So I understand what anarchy is, but what I don't get is why anyone would actually want this or consider it as a valid option against having laws and a government. I guess what I'm looking for is someone (or many someones) whom actually believes it as being a viable option to explain to me why it would be better, because all I can think of are ways that it would be worse. Discuss.
You've got the right idea already. I hope you don't expect anything in favor of it that will make any sense. Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! The things is, the ONLY people who try to promote such an idiotic system have practically NO experience with the real world and don't understand even the most basic things about human nature. They somehow expect people to somehow magically drop the very things that make humans people. Things like greed, laziness, ambition, the desire to control and have power over others, etc. And NONE of that is going to change or go away.
Actually some people misread what Anarchy is. Anarchy in essence is no order other than Entropy (Which is Chaos Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! ) It's not exactly what you'd want for a future of society, in fact it's what you usually get when a particular government is ousted from seat by rebellion and there is nothing to fill the void. (Somalia is a good example) The "Fashionable" Anarchy that a number of people want, isn't so much anarchy, they want something that is actually Democracy, where individuals can vote on policies rather than having representatives voted on to make policies. Such a system still requires a certain amount of Hierarchy to make sure that the policies can be suggested, opinion raised on them and action taken on the direction that the majority favour. Some obviously liken this to "Mob Rule" however if it's done correctly it would take weeks for decisions to be made and require debates on radio, television and through the internet medium in an attempt to make sure that all the angles of the policy are fully understood. It could even be suggested to encourage Technocracy through asking professionals of the various professions to add their thoughts on the issues that are raised. It's much like various governments attempts to get people to pre-sort rubbish, in the sense that the policies and operation of the government is pre-sorted by the public to lessen the overall bureaucracy at the government level. It's obviously an Idealist reasoning to how a country could run, but currently no government or people has chosen to fully adopt it to replace the tried and tested methods of old. (Which usually get termed corrupt).
In that case you'd get just what Stryder said - chaos. No structure, no order - just everyone for themselves and the strongest with the best weapons come out on top. Until another stronger one comes along...
My thoughts exactly, however some would advocate this style of self-governing. Funny thing is that once the strongest was established you would essentially have a crude, tribalistic government.
I think it's a worthy ideal. Imagine a society where everyone was more or less good, not overly greedy or violent, they wouldn't need any laws or government.
For me, when I was in my twenties, that's what anarcho-syndicalism was about...the ideal that we could all learn to live in a directly democratic society, respect each other, get along... What the hell was I thinking?:shrug: We're all a bunch of evil little monkeys flinging poo at each other. Eventually I realized I'd have to shoot a lot of people to bring about my wonderful society and I was totally not on board with shooting anyone over it.
I think anarchy would "break down" eventually, when they realized that coordinated activity amounted to a kind of government anyway, so why not just make it permanent? It's just easier to have some kind of order.
This would only be possible if earths natural resources were evenly distributed throughout its surface.
That pretty much sums it up. And where do you draw the line between someone being just a little greedy and someone who is TOO greedy? And the same with lazy, and ambitious, and the same with subversive, and the same with... Before you were through, you would have had to eliminate well over 90% of the population.
Yeah, I know... So when I get the remanned Kalashnikov with the happy shiny drum mag and the pretty bayonet, I should definitely get a reloading kit as well...Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! Might need a backhoe too... Misanthropic? ME???
