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Libertarianism, Anarchism, and Society with Voluntary Self Governance
Posts
That's a fundamental misunderstanding of both my point and the way the government is set up. Let me try to clarify.
It is an argument for active citizenship. The price we pay for living in a democracy is constant vigilance, it is every citizens duty to pay attention and speak out. Informed dissent is imminently patriotic.
If you don't do anything to make your dissent known, then yes, you're giving your tacit consent to something. Democratic governments have to assume they have the consent of the governed through elections and, to a lesser extent, polling.
TL;DR you don't get to complain about your voice not being heard if you're not speaking up.
This is one of the virtues to The State having a monopoly on force. When an armed malcontent decides that he does not want to play by the rules, the police / military can move in and stop him.
Without such a police force or consolidated center of power, the armed malcontent gets to slaughter all the pitchfork-toting hippies.
We don't have to portray this problem in terms of guns, either. When a person has an idea for how to manipulate people, they can infect the minds of their neighbors and coerce them into behaving in a way that suits the needs of the individual who discovered how to control people.
As I understand it, that is one of the myths anarchists tell of how The State came to be.
Which is kinda funny when you think about it. Once upon a time everything was awesome, and then someone came up with an idea for The State, and they took over the happy anarchists.
But, don't worry, anarchy can still work. Just ignore that story we just told you about how people can overcome anarchist communities and erect States.
I think part of it is that the anarchy/libertarian posters in this thread still haven't gotten past the righteousness phase, in terms of argument. I mean, sometimes it's prudent and even necessary to step outside of what you deem to be the most believable ideology or system. It seems these posters are stuck on the being right part, it's almost personal that their beliefs are being challenged as such.
I find it strange that some people treat their ideas / beliefs like baby kitties, tucked safely in a box under a warm blankie, lest someone disrupt them.
I'd think persons would want to battle their ideas / beliefs against others.
It's like pokemon. If you just keep your idea in your pokeball you're doing it wrong. If you don't let them out to battle, they never get a chance to grow or develop.
I think that this isn't really as forceful an argument as everyone believes. So let us say that we have three people. A, B, and C. A has a gun, and B and C don't. A is also hungry, and has no food. B and C both have food. You think that the most likely scenario is that A simply goes and kills B and C or enslaves them and takes their food (thereby making B and C starve). It wouldn't occur to A to trade with B and C? Maybe offer them protection in exchange for food? Then A can't simply just kill B and C, or he doesn't get any food, and B and C have a good reason to accept A's offer, because it ends up that they might need protection. I think that it's plausible that this would happen at least once. Okay, now we have D. Now D is short sighted, and doesn't give a shit about killing people. He wants to just kill B and C and take their stuff. But A is protecting them, and since D doesn't want to die, he's frightened off.
See, while you accuse the anarchist of thinking that everyone is full of sunshine and rainbows you seem to hold the idea firmly that every single person is a total fuckwad who wants nothing more than the murder his neighbor and steal his stuff. Now, honestly, I think that most people are just fine and dandy working with others for mutual benefit. I think that the people who just want to kill other people and take their stuff are rare, and usually driven to do so by some need, and the inability to fill that need any other way. I think that the number of those rare people who just want to kill, rape, and murder are probably smaller than the people who are willing to defend themselves and their neighbors. Most small communities are more than a little anarchic, and they seem to not have rampant problems with theft and murder. Most people are able to get along well with their fellows.
In the end, no one has the "advantage in force" over everyone, and people who might have the advantage in force are plenty willing to work with others for a number of reasons, not the least of which is that it's just in their self interest not to go around murdering everyone they can get their hands on. I mean, think about this. Is the only reason that you haven't murdered someone purely because you're afraid of the government?
"We believe in the people and their 'wisdom' as if there was some special secret entrance to knowledge that barred to anyone who had ever learned anything." - Friedrich Neitzsche
Well, this seems to be mostly a result of the fact that protection is something that is very difficult to give and take away. Unless that protection is in the form of just handing the person a gun, anyway. It's the public good problem, which is one of the things that economists generally believe the government has to have a hand in or it just doesn't happen. You don't get national defense without someone collecting taxes and organizing it, because if people don't pay (free ride) then nobody will want to pay and it doesn't happen. National defense is the most obvious, but this is also a problem with public safety things like lighthouses.
