4 ms·

While I’m also not an anarchist, I don’t believe these are good examples. In fact, they could be an argument for anarchism. With a lack of stimulus or even jus

While I’m also not an anarchist, I don’t believe these are good examples. In fact, they could be an argument for anarchism. With a lack of stimulus or even just in this economic system, bars and businesses in general are incentivized to stay open. They are being ‘coerced’ to stay open. People started rejecting masks and shutdowns en masse after astroturfing and media convinced them to. There are countries where orders were followed voluntarily and good results followed.

solipsism 6y ago
> With a lack of stimulus or even just in this economic system, bars and businesses in general are incentivized to stay open. They are being ‘coerced’ to stay open. You could say this about any thief in any economic system, including the economy of survival (stealing food, shelter, etc). This is not a thing anarchy could solve. > People started rejecting masks and shutdowns en masse after astroturfing and media convinced them to. These aren't laws or government, and they would still exist in an anarchistic system. > There are countries where orders were followed voluntarily and good results followed. Yes, and there are no countries where no orders were required because people self-regulated.
zanny 6y ago
Capitalism is fundamentally built on competition, it pits all participants against one another. It stratifies social bonds and breaks people apart because any cooperation represents unrealized exploitation. Its why people are so miserable en masse, hostile, and chomping at the bit for targets to attack and hate. Its worse in America because theres almost no socialism at all to raise the floor of society - the country is buried in homeless and something like 1 in 5 persons is food insecure (probably higher now in the pandemic). If you fail in "winning" at capitalism to some degree you are supposed to feel fortunate shelters and soup kitchens exist. Sometimes. Society has broadly rejected them as the socialism they are and underfunds or destroys them where able. Its also why drug addiction is totally out of control. Desperation and social isolation by our culture creates whole populations of people to be exploited by drug profiteers. Many other nations don't do this by catching people before they get that despondent or miserable and by helping (rehabilitation) rather than hurting (prosecution) those that get that bad. The process is cyclic. The desperation feeds into the hate feeds into the predation feeds into the exploitation feeds into the desperation. But breaking out of it requires class consciousness that is opposed at every level - at the bottom by the animosity and inability to trust and at the top by the profits and power reaped through the harm done.
- baconandeggs 6y ago
  > Capitalism is fundamentally built on competition, it pits all participants against one another. Life is built on competition, life pits all participants against one another. Resources are not infinite.
  - ozim 6y ago
    Resources are not infinite but human imagination is. We already produce more food than needed, there is hunger in the world, but not because of shortage but for multiple other reasons. Main point is that humans are intelligent and we can choose where and how we compete or if we don't want to compete at all. Holocene extinction is mainly because humans collaborated in much better way than any other animal can. Life might be build on competition but we see how powerful collaboration is.
    - baconandeggs 6y ago
      > there is hunger in the world, but not because of shortage but for multiple other reasons. That there's always been hunger in the world, even when we didn't produce more food than needed tells you production of food is not the resource limiting the distribution of food, other resources are. Even with all the imagination and collaboration of every communal government in the world to a scale never seen before in history, hunger is still a huge problem, because food is not the only resource, everything is a resource: time, interest, emotions, infrastructure, goods, distribution, people, communities, everything, and they compete with one another for our time and attention. Everything is in competition, even your ideas and mine right now, and that's a good thing, but the first step to try and better our situation is to accept the reality of the natural world and not fight against it.
- srtjstjsj 6y ago
  Ask the hundreds of millions of murdered Chinese or a Russian how well alternatives to capitalism work out. Maybe the problem isn't the economic model.
  - 6y ago
wongarsu 6y ago
Just because you implement anarchism, you haven't automatically abolished capitalism. Bars would still be privately owned, and the owners would have incentive to keep them open in order to earn money to buy food (and protection etc). In theory you could institute socialism in an arachic society. But that seems ... ill advised for anything larger than a small community. I can at least imagine socialism working in an exceptionally well organised state, but how would that work in a large-scale arnachy?
- wolco 6y ago
  Wait did you say money? Money doesn't exist in the situation you describe. Who is issuing the money? At best trading for good is the best possible.
  - wongarsu 6y ago
    Money is just a concept. Whether that's governement issued legal tender, gold, cigarettes or coffee beans doesn't really matter. Silver coins were in use long before governments started stamping them.
  - auston 6y ago
    bitcoin does though
    - bccdee 6y ago
      But without anyone to engage in fiscal or monetary policy to protect the value of BTC, it'd be vulnerable to huge swings in value.
- 9000 6y ago
  Well, despite what anarcho-capitalists may say, in an anarchist society you would find it very hard to maintain capitalism as is familair to us today. This is because the State, and by extension its threat of violence, enforces private property rights. In a truly anarchist system where no other protection force evolves to reinstitute the government's role in protecting private property, you would have a very hard time building large amounts of capital. You may be able to control some small amounts of relatively private property (in addition to some personal property), but you absolutely could not maintain the current breadth of our global supply chain without the credible threat of violence from a large organization bent on maintaining private property rights.[0] --- [0]: Merely the threat of violence from a large organization, but not one with a goal of maintaining private property rights, is insufficient to maintain capitalist supply chains, because such an organization would naturally try to increase its own power through force. It would look more like a warlord, cartel, or small-time dictatorship with all of the corruption that implies than a smoothly working system of trade.

