Anarchists, question for you...

[erowe1]

It doesn't matter if I do or don't, unless it can somehow show that anarchism is feasible.

I see it the exact opposite way. It doesn't matter if anarchism is feasible, unless it can be shown that the state is not inherently evil.

 

[The Gold Standard]

It doesn't matter if I do or don't, unless it can somehow show that anarchism is feasible.

If private people can provide all of the services the government claims to provide, then why is government necessary?

 

[Neil Desmond]

What post was that? I didn't see any post where you did that.

#52

 

[Neil Desmond]

It's feasible in the same sense that it wasn't feasible to end slavery when most people thought it was necessary, but that's no longer where we are today. The institutional mass coercion of blacks into chattel slavery is no longer feasible within the geographical US. People have come to a general consensus that it sucks and will not condone it. There is no real fundamental difference between abolition of slavery and abolition of the state, ultimately both come down to ideas and what is perceived as of just/legitimate by a critical mass of individuals.

And with advances such as the internet with it's information propagation capabilities and natural tendency to promote decentralization, we've got plenty to be optimistic about. The internet is decentralizing power in ways never before possible, and this trend is not likely to stop or slow down. They're more likely to speed up.

"The collective" is a subjective concept that only exists within your mind. It is simply your mind's attempt to classify the complex matrix of relationships of an impossible to comprehend number of individuals into a single easy to understand object. When you think of "the collective of americans" and I think of "the collective of americans" we are not thinking of the same thing, but only our own versions of this idea in our own heads. Groups do not exist as acting entities in the world outside your brain, they are human classifications in order to attempt to comprehend the complex world we inhabit.

Scarcity will always exist in this universe. Your physical body cannot occupy the same space that my body occupies. Scarcity is a fundamental aspect of the material world. The purpose of property is to delineate use rights of scarce material, material which has been legitimately obtained by an individuals through employing their labor, trade, or gift. Law is the legitimate use of force in defense of the [property] rights of the individual, stronger individuals/groups can lawfully use force in order to preserve the rights of individuals who are unable to defend themselves. These rights need not be defended by an authoritarian monopoly, which paradoxically must fundamentally violate these rights in order to exist and in fact use their position of "authority" to pervert these laws in their own benefit and for their own control.

In fact it's entirely not only plausible but much more likely that these rights can better be preserved by a more decentralized market (polycentric decentralized governing institutions) than an authoritarian socialist monopoly (the state), but the only caveat to this is that you have to have a critical mass of people who actually demand that or it's not going to be supplied. The overwhelming majority of people today believe that it is necessary to give up your rights to an apparatus of centralized power in order to be secure from those who would infringe upon them, and vote for power brokers to manage this central apparatus of control which systemically infringes upon their rights under their legitimized "authority" in the minds of those who willfully subject themselves to it's perverted laws perceiving it to be "just" as it benefits a class of plunderers and slavers who simply are now veiled by an apparatus of legitimate "authority" and systemically warping the institution of law from one of justified defense into violent infringement while selling it as just defense.

TL;DR - If people demand a free, stateless society, that's what will be supplied. Technological advancement will continue to empower the individual and decentralize power. Ultimately it all comes down to ideas and what a critical mass of individuals believes to be just.

I'm out of fuel from replying on this thread all day; I'll go through it some other time and respond later. Thanks for the input.

 

[Neil Desmond]

I see it the exact opposite way. It doesn't matter if anarchism is feasible, unless it can be shown that the state is not inherently evil.

Sure it does matter. Why advocate it if it's not feasible? I also explained in at least one other post concern I have about implementing anarchism, which is that we'd end up with a worse form of government than what we have now. Do you want to go from bad to worse? I don't; I'm not a masochist.

 

[erowe1]

#52

Here's what you say there:

Well, I suppose that I'm a definition #2 "statist": http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/statism?s=t

There certainly is something wrong with the advocacy of anarchism, because the implementation is bound to take a society from (phase 1) a state with fairly well-structured society and government, to (phase 2) a momentary phase of anarchism, to (phase 3) a monarchy, oligarchy, or authoritarian regimes. As someone opposed to phase 3, I'm opposed to anarchism.

But in post #68, you say that phases 1 and 3 are both wrong, stating:

Oh, sorry if it wasn't clear that the answer was an emphatic "yes." The answer is YES, and emphatic one.

So I'm having trouble nailing down your position here. If I were to state what you seem to be saying in a syllogism, it would be as follows:
1) Let "the state" be defined as any group of thugs that imposes its rule over other people without their consent.
2) Let "anarchist" be defined as any person who thinks the state, as defined above, is immoral.
3) If we didn't have a state, then we would have a group of thugs ruling over us without our consent.
4) Therefore, we should have a state.

 

[erowe1]

Sure it does matter. Why advocate it if it's not feasible?

If it's right, I have no choice but to advocate it. My mere claim that it is right is advocacy of it.

It may be the case that a world without any theft is infeasible. But that doesn't stop me from believing that theft is always wrong, that, wherever it exists it would be better if it didn't, and that decreasing theft is always good and increasing it is always bad.

 

[Neil Desmond]

If private people can provide all of the services the government claims to provide, then why is government necessary?

Well, assuming they can, tell me how anarchism would resolve this problem: suppose two people draw some maps showing their property perimeters, and they overlap resulting in a certain region where both these people claim ownership over it; who is right?

