Silk Road forums
Discussion => Philosophy, Economics and Justice => Topic started by: Purple_Hue000 on March 29, 2013, 12:25 am
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I've been pondering this for a while. What do you think?
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I think that it would and that it will seem very naturalistic when it evolves into the main method of societal organization . My (current) beliefs on the matter are that:
A: Anarchy has not been tried before and/or that it requires a high level of population, communications technology and wealth in order to get off the ground. In other words I don't think it would work hundreds or thousands of years ago. I think that feudalism, imperialism, democracy made a lot of sense in their time periods even if I don't find them preferable. The complexity of society informs what type of governance you get, what works for a village won't work for a empire etc. This could be said to be the 'energy' theory of governance, that a society is constructed into the shapes that they are in due to that form being most efficient, just as the way physical objects exist in their forms due to properties of physics.
If you have ever watched Ghost in the Shell you may be reminded of a scene in which an aircaft passes over a huge data haven, and the characters make the analogy that our cities are also literally storage centers for memes and genes, that our skyscrapers are like giant memory sticks with ourselves essentially being as the receptacles for human information technology. I think to date this is the most accurate synopsis of what humankind is really about, and that a gradual dissolution of the States is the next step to a new level of system complexity.
B: In my view anarchy does not seem a lack of organization or governance. It strictly refers to a lack of a single centralized state. With many 'governance providers' competing you have more organization in the system, not less. Different organizations offering governance as a service will exist which offer subscriptions to citizens. You can then choose the "government" you think best. Instead of being giant monopolistic entities that we call governments today, they shall be more like competing supermarket or clothing chains. Interactions between governance providers or conflict resolution organizations shall be handled by a set of Common Economic Protocols. These protocols (laws would be too inflexible a term) could be controlled in a decentralized fashion between different population centers by use of some kind of price network. In a world where warfare penalizes any centralization, this is the kind of result you should expect.
C: To get down to the 'practical realities' of anarchism, because the above might seem rather highminded or worse, obtuse, consider that there is actually quite a few suggestive trends to back up our view.
Consider that:
Sufficiently advanced nations cannot go to War due to MAD game theory. Many peoples on earth are stuck into 'countries' that they clearly don't belong to or don't have a nation state at all. The majority of voters don't feel their governments represent their interests and those governments are massively indebted, fragile. The rise of transnational corporations and the rise of NGOs is actually the best evidence for anarchism possible. Over two hundred or three hundred years ago, which is really not that long ago, neither of those things really existed. Corporations before that were just state/corporate monopolies with a charter like the Dutch and English East India companies. Guilds controlled inland trade and the power of the monarchy was absolute. Clearly there has been a huge flowering of diversity in the ecosystem of humankind.
The only thing I wouldn't believe you if you told me, is that our system of republicanism and democracy is going to last much longer, I don't think it shall be here in 2100. I think the dreams of the cypherpunks have more to say about the future than any government. I'd like to emphasize that this is not a utopian vision, we'll still have wars (brand new types!) and violent crime and so forth, it's just that the configuration of society like make democracy look as old fashioned as monarchy. Lest we forget, the concept of a "State" is kind of new, it goes back to Thomas Hobb's Leviathan political theory about three or four hundred years ago.
There are lot of people out there who've thought about the practicalities of things like Conflict Resolution Organizations more than myself, but I think it'll take the present system to collapse, perhaps as a result of war and debt, and then there will be enough 'oxygen' for a relatively small group of technocrats to implement anarchist systems. That's provided we all don't wipe each other out and go back to the Dark Ages, a distinctly realistic ugly prospect given the potency of modern weapons.
But other people have very different opinions, what is yours?
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Forgive WOT :-|
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Anarchy is not even a real political ideology. It has no answers to anything, it just wants to tear it all down. And then what, anarchy? Everything will be good? No. Governments will start to arise. We just have to start all over. Anarchy is nothing more than the political equivalent of a reset-button. It is not worth fighting for, unless you have a really good idea of what to build from the ruins of society.
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Well of course it would work -- in the sense that we wouldn't become extinct the next day or anything. Would all of mankind prosper? No. Most certainly not. There will always be cruel, indifferent, sadistic people. I think the police state we're ending up with today is worse than just about any alternative, but I think the cruel among us would have a field day in an anarchic social structure. Group boundaries, power and jurisdiction restrictions -- skirting all that would be a great game for them. As well as seeing how many people they could torture to death in a single night, I imagine...