Although I cannot claim to have an encyclopedic knowledge about how society would function without government, I am fully responsible for the unit of civilization I do have absolute expertise and control over, myself. As a sovereign individual I renounce the initiation of force on peaceful people, and vow to uphold voluntary interactions as a universal ideal. To demonstrate the presence of the violence that I reject contrast the theist position with the statist one, noting that average bible-thumpers are content to leave it up to God to initiate violence against me in the afterlife for having different beliefs, whereas statists are very enthusiastic about throwing me into a cage RIGHT NOW should I refuse to go along with their plans. You often see the left and the right boast gleefully about watching their political opponents being forced to submit to this or that government intervention, meaning that neither can honestly plead ignorance about the state being rooted in violence. Though of course many try very hard to obfuscate this unambiguous fact of reality. I think it tells an awful lot about how confidant someone is in the ethical veracity of their belief system, when they not only force it on you, but insist that it is not force and that you are crazy for even entertaining the thought of acting as though it is not force. So in this sense what I advocate for is the consistent application of rules. I think the world is stuck largely on what Lawrence Kohlberg identified as the pre-conventional or conventional levels of moral development, codifying in the form of religion and the state primitive behavioral adaptations emerging from the fear of disease, death and other people in a harsh, unforgiving world. Thankfully, none of us have ever really signed any contracts agreeing to have masters. There may exist some charismatic guy on TV who calls himself the president, the king, or the son of god. But the whole concept of having masters is very silly. The statist hypothesis is generally accepted as the sane position simply because we are saturated with its memes from an early age. It has nothing to do with innate virtue as the best of all possible worlds. Devotion to statist or religious ideologies is a response to the trauma of never developing a fully autonomous adult self. This is because natural power disparities between adults and children dictate that the young are not permitted to develop moral narratives, particularly about their society, that undermine the dominant authoritarian mythology. I have found that adults, unconsciously driven by the belief in original sin, something along the lines of the Freudian concept of innate destructive drives, or the outmoded and erroneous practices of behaviorist pedagogy inadvertently but inevitably smother the spark out of most children. This is because society is a rigidly corrugated box that can only interpret behavior within the context of the logic and rules of the box. So the box is perfectly suited for making sure nobody ever tips the box over to let in real sunlight. This brings us to the question of human nature. I would argue that ones view of human nature is really ones view of children, though of course children are chameleons that adapt to any environment, which is why I'd say we really do not need governments to cope with the disastrous consequences of human adaptation to a world that has governments. These propositions are testable self-evident truths of every day life. The freedom to associate with whoever you chose IS anarchy. By contrast statism is the anti-social paradigm that forces you to fund the most unconscionable specimens of depravity (the Afghan kill team, Bradley Manning's torturers, banksters, drug-warriors, the IRS, Dick Cheney, public schools etc) while being fed endless propaganda about how it is all for the greater good. But it is nothing more than social Darwinism that rewards corruption and punishes responsibility. Forced relationships are the root cause of evil. Voluntary relationships are the root cause of virtue. Any sociopath with a working brain cell in his head will look for work with the government, the organization where violence is perceived as virtue by the masses. But you do not eradicate bad people from the the world by giving them the keys to a ready-made tax farm that most people will instinctively avoid questioning for fear of slave on slave attack, even while totalitarianism is spreading its talons over the necks of a de-clawed, dumbed down, buttered up, and thoroughly distracted livestock. Those who claim to have all the answers, as statists do, are living in Wonderland. In a stateless society there will still be laws, but there will be no arbitrary authority unilaterally imposing ten-thousand commandants like some tired bronze aged Messiah. People will not be operating on the rules of the state propaganda matrix. Through voluntary associations we will stop relying on big daddy government to solve all problems and start talking to one another. We will recognize the simple truth that the initiation of the use of violence on peaceful people logically cannot form the basis of a peaceful society, just as it cannot form the foundation of healthy inter-personal relationships. The state is a concept that describes large scale interpersonal relationships organized by the use and threat of force initiated by a minority of people, some who wear funny costumes, and others who just look good on Television. But it is as nonsensical to insist that we need government to be good as it is to say we need religion to be good. Both are systems defined by a slave morality that conflate virtue with power, obedience with goodness, identity with collectivity, and violence with peace. It is time to put down the gun and see the farm for what it is.
Exactly. All roads lead to regulation. What we have to do is find the best form of it. Not argue about non sensical things like "more" or "less", but actually find out what works and what doesn't and not let outdated pure ideologies stand in the way. It's not the size of it. It's how you use it.
Lot's of prose and word salad to not have said very much. What's interesting the most about this tirade is what I highlighted in bold and italics: An extremely hypocritical accusation since that's exactly what you claim to be doing here!!:bugeye:
@ psyche: Please read this following wikipedia page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antisocial_personality_disorder#Sociopathy Keep in mind that these sorts of arise in all societies. Much less in Asian ones, but even there. Please also keep in mind that once sociopathic traits are set into a maturing personality, there is no known way to get them out...some people do manage to, but it's a choice on their part. The really strongly sociopathic do not care about others. In order to have an anarchic society...you would have to have people who identify far more strongly with others than they do now, such that they would not harm others, will always respect them, et cetera. I realized that if this were to come about it would take a multigenerational change in behavior and child-rearing practices. The flip comment I made about shooting lots of people? Not so flip, really. The only way to have a peaceful society with no government is to only have the sort of people around who can live in a peaceful society with no government. You can do that through a very slow evolutionary process or mass executions... :shrug: As far as statists having all the answers? No. I generally think a democracy in which more is decided directly rather than through (non)representatives would be better. The reason is, the more people have input: (a) more people will be committed to the decision (b)it would seem to increase the chance that the likely best decision was made But I'm a minority, and my rights aren't supported by the majority...so I still think the individual-rights exceptions are very fine things.