(Incidentally, they've fully explored the lighthouse thing on the Planet Money podcast. First they discovered that merchants in port towns used to build lighthouses without government intervention! Take that government! But then they found out that towns would only build lighthouses near their harbors, and there were still hundreds of dangerous reefs and whatnot that wouldn't have lighthouses without government intervention.)
It's the same thing with justice, if you think about it. If someone can just "opt out" of the justice system, then they're free to commit crimes and get away with it. If some people can just decide the rules don't apply to them, then the rules are meaningless for everyone.
Also, we discussed it earlier in this thread, but you can pretty much opt out of government and society. If you're making little enough money, the government won't bother you about taxes. If you go live in the middle of the wilderness where you're not benefiting from public infrastructure, nobody will bother you about anything! Unless you cause a fire or try to build a dam or do something that will effect other people, of course.
Vanilla ate my response, let's try again:
Tacit consent is a thing, but only if you're not giving out active con/dis-sent. That's who democracy works. The price of true democracy is CONSTANT VIGILANCE.
When you don't like a law it is your duty to speak out against it, take action to lobby your representatives or even run for office yourself. If you're just sitting at home being mad at a law but not doing anything about it, you're giving tacit consent to that law. That's the way it works.
Of course the government cannot always operate only by consent, that would never work, but just as it is the government's duty to do its best to provide for the common good, it is the citizen's duty to ensure that their government is following through.
Guess what though. In your example A has become the government of B and C. You've just illustrated why and how governments form in the first place.
"Orkses never lose a battle. If we win we win, if we die we die fightin so it don't count. If we runs for it we don't die neither, cos we can come back for annuver go, see!".
This illustration, while awesome, assumes that everyone wants their ideas to grow or develop. If you think you're right, you're not really motivated to grow on.
RIght, I guess that's what bothers me the most about this whole discussion. I can get behind the sentiment that currently many states have issues with corruption, and often don't effectively represent the will and best interests of their citizens. Obviously that's true in varying degrees in different states, but its a discussion worth having.
When someone comes in and says that the entire problem is "the monopoly of coercion and force maintained by the state", my first thought is that that is exactly how it should be.
I mean what are the possibilities? I can see 3 cases potentially
1) Monopoly of violence by a state
2) No violence (and unicorns and ambrosia for all)
3) Plurality of "legitimate" sources of violence
1) is the "statist" solution. 2) is fairyland. And 3) is absolutely fucking terrifying. It's literally might makes right, with no rights for anyone beyond what you can personally establish through the firepower of your faction. How anyone can see this as an improvement, or a stable solution is baffling to me.
Look at the proposed anarchist solution to the coal miners battle. The miners are getting massacred, and instead of going to some authority which the citizens have established as arbiter of justice and law to stop the killing, the solution is apparently to go get MORE dudes with guns and earn your rights through literal bloody warfare. Who is going to come in and be these "reinforcements" for the coal miners? I'm sure as hell not going to throw myself and my family into the meat grinder against an enemy with superior firepower to temporarily win rights for another group who I have no guarantee will reciprocate. For all I know they might want MY coal mine too while they're at it.
A plurality on the legitimate use of force is what most people call a civil war. Or I suppose since there's no state here, tribal warfare. Things might work all peachy in times of abundance, but the second one tribe feels like they can get more of a scarce resource through the use of force they absolutely will. This is literally the entirety of human history in a nutshell. And if the anarchist solution to this problem is to bring in more people with guns on your side, you can see how this very rapidly devolves into a particularly bloody brand of chaos, which eventually gives way to Somalia style warlords.
I am sorry, but this is absolutely not true. You cannot opt out of society - You benefit from society in a million different ways even if you're a survivalist living off game in the mountains.
Agreed. If you're off in the mountains, you're enjoying not being shot at by warlord tribes, clean air and water provided by environmental regulations, and when you fall down a canyon and break your legs the park rangers will be helping you out or burying your body when they come across it in a few weeks.
I guess you could opt out by running deep deep into the Rockies or the desert or the Canadian wilderness or Mexico, but even then.
There's really only one way you can opt out of society, but you have several choices on how to go about it.
