.

I'd love to see how such a system works out in practice, but much like anarcho-communists, there's no real evidence, just theorycrafting.

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

#815

Post by murgindrag »

vidarh wrote: post #802
murgindrag wrote: post #776

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Your history is confused. You're confusing the French Revolution and the American Revolution. Change in Europe came primarily due to a working example in America. America was, in a very real sense, a beacon of hope and freedom for the rest of the world.

The French Revolution in isolation was entirely regressive. It led to a lot of unpredictable chaos AND it slowed productive change. An ill-executed plan is a setback. You can see what the example of the USSR did to Communism.

I think I started this thread by saying we need to push FOR something positive, rather than AGAINST something. That's prerequisite to positive change. Pushing for something requires a plan. That requires discussion, debate, open-mindedness, and a mixture of pragmatism and idealism. Mostly, it requires a lot of deep conversation and thoughtfulness.

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

#816

Post by bena »

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…

Is it just the names that bother you?

Anarchy is the "I can do it over the weekend" of politics. It glosses over so many details.

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

#817

Post by _lqaf »

stjohnswarts wrote: post #724
_jal wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you think Somalia is like some never-ending Stallone movie? Business still gets done. People work, get paid, buy things without knifing each other. It is true that without recourse to state institutions, there is more non-state-sanctioned violence, which is kind of definitional, but also true in absolute terms. But enormous amounts of daily interaction goes on with humans demonstrating perfectly normal abilities t…

Since there are a few places on the planet where anarchy sort of reigns like in Somalia, I would like to challenge my anarchic brethren to go try those places for even just 3 months and come back and tell me about their adventures.

First, you assume I'm an anarchist, simply because I'm trying to describe reality instead of pushing an agenda.

Second, you somehow think "scary place hurrr silly anarchist just doesn't want to admit..." is a killer argument. It is just slightly recast version of the "If you like communism so much then move to Russia" schoolyard silliness.

If you want to discuss how political theory intersects the real world, I love that stuff. If you just want to convince yourself anarchists are dumb, that's boring and I'm out.

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

#818

Post by bufferoverflow »

natmaka wrote: post #810
bufferoverflow wrote: post #808

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

People who are reasonable most of the time don't need that much laws to govern them. It's the cases of conflict, violence, murder, property ownership, property destruction, and other negative things that inevitably lead to the invention of government, judges, police, prisons. Every country in the world has them, and for multiple reasons.

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

#819

Post by djur »

the_other wrote: post #730
djur wrote: post #559

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it possible to transition to anarchy in a geopolitical environment of competing nation-states? How would an anarchizing state in the process of gradual self-dismantlement outcompete more centralized states in economic and military terms?

The same ways any small country survives more than a few years.

The way most small countries have survived in the past century is to rely on the protection of a larger state with a powerful military and/or on international treaty organizations (UN, NATO, OAS, etc.) which derive their influence from those state militaries.

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

#820

Post by djur »

brbrodude wrote: post #763
djur wrote: post #550

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem with Chomsky as a resource for anarchism is that 1) his anarchism is sui generis, and he doesn't tend to cite or be in conversation with other anarchist thinkers and 2) his anarchism is utopian, and he doesn't begin to outline a program to accomplish it. In practice he's really more of a social democrat whose vision of anarchism basically resembles a self-organizing social democracy with minimized state c…

Again this is taking the position that anarchism would need it's "government program" to justify itself and then maybe society could see about moving over to that program, I don't think that's the point, as I've argued in my previous comment.

Unless you see anarchism as inevitable, you need to persuade people that it's superior to statism, or else people will keep on creating states.
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