During University, I was a believer in co-ops as a form of organization. I lived in and was actively involved in student housing co-ops. During grad school, I lived in a large house with 12 other people. I was the house organizer, and arranged for and paid for our internet service. Everyone else in the house gave me ~$5/mo.
Except one person, who opted out. This person was a self-described anarchist activist, and extremely active from what I could see (lots of anarchist events, protests, marches, etc.). Halfway through the year, I discovered they had just “borrowed” the password from someone else in the house almost straight away, and used the connection as much as anyone.
So the anarchist activist (who would happily give you an unsolicited lecture on how “self-organizing” works), couldn’t even self-organize with his 12 house mates, and instead let a bunch of broke students cover them. (And this person wasn’t under-privileged or anything. I’m pretty sure their education wasn’t self-funded.)
So, yeah — even if you limit an anarchist society to just the true believers, I don’t think it’s gonna work.
It's sometimes a shame when the idea these believers, not just anarchists, present might be plausible yet they can't argument it in such way that would make sense to ordinary people.
Often of course it springs from some emotional experience that keeps the whole fervor running. I guess once it has become such a big part of their identity to admit that they are wrong, is an earth-shaking blow to their ego which makes its critical examination especially painful.
--
https://www.consumerfreedom.com/2004/08/2628-hyperbolic-hypo...
PETA Senior Vice President MaryBeth Sweetland on her use of insulin, which was tested on animals:
“I’m an insulin-dependent diabetic. Twice a day I take synthetically manufactured insulin that still contains some animal products — and I have no qualms about it … I’m not going to take the chance of killing myself by not taking insulin. I don’t see myself as a hypocrite. I need my life to fight for the rights of animals.”
—Glamour, January 1990
Such people, generally people on the extreme side of any debate, are often not rational. Not always of course, but.. often.
Even if this person abandoned all her belongings and moved to the middle of nowhere, all her knowledge is still the direct product of societies that have been using animals for (at least) the past 10,000 years.
In 1990 insulin production was derived from animals.
Similarly, I'm not all that obsessed with stopping climate change, but I don't think there is a substantive criticism when people talk about Al Gore or whoever flying to climate conferences.
The fundamental reason I think purported hypocrisy is irrelevant, is that generally organizations and people who are trying to change the world are not part of a religion that is imposing a standard of personal morality.
There is always going to be human and animal suffering, and there's always going to be something made of hydrocarbons burning somewhere. The goals people have involve reducing the amount.
I still think mass animal farming is grotesque and that we should end all factory farming immediately and seriously question our assumptions about animals as legal property.
Are you saying that in a world where life saving medicine requires animal products that those who use such a medicine cannot legitimately criticize the use of animals in science? It seems to me actually those with little choice in the matter have the most to make noise about. They need help from the rest of society to change the way the medicine is produced. They cannot do that themselves.
As a vegan I can completely understand why someone who believes in animal rights would compromise for life saving medicine. I also do not think you or anyone else has to be vegan, but I do think it’s important to talk about.
Honestly your comment reminds me of Mr Gotcha: https://thenib.com/mister-gotcha/
You cannot oppose all animal testing, say it is morally wrong under all circumstances, then ... because you're fighting to end it, say in your special little case -- it is OK.
PETA representatives have often said that killing animals, is not worth saving one human life.
Such broken logic indicates that this person thinks that they are special. They aren't, they could die tomorrow, and some other pro-PETA person could become VP. They are, quite literally, saying it is OK for countless humans to die, due to a lack of animal testing, but that for them?
Special little them?
It's OK.
They have further stated that using animal tested products is 100% morally wrong. Except, of course, for Special People which are 'in the fight'.
This is far different from saying "We need to work to end animal testing".
Out of purely academic interest, how are you not bothered by the clear contradictions in that logic?
> we ultimately need to end animal testing
and,
> work hard to eliminate animal testing
One is known as a universal; animal testing shouldn't be done regardless of the consequence. The other is a much weaker standpoint. You've taken the extreme condition of "cheeseburger" where most people would say there doesn't exist anyone who can't reasonably switch to a non-animal product - but what about cosmetic products which people use to help their self-confidence (acne treatments and what not), can those be tested on animals?
By what metric do you choose what's necessary and what's not in the meantime? Your own example of leather boots isn't directly survival related i.e. you don't die if you don't have them.
The final problem is that it's not an unreasonable hypothesis that there will be products which will always be needed to be tested on animals (such as medicines) - is it morally correct in your worldview that we continue to pursue such products?