The reason I don't worry about going for a walk at night is because of government.
The reason people get aid they desperately need and I wouldn't provide out of ignorance or indifference is because of government.
Also A still has the advantage of force over the other two. They pay taxes (food) and A provides a service (protection). Note that they can not opt out either. If they do, he has no reason not to steal their food as he will starve.
Well, yes, you're still benefiting from national defense (Hey! North Korea! It's totally okay if you attack that guy. Over there. But only him!) and conservation laws and whatnot. But you can totally opt out of taxes by being dirt poor and/or living in the wilderness.
EDIT: I realize now that this isn't as relevant to the current discussion as it was earlier (when we were arguing with that other anarchist who equated taxes to being robbed at gunpoint) but OH WELL.
Depends on your taxation system. Some governments tax people at a flat rate for being a resident of an area. Some don't. Some charge less if you are poor. Some don't.
You're not opting out of taxation just because the government hasn't charged you anything this year. You still get the benefits of taxation, and the government still claims the right to tax you if it desires to.
I think that A uses his force to take B and C's stuff if he thinks he can do so without a credible risk of failure, yes. In small communities where everyone is interdependent on each other for survival, and everyone sees their neighbors as actual people (as per the monkeysphere concept), it might be possible to rely on decency to prevent outright murder for property. On a larger scale? Human history is full of bandits, pirates, and raiders of all colors and flavors.
I mean hypothetical case here. New York City is run as an anarchist community, and somehow manages to support its current population density and infrastructure. As an anarchist city-state, there is no government, and most certainly no unified police force. One night, the power goes out. What is the more likely result here, mass looting and violence as people opportunistically steal more property for themselves and destroy the property of others they hold grudges against during the time when there is effectively zero chance of repercussions? Or everyone spontaneously organizes into community police task forces who patrol the streets and stave off theft through some highly armed concept of mutually assured destruction should one group start looting?
Hell, even the best case second scenario is a ridiculously highly charged situation. If people I don't know, who I have had no contact with and therefore can make no character judgement about them, are massed with guns across the street from me, I'm going to be pretty damn nervous. I'd love for them to not be a band of murderous thieves, but I'm sure as hell going to be watching them to see if they make a hostile move. And they're going to be doing the same to me. After all, how would one tell the difference between a roving band of bandits looking for a target of opportunity vs the local peacekeepers? One guy on either side moves too quickly, or points his gun in the wrong spot, and oops, we've started a war. And of course the anarchist solution is to call in reinforcements so.....
Going back to your example, A might protect B and C, sure. If he does so with their consent, hes now established a monopoly on the legitimate use of force, and has become their police and governing body. Welcome to statehood! In all likelihood though he does so by saying "I have a gun, give me as much of your food as you can without starving so that you can produce more food for me in the future", and now he's their feudal lord. Hurray freedom?
The only way in which a plurality of force doesn't devlove into conquest, is in some sort of situation where all sides are equally matched, and you effectively have mutually assured destruction. I'm not sure living in a state of perpetual cold war with every other community is particularly desirable, nor is it anywhere near a stable arrangement that would last and foster prosperity.
True!
I concede the point. My use of the wording "opt out" was not appropriate. You can dodge taxes by being dirt poor in America because we have a somewhat progressive tax system. At least on a national level.
So basically what you're saying is that some people are intellectually the equivalent of catching a team full of zigzagoon simply to walk around outside the grass and snag a few random but generally worthless items with pickup.
I enjoy this comparison.
My Backloggery
So, anarchist society makes rules to govern itself, and everyone who agrees to be bound by those rules is also offered their protection.
What happens to the people who don't agree? Let's say I've opted out of the rules. How does this anarchist society address me? Presumably if I were to just start stealing things or something I'd be sanctioned in some way, but by what authority? I didn't opt into any rules.
dappled sunlight / strikes your butt
girl you got a / real sweet butt
That's essentially why the whole "monopoly of force is bad" argument doesn't make much sense as a justification for anarchism. When push comes to shove, the "final" way to stop a specific, unwanted behavior will always be violence. It is deplorable and should be a last resort, but it is nonetheless reality. I guess since anarchists reject the idea of a single entity ("the State") wielding the power to harm and/or punish others, that leaves them with 3 options (?):
1) Not do anything to stop you and let you steal (or kill/rape/pillage/etc.) freely. Which is worse.