Yes, it would work; but no, I don't think it would be better than any other possible form of gov't. I'd take it over what America's turning into though, for whatever that's worth... and if people would just be fucking reasonable and let others choose their own lives, I think it would be a smashing success. But people aren't like that. People suck.
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I'm inclined to think that thinking of anarchy as a concept by itself doesn't make sense. The concept of Anarchy is in the same bracket as the concept of "State". A state can be a state+monarchy, state+republic, state+democracy and so on. But you don't get a State by itself as some kind of platonic ideal or something.
Crypto+anarchy. Anarco+communim, Anarco+capitalism make sense, those are systems you can take practical steps to build. Whether they'll work or not is the issue. I think we've seen a slow but certain shift from hierarchical systems to networked systems over a few centuries.
What I'd ask SS and northsouth and PurpleHue, is what is their vision of the future, say in 2050 and in 2100.
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What I'd ask SS and northsouth and PurpleHue, is what is their vision of the future, say in 2050 and in 2100.
I don't know what the future holds politically. It'll be a consequence of the world we'll live in at that time, and the problems we face (f.ex. when global warming raises the sea-levels enough that countries will start to be under water, the problem of overpopulation will really start to kick in. One could fear that suddenly genocide wont seem so horrible). Nature and science is too unpredictable for me to have any kind of vision. But I do suspect that many scientific discoveries and revolutions are right around the corner. Personally, something I am very interested in, is the advances we've made in biology recently. The human genome project is complete. We've created the first synthetic life-form, from 100% man-coded DNA. We're catching up on natural evolution. What that means to the human race, I have no idea.
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No..I believe some sort of government is needed to keep society from self destructing.
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I'm inclined to think that thinking of anarchy as a concept by itself doesn't make sense. The concept of Anarchy is in the same bracket as the concept of "State". A state can be a state+monarchy, state+republic, state+democracy and so on. But you don't get a State by itself as some kind of platonic ideal or something.
Crypto+anarchy. Anarco+communim, Anarco+capitalism make sense, those are systems you can take practical steps to build. Whether they'll work or not is the issue. I think we've seen a slow but certain shift from hierarchical systems to networked systems over a few centuries.
What I'd ask SS and northsouth and PurpleHue, is what is their vision of the future, say in 2050 and in 2100.
I'm not really sure that you're right about that, to be blunt. I'm not trying to directly contradict your statement, mind you -- but I'd be very, very surprised if this is the only time in the history of mankind that circumstances and affairs have been like they are today. Now naturally the state of technology and weapons is new, but societies on the verge of collapse, economies failing, general discontent by the populace at large... that's happened tons of times.
Did anarchy ever come out of it before? Well I don't know. I'm not a history buff. But I'm assuming it didn't, or those who believe it's a good form of gov't would cite it as support. But then, your position is that it's the technology we now have that would allow it to work. I don't know about that. What technology do we really have that radically changes the situation, other than massive levels of communication?
Is that enough to bring it about? I won't pretend to know that, and I don't. I also have no clue what 2050 or 2100 will look like. At the rate we're going, we'll have terrible vegetation, vanishing resources, constant wars, and mankind may just destroy itself by then or shortly thereafter. Or we may use our technology to create what today we'd call a utopia. I doubt that very much, given human nature, but it's possible.
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I'm inclined to think that thinking of anarchy as a concept by itself doesn't make sense. The concept of Anarchy is in the same bracket as the concept of "State". A state can be a state+monarchy, state+republic, state+democracy and so on. But you don't get a State by itself as some kind of platonic ideal or something.
Crypto+anarchy. Anarco+communim, Anarco+capitalism make sense, those are systems you can take practical steps to build. Whether they'll work or not is the issue. I think we've seen a slow but certain shift from hierarchical systems to networked systems over a few centuries.
What I'd ask SS and northsouth and PurpleHue, is what is their vision of the future, say in 2050 and in 2100.
I'm not really sure that you're right about that, to be blunt. I'm not trying to directly contradict your statement, mind you -- but I'd be very, very surprised if this is the only time in the history of mankind that circumstances and affairs have been like they are today. Now naturally the state of technology and weapons is new, but societies on the verge of collapse, economies failing, general discontent by the populace at large... that's happened tons of times.