No, the boots aren’t life saving. I bought them the first year that I became vegan, when I was focused on adjusting to a vegan diet. I got a new job and looked around but couldn’t find any suitable work boots that were vegan. I actually still have not been able to find them. I will say that I was experiencing some ankle problems including an incident where my ankle gave out on stairs, so it was important for me to get good supportive boots.
Two years in and the boots are still working well, but it is super frustrating that I can’t find work boots made from canvas or whatever. I am very happy with my vegan diet but I know I have more work to do rooting animal products out of my life.
Edit:
That said my problem may have been looking for “vegan boots” or “canvas boots” rather than “vegan work boots”, which seems to return some helpful results, including this nice page from PETA: https://www.peta.org/living/personal-care-fashion/vegan-work...
That same staff member lamented that her sister had gotten her some N95 masks, but she was prohibited from wearing them. I can imagine if Covid continues much longer (as it will until we find a magic vaccine, as there is no societal will to contain it), enforcement of the rules will become even more mechanical and unforgiving. Glaringly suboptimal outcomes imposed by top-down structure is a tyranny anarchists take issue with. Although the group behavior around Covid shows why the ideal is ultimately impractical for everyone, I still consider myself a libertarian.
I would clarify that they have not gotten a studentship either.
A co-op doesn't magically suppress all problems and abuse.
It sets up a context where they can be dealt with without any "big thingie" (in most cases some government body).
Therefore what did you do after discovering the abuse, and what were the effects?
More generally anyone paying for Internet access should receive some explanation about why the gateway/router/hotspot/wotever password must be kept secret.
When someone abuses (be it a neighbor or a member of the co-op) you brief everyone authorized to access ("NEVER give the password") then change the password, hardening it if you suspect that it was discovered by bruteforcing.
If the freerider is in the co-op you may first explain the situation to him, then ask him to either pay his future share, or abstain from using this service. If you are unhappy with his reaction you may talk about it to the other members of the co-op when briefing them, maybe with a proposal (to give the boot to the free rider, to have everyone lesson him...) and ask for other proposals.
This situation (freeloader in the co-op) seems better to me than the classic one, where the freeloader is a neighbor. Confronting a neighbor may lead to unpleasant experiences (you first have to discover which neighbor is the culprit, he may try to deny or to punch you, or ack whatever you say then abuse again...).
> 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 hierarchies bad/selfish people don't amass power so everyone else can actually handle them on equal terms.
> Considering how Epstein was able to morph the whole political landscape to defend himself for over a decade, uh, any alternative can seem pretty reasonable.
Like half the comments on this thread are variations of "well bad people exist" and it's maddening because bad people exist in this system! And they're extremely powerful! We 100% do not deal with them largely because of the systems that are in place.
This doesn't really ring true to me. In a society where hierarchy is removed, the bad people will form a hierarchy to create power. It being "not allowed" in that society doesn't mean it won't still happen, due again to the people being "bad" in the first place. Two bad people will form a group and use that to derive power over any non-grouped individuals. Or 10 bad people over smaller groups, etc..
Socio-political issues tend to be more complex in causal factors than political rhetoric can possibly bare.
Look at how conservatives re-evaluate the value of "BLM" at every opportunity since it represents all Black politics to them even though Official BLM is a distinct political group in the Black community of whom not every Black person agrees with the stated manifesto on their website, there being more than enough easily searchable YouTube videos to learn the opinion of various Black commentators.
I mean, you can essentially formulate any world view that takes any clearcut stance into the in-group and out-group dynamic. People who are pro democracy are looking for a world without oligarchy/monarchy, making those who want to consolidate power around a few people as the out group. Etc..
For the market to be manipulated, you would need something that lives outside of market rules, namely politicians who can use violent threats to shape the market to benefit them and their friends.
In both cases, if we get rid of a government and we move law making and law enforcement in the hands of the free market, we end up with a system which is the closest representation of what citizens want. It may not fair or just according to someone's ideals, but it would be a close reflection of what people wants and it would remove the form of violence which is most commonly perpetrated in the world: state initiated violence.
All systems of economics are also systems of power. If the only system of power is the economic one than your economy is your de facto government.
If a structure for “governmental“ power is identical to the economic structure you have zero ability to fix abusive power imbalances when they eventually arise. It’s the same reason it’s good to have many checks and balances within government itself. Every structure has flaws, and any singular structure of power will have it’s flaws exploited unchecked.
