Quote from: anarcho47 on March 01, 2012, 08:33 pmlol you knew I was coming after this ;)I would suggest you do your reading up on the "wild west" which is the best example of a close-to-anarchist society in recent history that was based on individualist principles similar to the NAP.As to your Jews in Germany remark, I don't think that holds a drop of water. Living by the NAP means you make sure you are able to defend yourself against violence or threats thereof. I have ready many accounts, outside of the outright weapons bans of the Hitler regime (these measures were present in ALL of the dozens of major genocides in the 20th century), where the Jewish people were extremely passive. They were such in number that they could have overtaken the initial forces of sadists coming to herd them off by picking up lamps and broom handles and overpowering them and stealing their guns. They didn't act in defense. The NAP is very strongly in favor of strong defense, especially since owning an inanimate object (like a high-powered assault rifle and anti-personnel rounds) doesn't violate the NAP. It is only in statist societies where massive genocides have occurred - you have to have a centralized, monopolized group of violent people and a disarmed population for it to even be a possibility.This is why I laugh whenever anyone says it's possible the U.S. could be invaded. There are more guns in private hands in the United States than the entire population of the country. It would be a suicide attempt for anyone, even the U.S.'s own government, to attempt to declare all-out war on the American people. That is the thin veil of protection that the US population has against Hitler 2.0.Okdokey, give us a good book(s) to read then. I read quite fast, soon I will be through all the intel posted on the forums, no fear of the written word here, haha! Some Jews might have been passive sheep to the slaughter, but some of them certainly were not, you must have heard of the vicious battles that raged inside the ghettos all over Europe? In some cases it took months for the Germans to take back control of the very inner cities they were supposed to be occupying! No, I assure you the Jews by no means were pacifists. At least some of them were insightful enough to understand the reports from the camps and what they meant.My point about hunter gather societies wasn't that States are non-violent, because the State is inherently based upon the threat of violence. Any political scientist worth his salt who's read Leviathan by Hobbs knows that. No nation state, no social contract.Where we fundamentally disagree I think, is that I see a terrible threat from decentralized violence in anarchist society, where groups will form and develop neverending vendetta on each other's heads over and over and over. Much like the mob wars in Italy. Much like any tribe in Africa today. Ultimately leading to more destruction that any State would impose, after all, if people are dead they cannot pay their taxes. There is an upper limit on the insanity of a State, where it begins to destroy itself even if it's not held to account for it's murderous actions.You could tell me that we could have privately organized justice systems competing with each other, but I wonder how they will compete if there is no arbiter between them to stop violence between them.That may sound abstract, so let's get concrete. I don't like Sharia Law and Muslims don't like some Western Laws. It would be easy to develop conflict between those two competing legal systems, and by conflict I mean it literally. Locals are always enraged in Europe when Muslims attempt to implement Sharia customs, I find it easy to imagine violence consequences if the hand of the State wasn't there to stay both parties. Some evidence for my thinking, is that Nation States have much lower rates of violent crime than the so-called Failed States. If you look over time, over the last 3-4 centuries, the stronger the State becomes, the lower the crime rate becomes. Today we live in the least violent time period in history. It's been a steady linear decrease in violent crime per capita over time. (albeit you'd never believe it from the Media!)Now, that doesn't mean that 'external violence' does not exist. Clearly the inter-state wars of the 20th century were exceptionally bloody.But the internal violence has steadily declined for centuries with the rise of the Nation State, and any anarchist has to explain how his society would replicate that effect without taking us back to tribalism. It is totally conceivable that we could politically 'de-evolve'.Do you have an answer to this?tldr; why throw out the baby with the bathwater?