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[Edit: Self-righteous anger caused me to stop reading parent post mid-way through and start replying furiously. Nothing to see here.] Crazy anarchist. Because

[Edit: Self-righteous anger caused me to stop reading parent post mid-way through and start replying furiously. Nothing to see here.] Crazy anarchist. Because there have been no extremely intelligent, logical, level-headed and productive people who are also anarchists. Start with this guy and get back to me: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murray_Rothbard https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murray_Rothbard If you said "crazy statist" I could maybe agree, since statism is kind of crazy in my opinion, but I think attacking any ideas by disqualifying with adjectives like crazy is extremely narrow-minded and leads to poor results, even if you're talking about statists. Just because you've never heard of something, don't be so immature to dismiss it without thinking it through... you expose yourself as ignorant of the hard work of many intelligent people that have come before you.

xenophanes 13y ago
While there are level-headed anarchists (e.g. William Godwin), Rothbard is a terrible example. He was an anti-semite and thought children were property. He wrote a letter to Ayn Rand about his serious psychological problems.
icebraining 13y ago
In your self-righteous anger, you clearly missed snitko's sarcasm. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6089775 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6089775
- pinchyfingers 13y ago
  Touché
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
unimpressive 13y ago
Since we're now on the subject. I notice that there seems to be a very high turnover of young people from the various forms of anarchism as they get older. Would anybody who fits this description like to elaborate on why that happened? Found a convincing argument? General disillusionment with humanity?
- RKoutnik 13y ago
  As they get older, they accumulate stuff and realize the government's job in protecting said stuff. It's easy to be an idealist (in any direction) when you don't have to sacrifice anything for it.
- Houshalter 13y ago
  I was an anarcho-capitalist for awhile. I thought it was the perfect system. There would be absolutely no incentives to do bad things. Anything a government could do, could in theory be done by a voluntary system if enough people agreed it was a good idea or it was a benefit to them to do so. But I no longer think it's a perfect system. People don't behave like perfect rational market actors, there are edge cases like natural monopolies where normal market mechanisms don't lead to the best outcome, and then there is just enforcing altruism (like looking out for animal rights or children's rights, who couldn't buy legal services under this system, or redistributing income so you don't end up with people starving to death or in poverty.) Of course the current system we have is so far from a perfect system it makes these problems seem trivial. But at least it seems ok and generally stable, whereas what would happen in an anarcho-capitalist world is a complete unknown. There still might be a near-perfect system. Robin Hanson's ideas on prediction markets for making policy decisions might be a huge improvement, at least in some areas, and a semi-private legal system for some things might work. And I think libertarian policies in general are better.
  - derleth 13y ago
    > Anything a government could do, could in theory be done by a voluntary system if enough people agreed it was a good idea or it was a benefit to them to do so. And we call that system a government. Seriously. Every time an anarchist seriously gets down to brass tacks about how their world would work, there's some agency by 'the people' which does things which have to be done, and it's indistinguishable from a government. It's just a Good Government, a Responsible Government, and, really, an Ideal Government. Either anarchy has never happened or it's the only thing that happens. I don't know which is more damaging to the case of doctrinaire capital-A Anarchists. > a semi-private legal system for some things might work This is called contract law.
rwallace 13y ago
PSA: Whenever you're going to use sarcasm on the Internet, don't. Seriously, just don't. Write a straight comment instead. As demonstrated here, when you don't have tone of voice as a cue, sarcasm is just not reliably recognizable.

xenophanes 13y ago

While there are level-headed anarchists (e.g. William Godwin), Rothbard is a terrible example. He was an anti-semite and thought children were property. He wrote a letter to Ayn Rand about his serious psychological problems.

icebraining 13y ago

In your self-righteous anger, you clearly missed snitko's sarcasm. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6089775 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6089775

pinchyfingers 13y ago
Touché

deleted 13y ago

[deleted]

unimpressive 13y ago

Since we're now on the subject. I notice that there seems to be a very high turnover of young people from the various forms of anarchism as they get older. Would anybody who fits this description like to elaborate on why that happened? Found a convincing argument? General disillusionment with humanity?

RKoutnik 13y ago
As they get older, they accumulate stuff and realize the government's job in protecting said stuff. It's easy to be an idealist (in any direction) when you don't have to sacrifice anything for it.
Houshalter 13y ago
I was an anarcho-capitalist for awhile. I thought it was the perfect system. There would be absolutely no incentives to do bad things. Anything a government could do, could in theory be done by a voluntary system if enough people agreed it was a good idea or it was a benefit to them to do so. But I no longer think it's a perfect system. People don't behave like perfect rational market actors, there are edge cases like natural monopolies where normal market mechanisms don't lead to the best outcome, and then there is just enforcing altruism (like looking out for animal rights or children's rights, who couldn't buy legal services under this system, or redistributing income so you don't end up with people starving to death or in poverty.) Of course the current system we have is so far from a perfect system it makes these problems seem trivial. But at least it seems ok and generally stable, whereas what would happen in an anarcho-capitalist world is a complete unknown. There still might be a near-perfect system. Robin Hanson's ideas on prediction markets for making policy decisions might be a huge improvement, at least in some areas, and a semi-private legal system for some things might work. And I think libertarian policies in general are better.
- derleth 13y ago
  > Anything a government could do, could in theory be done by a voluntary system if enough people agreed it was a good idea or it was a benefit to them to do so. And we call that system a government. Seriously. Every time an anarchist seriously gets down to brass tacks about how their world would work, there's some agency by 'the people' which does things which have to be done, and it's indistinguishable from a government. It's just a Good Government, a Responsible Government, and, really, an Ideal Government. Either anarchy has never happened or it's the only thing that happens. I don't know which is more damaging to the case of doctrinaire capital-A Anarchists. > a semi-private legal system for some things might work This is called contract law.

rwallace 13y ago

PSA: Whenever you're going to use sarcasm on the Internet, don't. Seriously, just don't. Write a straight comment instead. As demonstrated here, when you don't have tone of voice as a cue, sarcasm is just not reliably recognizable.