In contrast, anarchists are usually opposed to having any state whatsoever. The ideology tends towards being far more extreme and uncompromising.
It is to your credit that you haven't had a similar reaction to those who oppose racism.
You have to realize there are truly evil people out there. People who will assault innocent people, who will torture, who will rape, who will murder, who will do all of the above to a toddler. And will force the parents to watch. I don't want to live in a society where such people are simply let go, or get some bullshit therapy and let go.
At least in a flat society you’d have an equal say to advocate for w/e you thought is just.
Personally for me, and many others who lean left, prison or death doesn’t sit right because it doesn’t address the root of the problem and it’s often used to quash dissent. This is perhaps what you find unsatisfying but if you were magically placed into an anarchist community you’d have more ability to advocate for what you thought was fair.
Just don't pretend like killings of career criminals resisting arrest (like George Floyd) is what we're talking about.
With no laws, no police, no jails, no courts, and no justice system, everyone on of those incredibly evil people mention in the prior comment goes 100% free to continue their reign of terror.
Yet, of course, that's exactly the same as some people who slip through the cracks of a justice system that catches many such people a year. Prosecutes them with attempts to be fair. Puts them in jail so they can't hurt others.
Yup. Because someone might slip through the cracks, well.. that's precisely the same as what the prior poster said!
What a false equivalency.
The end result is, you need to be able to use violence, against those willing to use it against you. Note, that can be a last step, but without it?
Those who care not about stern looks, "talking tos", or cold shoulders will literally take everything you have, and kill everyone.
So now you fall to mob rule, lynchings, and what? Power of the strong man?
As soon as you organize, to provide for a response to organized thugs/criminals/rapists/murderers, you now have a government. That's how governments came into creation ; shared defense.
And you need that 24x7. And the people doing it for the community need to be paid. And you need a way to judge, and sentence, and on and on and on.
You cannot simply wave this away.
Second, it doesn't really matter. Two people working together is pretty much politics. It's government. It leads there. Cooperation requires coordination.
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.
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.
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.
Anarchy is the "I can do it over the weekend" of politics. It glosses over so many details.
As an addendum, in an anarchic society victimless crimes wouldn't be crimes so there would be significantly less people to imprison / execute / send to force labour camps.
I think most anarchists believe in self defense. So in that sense the really bad people are self-eliminating -- they try to kill and instead they get dead, and then they don't bother anybody anymore.
Obviously this is imperfect, but it doesn't seem dramatically more imperfect than the status quo.
Notice that for the would-be murderers who aren't deterred by the threat of death, you have to do the fight to the death even under the existing system.
So if that's all the defense Anarchism has from murderers, it will definitely have more murderers than any society that adds any extra countermeasures.
It's obviously easier to "catch" a murderer while you're still in the room with them than after they have a ten hour head start and you have to depend on unreliable third party testimony to even identify them.
But how do you stop a bad person from amassing power in an anarchist system?
As a simple example, how would you deal with highway robbers? Those were omnipresent in societies before states gained strength.
A community can decide to cast someone out, reprimand them, imprison them, etc. The whole idea of restorative justice can actually exist when a community is able to address it.
How can you throw them out? Prevent them from returning?
Do you think the robbers will just stop, because you said "Stop!". I feel like you're trolling here. I could of course be wrong, but it feels that way.
I hope Merriam-Webster clears that up:
"Definition of government
1 : the body of persons that constitutes the governing authority of a political unit or organization"
I did say that a specific political system was madness. If you want to discuss "What about in 1000 years", yeah -- OK.
But we're talking about now, humans today.
And anarchy does not, and will not, work. It ignores significant human behaviour.
There have been attempts at large, nation-scale anarchist communities, like revolutionary Catalonia, or Makhnovia, but the most fundamental problem they have isn't functioning well, but simply continuing to exist. Without a strong state, they seem to just fall over to competing states or forces. And this isn't very easily fixed within anarchism, because the whole point is to not have a state, and certainly not a strong one.
The most fundamental flaw for a large anarchist, state-equivalent community, is the inability to resist state or state-like forces both internally (revolution/civil war) and externally (other states invading or taking territory). While certainly anarchists theorycraft on how this issue can be fixed, out in the real world, well, it hasn't happened yet, so it remains theorycraft.
Even some of the real-life examples anarchists point to, like Rojava, aren't really very anarchist; Rojava still has plenty of police, for example, which is a very un-anarchist thing to have around.
Why?