2) Have multiple entities try to punish you --> Plurality of violence, because having 1 group harming someone is bad, but having multiple groups is OK? And as someone above me posted, it's fucking terrifying, and it's much, much worse. At best, that's mob justice.
3) Rainbows and sunshine and bunnies and flowers! People don't steal or commit violent crimes if there's no government around, why would you invent things like this?
When the metaphor works for you, use it. When it doesn't, it's a bad metaphor.
(Also I don't think fighting over resources would occur at a buffet)
Counerpoint: Somalia
Actually, for as long as A has the gun, this option is still open to him at any time. For instance, if somebody undercuts A in the protection game, or B and C feel more secure and decide they don't need protection anymore, A can still just kill them and take their food.
In fact, it's entirely likely that A is offering "protection" in less than good faith, and that given an actual aggressor coming after B and C he'd steal what he could and bounce, leaving them to their devices. Really what you're describing is more likely to wind up as an old-school protection racket, where what B and C are really paying A for is protection from A. And not much else.
Maybe he is, maybe he isn't. On the other hand, you're still describing a world where I'm being extorted by one gunslinger to protect me from another. Freedom!
Not every single person.
But the ratio doesn't need to be all that high for things to go sideways.
Unless D is dumb enough to let A know he's coming, he's almost certainly going to win that fight.
Or to put it in Rayofash's terms: If there is only enough food to feed B and C. Either B or C is going to be out of luck, because A has got a gun and he will make damn sure he isn't starving.
There is no scenario in which A is going to starve. There are several scenarios where B an C are shit out of luck because A screwed them over. Yes, there is a scenario where A, B and C work together peacefully, but it is the only one. Its not even the most likely scenario.
Ray, this is your scenario.., that you made.., to prove your theory... and it doesn't even work in theory.
I think its time you admit that your theory doesn't work.
Loser came up with that theory, not ray.
Ray has presumably given up on the idea as per his last post. At least until he comes back.
I'm sympathetic to the argument that any anarchic society is going to eventually develop into a state. The only people who I've known to intelligently hold anarchic beliefs don't seem to have an answer to that question. I tend to think that while anarchism is nice (I guess), it'll eventually become a state.
The issue with it not immediately being a state though is that anarchists tend to have a very narrow concept of what a state is. I'm not sure they're entirely off base with it though. So something that you explicitly consent to isn't a state, because in theory you will be literally contractually bound, and your contract will have an opt out clause. So if you don't like the way things are going, you pull out.
As for the whole "what happens to people who opt out?" That I'm not entirely sure of either. It's never made a lot of sense to me, but I can give a shot at perhaps a plausible answer. No one can actually survive on their own. At some point, you're either going to have to be far far geographically removed from other people, or you're going to have to join up with SOME group of people. Now, you may be able to pick a group that has the rules that you want to live by, unlike the state system of today, where you don't get to pick where you live (otherwise there would be far more citizens of the US).
As for the Somalia people, do you really want to get into a match where we talk about the atrocities perpetrated by states with a monopoly on power against places with no state? Because I can guarantee you the anarchist wins that discussion. Of course, when you look at things like Nazi Germany, or Stalinist Russia you say that those are states gone bad. Or they aren't the good states. That states don't necessarily have to be like that, they can be better, yet at the same time, you think every anarchic group has to be Somalia. You can't have it both ways.
McDermott, you keep attributing violent and deceitful motives to every single human being who has any capability of exerting force. You seem to have a very Hobbsian view of humanity, like we're all barely constrained monsters that will kill others at the drop of a hat. If I'm starving, I don't think that I would immediately resort to killing other people for food, and I don't think that it's the State that would prevent me from doing that. I also don't think that I'm somehow special or morally superior to your average person. I think that most people wont resort to theft and murder when things get a little scary.
Also, we admit that there isn't really a scarcity of resources now, right? We do have enough food to feed people, don't we? So when does this problem of scarcity arise? From where do we get this scarcity of food that drives everyone who might be able to exert force to steal and murder?
The gun thing, I just picked a gun. I don't care what the weapon is. A tank, a roll of pennies, hope and love, whatever.
