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First off, I would just point out that a tremendous amount of literature has been written about Anarchistic theory. Probably a lot more than we have time left

First off, I would just point out that a tremendous amount of literature has been written about Anarchistic theory. Probably a lot more than we have time left in our lives to completely read. You can't just handwave the system away with "yea, but there are bad people!". This has obviously been covered at length. What the theory lacks is real world large scale testing which will obviously be extremely difficult to do. >You can't handwave that away. Which is why I didn't. I gave the reasons I believe people were susceptible to it and gave reasons that those problems may no longer apply. >And you expect people under anarchy to voluntarily mobilize for the sake of strangers around the world? I'm not expecting anything. I'm considering the possibility that if we switched to a government-less world (which would mean drastic changes, no government implies a great deal of other changes) that if someone tried to rise up and take it away from us people might mobilize to stop it. Your Syrian/Lebanon examples don't strictly apply because those are other countries. Invade the US and see how passive people are. In a government-less world there is no more "country". Potentially people would form other kinds of groups and not care about people outside of their group, but if they are ignorant enough to do that then they wont be intelligent enough to have an Anarchist system at all, Genghis Khan or no. >Also, it's not entirely clear that our current level of technology and communication would continue to function without government Open source and various open source systems seem to work well enough. It's not clear or proven but to do that someone would have to actually try it and see. >they likely require a free market system No, this is one of those drastic changes I was talking about. You can't have any kind of bartering system what so ever or it just devolves right back into the current system. Ancap is a nonsense theory like US-Libertarianism is for largely the same reasons. I do believe though, that the system isn't viable even with our current technology because I think that the constraint of having no barter system means there can be no work that has to be done that no one wants to do. This means we would have to have robots doing all that kind of work. >None of this can be provided without a government. Not true. If you're really interested, have a look at some Anarchist writing and see what they actually have to say about these issues. It's not some kind of cursed literature that will damn you for reading, it's just an idea that may even be wrong. >Governments are even more entrenched, and it's not clear that it's even possible for major parts of the world to function without them. Big parts of the world do function without them today. You don't have to buy into the system, I'm not convinced myself (and I have no confidence that it will be tried on a large enough scale on my lifetime anyway) but the effort put into it deserves more than the simple brush off that you give it. >Empirically, I'd rather go with what's been proven to work and improve on it. I wouldn't frame the system we have today as "proven to work" but rather "managed not to utterly fail outright". If you're a programmer you should be able to appreciate this difference. The issue with this mindset is that at some point the government system becomes a drag on progress. The government is always a drag to some extent but they usually provide a net gain due to the services they provide (e.g. justice system). When and if we reach the point that we could provide most or all of these services in a more efficient form than they do (e.g. email today vs. US Postal service or telegram service) all that remains is the drag. I think we're already seeing signs of this (e.g. government attempts to prop up the obsolete media distribution model).

philwelch 16y ago
First off, I would just point out that a tremendous amount of literature has been written about Anarchistic theory. Probably a lot more than we have time left in our lives to completely read. You can't just handwave the system away with "yea, but there are bad people!". This has obviously been covered at length. If you're going to refer me to the existing literature, please at least make a specific reference. There's been just as much (if not more) philosophy written about why a government is necessary. What the theory lacks is real world large scale testing which will obviously be extremely difficult to do. Somalia's been trying it out for years. The results don't look promising. Your Syrian/Lebanon examples don't strictly apply because those are other countries. Invade the US and see how passive people are. If you invaded the US, I think Syrians would be quite passive about it indeed. In a government-less world there is no more "country". Potentially people would form other kinds of groups and not care about people outside of their group, but if they are ignorant enough to do that then they wont be intelligent enough to have an Anarchist system at all, Genghis Khan or no. People have always formed groups and not cared about people outside of their group. That's how humans work. If anarchism doesn't expect humans to work that way, then anarchism is a bad system for humans. You're assuming I'm dismissing anarchism without considering the arguments for it or anything. Actually, I'm dismissing it after a lot of consideration, partially about anarchism and partially about idealistic, theoretical political philosophies in general.
- loewenskind 16y ago
  >If you're going to refer me to the existing literature, please at least make a specific reference. This should be a good starting point. http://anarchism.pageabode.com/afaq/index.html http://anarchism.pageabode.com/afaq/index.html >Somalia's been trying it out for years. The results don't look promising http://c4ss.org/content/1201 http://c4ss.org/content/1201 >If you invaded the US, I think Syrians would be quite passive about it indeed. The point is that, yes people tend to only care about their group but there are different levels of group. For example, when the Russians had their "communist" revolution practically the whole world cared because they were terrified it would happen in their country as well (and in some cases like Spain, it did). >People have always formed groups and not cared about people outside of their group. As just shown, while this may be technically true group size changes depending on the level of threat up to and including "group human". >That's how humans work. Now you're moving toward a more interesting argument. We see how humans behave but how much of that is because of our nature and how much is because of the environment we grow up in? There's tons of interesting research about this question (one starting point: http://www.charleswarner.us/articles/competit.htm http://www.charleswarner.us/articles/competit.htm). >You're assuming I'm dismissing anarchism without considering the arguments for it or anything. Actually, I'm dismissing it after a lot of consideration, partially about anarchism and partially about idealistic, theoretical political philosophies in general. I'm assuming you dismiss it after working it out in your own head without consulting the existing body of knowledge on the subject, and it sounds like you just confirmed that my assumption was completely correct. AFAIU, this site isn't about circle-jerking, it's about intelligent conversation. In that spirit, if I see someone making uneducated off hand "me too" comments like "anarchism can't work, it's human nature!" I'm going to challenge it, even if I'm not convinced myself. Circle-jerking isn't learning, it's not a way forward.

philwelch 16y ago

loewenskind 16y ago
>If you're going to refer me to the existing literature, please at least make a specific reference. This should be a good starting point. http://anarchism.pageabode.com/afaq/index.html http://anarchism.pageabode.com/afaq/index.html >Somalia's been trying it out for years. The results don't look promising http://c4ss.org/content/1201 http://c4ss.org/content/1201 >If you invaded the US, I think Syrians would be quite passive about it indeed. The point is that, yes people tend to only care about their group but there are different levels of group. For example, when the Russians had their "communist" revolution practically the whole world cared because they were terrified it would happen in their country as well (and in some cases like Spain, it did). >People have always formed groups and not cared about people outside of their group. As just shown, while this may be technically true group size changes depending on the level of threat up to and including "group human". >That's how humans work. Now you're moving toward a more interesting argument. We see how humans behave but how much of that is because of our nature and how much is because of the environment we grow up in? There's tons of interesting research about this question (one starting point: http://www.charleswarner.us/articles/competit.htm http://www.charleswarner.us/articles/competit.htm). >You're assuming I'm dismissing anarchism without considering the arguments for it or anything. Actually, I'm dismissing it after a lot of consideration, partially about anarchism and partially about idealistic, theoretical political philosophies in general. I'm assuming you dismiss it after working it out in your own head without consulting the existing body of knowledge on the subject, and it sounds like you just confirmed that my assumption was completely correct. AFAIU, this site isn't about circle-jerking, it's about intelligent conversation. In that spirit, if I see someone making uneducated off hand "me too" comments like "anarchism can't work, it's human nature!" I'm going to challenge it, even if I'm not convinced myself. Circle-jerking isn't learning, it's not a way forward.