The second you mentioned 'boomers', you mentioned what is very specifically an American phenomenon. It certainly isn't a Chinese, Russian, Japanese, South African, or, well, the "rest of the world" phenomenon. To me, this makes me think you are viewing the world from a US perspective, without any attempt to see things from outside that prism.
On top of that, the wild assertion that "boomers" somehow created an authoritarian government is beyond incomprehensible. While every generation has its flaws, yes every single generation, boomers were the hippie generation.
Yes, hippies. The "free love" movement, anti-authoritarian counter culture that quite literally existed in highly conservative Western post-war cultures. The level of protest, anti-materialism, anti-corporate stance which hippies took, particularly in the US, far, far, far outweighs anything seen in the decades since.
Of course, like every other generation since, for thousands and thousands of years, once they aged they became just like those they wanted to replace.
But, let's walk away from the fact that boomers = hippies, and hippies protested, fought, and died in protests en mass, and even enacted some real change. Let's look at the overall assertion here.
You're claiming republics were "obvious", and that this somehow sparked an instantaneous move from feudal, to republic. Yet in many places, these changes took literally centuries. And the powers of Kings were very gradually eroded, sometimes with blood, and other times with threat of blood.
Even "revolutionary" moments in most Western cultures were smaller stepping stones, each effecting smaller sections of culture about governing, and self-governing.
And really, suffrage for the "common person", for example, is less than 100 years old in many democracies. Like the UK, Canada, the US. In fact, for many cases, less than 50 years!
And this change was gradual too. For example, in the UK with Lords challenging the King's right to tax, creating the "House of Lords", or the modern Senate. Or, the allowance of freemen with significant land, or land rental, being allowed to vote.
It wasn't until 1918 that all white men in the UK could vote, and women/everyone else at 1928.
This was a gradual, step by step change, each transformative, but each fought for.
Now ... I have no doubt change will come, for there is nothing that ever remains static.
However, what you are suggesting is that people will simply "all get along". Literally, that is what anarchism suggests. For, you cannot compel people to leave, or stop them from doing things you don't want, if you do not use violence as an end tool.
If you have a counter to this, a realistic, logical, sensible counter to the idea that people will just all be nice to one another? I'd love to hear it.
I really would.
I used boomer as a shorthand for "person rooted in the old ways" all over the world, not just US older citizens.
> Of course, like every other generation since, for thousands and thousands of years, once they aged they became just like those they wanted to replace.
Yes, they both sold out and are watching from the bleachers as things get progressively worse (rate of home ownership, food stamp usage, life expectancy). Don't tell me what they did in their early teens/twenties absolves them from criticism.
> However, what you are suggesting is that people will simply "all get along".
OK, this response has put me firmly in the "you need to really read about anarchism a bit, bbarnett" camp. Anarchism doesn't magically will away human tendencies to lie, cheat and want to have power over others. It simply turns the tables on illegitimate authority.
A 2 min browse over Wikipedia could have netted you:
"anarchists are opposed to irrational (e.g., illegitimate) authority, in other words, hierarchy – hierarchy being the institutionalization of authority within a society."
For anarchists, the centralization of political power is the cause of cronyism and ineffective representative democracy. Practical solutions include decentralization and strengthening of local power. As for police work, community policing and other proposals are part of anarchist manifestos.
It doesn't take a genius to realize democracy as it stands today has failed us. Stricter gun control, for example, is something the overwhelming majority of US voters want and yet it will probably never be enacted. The problem is centralization, the problem is authority without legitimacy. Anarchism doesn't want to abolish the rule of law, it aims to humanize it.
It has nothing to do with a mythical need to change human nature - in fact, it gels with it much more than the current status quo. Of course, like socialism, the word has been tainted over the years. But before you criticize it further as a "mad fantasy", you should probably know what it is you're criticizing. This is a good book to get you started https://www.amazon.com/Fragments-Anarchist-Anthropology-Para...
You do. You really, honestly do.
All of the methods which anarchists list to deal with rapists, murderers, or even just a guy that stands up and says "OK, the 10 of us have decided we're going to form a democratic government, and you're all part of it", don't seem to hold water.
For example, that last one. 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? And what if that number is 40 out of 60?
I've heard "shunning", "banishment", and I've heard "hired guns". I've also heard of "local police power", yet that involves government, in that, you need to pay and organize and on and on and on. And all your concerns leak therein.
I think you need to be honest with yourself. The "old ways" you speak of, are pretty much accepted by people 10 to 100. If you think that "most people under (what?) 30? 40? 25? believe in anarchism, you are sadly mistaken.
