Absence of U.S. government in our private households has been showing us that anarchy (defined absence of government) clearly isn’t chaos, and that anarchy can work outside of our private households.
Discuss.
In anarchy, someone will inevitably try to use force to take control. I trust that current government (at least where I live) means more freedom and a better life than whatever strongman with guns would end up winning the scuffle in anarchy to take control. Plus, that scuffle would probably suck a lot.
I suspect your question might get a better reception in GD since anarchism really does not have a lot to do with any current elections. I think other posters will also post more stuff for you to chew on if you can also discuss a few of your own ideas in the thread that you started. For instance, I want to know more about your equivalency between household and state issues and what either really has to do with anarchism.
From mind, I’d say those things are not equivalent at all and belong in different spheres of thought, though, but YMMV.
A household is a very different thing than a country of 300 million. What works on a micro scale doesn’t scale up well. It’s like trying to apply kitchen table economics to the federal budget; they are not comparable, so the same principles do not apply.
To a large extent, if you could find candidates you can trust to run on an ‘I will do nothing (and tax nothing)’ platform, and people who would vote for them, you could do this. There are some things that the US government is mandated to do by the constitution, so you might need to pass a non-governing constitutional amendment.
This. You can scale anarchy up to around 200-odd people, probably not coincidentally the estimated “natural” maximum size of human social groups. After that though you need an artificial social construct to keep society going - a government, in other words. Without one, the anarchic society will disintegrate.
Which of the government-less areas or nations of the world would you choose to live in?
You don’t see the government in your home? Do you access the internet at the library?
My family had a government. We members of the governed classes called it “Mom and Dad.”
And if a bad guy is knocking down your door, would you call the police? If your loved one was having a heart attack, would you call for an ambulance? Do you drive on roads built by the government? Do you drink water from a municipal water system, or flush your toilet using a municipal sewage system? &c. &c. &c.
A family has means of keeping order that won’t work in larger society. A family works because every member intimately knows, and loves, every other.
Somalia. The well-known Libertarian Paradise!
Tell you what. Even though it’s a bloody stupid idea, you can still vote for “absence of government”. All you need to do is find someone - or some people - who think the same way you do, and get enough votes to hand them the keys so they can wind the whole thing down. What you can’t do is create an anarchy without the support of the populace, because otherwise the first thing they’d do with their new found freedom would be to rebuild the structure of government and you, as an anarchist, would have no standing to complain about that.
Surprisingly few, actually. We have to have a House, Senate, President, Vice President, and Supreme Court. Congress must assemble at least once per year, keep a journal, and compensate themselves and the other officers. And, they have to conduct a census every ten years. Other than that, the Constitution doesn’t really require the federal government to do much. It’s a grant of powers, not duties.
Article IV Section 4 does require the federal government to “protect each of [the states] against Invasion” and “against domestic violence”, which arguably requires the maintenance of some sort of army or police force.
Pave my road? Bring me ebola medicine? Slaughter my yaks?
Hurricane Katrina and NYC blackout’s looting and rioting shows it does not work.
This.
A complete random stranger isn’t going to love you or make sacrifices for you.
The moment she meets me, I’m sure she’ll be willing to. Especially if she’s a leggy supermodel.
This. Sure, the primary power isn’t THE government, but it certainly isn’t anarchy. Hell, even a place like Somalia isn’t anarchy, it’s just ruled by warlords.
Personally, I’m sympathetic to a lot of anarchist ideology, and while I could even imagine a world where we could live in anarchy, I realize that it’s not practical in the world as it exists today or will exist in the foreseeable future barring some massive unpredictable changes.
The thing is, anarchy suffers from a lot of problems related to human nature. Sure, if everyone favored order and acted in a moral and honorable fashion, like not going around raping, murdering, and killing, making and honoring contracts in good faith, being respectful and mindful of others around them, being willing to contribute personal resources toward the good of the community, etc. then we wouldn’t need government. Unfortunately, we can’t all agree on morality other than perhaps the biggest rules, we can’t agree on various protocols, and without someone to make a decision about which one we should follow, inevitably leading to those who disagree having a voice about it, then we can’t make it work. And, of course, someone who can make rules and use force to enact it is qualitatively equivalent to a form of government.
Now, that’s not to say that it doesn’t work on small scales, but those are scales where these sorts of ideas have something in common. Like the aforementioned family unit, chances are the parents at least have a mostly unified idea about how the house should run, and the kids were likely raised under those ideas, and there’s love and other common values that bind them together. And yet, the parents still sometimes have to have the ability to make rules that contradict what the kids want and they have to use force to enact those rules.
On a somewhat larger, but less serious scale, some degree of anarchy works just fine. For instance, there’s a lot of unwritten rules about lines. For instance, imagine a line of people waiting to buy tickets or the next big game or gadget. There’s no one running around enforcing rules, but there’s a set of socially understood rules that mostly are self-enforced, as in I know cutting in line is unaccepted so I don’t even try it. Chances are if someone tries, they’ll get shouted down and give up. But if enough people, certainly a lot less than half the people in line, decided they didn’t want to neatly queue up, you get chaos. Hell, we see this in traffic all the time, with an accident or construction. Sometimes traffic still flows okay as everyone merges considerately, but then someone forces in or doesn’t let someone in, then another, and another, and we end up with a mess.
So, sure, it’d be great to see a future one day where resources are plentiful and the standard of living of even the poorest among us is excellent. Maybe in a place like that we could have a virtually non-existent government. But, even still, I’m not sure it’s possible to have none, because there’s still going to be disagreements of some sort, there’s still going to be mentally ill people who may just not be able to fit in, or maybe there will be some other fundamental difference that separates people that we can’t even really understand as things are now.
That all said, I’m certainly in favor of taking the time to examine various scenarios and seeing where reducing or eliminating government involvement might be better than it is now, but that comes with the concession that there may very well also be places where perhaps a little more government involvement could improve things. Frankly, I’d like to see us take time on a periodic basis to reevaluate the role of government because there’s a lot of things that are the way they are just because that’s how they’ve always been.
This really is better suited to Great Debates than to Elections.
So moved.