What is to be gained from Anarchy?

When I was in highschool it was very popular to put the Anarchy A all over your notebooks and jeans and cars and the like, particularly if you were a skater chick like myself. All us rebels wanted Anarchy man, no rules man, no government.

But as I grew I realized that while I may desire a less intrusive and smaller government, a land with no leadership or rules would quickly turn…Beyond Thunderdome. And yet I know there are still adults and well educated people who desire or indeed express a desire FOR anarchy, no government, no law…and I’m wondering what for.

Wouldn’t a world of Anarchy be one that you’re constantly living in fear? There would be no mechanism in place to keep anyone from murdering you for a candy bar, breaking into your home, raping…it would be nothing but chaos.

Does successful Anarchy count on the ‘citizens’ of said Anarchy having high moral values so that they PREFER to live in peace?

Well, anarchy assumes that most people do prefer to live in peace, but most anarchist philosophers accept the validity of responsive force…if you’re being attacked, you can defend yourself. They’re opposed to the idea of coersion and initiation of force. If a group of people get together voluntarily and form a mutual defense association, that’s fine.

Personally, I don’t think it would work, but that’s just me.

“Teen Angst” Anarchy is just another way to rebel against society. The farthest thing from organized government is no government…anarchy. Same idea with Satanism. What better a way to rebel against Christian society than to worship satan (Of course real Satanism isn’t like this but that is another discussion)?

This type of anarchy shouldn’t be taken seriously. There are some rational versions of Anarchy not made up by angry white teenagers. It is more like Libertarianism and they make a little bit more sense, they take the idea that people should have as much freedom as possible.

seems a mutual defense association is something that would end up weilding some sort of control, however tenuous, and would be a sort of…leadership.

Well, control over whom? So long as the organization only controls its members, who are allowed to leave the organization when they want to, without consequence, that’s ok under anarchy. If the organization controls people who don’t consent to be controled by them, or controls them by fear or threats, that’s coersion, and bad.

But wouldn’t the organization or the knowledge of the existence of said organization serve as a deterrent (threat) to those who wouldn’t live in peace? And therefore hold some sway over the citizenship?

The important thing for anarchist (that I know) is to make sure that “government” is a form of cooperation instead of coercion. Leadership needs to be held accountable to the group instead of the other way around. Decision making can be job like any other job as long as the people always capable of rejecting that leadership anytime it become dissatisfactory.

It’s a very extreme form of direct democracy based on consensus. It’s main problem is that it lacks enough practical application to have a full body of theory. Also for obvious reasons an anarchist revolution is nigh impossible.

Interestingly enough, George Orwell was an anarchist at one point in his life, but ultimately he felt consant social pressure for cooperation was more oppressive than the state. Considering his critique of the state, that’s saying a lot.

I tend to the Anarchy is a nice ideal, but probably not something to be literally achieved. I have problems with American Libertarians who don’t seem to realize that a few people controlling the needs of others can be just as oppressive as a few people running the police. These libertarians are very, very different from the original libertarians and anarchists. As long as strides are made to build a strong cohesive caring community, I’m in favor of less government. Ultimately something resembling a government may need to exist, but it should only be given just enough respect and authority to do its job and should be revocable at any time.

Anarchy will lead to war. It’s inevitable. It is, after all, where we started.

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Great post errata, and very informative. The statement above is closest to what I suspected, that anarchy, like communism may look good on paper, but is harder to implement realistically.

Glad you enjoyed the post.I’m happy to be commenting. There’s not enough serious discussion on it.

I’d like to point out though, that one can still be an anarchist and be willing to implement some minimal sort of government in the same sense that most Americans consider themselves capitalists yet favor public schools. Just because the extreme is unpractical or unwanted, doesn’t mean that in principle it’s not a sound idea.

I’m an anarcho-capitalist; so I’ll kick in a few cents here.

Majoritarian government, while possibly the MOST version, is still stilted enough to be a danger to every individual under its control. If 51 percent of people approve something, that still leaves 49 percent of people subject to something with which they do not agree. Of course, that 51 percent now has an armed authority group (the police) to enforce its will at gunpoint, which is bad.

In addition, there is never a neat 51-49 split. In most elections, only a small percent of the eligible turn out to vote. For example, take the following hypothetical numbers.

If you have a population of 1.5 M homeowners, let’s assume 1M are eligible to vote. Let’s say, for a given election, one of the ballot questions is whether everyone has to paint their house red.

Of the 1M eligible, 20 percent (200,000) come to the polls. The vote splits 51 (102,000)-49 (98,000) in favor of the proposition. As a result, 102,000 people decide for 1,500,000 that every house in the jurisdiction has to be painted red, at the homeowner’s expense. That’s hardly fair or equitable.