And there is a reason for that.
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".
> 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...
But I wanted to do you the courtesy of saying I'm done discussing, instead of just ghosting this thread.
Have a good one.
Some people just give 0 fucks about anyone besides themselves.
Most people give 0 fucks about anyone outside of a moderate group of acquaintances and friends.
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.
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... )
That said, I agree with your criticism of communism / anarcho-syndacalism: if you remove capitalism, you are moving power into party politics, which creates even greater inequality to what we have today and explains the horror of communism we've seen in the past century.
I don't know why you interpreted my comment as being a criticism of communism or anarcho-syndicalism (it was just a probing question to understand what somebody thought anarchism would look like), and neither does your criticism of those ideologies make much sense. I don't think you actually know what anarcho-syndicalism is if you think it involves party politics.
The destruction of fiat currency wouldn't prevent the accumulation of valuable goods/commodities.
How is the current system of any consequence for you to live the anarchy dream? Why can't you just ignore it and do what you wanted to do in the hypothetical anarchy? If I had these beliefs (i.e. the lack of social hierarchy and organized violence to uphold it) I would be very happy as I could immediately live in my ideal society by just ignoring the existing hierarchy and organized violence since all I could do about it in the true anarchy I can do already (i.e. submit to the organized violence or die challenging it).
Concretely, most anarchists still have a sense of justice, possibly even a stronger one. Murdering someone and then succumbing to (possibly organized) violence makes sense. Smoking a plant and then being attacked does not.
This does not answer my question though. Why anarchists are not happy? Why can't they live in their desired society right now?
The freedom can be provided by the inhabitants of such land, either by getting weapons themselves or by paying some members of this community.
Consider a world where society lived by the anarchist principles. In that hypothetical world, most people self-organized in a large group where:
- They decided to democratically appoint representatives that flesh out large-scale agreements and called it law
- They decided it is necessary to have people dedicated to securing the lands where they live from both internal and external threats
... and so on and so forth, until they effectively self-organized into the equivalent of our current society.
Is there any difference between that world and ours? Why can't an anarchist assume that this is what actually happened (there's some merit to the idea) and be happy to live in an anarchist world, our world?
The core of anarchism is the heuristic of rejecting hierarchies and coercion. A negative doesn't make for a compelling mass movement, hence all the different flavors are attempts at imagining structures that could replace the current ones. They all have obvious potential failure modes, but the core remains - downsizing the structures of arbitrary authority.
As for answering your question, that's exactly what my comment attempted but you didn't engage with what I said. You're effectively just arguing against straw men, and have invoked yet another with "their CHAZ/CHOP".
My question is still not answered by this and I don't see how is this related at all, to be frank. It's almost as if your answer is not quite coherent.
> Some people think that murder for "dissing" them or being too rich/white/gay/smart/stupid/etc is just
The problem with your initial "question" and subsequent replies is that they revolve around a sophomoric understanding that collapses the philosophy into meaninglessness.
What I said in my first reply:
> What matters is the overall heuristic of trying to shrink the structures to be more local and manageable. Anarchism in all its various flavors isn't a prescription, but rather a rebuke of prescriptivism.
You may have a hard time seeing this as the essence of anarchism, as it is a general desire shared among most people. But really, we've got lots of anarchist thought in our political discourse. Blue team: drugs, prisons, nondiscrimination. Red team: guns, taxes, business regulations. But we have very little anarchism in our actual political results, except for maybe ancap for big businesses.
So, to prevent any possibility of stramaning, are you now saying that anarchism is disagreement with some laws and not the rejection of the institute of government?
True scotsman fallacy aside, what the top minds on anarchy think is not as relevant as what most people/anarchists understand of it, if we are talking about a non-hierarchical self-administering system, because performance of the system will approximate to the median (mis)understanding of them.
> 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.
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!
https://newpol.org/issue_post/the-return-of-democracy-by-lot...
My main concern with it, is that black people (and BLM supporters in general) are routinely excluded from jury duty in the US, so if there's a system in place that could exclude people from sortition, that would be ripe for abuse
The federalist papers spend a bit of time debating inevitable rise of factions and pluralism without a dominant faction ordained by the people.
Imagine the American government disbanding. The kingpins would be Silicon Valley and other West Coast Tech executives because of the sheer convenience afforded by us depending on their hardware (their ideas too) for most communication. People would adapt over time, but that's the issue: over time, people would adapt, not imminently. And the Tech executives would have far fewer barriers to implementing controls than the people would have the means to obstruct them.