Did anarchy ever come out of it before? Well I don't know. I'm not a history buff. But I'm assuming it didn't, or those who believe it's a good form of gov't would cite it as support. But then, your position is that it's the technology we now have that would allow it to work. I don't know about that. What technology do we really have that radically changes the situation, other than massive levels of communication?
Is that enough to bring it about? I won't pretend to know that, and I don't. I also have no clue what 2050 or 2100 will look like. At the rate we're going, we'll have terrible vegetation, vanishing resources, constant wars, and mankind may just destroy itself by then or shortly thereafter. Or we may use our technology to create what today we'd call a utopia. I doubt that very much, given human nature, but it's possible.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Netwar
You should read about netwar if you want answers to those questions. Largely you answered it yourself though, what we have now is a massive capability to communicate with each other, in a secure and anonymous fashion in particular. Also, with Bitcoins, we have the ability to store and transfer wealth securely and anonymously, across national borders with little to no regulation. These are very important changes, and they lead to a natural reorganization of the groups that utilize them, into more efficient and dynamic structures. This is what Pine means by saying that there is a change from hierarchical models to networked models. In a hierarchical model there will be those who lead a group authoritatively, in a networked model there are merely actors, the more successful actors gain followers but they do not lead them in the same sense. It is similar to the online drug scene really, right now DPR runs the most successful site, but he is not the leader of us in the same sense that Pablo Escobar was the leader of his cartel. Rather he is one of the more active actors and has taken measures that bring him the most followers. This structure is extremely resilient to traditional governmental attacks, the first example that pops into my mind is a decapitation attack. With a traditional hierarchical model, attacking the leaders of the movement can kill the movement if successful, in a networked model the most active nodes are easily replaced when they are compromised. Additionally, the network consists of individual actors that can react to change in real time on their own prerogative, this is in contrast to a hierarchical model in which data flows upward to the commanders and instructions move downwards from the commanders to the actors. Removing the latency involved with that bi-directional information / command chain significantly increases the strength of the network.
Also Anarchy is NOT a form of government, in the same way that Atheism is not a form of religion. Anarchy is the lack of government. Anarchists correctly believe that all government is inherently coercive, and they prefer a free market approach to society instead. Anarchists recognize that taxation is theft, that people going to prison for drug crimes are slaves, etc. Government is always inherently criminal and rights violating, they steal our money, they enforce seemingly arbitrary laws on us (often religious based), they restrict what we can do (beyond not restricting others freedoms). Anarchists are purely pro-freedom and they correctly view government as inherently pro-slavery.
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My opinion could be said to be biased due to me having a military background, but I have played both parts of the fence, so to say. In Afghanistan, a form of anarchy and terrorism runs rampant. Society doesn't function as it should for the people of that nation.
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There will always be cruel, indifferent, sadistic people.
Yep. And those psychos will be running your laughable 'limited' government.
Also, your non-voluntary government actually works by murdering any peaceful person who doesn't acknowledge the government's authority. Just in case you didn't notice that little fact, or are trying to hide it.
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"B: In my view anarchy does not seem a lack of organization or governance. It strictly refers to a lack of a single centralized state. With many 'governance providers' competing you have more organization in the system, not less. Different organizations offering governance as a service will exist which offer subscriptions to citizens. You can then choose the "government" you think best. Instead of being giant monopolistic entities that we call governments today, they shall be more like competing supermarket or clothing chains. Interactions between governance providers or conflict resolution organizations shall be handled by a set of Common Economic Protocols. These protocols (laws would be too inflexible a term) could be controlled in a decentralized fashion between different population centers by use of some kind of price network. In a world where warfare penalizes any centralization, this is the kind of result you should expect"
(Sorry Pine my quote button is missing for some reason)
this is interesting but relys on a fairly unorthodox definition of anarchy. As you say the nation state is only a couple of hundred years old. ; before that we have had city states, baronys, monarchy's andso on. What you seem to be describing is some system of corporation states. I'm guessing these would need to be geographically based? Will ownership of natural resources be determined by whose territory they happen to be found? Or by force of arms? Clearly one benefit of this system is the right of the citizen to choose which state he lives in and pays taxes to. Again, though, since some of these corprostates will be better endowed with natural resources than others, these will be richer more powerful and better able to defend the rights of their subscribers. Thus they will attract even more subscribers and become more able to seize control of valuable resources. The huge monopolistic governments you decry did not begin that way. They came about because, in general, larger organisation s are better able to defend the rights of their members.
