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Libertarianism, Anarchism, and Society with Voluntary Self Governance
Posts
How do you solve a collective action problem?
A state government didn't prevent the Toledo war. If people feel the only recourse is to fight, there's nothing to prevent it.
>Rayofash, what right did the miners have to forcibly take the company's property from them?
When they didn't provide a safe working environment and when they started killing them for forming a union, that's when they gave up their right.
Because it's never somebody who ate their share of the pizza, and is either broke or a dick.
So farewell to any kind of social safety net, I suppose.
The comparison isn't good because government services are not pizza.
THis is all very well and good for stuff people can easily know they need (like armed protection), but what about unsavoury things, like sewers, or wages for regulation enforcers? I can't see a lot of people volunteering to give enough money to keep a working sewage system going, despite it being absolutely necessary.
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For example:
This is how anarchy works. This is what you're suggesting we return to. When two groups disagree over resources, slaughter.
You haven't shown a single workable system. Not one. You have proposed ideas, but none of them actually prevent a party from taking power and then creating yet another state beyond "the communities would stop them". Yet no group of communities with no ties to each other have ever done this successfully over a long term. Ever.
This is, once again, blatantly false.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loving_v._Virginia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McLaughlin_v._Florida
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perez_v._Sharp
All of those are instances where the majority is overruled by the state for the sake of minorities.
And yet given the option people are more than happy to enjoy the benefits of either one without paying for them. And some government services (or "community" services) aren't exactly easy to exclude people from.
We just went over this! They did in your example! A war was stopped by the government coming in and stopping it.
Or anytime some douchebags whines about having to pay to taxes for schools when they don't have any kids.
They're far more important.
So now people are dying in the streets because Douchebag McGee didn't want to pay his fair share.
Really? All disagreements devolve into slaughters? Wow, remind me never go to a buffet with you.
>You have proposed ideas, but none of them actually prevent a party from taking power and then creating yet another state beyond "the communities would stop them".
What you're talking is psychological. Are you familiar with The Third Wave? The only way to prevent this kind of take over is vigilance, know what it is and stop it before it gets a chance to grow.
>This is, once again, blatantly false.
A few examples against it does not refute the examples that support my argument. Just look at the Democrats and Republicans, we either get Right or Far Right, almost none of the liberals are represented though they make up a large amount of voters. We need Mixed-Member Proportional Representation.
Ray.... buddy... pal...
You got to stop posting examples to support your position that disprove the point you are trying to make.
This is the third time I think.
The well off have no specific need for welfare or education services even though it benefits society as a whole and every individual in it to have an educated population that is not on the brink of starvation and destitution.
Yeah enlightenedbum I think I was being overtly optimistic about the education thing.
I didn't. Preventing a war is different from stopping a war. You don't need a state to stop a war.
Ok.
What would constitute evidence against your position?
Because it seems like you are saying, "Anarchism works in principle", and every time someone offers an argument against it, or a historical example of anarchism failing, your reponse is, "they didn't do it right" or "that wasn't really anarchy" or "something".
Are you actually open to the possibility that anarchism is a silly, childish notion? or is it simply awesome in principle, and nothing anyone says, ever, and nothing that could ever empirically occur in the world, ever, is proof against that?
Because that answer will greatly influence how this discussion plays out.
The point is that people will try to get away with paying less than they should for things they do want and do use. You wouldn't come up short otherwise, because you wouldn't be asking those people to pay, and they wouldn't be asking for pizza.
In terms of government services, since you profess an inability to understand the analogy, it's very simple: people don't want to pay for things if they don't have to. You understand what "free rider" means, I hope?
Re ancient Canaan, surely you can point out where in the video this information appears? Because what I'm seeing is a description of a "long period of decline and upheaval" of the existing Canaanite city-state system around 1200 BCE, which opened up opportunities for other social and ethnic groups to get out from under that existing system and form their own....well, state. (Protip: citing a long video in the hopes that nobody will bother to watch it to fact-check you, or citing "I kind of remember this TV show once" as evidence, is not going to get you far here.)
If this is going to be one of those discussions where you respond to counterpoints with non sequiturs and handwaving, might as well say so now and save everybody a lot of time.