I don't doubt for a second that Jeff Bezos would announce Amazon as a leader in "keeping us united as a society," while implementing a new policy in their warehouses that requires Safety teams to lash employees with a bamboo reed each hour if they have not met their rate.
The problem with anarchy, Libertarianism, socialism, communism, and so many similar-veined structures argued for is that these arguments so deeply idealize the end goal that they almost entirely are void of planned action during the transition.
We are physiologically engineered to take the path of least effort. Whatever minimal effort ensures the most survival. The downside to technology is an exponential drop in effort necessary for survival. We need look no further than how far off Reagan was about giving rich people more money in American capitalism (it worked until it snagged on steadily increased market instability, which has since caused massive crashes in 1987, 1996, 2001, and 2008, each time in different sectors and each time due to extremely risky and obviously absurd liability risks taken by the highest brackets of networth wherein any net loss on those decisions was guaranteed to be distributed, whereas any net benefit was guaranteed to be isolated in impact.) We can see this in social justice as well: Feminist organizers are struggling a lot right now after having envisioned a world where "misogyny" was eradicated, yet numbers across the board are going up... more sexual violence, more abuse, more online bullying, more conflicts with other civil rights' movements. The emphasis on a perfect vision has led some amazing women leading the movement to be targeted with abuse from other intersectional groups.
This is just a cursory perspective, and so much more nuance and detail is necessary to get a clear picture, but it is absolutely not as simple as saying, "Anarchy wants/doesn't want to abolish ___." Anarchy is one of a number of social philosophies that by nature are self-cannibalizing, and thereby illogical.
Your tech execs with all their modern technology can't do anything against a well trained, well organized group of people who will imprison or kill you if you don't do what they say. Or they can work together for an even worse dystopia.
That's anarchy. A few people will work out any issues with diplomacy, while most will band under some leaders and take what they want by force.
It's the same right now, except groups who have an oligopoly on violence (i.e. governments) are few and really big - everyone does what they say and in turn live in relative peace and decent conditions.
What you would get then is not a society that had evolved into anarchy by a natural process, and therefore had institutions appropriate to such a society. (Yes, a society that is a functioning anarchy will still have institutions. But none of them will have a monopoly on violence.)
What you would get instead would be a society that had evolved with a hierarchical set of centralized governments, which was then forcibly deprived of those governments, without restructuring all of the other institutions in the society that only exist in the first place because the society had centralized governments. Obviously this will be worse than either what we have now, or what we would have if we lived in a society that evolved into anarchy by a natural process. But that is irrelevant to the question of whether a society that evolved into anarchy by a natural process could be better than what we have now.
I see similar bad/evasive arguments from prison abolitionists, who have recently been given a higher profile as part of the push to defund the police.
What are you going to do with criminals, ask them to please stop victimizing others? No prisons? Not even for murderers? Really?
Looking back through human history, at all forms of tribal and political organization at all levels of complexity, you will always find violence and war. Those are not consequences of modern society or government.
Just like saying we can't reduce nuclear weapon counts in the us because russia and china are scary and we need them to stop them, we could still drastically reduce the count of them by about 100 without changing that.
In fact, the fear of those are the reason for government!
Chomsky usually defines anarchism [1] by saying powers and hierarchies have to justify themselves. Keeping people safe can be a reasonable such justification. The point is just that such powers should never be taken for natural, and always be questioned. If jailing doesn't probably make people safer, then it loses its justification.
That being said, there are certainly situations where people with anarchism (or anarchism-like) beliefs have essentially jailed people. For example YPG/YPJ forces in Rojava certainly took IS/ISIL forces they won over as prisoners.
PS: Never ever heard of an anarchist that thinks the US prison system is anywhere near of justifying itself though, but that's probably something all radical leftists agree on.
I don't think you have to even be left of the centre to realize the US jail system had serious flaws and need major reforms.
Just looking at the incarceration rates and the number of reoffences compared to international levels show that something is completely off.
Huh, that's not what I've heard. Anarchists I've seen talking are very strictly against explicit hierarchies, and prison obviously is very much that, since bare minimum you have prisoners at the bottom of the hierarchy there.
As a card carrying -archist, I think it should be pointed out that no -archy can be maintained unless most people behave reasonably most of the time, either.
I'm not sure what my point is, just that most people are reasonable, even government employees.