solipsism 6y ago

> With a lack of stimulus or even just in this economic system, bars and businesses in general are incentivized to stay open. They are being ‘coerced’ to stay open. You could say this about any thief in any economic system, including the economy of survival (stealing food, shelter, etc). This is not a thing anarchy could solve. > People started rejecting masks and shutdowns en masse after astroturfing and media convinced them to. These aren't laws or government, and they would still exist in an anarchistic system. > There are countries where orders were followed voluntarily and good results followed. Yes, and there are no countries where no orders were required because people self-regulated.

zanny 6y ago

Capitalism is fundamentally built on competition, it pits all participants against one another. It stratifies social bonds and breaks people apart because any cooperation represents unrealized exploitation. Its why people are so miserable en masse, hostile, and chomping at the bit for targets to attack and hate. Its worse in America because theres almost no socialism at all to raise the floor of society - the country is buried in homeless and something like 1 in 5 persons is food insecure (probably higher now in the pandemic). If you fail in "winning" at capitalism to some degree you are supposed to feel fortunate shelters and soup kitchens exist. Sometimes. Society has broadly rejected them as the socialism they are and underfunds or destroys them where able. Its also why drug addiction is totally out of control. Desperation and social isolation by our culture creates whole populations of people to be exploited by drug profiteers. Many other nations don't do this by catching people before they get that despondent or miserable and by helping (rehabilitation) rather than hurting (prosecution) those that get that bad. The process is cyclic. The desperation feeds into the hate feeds into the predation feeds into the exploitation feeds into the desperation. But breaking out of it requires class consciousness that is opposed at every level - at the bottom by the animosity and inability to trust and at the top by the profits and power reaped through the harm done.

baconandeggs 6y ago
> Capitalism is fundamentally built on competition, it pits all participants against one another. Life is built on competition, life pits all participants against one another. Resources are not infinite.
- ozim 6y ago
  Resources are not infinite but human imagination is. We already produce more food than needed, there is hunger in the world, but not because of shortage but for multiple other reasons. Main point is that humans are intelligent and we can choose where and how we compete or if we don't want to compete at all. Holocene extinction is mainly because humans collaborated in much better way than any other animal can. Life might be build on competition but we see how powerful collaboration is.
  - baconandeggs 6y ago
    > there is hunger in the world, but not because of shortage but for multiple other reasons. That there's always been hunger in the world, even when we didn't produce more food than needed tells you production of food is not the resource limiting the distribution of food, other resources are. Even with all the imagination and collaboration of every communal government in the world to a scale never seen before in history, hunger is still a huge problem, because food is not the only resource, everything is a resource: time, interest, emotions, infrastructure, goods, distribution, people, communities, everything, and they compete with one another for our time and attention. Everything is in competition, even your ideas and mine right now, and that's a good thing, but the first step to try and better our situation is to accept the reality of the natural world and not fight against it.
srtjstjsj 6y ago
Ask the hundreds of millions of murdered Chinese or a Russian how well alternatives to capitalism work out. Maybe the problem isn't the economic model.
- 6y ago

wongarsu 6y ago

Just because you implement anarchism, you haven't automatically abolished capitalism. Bars would still be privately owned, and the owners would have incentive to keep them open in order to earn money to buy food (and protection etc). In theory you could institute socialism in an arachic society. But that seems ... ill advised for anything larger than a small community. I can at least imagine socialism working in an exceptionally well organised state, but how would that work in a large-scale arnachy?

wolco 6y ago
Wait did you say money? Money doesn't exist in the situation you describe. Who is issuing the money? At best trading for good is the best possible.
- wongarsu 6y ago
  Money is just a concept. Whether that's governement issued legal tender, gold, cigarettes or coffee beans doesn't really matter. Silver coins were in use long before governments started stamping them.
- auston 6y ago
  bitcoin does though
  - bccdee 6y ago
    But without anyone to engage in fiscal or monetary policy to protect the value of BTC, it'd be vulnerable to huge swings in value.
9000 6y ago
Well, despite what anarcho-capitalists may say, in an anarchist society you would find it very hard to maintain capitalism as is familair to us today. This is because the State, and by extension its threat of violence, enforces private property rights. In a truly anarchist system where no other protection force evolves to reinstitute the government's role in protecting private property, you would have a very hard time building large amounts of capital. You may be able to control some small amounts of relatively private property (in addition to some personal property), but you absolutely could not maintain the current breadth of our global supply chain without the credible threat of violence from a large organization bent on maintaining private property rights.[0] --- [0]: Merely the threat of violence from a large organization, but not one with a goal of maintaining private property rights, is insufficient to maintain capitalist supply chains, because such an organization would naturally try to increase its own power through force. It would look more like a warlord, cartel, or small-time dictatorship with all of the corruption that implies than a smoothly working system of trade.