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

I'd say this is just a convincing argument that we can't leave it to government to fix society then.

With respect to your points about capitalism. Yea sure. I think that to create a society that better respects the rights of workers and ensures that people live good lives. You'll see countries that are considered even more capitalistic than the US like the Nordics have really good government that they vote for and participate in, and they have great protections for workers. But they also pay for those things with higher taxes. The issue in the US is just that we don't believe the government can effectively do those things (and for decent enough reasons) so we just sit in this vicious cycle. Nobody wants to fix things.

> there is a reason the US was founded to have an electorate of white, land owning men.

Well there's a few reasons, but part of why we have a republic instead of a direct democracy is because the founders were worried about mobs of uneducated voters causing the government to do really dumb things. At the time the only educated people were white, land-owning men. If you can't trust your fellow citizens right now to vote, then I'm not sure why you'd trust them with even more power. To me it seems day in and day out I'm more and more convinced Americans shouldn't even be allowed to vote on account of how many dumb decisions we make. We don't deserve a republic or democracy. Fat, lazy, entitlement mentality for far too many.

> That is, for anarchism to work, you need people to simply "all get along".

For current society to work, we all also have to get along, right? I walk down the street nobody robs or kills me, my boss pays me at the end of the month, the power company supplies me with a service as long as I pay for it... aren't we all "getting along"? Of course, there are fringe players, but they are fringe. Anarchism doesn't magically assume everyone everywhere is a well-intentioned player for it to work, no more than capitalism.

> You live in a community with 100 people, under anarchism. Those 10 stand up. They state that they run the place. They have guns. Now what?

How would this be different under capitalism, if 10% of a community rose up with guns? Answer is the same as with anarchism: people would fight back. I don't understand how this is hard to comprehend. It's called Anarchism, not Pacifism. Do you really think anarchists just roll with the punches with everything bad thrown at them? How can you even think that's possible to propose as a system?

Anarchists don't believe, however, in a lap-dog class of the system as the Police exist today. Individuals can be chosen to serve or volunteer as community defense agents, since as I've mentioned _illegitimate_ authority is what Anarchism rails against.

> yet that involves government, in that, you need to pay and organize and on and on and on.

Anarchism is not 100% opposed to systems of governance - it only mandates they are fairer than the current ones. Community councils, if agreed upon by said community, are valid. Just not imposed on them.

> The "old ways" you speak of, are pretty much accepted by people 10 to 100

So was Feudalism - your point?

> If you think that "most people under (what?) 30? 40? 25? believe in anarchism, you are sadly mistaken.

Have I said that? I said as conservatives give away to newer generations, those will be more amenable to different systems of government (precisely because the current one isn't working for them).

> I've listed them, others have, but all you care to espouse is that "I don't like the current governmental system" and "we'll just handle it without organized government".

I don't think you can vote the Anarchists in and from Sunday to Monday we go from late-state capitalism to anarchism. It's a process, all deep change is - we're seeing the end of a neoliberalization process that started in the 70s.

But to think we're living in the best system we can because "it's accepted by people" is really poor, and a capitulation to a system that is visibly cracking. But don't mind me, keep hoping for incremental improvement and see where that gets us...

It's an excellent example to consider, since vaccines are in that category and some people's free choice to not take vaccines impacts the health of people who cannot take them for reasons of medical complication and now cannot rely on herd immunity to keep them safe.

> Reject property rights, and by extension territorial claims of states comes part and parcel with all left-libertarian ideologies.

While I like those ideologies for their moral purity, I think they fail in practicality for the reason you've just described: they're unstable. Another group with organized use of force and a willingness to take and hold territory displaces them, and then they get to define their actions as just in their moral framework, regardless of what the libertarians think.

I think this is the best question I have been asked in this thread.

As you might imagine, ancaps are very into this topic and have done a pretty good job of thinking through all the little details. The answer to almost all these questions is something like, "It would work just like it does now, but you would voluntarily choose who to pay for the service, instead of a government having a monopoly on it, so you could fire them if you weren't satisfied".

CPS seems like a genuinely difficult problem though. For that matter, it's a tough problem in the current system.

If you ran a rights enforcement agency, what would be the fall-out for you for interceding in a child abuse situation? Or for having one reported, but choosing to not intercede? What kind of liability would interceding expose you to? If you heard that in real 2020 America, Uber had directed its drivers not to report suspected child abuse, and Lyft had the opposite policy, would that influence who you hired?

Great question.