Befehl ist Befehl https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superior_orders
I just don't think this is true of humans. The good of is treat the ones close well but really don't treat distant people well. We are tribal by nature. Modern governments help restrain us from forming tribal lines and going to war with each other.
I certainly used to believe that, but recent years have damaged my faith.
If it weren’t for psychopaths we would not need passwords or encrypted passwords or security protocols, etc, etc., because everyone would behave in good fashion. But we don’t so we can’t.
And you know what? If the ticket didn't come with some threat of forceful punishment for no payment, I probably wouldn't have paid it, and I wouldn't be afraid of getting another one.
I also wouldn't pay taxes voluntarily, at least not nearly as much as I pay now.
I do these things because I am scared of the law. I don't think I'm unusual, and I don't think I'm a psychopath. So unless the threat model is only serious crime, I don't think psychopaths are the only issue. I think most people are not good players once a community grows large enough to afford anonymity.
Why do you think this? Have you ever actually been in an accident caused by the speed at which you were driving? Have you ever had a close call?
If the answer to either of those questions is yes, then you shouldn't have needed the ticket to make you drive more carefully; you already had much better feedback.
If the answer to both of those question is no, what makes you think the government bureaucrats who drafted the speeding laws are better than you, the person who is actually driving and seeing the road and whatever hazards are there, at judging a safe speed to drive?
> I also wouldn't pay taxes voluntarily, at least not nearly as much as I pay now.
Would you pay them if you could link them directly to benefits? Goods and services provided to you by the government? For example, suppose you were told that if you didn't pay taxes, you would not be able to call 911 and have the police or an ambulance come if you were in danger or needed medical assistance? Or that the US military would not protect you if a foreign country tried to invade?
I think most people's aversion to paying taxes is because they believe most of that money does not actually provide a net benefit, but gets wasted on things that either benefit no one, or cost more than the benefits they deliver.
> I think most people are not good players once a community grows large enough to afford anonymity.
You have anonymity right here on HN. You seem to be having a reasonable discussion and being a good player.
Hahahaha. You don't really think that all "hackers" are literally psychopaths do you? That's rather an amazing way to view the world, to be honest. Does it make it easier to go to sleep at night to attribute insanity to everyone who does anything you disagree with?
People don't like to sit at a table and talk it out, and if the results are not to their liking, they'll just abandon diplomacy and switch to violence.
They're not psychopaths, that's just primal survival instincts.
Actual psychopaths and sociopaths are a minority, although a pretty powerful one since they don't care about your unwritten, unenforced social norms.
Wherever something is wrong, something is too big.
That "notion" also goes against all available evidence.
Which seems contrieved, but ... gestures broadly at everything, everytime, everywhere.
Social power isn't something that can be created or destroyed, only redistributed and restructured. The point of government is to hopefully structure it in a way that funnels people's collective and individual desires towards useful efforts and impulses.
In any case, I think that most people have a baseline level of reasonableness for most situations. But it's useful to have government to handle the various edge cases, and define certain expectations.
More cynically, if some assholes are gonna have power over others one way or another, it's better if said assholes are in a relatively transparent democratic system, rather than just, like, warlords.
Really, the most basic criticism I have of anarchism is that it doesn't seem capable of meaningfully sustaining itself in the long term as a larger state-equivalent community. The most famous example anarchists seem to bring up is anarchist Spain, which doesn't inspire confidence in the ideology's ability to last more than a year or two if other state actors look at it the wrong way.
Really says it all.
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.
I actually like a lot of things about Freidman's work, but I don't think it would actually function. The issue is that at the end of the day it's still just armed gangs living in tension with each other. Peace is retained as long as it's more profitable than war, but that's no longer the case when one gang is stronger than the others. In our world, I think you'd pretty much immediately see Amazon Security Forces start annexing all their smaller neighbors, thus making ASF stronger so they can annex more and more. This scales up until there are just a few large organizations (ASF, Google Army, Exxon Defense Group, etc) who are equally enough balanced - or until there is only one. These large organizations have contiguous territories, borders, and monopolies on violence.
Anarchist just can't last. It's like try to make a sculpture of water. Even if you could shape it, it'll immediately move towards the lowest-energy state. Without something to stop them, the strong will immediately begin seizing power from the weak and ultimately culimnate straight back to governmental entities with monopolies on violence. Which is how we live now.
I think a central corruptible government is key to have massive corporations, I would expect the market not to be as centralised if starting a company were easier and if we didn't have regulations.
