Can freedom and the State coexist?

My post was entirely neutral as to my opinions about corporations. It simply pointed out that the lack of government would not, in fact, immediately lead to, for instance, no more water service, because it's not the government that does that. I don't know how anyone got a pro-corporate worldview from that.

Shinigan (Naruto fanfic)

Uhhh.. not quite...There's some private water companies, but even then, it's highly regulated.

@The original post: Yes.

If you don't like a single Frank Ocean song, you have no soul.

@ alethiophile

Well I think the issue is that I believe your causation relationship is backwards.

You're stating, people are nice and we have government services on top. However, what I'm saying is that people are nice because of the government services.

Certainly if there was no government tomorrow, it would be confusing and people wouldn't start stabbing each other but that's when you start realising all the things that used to be done by the state. You notice the power companies start charging more and more money for less and less service. There's far less police or no police, so the poor and employed could turn to banditry with little resistance (afterall, if you want to stop them you want to spend more money, but you're going to spend money on yourself/your community, so it'd turn into pockets of policed areas and lawless area inbetween).

Then you start find justice to be completely arbitrary. What gets your hand slapped in one place, gets you hung in another. Some places use courts and police, others have armed gangs roaming the streets. There's no central force to unify anything.

Fights can spiral out of control with policing forces to calm anything. I think you're taking for granted a lot of what government does while ignoring what happens. You know why people like to use Somalia as an example of anarchism? Because the place lost its government and all it devolved into was many factions fighting for power. Then a foreign power stormed in to impose another government on the people but that partially failed. Anarchists can claim all they want that's not how anarchism works but what are you going to do? Mind control all humans to behave properly?

Somalia had warlords. Anarchy means no rule. Sorry, it's not an example.

edited 14th Jun '11 3:29:12 PM by LoveHappiness

"Had Mother Nature been a real parent, she would have been in jail for child abuse and murder." -Nick Bostrom

Your missing the point. True anarchy is impossible. People are going to take control. If there's no central Government, you get warlords taking their place.

edited 14th Jun '11 3:48:56 PM by Alichains

How does a state collapsing prove that egalitarianism is impossible?

"Had Mother Nature been a real parent, she would have been in jail for child abuse and murder." -Nick Bostrom

Because it shows what happens when a state collapses, and it's not egalitarianism.

This is proof? Wow you have low standards.

"Had Mother Nature been a real parent, she would have been in jail for child abuse and murder." -Nick Bostrom

Because humans, while not necessarily bastards, aren't for egalitarianism. Not all of them. If you lose a central body of organization, people form small groups to do things their way. Once they start forming groups, those groups vie for power. And those groups will have leaders, if only because not everyone'll contribute equally and someone will be considered "the boss" by others.

They lost me. Forgot me. Made you from parts of me. If you're the One, my father's son, what am I supposed to be?

Considering that it has never worked in the past for any society large enough to have cities, I'd say the burden of proof is on your end.

edited 14th Jun '11 3:56:45 PM by Alichains

Here

I just don't see any proof that anarchy can't work. I don't care about "the burden of proof" here because I'm not even saying it can work.

"Had Mother Nature been a real parent, she would have been in jail for child abuse and murder." -Nick Bostrom

It lasted three years, that's not a success.

I didn't say it was. I'm saying clearly we have no clue whether it can actually work long-term for sure.

"Had Mother Nature been a real parent, she would have been in jail for child abuse and murder." -Nick Bostrom

By the looks of it, not terribly likely. It's looks as though it was basically done in by not being able to really stand on it's own against other interests.

Crushed by superior forces, yes. And what does tell you? Nothing. This is one example, I don't think you can generalize that much.

edited 14th Jun '11 4:13:25 PM by LoveHappiness

"Had Mother Nature been a real parent, she would have been in jail for child abuse and murder." -Nick Bostrom

That's really one of the problems I see with anarchy. How do you deal with better equipped and better disciplined armies? Even if you manage to have numerical superiority, a smarter opponent could certainly still crush you completely.

It tells me it couldn't stand against superior forces. It tells me it needed much more support. It tells me what I would need to considered if I were to try another revolution. It tells me a lot a things.

• Looks at earlier post**

I think I might be getting a bit too jackassy. I'm sorry.

edited 14th Jun '11 4:29:27 PM by Alichains

That is also one of the issues that I have with pure anarchism, as opposed to minarchism. I have seen it argued that sufficient civilian gun ownership and culture can make it so that no sane opponent would invade, and it can certainly make it quite difficult for an occupier, but it kind of requires that you lose your cities first, which sucks.

