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Exactly this. It's a lovely dream, but humans are lazy, aquisitive, and many would sell their own grandmother to gain a perceived advantage.
by Nursie 6y ago
Exactly this. It's a lovely dream, but humans are lazy, aquisitive, and many would sell their own grandmother to gain a perceived advantage.
- fallingfrog 6y agoNobody aside from hardened sociopaths would do that.
- shadowgovt 6y agoHow many hardened sociopaths can an anarchy sustain before it either collapses or becomes a mockery of its own self-direction and mutualism principles?
- lawwantsin17 6y agoYou should read about how Anarchy treats it's mentally ill before you decide they don't have a solution to that simple problem. The way we treat mentally ill in Capitalism is a crime.
- ModernMech 6y agoHow many hardened sociopaths can any system take before the same? Look at America right now, with a narcissistic psychopath installed at the highest level of a supposed democracy.
- shadowgovt 6y agoSystems built on mistrust of human nature (i.e. checks and balances) can take more. The amount he hasn't been able to do in that position is testament to that. Imagine if the US had been an anarchy instead and he'd amassed enough same-thinking folk to take it over?
- vidarh 6y agoIs it not a good thing if there are no structures in place for those people to abuse to oppress others? We've seen states captured by murderous lunatics time and time again. It seems having structures in place for those kinds of people to abuse has worked very poorly.
- Nursie 6y agoThey will build structures. These structures are called gangs, and their leaders warlords.
- vidarh 6y agoOr states. As long as the concentration of power in the hands of nation states have been the foundation for most of the worst mass murders in human history, it seems quaint to worry that people arguing for making power shared and collective rather than allowing it to be concentrated will do worse.
- Nursie 6y agoIn democratic states power is shared and collective. That's the point. They will do worse, look around you at wherever there is a power vacuum. What follows? Violence.
- vidarh 6y agoPower is concentrated and delegated top down. That's the point. If I want to withhold consent to be policed a certain way, I can't, even if I only e.g. live and interact with people who similarly want to withhold consent (nobody would suggest that I would have the right to unilaterally dictate the rules if I interact with others who don't share my views). So the problem is that the power is not collective other than the power to vote for who the power will be concentrated with. There's a massive disconnect there where, e.g. if we go by US elections, about half the population at any point are ruled by a system they have not consented to. That is not collective power, at least not collective and shared power of the people, but of a majority at most (even assuming representatives do what their voters want them to, which is also a dicey proposition). Nearly every government in the world tries to limit this tyranny of the majority by legally protected rights to secure the minority against government overreach too, but the fact that they need to demonstrates how flawed this model is. You assume a power vacuum, but nobody is suggesting a power vacuum, but power mediated by consent, negotiation and bottom up delegation rather than top down coercion. As long as you're assuming a power vacuum, you're arguing against a strawman.
- Nursie 6y agoIt was an exaggeration. But there are enough humans who are not interested in fair behaviour, but only getting ahead at almost any cost, that the idea of an unregulated world is laughable.
- shadowgovt 6y agoI don't even think many would, the problem is that it only takes a few. The damage that a dedicated antisocial hyperminority can do to a society that lacks rules and enforcement of said is significant... Even more so in an age where technology acts as a force multiplier.
- sudosysgen 6y agoThe idea of how an anarchic society would be run is that you would need strong social norms, and people willing to use violence in order to prevent authority from rising, which effectively deals with small antisocial minorities.
- Nursie 6y agoAnd where in the world has it played out like this? Instead of examples of peaceful anarchism, the history of the world is full of examples showing that those with the will to use violence use it for their own ends, form gangs, and militias, become warlords...
- sudosysgen 6y agoSure, the Zapatistas, the Apoists, and a few indigenous anarchist groups. Forming gangs and militias is difficult when the status quo is good for most people resulting the majority being willing to use violence to avoid being ruled by gangs and warlords.
- Nursie 6y agoThe zapatistas amd apoists appear to be effectively democratic militia, existing in opposition to outside oppressors. The body of your post there seems effectively to be historically illiterate.
- sudosysgen 6y agoThey are indeed directly democratically run militias, but that is exactly how anarchists would run a militia. And they aren't just militias, they also run civil society.
- FranzFerdiNaN 6y agoThis behaviour is most definitely promoted by capitalism, so I wouldn't be so fast to make it a general principle. In fact, all proof shows that humans are extremely cooperative and social when the going gets tough or disaster strikes.
- Barrin92 6y agoI think it's really telling that this disaster-anarchism argument comes up so regularly. The question isn't how society functions during a state of exception, it's how it functions on day 2 after the excitement is over when things go back to normal. It's like all other revolutions having failed the revolution has now been outsourced to hurricanes and floods. if you want to argue that capitalism or the status quo or whatever is bad, make the case how anarchism functions on an ordinary, boring day, that is to say how it organises regular life, that is the relevant question.
- Nursie 6y agoHumans in general are, but a significant enough minority are interested only in power and aquisition. I'm sorry but this is a pipedream.
- tomp 6y ago> humans are extremely cooperative and social when the going gets tough or disaster strikes. 2020 being a great example. Jesus, this whole discussion is such a shitshow. Every time I hear about anarchism I keep wishing someone would explain to me how it all works, I expected a lot from HN users, but all I keep reading is fairy tails with obvious holes the size of Mount Everest. Like, did anyone even consider to think how you'd resolve the obvious market fallacies (which, despite the name, have nothing to do with capitalist markets, but simply with humans / rational self-interested agents).