In case I'm wrong and we end up with a few massive competing law enforcement agencies, I still think it would be an improvement over the current system: law enforcement agencies would have an incentive at doing their job (unlike today, when more crime = people are less opposed to increase taxes and funding the police), competition would drive the cost of law enforcement down for consumers.
The government, in the end, is just an armed gang as well with a monopoly on violence.
No, they have an incentive to consolidate control over territory and eliminate competition. Those that 'do their job' will be outcompeted by those who simply conquer. There is no need to 'do your job' to get profits when you can just take physical power over the customer and take their money, take their house, enslave them as workers or sex slaves, etc.
The point is that these law agencies you're talking about quickly just become de facto governments (armed gangs with monopolies on violence). It would happen basically instantly.
Then we're back where we started, but without any of the gains we made since 1792.
how do they relate to anarchism?
and wouldn't a globaly organized democratic cooperative essentially eliminate anarchism?
Like, an actual libertarian (for example) should be able to make a good case for their perspective without making it sound like their chosen personal identity is somehow forcing them to see things in a particular way. People should think things because they are rational, not because they identify with an ideology that they allow to dictate their beliefs on the stuff that they haven’t done their homework on.
TL;DR you can identify a lot of bullshit and sloppy thinking if you listen to what someone says after they invoke the dreaded, “as a <blank>, I think that...” and anarchists are no exception.
> 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.
Yes, I can see it now. What could even go wrong with the privatization of violence?
That is a platitude that doesn't really reflect reality.
But we don't see them shooting each other up because there's the Leviathan with the big guns telling them not to. We do for example, still see plenty of war between drug cartels, even though the wars are extremely unprofitable. Yet if you win one, you get to control much more space and you're suddenly a lot more profitable than before.
This argument sounds good in theory, but given that we've had wars before in history, it needs some explanation why states and individuals act irrational in that regard all the time, but these new companies would not.
Do you think that 7-11 is itching to shoot up AM/PM? Would you still buy your Slurpies there if they stared?
> We do for example, still see plenty of war between drug cartels, even though the wars are extremely unprofitable.
Drug cartels are an artifact of the state. There are no drug cartels without drug prohibition.
> Yet if you win one, you get to control much more space and you're suddenly a lot more profitable than before.
Would you keep paying for cops that did that? Or hire different ones?
> This argument sounds good in theory
It's not my argument, especially. I'm not an anarchist. :)
> it needs some explanation why states and individuals act irrational in that regard all the time
I think that's very fair. But I think you will find that at the bottom of mafia violence is rational decision-making. But private rights-enforcement is a different game with very different rewards for the actors.
Not while it lasted. But generally, that's what happened before the nation states took over the monopoly of violence and enforced it with an iron fist. You may not see two mega companies go at it (they'll form a cartel), but want to set up a new shop next to 7-11? Good luck keeping the flames from spontaneously erupting all the time.
We've had private right enforcement before we've had public rights enforcement, or rather, public rights enforcement evolved from private rights enforcement. You went to your local nobility who had a bunch of men to do the violent enforcement, and they'd settle disputes for you. Still: war.
I'm not convinced it's a good idea to go back to a system that we've abandoned for its many issues, injustice and general inefficiency. Now, if you throw blockchain in there, that's a totally different story, of course! ;)
> in the same way that we don't see Uber and Lyft shooting each other up.
Do I need to point out the obvious here? Uber and Lyft are subject to whatever states they operate in, including those police forces.
The ancap police forces you're talking about would be subject to...what, exactly?
Would you still give Uber money if they were shooting up Lyft?
> The ancap police forces you're talking about would be subject to...what, exactly?
The voluntary support of their subscribers.
In the current context, no.
If street wars between rival ride sharing companies was the norm, then sure, maybe, along with everyone else. People are remarkably flexible when it comes to necessities.
Cabbies have been known to be racist as hell to black people for a long time, that didn't stop non-black people from taking taxis.
> The voluntary support of their subscribers.
Ah yes, and if they abuse others I'm sure their subscribers will withdraw their support, of course.
Curious, what's the ancap version of something like CPS?
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.
The idea of private policing being effective and reasonable is subject to the same ridiculous reasoning that anarchists use. At best you'd end up with some completely fucked up cyberpunk dystopian bullshit where corporations are governments in all but name.
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.
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.
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 anarchists try to explain how they would deal with the subset of people who are just real shitty in various ways, the responses have been either, a) in our utopia, you wouldn't have those problems, because hierarchy causes all of them, or b) increasingly convoluted and implausible-sounding ways to deal with crazy assholes without using force.