I guess what I'm saying is I could see this system evolving fairly quickly into a similar situation to what we have now.
Anarchy is never a lasting state. People naturally group together into larger alliances to better defend their rights and property. While at first membership of these groups is voluntary; once the world becomes populated by similar, increasingly centralised groups ( better able to compete militarily for resources) the choice of the citizen becomes worth less. Indeed under our current system, if you don't like paying taxes to the "government protection racket (enforced by men with guns etc.)" you are free to choose to leave and find a society more to your liking. Its just there aren't many that are better at present.
I could see a similar choice facing citizens in the projected system of corporate states.
In answer to how I see our future developing:
Firstly I think it would take some huge upheaval to dislodge our current 'leviathan' governments. I cannot see them tolerating the existence of the consumer based subscription states in their midst. I think most western governments could utterly crush any internal resistance withoutmuch trouble . I know US citizens like to think that owning an assault rifle will protect you against government tyranny, but they will pry it from your cold dead hands with very little effort,
Or perhaps a sizable faction of the military might become convinced of the libertarian cause. Sadly, history shows us that inviting the military to assist in ridding yourselves of a tyranny usually leads to military rule.
I do agree that central government will be less and less powerful and private corporations will take on more and more of the functions of government. I differ in not thinking that this will be a particularly good thing. We will move from a system of "one man one vote" (however flawed) to a system of "one dollar one vote".
In my view central democratic governments (again, however flawed, and they are VERY flawed) offer the only balwark against the tyranny of ever larger monopolistic corporations.
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OH SHIIIIIT!!!!!!! Just noticed KMFkewn is here too..... I feel equipped to take on pine or kmfkewn individually ( unless we are talking about computers in which case I shut up and listen) but BOTH AT ONCE? I have made an error of judgement and may be about to have my ass handed to me. Welcome back pine by the way
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Short answer: REALLY crappy at first, pretty awesome in the middle, and quickly evolving into an actual form of government (sad face)
Long answer:
Obviously, there are some serious holes in the concept of Anarchy as a workable form of government. If, for some reason, the us government fell apart completely today, what would happen?
First, a whole lot of people would die/loose everything/get hurt. Sam (as in uncle sam) has a hand deeply imbedded into everything. if the entire system of government were eliminated, power plants and public transport and schools, and traffic lights and fuel distribution and the entire financial regulation system would collapse or at least glitch significantly. This would cause people to commit suicide, riot, loot, and otherwise act like animals. I honestly think that this period would be bloody, but very short. I think people would quickly realize that if they didn't step up, life would basically suck for everyone. So I think people would start taking care of business. They'd get power and water and communications back up and figure out a currency, etc.
But, I think because the wealthiest people in the world would still have the resources to move back into positions of power very quickly. I think the whole thing would be over and back to some organized central government in a very short time. With the possibility of several centralized governments instead of one.
The biggest problem with anarchy functioning for any length of time is that people, given the chance, will act like animals toward each other until someone makes them stop (or they find an incentive to stop). Look at the LA riots (among other things). That shit got way out of had really fast and, for the most part, those people were DESTROYING THEIR OWN NEIGHBORHOODS. I think if you could pin any one of them down and get an honest answer as to why they did it, it would either be an "I have no idea" or it would be "I saw an opportunity to get me a new TV and I took it"
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Anarchism is the rejection of all unwarranted authority, there would be no "higher up" to exploit anyone.
There actually is an example of anarchism in action in Spain during their civil war in the 30s. Over 1 million workers seized control of their workplace and governed themselves for about 3 years. During this time economic production more than doubled. And this was while fighting a war!
I can tell that most people on this thread have a misunderstanding of anarchism, it is not chaos, it is the most orderly and organised political stance there is. With anarchism everyone has a say in how their lives are governed and it requires a great deal of political engagement from all sectors of society. I'm an anarchist and I have been for most of my life and I fully believe it to be the endgame of social organisation.
Private property and the existence of states and borders are the direct cause of the vast majority of crimes and injustices and anarchism is the only ideology that addresses this and offers a solutions.
To bring about an anarchist revolution require an unbelieveable amount of organisation and education but I maintain that it is by far the most organised system on offer.
Bit of info for those who are unaware that the circle A anarchist symbol stands for "anarchy is order".
You will also find that many anarchists are extremely well read on many issues of politics and social organisation.
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First we destroy the governments through fire. Then anarchy takes over and destruction ensues. Then rebirth of civilization.
