Sure but there is all the khat you want to chew. So it’s a trade off.
No, most Libertarians are idiots whose entire philosophy boils down to “Just let me do whatever the fuck I want and I promise everything will work out fine.”
Yup, and that response is that it’s a stupid argument. None ever seem to actually explain what’s stupid about it, though.
Which is, conveniently, an impossible comparison to make. Just because every stateless place is worse than every place with a state, doesn’t mean that those stateless places wouldn’t be even worse with a state.
Khat is on my bucket list!
It really isn’t that big of a deal. I think it’s only impressive if you grew up never having smoked a joint or drank whiskey.
Then what do you do with utter, bull-headed intransigence? If there’s a decision which requires 100% cooperation to be effective, and one person absolutely refuses, come Hell or high water, damn the torpedoes, full NO ahead, what do you do?
Again: Consensus requires the ability, and the willingness, to see that there’s a consensus even when you are not part of it, and to abide by that consensus even if you do not agree with it.
And physical or emotional coercion is hierarchy. Coercion inherently, unavoidably implements hierarchy.
That last sentence is false. I’m not saying anything about what I think of those experiments, but they happened.
These are thoughtful and useful questions…
What you don’t do is successfully operate as an anarchy. Anarchy doesn’t require saintly selflessness or devotion to the needs of the many and erasure of all desire or any of that crap, but it requires a willingness to play with others.
Agreed. So people have to have a vested interest in doing so. The existence of a structure that would let them interact in such a way as to officially reverse that consensus (assuming they can convince the other participants) is the carrot that lures them into accepting and abiding by it in the current moment.
Totally. Could not agree more. Just not seeing where it isn’t a non sequitur. Can you develop where it’s supposed to be sequituring from a bit more clearly?
Fair enough. I’ve seen some dismal experiments myself to be honest, but they were very small-scale and they went from the initial starting structure (or nonstructure) directly to “well that didn’t work” with very little attempt to tweak and modify to see if they could fix the observed problems. I don’t really count those as serious experiments.
You’d be surprised what some of your fellow anarchists seem to think of them.
Which is why the successful anarchies I’ve seen have all be online, where people can always leave, as opposed to in the physical world, where “you can leave” is a rather hollow promise in many circumstances.
You should read “Homesteading the Noösphere” to see one example of what I mean. Open Source projects are anarchies in that nobody, especially not the titular head of a project, can force anyone to do anything; the only thing they have control over is one specific copy of a codebase, and anyone else can fork off their own copy and use it as they will. The realities of what actually occurs are more interesting, but they all rely on that ultimate escape valve, the fact people can just leave in a zero-cost (or close to it) fashion, which is the ultimate recourse of the obstinate.
As for reversing consensus, imagine the religious anarchy and the heretic: Neither will be moved, as a matter of dogma or conscience, so there’s no possible common ground unless some government can step in to either moderate the will of the majority through constitutional protection or force the heretic to conform or leave. I’m sure you can think of other examples where convincing others to change the consensus is a rather hollow premise.
All the anarchists who assume as a matter of course that the majority will be able to force individuals to do what it wants in its perfect anarchist society. Because, after all, is it still coercion when the body coercing you gets really really pissy if you imply it’s effectively a state, if not a simple mob?
Don’t fall into the Marxist trap of “if it failed, it wasn’t Marxism”! This is sociology, or political science, not physics. You don’t get pristine initial conditions with everything controlled. If your system can’t survive a rocky start, well, it can’t survive at all.