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Can somebody explain Anarchy to me?

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CassidyTheDevil Since: Jan, 2013
#151: May 29th 2013 at 4:42:13 AM

Really, nobody is ever forced into that? Yeah, no. Another thing, almost everybody would prefer to not have a boss. It's simply not practical for most people. And it's flat out mathematically impossible for the majority of people to be employers.

Ramidel Since: Jan, 2001
#152: May 29th 2013 at 8:07:49 AM

@Katsura: You are forced into the workplace, in some form, by the threat of starvation. That, itself, is unjust to most anarchists, who would require at a bare minimum that everyone be provided with the minimum standard of living irrespective of their ability to work (and sometimes even their willingness; this depends on the branch).

Unrestricted right of contract is generally a liberal idea, and not everyone is behind that.

Greenmantle V from Greater Wessex, Britannia Since: Feb, 2010 Relationship Status: Hiding
V
#153: May 29th 2013 at 8:54:52 AM

...who would require at a bare minimum that everyone be provided with the minimum standard of living irrespective of their ability to work.

...but isn't that a Liberal idea too?

Keep Rolling On
RavenWilder Since: Apr, 2009
#154: May 29th 2013 at 11:00:51 AM

[up][up] If someone's truly unable to work, there are welfare programs and charities, enough to ensure that (in first world countries, anyway) actually dying of starvation is incredibly rare.

And if someone's just unwilling to work . . . well, they better hope we achieve a post-scarcity society sometime soon.

Ringsea He Who Got Gud from Fly-Over Country,USA Since: Aug, 2012 Relationship Status: Above such petty unnecessities
He Who Got Gud
#155: May 29th 2013 at 9:17:35 PM

What's the alternate to the current employment system? How is it unjust to be rewarded for contributing to a greater society via working, and being punished if you decide not to?

If I chose to live in a city that gives me security (cops/army) and the ability to have better food/water/housing etc. than I could get myself or even in a small society, I should have to contribute. The bosses are contributing by making a product or service available to everyone else and paying people. I could just go have a lower quality of life by farming out in the country somewhere and not having to work, or I could choose a high quality of life in exchange for contributing.

You have to give up some rights to have rights.

The most edgy person on the Internet.
CaptainKatsura Decoy from    Poland    Since: Jul, 2011
Decoy
#156: May 30th 2013 at 2:16:34 AM

Our civilization, as a whole, functions because majority of people work and contributes to the society in exchange for something else. Both employers and employees contribute, as the former create jobs, and the latter are able to meet demands of their employers and do what is expected from them in their position. If somebody complains that employers get higher cut from profits of the company, s/he should remember that they are ultimately in charge of managing their business, and have lot of responsibilities as well.

edited 30th May '13 2:21:23 AM by CaptainKatsura

My President is Funny Valentine.
Peryton Since: Jun, 2012
#157: May 30th 2013 at 8:19:30 AM

There are many types of anarchies. The most "fabled" is the utter lack of order and stability. But did you know that simply the lack of a dominant figure counts as an anarchy?

Communinal anarchies do exist, and they're hilariously the exact opposite of the chaos ridden concept. They're the rural areas, where the local individuals have more equality in power than one would expect, each relevant to the town's function, at the expense of personal freedom and self expression.

RavenWilder Since: Apr, 2009
#158: May 30th 2013 at 9:34:28 AM

In that scenario, people would still be controlled, they'd just be controlled by a collective instead of a hierarchy.

Ramidel Since: Jan, 2001
#159: May 30th 2013 at 10:13:26 AM

@Greenmantle: No, that's a socialist idea.

@Raven Wilder: Actually, right now, we easily have enough resources to provide everyone with a basic standard of living even if a fraction of the population opts out of the labor pool.

Kropotkin's suggestion, though, was that everyone be required to work 5 hours a day at necessary jobs if able, and if not a woman raising children, in return for access to communal supplies (food, clothing, shelter, needs of that nature). That was around 1900.

edited 30th May '13 10:17:30 AM by Ramidel

RavenWilder Since: Apr, 2009
#160: May 30th 2013 at 11:00:57 AM

That depends how large a fraction you're talking about, or exactly what jobs that fraction is choosing not to do.

Shepherd Since: Mar, 2011
#161: May 30th 2013 at 4:57:48 PM

It also depends on what jobs people are choosing to do. If I had to bust my ass everyday tilling soil for crops I sure as shit don't want some lazy yahoo who chooses not to work to reap the benefits of my labor without checking with me first.

RadicalTaoist scratching at .8, just hopin' from the #GUniverse Since: Jan, 2001
scratching at .8, just hopin'
#162: May 30th 2013 at 6:28:52 PM

I bet we could get it down to 4 or even 3 a day, 5 days a week, with today's tech.

Part-time communism. Hmm.

Share it so that people can get into this conversation, 'cause we're not the only ones who think like this.
CassidyTheDevil Since: Jan, 2013
#163: May 30th 2013 at 7:47:47 PM

people would still be controlled, they'd just be controlled by a collective instead of a hierarchy

You say that like it's bad thing. :/

RavenWilder Since: Apr, 2009
#164: May 30th 2013 at 9:02:20 PM

[up] Earlier deathpigeon talked about getting rid of private property because it lets the property owner control other people. I was pointing out that even without private property, people would still be controlled by others.