Sure, everyone SHOULD have showed up to vote; however one of the cornerstones of freedom should be the ability to not get involved in the political process and to be safe doing so.

Another thing we have problems with is governmental manipulations of the market. Favoritism, protectionism and governmental “oversight” enable small groups of businesses to maintain virtual monopolies and set prices that are out of adjustment with market forces. Subsidies, tax abatements, guaranteed loans, etc. are all passed on to the consumer and/or tax payer and make us all pay for things we don’t want or could get more cheaply if the government hadn’t butted in.

We also take a stance of personal liability and responsibility. All right stem from property rights, and the foremost property right is that one’s body is one’s own property, which one can do as one pleases with provided the action or actions do not directly harm the person or property of another.

If that is not the case, and your actions do cause harm to someone else or their property, you are liable for total restitution. This would, ideally, be determined by an impartial adjudicator selected by both parties, whose determination would be binding. That’s all the government we want or need. Volunteer judges to handle property and liability disputes.

Lastly, we take the stance the personal safety is the responsibility of the individual. That may seem, as stated above, to be living in fear, since most of us carry individual weapons and are trained in their use, but it’s actually much more liberating than being forcibly disarmed by the government and relying on the government to provide you the safety you can guarantee for yourself if you’re actually free to do so.

Cops aren’t there to protect us; they exist to take reports and handle paperwork after the fact. If people take responsibility for their own safety, a few things happen as a natural by-product:

Government decreases because people realize they can (and should) fend for themselves.

Crime drops, because a) fewer criminals survive their foray into the field and b) those criminals who are still around try to find easier ways to make a living, such as working. (Also, since only actions that damage the person or property of an unwilling other are now “crimes” the sheer number of illegal things reduces dramatically)

Intimidation all but disappears, as everyone realizes everyone else is (most likely) armed and the playing field for daily interaction is now level.

If government is eliminated, people will have to deal with themselves and each other. Market forces and natural selection will deal with the vast majority of social problems we face, and they will do it much more efficiently than any combination of A-B-C agencies, bureaus and administrations ever could.

I knew you were American as soon as I read this sentence.

Scariest thing I’ve read all day…

-FK

A smart guy once said, when asked why his followers were so well behaved, “I teach them correct principles, and let them govern themselves.”

If society was like that, i.e. everyone acting according to the ethical principles they were taught, anarchy might work. But until then, it is the nature of people to be contentious, and argue over the smallest points (witness this message board!) Under these circumstances nothing would ever get done if it had to be debated endlessly and then voted on by 280 million people.

FallenAngel:

That’s beautiful man, simply beautiful

Why doesn’t it work?

If everyone is armed and we must deal with each other to settle disputes, what’s to prevent deadly shootouts over parking spaces? What prevents road rage? Or looting during blackouts, or price gouging in times of distress or panic? If I’m only going to be sentenced by an impartial judge of both party’s choosing, I might as well kill the other guy so he can’t tell his side of the story.

Simply put, we can’t guarantee that everyone in a purely Anarchistic society is not off their rocker, and what is the suggestion for the guy who goes bat crazy and shoots up his place of work? You say he gets a say in who his judge is…doesn’t that ultimately result in a lot of timely red tape while each party in the crime picks which judge they like best?

What anarchists want to do is increase freedom. If certain people are running around shooting and looting and whatnot, they are infringing on the rights of others and decreasing other people’s capacity to live freely.

IMO, any kind of force or threat might as well be government, therefore as long as this is a significant threat, it is ok to meet that force with force if the overall level of oppression is lowered.

Gang leaders, for example, have their own form of government, and it is not legitimated in any way by the people they intimidate. Should people become organized in some way to reduce the power of those who use only intimidation, they have actually reduced the amount of coercion taking place in society.

Likewise democracies and republics offer more freedom than a military junta, but in the long run could be improved upon.

Anarchy is part of utopian vision to me. It is the long term goal, but the steps needed to get there aren’t clear. At any point, the guiding balance is whether or not certain individuals will begin their own forms of oppression in lieu of a government. The trick is recognizing that goverment should be the means to that end and not an end in itself.

How would you deal with those pesky anarchists who rail against all things capitalist? armed conflict?

I’ve never been at gunpoint, so I’ll take it as hyperbole…

Lets chant: MOB RULES, MOB RULES

Lets chant…

The guy with the bigger gun wins, lets chant…

Pie-in-the-sky

This sounds a lot like intimidation,of a different sort

Sounds like a bloody voilent world to me…

There is no advantage to anarchy, except that it is a subject that some people like to talk about - at length - with no useful result.

This is kind of wildly optimistic, isn’t it?