At that point we try again, this time to get it right.
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That the symbol means "anarchy is order" is the most interesting thing I've read all day. Mind you, it is only 7.50 am. I am definitely aware that anarchist theory is very much untaught. It suited both sides in the cold war to pretend that the Marxist version of communism was the only model proposed. Anyway here is a Crass lyric I feel is apposite:
If there was no government, wouldn't there be chaos
Everybody running round, setting petrol bombs off?
And if there was no police force, tell me what you'd do
If thirty thousand rioters came running after you?
And who would clean the sewers? Who'd mend my television?
Wouldn't people lay about without some supervision?
Who'd drive the fire engines? Who'd fix my video?
If there were no prisons, well, where would robbers go?
And what if I told you to Fuck Off?
What if there's no army to stop a big invasion?
Who'd clean the bogs and sweep the floors? We'd have all immigration.
Who'd pull the pint at the local pub? Where'd I get my fags?
Who'd empty out my dustbins? Would I still get plastic bags?
If there were no hospitals, and no doctors too,
If I'd broken both my legs, where would I run to?
If there's no medication, if there were no nurses,
Wouldn't people die a lot? And who would drive the hearses?
And what if I told you to Fuck Off?
If there were no butchers shops, what would people eat?
You'd have everybody starving if they didn't get their meat.
If there was no water, what would people drink?
Who'd flush away the you-know-what? But of course MINE never stink.
What about the children? Who'd teach them in the schools?
Who'd make the beggers keep in line? Learn them all the rules?
Who's tell us whitewash windows? When to take down doors?
Tell us make a flask of tea and survive the holocaust?
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Obviously the last couple of lines are mocking the "protect and survive" public information leaflets of the 80's. Advice was to take off all the doors in your house and construct a shelter against a solid internal wall, and whitewash windows to protect against the flash. And fill your bath with water.
This, incidentally is why I find reviewers who describe Cormac McCarthy's 'The Road' as 'after some unspecified disaster' annoying. In the book he sees flashes on the horizon and turns the taps on in the bath. Its clearly a nuclear war.
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150 years of media spin from all political camps (particularly Leninist communism)) have done a lot to tarnish anarchism, that the word is synonymous with chaos is completely engineered. Please if you're intersted look into the Anarchist movement during the spanish civil war, it is incredibly interesting and a compelling argument for anarchism.
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I can tell that most people on this thread have a misunderstanding of anarchism, it is not chaos, it is the most orderly and organised political stance there is.
I dunno, I would say fascism is more orderly and organized.
With anarchism everyone has a say in how their lives are governed and it requires a great deal of political engagement from all sectors of society.
Isn't that democracy?
Private property and the existence of states and borders are the direct cause of the vast majority of crimes and injustices and anarchism is the only ideology that addresses this and offers a solutions.
Socialism does this as well.
You will also find that many anarchists are extremely well read on many issues of politics and social organisation.
That's funny, because I've found the opposite to be true most of the time.
You say you find anarchy to be the endgame of social organisation - to me, anarchy is the earliest stage in social organisation.[/size]
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I am reading a very interesting book at moment :
(More a collection of essays really)
Markets Not Capitalism: Individualist Anarchism Against Bosses, Inequality, Corporate Power, and Structural Poverty By Gary Chartier, Charles W. Johnson 2011 | 440 Pages | ISBN: 1570272425 | PDF | 2 MB
It seems to offer a form of anarchism/libertarianism that I can get on board with. A free market, but one truly freed from the distorting effects of existing capitalist privilege.
Here is magnet link; obviously subscribe to the torrent at your own risk(specifically, identifying yourself as a user of this site by downloading a torrent mentioned here)
magnet:?xt=urn:btih:4c1970e6110b1224006d7d767b8f02e5df001be7&dn=Markets+Not+Capitalism%3A+Individualist+Anarchism+Against+Bosses%2C+&tr=udp%3A%2F%2Ftracker.openbittorrent.com%3A80&tr=udp%3A%2F%2Ftracker.publicbt.com%3A80&tr=udp%3A%2F%2Ftracker.istole.it%3A6969&tr=udp%3A%2F%2Ftracker.ccc.de%3A80
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I do agree that central government will be less and less powerful and private corporations will take on more and more of the functions of government. I differ in not thinking that this will be a particularly good thing ... In my view central democratic governments (again, however flawed, and they are VERY flawed) offer the only balwark against the tyranny of ever larger monopolistic corporations.