Ringsea He Who Got Gud from Fly-Over Country,USA Since: Aug, 2012 Relationship Status: Above such petty unnecessities
He Who Got Gud
#165: May 30th 2013 at 9:25:15 PM

[up][up][up] But technolgy is evil, it devalues the workers! -The USSRtongue

The most edgy person on the Internet.
CassidyTheDevil Since: Jan, 2013
#166: May 30th 2013 at 10:27:52 PM

I see. Well, it's an entirely different thing to decide things on an egalitarian community basis rather than a dictatorial top-down fashion. Yes, is not "total freedom", but the spectre of "absolute liberty" was always more of a classical liberal thing anyway (always coming down to "property rights" of course). People in power will always have the incentive to screw people over, that's an unavoidable fact. And most people in a hierarchy will be always be subordinates, and thus always most people will not have very much self-direction in it, and likewise most of the apples and milk will certainly go to the pigs in the farm. Now, it's just a fact of life that this sort of schism, this "war of all against all", will always sow discontent, alienation, and many many victims. And this problem only builds on itself, creating disaster after disaster.

edited 30th May '13 10:28:33 PM by CassidyTheDevil

Robbery Since: Jul, 2012
#167: May 30th 2013 at 10:32:47 PM

It strikes me that in an authority vacuum, people with just establish new lines of authority. People started organizing themselves into tribes, nations, etc, because there are benefits to such things.

Ringsea He Who Got Gud from Fly-Over Country,USA Since: Aug, 2012 Relationship Status: Above such petty unnecessities
He Who Got Gud
#168: May 30th 2013 at 10:47:10 PM

Anarchy =/= Chaos or no society. Anarchy = Leaderless society

The most edgy person on the Internet.
RavenWilder Since: Apr, 2009
#169: May 30th 2013 at 11:18:26 PM

Making communal decisions doesn't really work on a large scale, though. As a community gets larger, it will face more and more issues of greater and greater complexity, until it's beyond anyone's ability to keep track of them all. Eventually the community's gonna have to start delegating authority to specific individuals if it wants anything to get done.

For example, suppose Alice and Bob have gotten divorced, and Bob wants full custody of their child because Alice, he claims, is an abusive parent. In order to decide who keeps the child, evidence and testimony from both parties needs to be carefully examined. In a village of a few dozen people, it might make sense to gather everyone together and have the community as a whole decide who keeps the child. But in a country of over a hundred million? Even if you got every single person in the nation to listen to testimony from Bob, Alice, and any witnesses they might call, that's time when nothing else is being done in the entire country. And you can bet, as soon as that custody battle's over, a hundred more couples will be filing their own custody suits. Everyone could spend their entire lives doing nothing but reviewing custody suits, and they'd still never come close to being finished.

AceofSpades Since: Apr, 2009 Relationship Status: Showing feelings of an almost human nature
#170: May 30th 2013 at 11:43:12 PM

@ Cassidy: I've pointed out before that social censure is a way to keep down dissident voices, and even violently dispose of them. Current laws help mitigate that issue, but you can't have enforceable laws without some sort of hierarchy designed to enact those laws. Think of high school popularity contests, only applied to the entirety of a community that a dissident individual might not have the means or sufficient motive to leave. There's nothing in anarchy that can prevent popular people from accruing social power and influence, and that can lead to very dangerous situations. So yes. Communal whatsits can be bad, partly because they're insular and partly because decency is easy to ignore in the presence of the charismatic.

Anarchy has no practical or uniform way to protect against the worst parts of human nature.

Greenmantle V from Greater Wessex, Britannia Since: Feb, 2010 Relationship Status: Hiding
V
#171: May 31st 2013 at 5:15:50 AM

People in power will always have the incentive to screw people over, that's an unavoidable fact.

And that applies even in an anarchical or a leaderless society.

Remember, a group can still be dictatorial against another part of the same group, even if there is no formal leadership. It cannot be dictatorship in the hands of one person, but it can be dictatorship in the hands of many.

edited 31st May '13 5:16:04 AM by Greenmantle

Keep Rolling On
CaptainKatsura Decoy from    Poland    Since: Jul, 2011
Decoy
#172: May 31st 2013 at 7:00:56 AM

[up]Tyranny of the majority?

My President is Funny Valentine.
Greenmantle V from Greater Wessex, Britannia Since: Feb, 2010 Relationship Status: Hiding
Meklar from Milky Way Since: Dec, 2012 Relationship Status: RelationshipOutOfBoundsException: 1
#174: May 31st 2013 at 11:35:14 AM

As a community gets larger, it will face more and more issues of greater and greater complexity, until it's beyond anyone's ability to keep track of them all. Eventually the community's gonna have to start delegating authority to specific individuals if it wants anything to get done.
People will keep track of the issues that are important enough to them to bother keeping track of. Even if it turns out that different groups end up focusing on different issues, that's still not the same as (and possibly better than) giving certain individuals authority over all the issues simultaneously.

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RavenWilder Since: Apr, 2009
#175: May 31st 2013 at 5:56:27 PM

So let's continue my custody suit example. Bob comes from a large extended family and is very popular with friends and co-workers. Alice is estranged from her family and has few friends that aren't also, first and foremost, Bob's friends. So when Bob claims Alice is an abusive mother and he deserves full custody of their child, he's got a lot of people ready to defend him, while Alice has hardly any. And since there's no objective authority figure to deal with this issue, Bob wins because he's got the bigger fan club.

Does that seem fair?

edited 31st May '13 5:57:46 PM by RavenWilder


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