Why isn't the scenario of cooperation the least likely one? Seriously? I think that there are a lot of good arguments against anarchism, but I don't think that the best is "human beings can't work together because we're all selfish assholes." Do you honestly think that the only reason that people are able to cooperate is because of the State? Is that the only reason you are able to cooperate with people? If the State wasn't looking, you think that you would just start killing people and stealing things?
"We believe in the people and their 'wisdom' as if there was some special secret entrance to knowledge that barred to anyone who had ever learned anything." - Friedrich Neitzsche
tl; dr: "I'm an anarchist silly goose"
"Money tends to corrupt, and lots of money corrupts lotsely" - Me.
Actually, I specifically said that not all people would act in violent or deceitful manners. Read mah posts, broski.
Doesn't take many to fuck things up.
Three things.
How many of these people are there? Like, percentage wise of the whole earth's population. 50? 60? 10? I know you certainly can't be exact, but a good estimate that we can work with will do.
Absent the threat from government isn't absent threat. People can and will still defend themselves. In fact, I'm even betting people will defend each other. There is strength in numbers after all.
If you allow for the bad guys to band together into groups as well, well then you have people who can actually cooperate, and why are they stealing and murdering? They can and do cooperate with people to maximize resources. So what's their motivation? Love of murder? Do you really think that there are a lot of people out there that just love killing?
"We believe in the people and their 'wisdom' as if there was some special secret entrance to knowledge that barred to anyone who had ever learned anything." - Friedrich Neitzsche
Enough. There are enough people like that to fuck your entire system. Fuck, it would only take one self proclaimed warlord to force other people to adopt the same system or face life under his rule. I mean honestly, do you really find it that hard to believe that there are power hungry amoral people? Do you watch/read the news?
The problem with anarchists is that they think everyone thinks like them (which is especially moronic as there are anarchists who want the governments to fall explicitly so they can live in a feudal warlord system). That no one might take advantage of a power vacuum to get themselves some slaves and harem girls. You're delusional.
That argument was silly, buffet? Where people can eat as much as they want?
So we just need to eliminate scarcity, no big deal
Okay, so you're going to take the "bad guys can cooperate but good guys can't" angle. So we've got one bad guy and thirty normal people (that's about a 30% ratio of bad guys in the general populace). What you're saying is that one bad guy will be able to force all 30 of those normal people to live under his oppressive and authoritarian rule with little to no resistance? All by himself? Of course not, so he cooperates with other bad guys, so that they all work together to oppress everyone. So why are they working together to oppress everyone? Do they have some drive to oppress? Do they just want to kill and enslave people? Do they just get off on it? And there are enough people like that such that the whole population can't resist them? Why don't the bad guys work with the normal people and reap the benefits while not exposing themselves to the risks of having to live like warlords?
I find it hard to believe that the power hungry amoral people are stupid enough not to maximize benefit while minimizing risk.
"We believe in the people and their 'wisdom' as if there was some special secret entrance to knowledge that barred to anyone who had ever learned anything." - Friedrich Neitzsche
Defending one another may well be the problem in many cases. A group of people banding together to "protect their community" quickly and easily becomes a lynch mob or a witch hunt.
Up to a point it's easier to take than to organize creation. A group of a hundred raiders might be able to cooperate well enough to rape and pillage with everyone basically in it for themselves but working together to the extent required. It's significantly more difficult to organize a group of a hundred people into a functional community with complicated dependencies. Also: it takes a lot less knowledge and sustained effort to steal than it does to farm.
Since we're all playing Devil's Advocate, now.
"Looks like someone hasn't been to a Shoney's after Sunday service lets out..."
I don't get how that's different from government
Doc: That's right, twenty five years into the future. I've always dreamed on seeing the future, looking beyond my years, seeing the progress of mankind. I'll also be able to see who wins the next twenty-five world series.
In theory the difference is that one can leave the community at any time, and that the organization which evolved has the explicit consent of its members. Which no government on the planet does today. Since the anarchists I know all are obsessed with consent, this is what makes one organization just, and another not.
"We believe in the people and their 'wisdom' as if there was some special secret entrance to knowledge that barred to anyone who had ever learned anything." - Friedrich Neitzsche