 

[noneedtoaggress]

Well, assuming they can, tell me how anarchism would resolve this problem: suppose two people draw some maps showing their property perimeters, and they overlap resulting in a certain region where both these people claim ownership over it; who is right?

Dispute Resolution Service.

 

[noneedtoaggress]

Sure it does matter. Why advocate it if it's not feasible? I also explained in at least one other post concern I have about implementing anarchism, which is that we'd end up with a worse form of government than what we have now. Do you want to go from bad to worse? I don't; I'm not a masochist.

If one understands the alternative to be immoral, one may choose to advocate for it on principle.

Also you're making an assumption that it would go from "bad" to "worse". It could just as easily, and would probably more likely go from "bad" to "less bad" if anything.

 

[erowe1]

Well, assuming they can, tell me how anarchism would resolve this problem: suppose two people draw some maps showing their property perimeters, and they overlap resulting in a certain region where both these people claim ownership over it; who is right?

They're both wrong.

Nobody has the right to just draw a map and say, on the basis of that map, that they own everything inside whatever perimeters they drew.

 

[noneedtoaggress]

They're both wrong.

Nobody has the right to just draw a map and say, on the basis of that map, that they own everything inside whatever perimeters they drew.

To be fair he didn't say they arbitrarily claimed it as territory, he simply said there was a dispute over claims to property boundaries.

 

[erowe1]

To be fair he didn't say they arbitrarily claimed it as territory, he simply said there was a dispute over claims to property boundaries.

If they don't claim land as their own, then what kind of boundaries would they be disputing? The answer to how their dispute could be resolved depends on that.

 

[noneedtoaggress]

If they don't claim land as their own, then what kind of boundaries would they be disputing? The answer to how their dispute could be resolved depends on that.

There could be a variety of ways people could both subjectively perceive they have a legitimate claim to the same material and need to have the dispute resolved. Arbitrarily saying "it's mine cause I say so" is one, it's just pretty much no one else is going to agree with it.

 

[erowe1]

There could be a variety of ways people could both subjectively perceive they have a legitimate claim to the same material and need to have the dispute resolved. Arbitrarily saying "it's mine cause I say so" is one, it's just pretty much no one else is going to agree with it.

But the situation posited wasn't as general as "material." It was specifically about properties drawn on maps.

 

[Neil Desmond]

Here's what you say there:


But in post #68, you say that phases 1 and 3 are both wrong, stating:


So I'm having trouble nailing down your position here. If I were to state what you seem to be saying in a syllogism, it would be as follows:
1) Let "the state" be defined as any group of thugs that imposes its rule over other people without their consent.
2) Let "anarchist" be defined as any person who thinks the state, as defined above, is immoral.
3) If we didn't have a state, then we would have a group of thugs ruling over us without our consent.
4) Therefore, we should have a state.

No, they're both just responses to the same question that you asked. What you've written here is very different from the point I was trying to make.

We're in "phase 1", a fairly well-structured society and government. If we try to implement "phase 2", anarchism, and it is an unstable system for society, then my concern is that we would be bound to end up in "phase 3", a monarchy, oligarchy, or authoritarian regimes. My question has been, all along, if we were to implement "phase 2", anarchism, would it be feasible or unstable? Pick one: (a) feasible, or (b) unstable. Which is your response, a, or b?

I also have another question for you: do you want to take us from what we have now to the "phase 3" stuff: a monarchy, oligarchy, or authoritarian regime, or not? (Yes or no?)

So what I would like to see from you is 2 response, a or b for the first, and yes or no for the second.

 

[Neil Desmond]

If it's right, I have no choice but to advocate it. My mere claim that it is right is advocacy of it.

It may be the case that a world without any theft is infeasible. But that doesn't stop me from believing that theft is always wrong, that, wherever it exists it would be better if it didn't, and that decreasing theft is always good and increasing it is always bad.

Is it right? I say it's wrong if it's not stable, because of what it might very quickly decay into. That, to me, is wrong; that, to me, is immoral.

 

[noneedtoaggress]

But the situation posited wasn't as general as "material." It was specifically about properties drawn on maps.

Right, and if they both did something they felt homesteaded the overlapping areas without the other knowing they may both feel they have a claim to it and have "drawn it on their maps".

 

[Neil Desmond]

Dispute Resolution Service.

What I'm trying to find out is how would they resolve it, to determine who is right. What steps do they take to say it's person a or person b, or how do they go about doing so?

BTW, we have "dispute resolution services" in many forms now, courts, arbitrators, etc. Why do we need anarchism to have a DRS if they already do exist now?

 

[Neil Desmond]

If one understands the alternative to be immoral, one may choose to advocate for it on principle.

Also you're making an assumption that it would go from "bad" to "worse". It could just as easily, and would probably more likely go from "bad" to "less bad" if anything.

Yes, I basically am doing that, because that's the possibility that concerns me. I don't need to address the other possibility, because I find it desireable. That doesn't somehow make my conclusion wrong. If I and others don't want to take the risk of transitioning from what we have to anarchism lest we end up with something worse than what we have now, then I and others shouldn't be forced to go along with the transition. Or, do anarchists want to force people society to transition? Oh wait, that would be contradictory to their position. Well, I'm still back at square 1: is anarchism feasible?