In general I contest that loss of government services would cause people to start becoming less 'nice'. Current US culture in most non-coastal areas, for instance, strongly binds with the idea of armed individuals protecting others when necessary, and strongly against any sort of predatory opportunism. There's no reason to suspect that the latter impulse would win out over the former.

Shinigan (Naruto fanfic)

It tells you the exact point I am trying to convey to you. Anarchists will be crushed.

There's not going to be some magic anarchist god protecting them and their way of life. They'll just be crushed.

@alethiophile

I can understand a socialist state with mini-anarchist enclaves. You'd still need a central power but you relegate to a status where it has enough backing to block other powers from coming to be but not enough to blow away your belief systems. However, that ends up being more of a democratic socialist regime which is what I feel we're edging towards as is anyway.

You know so many shared economic ventures are starting to become state run because it just makes more sense. Car insurance for example. What point is there to a private market? That doesn't even make sense for insurance. Insurance is to turn statistical anomalies that no individual can suffer and turn it into a steady fixed payment system that everyone contributes into so that everyone knows exactly how much it will cost them. Why not state-run (or if you want to call it a collective co-op between all members of a country, fine, but that's basically no different)?

I'm just not sure what pursuing anarchism versus pursuing these pragmatic market placements will do. Taking away subsidies in many markets (eg. corn). Putting in tighter regulation in others (eg. banking).

edited 15th Jun '11 12:10:30 AM by breadloaf

How the fuck does a total of one example prove that?

"Had Mother Nature been a real parent, she would have been in jail for child abuse and murder." -Nick Bostrom

That's highly circumstantial. If you set up an anarchist state in North America of a size of at least a current US state or two, and they retain the attitudes that they currently largely profess re: invasion, I challenge anyone to invade and take them over successfully, even if it's purely anarchist with no standing army. We're having enough trouble in Iraq and Afghanistan; now imagine that with a much larger proportion of the civilian population actively fighting and that population drawing on a culture that includes sniping and proper squad tactics, instead of suicide bombings.

Shinigan (Naruto fanfic)

Or they could just leave the state to rot, and eventually the inhabitants would beg for effective government again.

Given that nobody is able to offer any kind of definitive proof, it's just arguing conjecture, nothing more.

edited 15th Jun '11 11:09:41 AM by blueharp

It's true that it's arguing conjecture, but it's entirely possible to argue from conjecture with full confidence in your conclusions. We've never accelerated a spacecraft to .99c, but we can confidently state that if we did the clocks aboard it would behave in a certain fashion. I'm not claiming that human reactions are so predictable, but it's still disingenuous to say that because we're arguing from conjecture, any postulation as to what would happen is equally valid.

In this case, I've seen plenty of data to indicate that people are entirely capable of putting together a decent society in the absence of government. It is, after all, kind of the default status of modern humans. To make it more clear: if government was suddenly abolished, are you saying that you, personally, would take the opportunity to act criminally and upset the social order? Or are you saying that you think everyone else would? If you argue that only a minority would do so (which is probably true) why do you think that that minority would prevail?

Shinigan (Naruto fanfic)

What's really disingenuous is to even come close to pretending that our understanding of physics and human nature even on the aggregate scale are in any way comparable. They aren't even close. So no thank you, but even with your disclaimer, it's not enough.

And you're overlooking the real problem in the latter case, it's not that the minority will prevail, it's the amount of harm caused by your course. How do you know what's going to be more or less harm? You have yet to show that in a believable fashion. So you can honestly and truly believe what you say, but that is not persuasive on its own.

In any case, just arguing conjecture is a waste of time, there is no productive way to discuss anything, it's just who shouts louder.

No thank you. You want to change the world? Have more to go on than just your faith if you want others to go along.

edited 15th Jun '11 12:12:24 PM by blueharp

But you've shown absolutely no evidence to show that humans would be nice. You go, hey humans are nice in all these places with effective government. Yet in every single country where there are no effective governments, they do not act nice. I like using Somalia but I can use any other example.

• Democratic Republic of Congo
• Liberia
• Egypt
• Palestine
• During the fall of Soviet Union when mafias rose up
• Lawless regions of today's China

Historical examples

• Any time China was inbetween dynasties
• Warring States period in Japan

I could keep going but any time an effective central government fell, chaos reigned. People didn't band together to form happy anarchist societies. It never happened. What easier time to do so than when a government disappears from the lands? You can't do it then, it won't happen now.