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I have offered evidence where anarchism has worked in history. There are plenty of examples where it didn't work because a stronger nation invaded and took them over, but that has also happened in early democracies. Should democracy have been ignored when founding the US because it hadn't worked before that?
Of course I am open to the possibility that anarchism is silly, but I am convinced that isn't the case.
>What would constitute evidence against your position?
Since anarchism hasn't been tried on the scale I'm suggesting, there is none that I can think of.
Which no anarchistic entity has ever done over a long period of time. Ever.
Yes, actually, it does. You claimed the state doesn't protect minorities from majorities. Yet the state has routinely protected minorities even when the majority didn't desire it to. You were wrong.
They prevented further fighting.
Had there been none the number of dead would have easily crested the thousands. That did not happen though because the government prevented war from continuing.
I would like to see welfare reformed, and I personally would pay into it if given the chance. Currently I live with my parents.
And there are examples where it hasn't. Yes, sometimes the state works, we've been over this.
There are many other cases where democratic nations stood their ground successfully.
There is no case of an anarchistic entity doing so over any sustained period ever.
Err, Democracy went away too.
Once upon a time there was a democratic society. It existed until an empire came in and kicked its ass.
Empire > Democracy.
Here's the problem: "I have offerred evidence where anarchism has worked in history." If it went away, then it didn't work.
Once upon a time there was an anarchist society. It existed until a State came in and kicked its ass.
That indicates State > Anarchy.
I feel like it wouldn't be helpful to ask you to define "work". So, instead, can you at least respond to my statement that "If X went away, then X did not work"?
You said it didn't. You did not say it sometimes didn't. In fact, your exact words were:
So now that we've established that the state does protect minorities against the majority, how does an anarchy do it? There's no state so there's no entity that the minority can appeal to for help against the majority. What do they do?
Even most who advocate democracy(at least in observing this forum) will admit that it's quite flawed in various aspects.
I mean, star trek has story arcs dedicated to exposing the holes in their utopian future. They also ran under the presumption that human beings had socially 'evolved' to a state of overall consistent rational thinking and altruism. Rayofash seems to be running with this presumption as well.
Huzzah!
This has only happened to some states, not all.
It is what happened to every anarchy ever.
This literally puts organized states at infinity times more successful than any anarchy ever.
And then a Democratic society kicked the ass of the Empire.
Democracy > Empire > Anarchism
Edit: To give a more significant reply, "Democracy" did not go away. A particular democracy went away. A particular democracy, a particular empire.
The difference I would point to is that while empires and democracies come and go, they seem to be sustainable for longer periods of time than any anarchist society ever has been. I cannot think of any anarchist society that has existed for a significant span of time, in our modern era, that was of a significant size. Have we ever had an anarchist country the size of, say, Germany?
I am happy to grant that an anarchist commune of a few hundred people can live in the slums of a modernized city and eat from its dumpsters.
But that doesn't seem to be what you're arguing for.
This is the dumbest dumb that's ever dumbed.
The value of a social organization cannot be cashed out in who's ass it can kick. This is seriously "my social system can beat up your system"
Its literally all he has to offer as an argument for his anarchist ideals.
As for his stance on states and government... whats the opposite of No True Scotsman? Trying to claim that all the times states and democracies worked, does not count because it was really people doing it and not the government. True Welshman? Or True Irish? True Indian?
It's pretty valuable in determining which one can actually continue to exist and care for its people.
But what if the miners lost? And furthermore what prevents them from losing? You seem to be implying that the minorities/weaker people simply cannot lose these fights in an anarchy, whereas we are presupposing that in an anarchy, the stronger group will tend to prevail.
Why is a monopoly on violence and justice bad if the justice is just and the violence is sparse?
If individuals are more efficient than the State then how does the State dominate individuals into doing what they want?
You must have never been to a pizza party; because, let me tell you, we finished the fuck out of that pizza.
So you're saying that if forcible taxation was replaced by voluntary subscription to services, no one would be either too poor to afford their share or too much of a dick to pay after using the service? If we use the example of sewage, the service providers must go ahead and do it anyway; not clearing out sewage leads to unsanitary conditions that hurt everyone.
I'm not sure what you mean by "value".
But in terms of sustainability, with respect to self defense and the ability to persevere through conflict with external sources? I think that's the best rubric to use.
Your "evidence", as to ancient Canaan and England, appears to be complete horseshit.
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