Very astute and I couldn't agree more. That's always been a fundamental pet peeve of mine that's bothered me about anarcho-libertarians and their ideology ... which is their seeming refusal to recognize that corporate tyranny is still tyranny. And I see no reason why corporate tyranny would be better and a lot of reasons why it would be a lot worse. At least now, in spite of our form of government being far from perfect there are at least checks and balances built in and levers of power and redress accessible to the public that gives us some forms of representation.
OH SHIIIIIT!!!!!!! Just noticed KMFkewn is here too..... I feel equipped to take on pine or kmfkewn individually ( unless we are talking about computers in which case I shut up and listen) but BOTH AT ONCE? I have made an error of judgement and may be about to have my ass handed to me. Welcome back pine by the way
LOL. Don't worry, I got your back. ;)
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I do agree that central government will be less and less powerful and private corporations will take on more and more of the functions of government. I differ in not thinking that this will be a particularly good thing ... In my view central democratic governments (again, however flawed, and they are VERY flawed) offer the only balwark against the tyranny of ever larger monopolistic corporations.
Very astute and I couldn't agree more. That's always been a fundamental pet peeve of mine that's bothered me about anarcho-libertarians and their ideology ... which is their seeming refusal to recognize that corporate tyranny is still tyranny. And I see no reason why corporate tyranny would be better and a lot of reasons why it would be a lot worse. At least now, in spite of our form of government being far from perfect there are at least checks and balances built in and levers of power and redress accessible to the public that gives us some forms of representation.
Chin up, I'm pretty sure most anarcho-libertarians know the deal when it comes to corporate tyranny :)
Chomsky gives a good talk or two on Anarchy. A good one can be found by searching 'conversation with history Berkeley Noam Chomsky' It's a good read with many basic lucid points to be had.
Interviewer asks, "You're a libertarian anarchist, and when one hears that, because of the way issues are framed in this country, there's often many misperceptions -- and also because of things that you've written. Help us understand what that means. In other words, it doesn't mean that you favor chaos or no government, necessarily."
Response: "The United States is sort of out of the world on this topic. Britain is to a limited extent, but the United States is like on Mars. So here, the term "libertarian" means the opposite of what it always meant in history. Libertarian throughout modern European history meant socialist anarchist. It meant the anti-state element of the Workers Movement and the Socialist Movement. It sort of broke into two branches, roughly, one statist, one anti-statist. The statist branch led to Bolshevism and Lenin and Trotsky, and so on. The anti-statist branch, which included Marxists, Left Marxists -- Rosa Luxemburg and others -- kind of merged, more or less, into an amalgam with a big strain of anarchism into what was called "libertarian socialism." So libertarian in Europe always meant socialist. Here it means ultra-conservative -- Ayn Rand or Cato Institute or something like that. But that's a special U.S. usage. There are a lot of things quite special about the way the United States developed, and this is part of it. There [in Europe] it meant, and always meant to me, socialist and anti-state, an anti-state branch of socialism, which meant a highly organized society, completely organized and nothing to do with chaos, but based on democracy all the way through. That means democratic control of communities, of workplaces, of federal structures, built on systems of voluntary association, spreading internationally. That's traditional anarchism. You know, anybody can have the word if they like, but that's the mainstream of traditional anarchism."
Interviewer: "Under what circumstances is power legitimate?"
NC: "The core of the anarchist tradition, as I understand it, is that power is always illegitimate, unless it proves itself to be legitimate. So the burden of proof is always on those who claim that some authoritarian hierarchic relation is legitimate. If they can't prove it, then it should be dismantled.
Can you ever prove it? Well, it's a heavy burden of proof to bear, but I think sometimes you can bear it. So to take a homely example, if I'm walking down the street with my four-year-old granddaughter, and she starts to run into the street, and I grab her arm and pull her back, that's an exercise of power and authority, but I can give a justification for it, and it's obvious what the justification would be. And maybe there are other cases where you can justify it. But the question that always should be asked uppermost in our mind is, "Why should I accept it?" It's the responsibility of those who exercise power to show that somehow it's legitimate. It's not the responsibility of anyone else to show that it's illegitimate. It's illegitimate by assumption, if it's a relation of authority among human beings which places some above others. That's illegitimate by assumption. Unless you can give a strong argument to show that it's right, you've lost.
It's kind of like the use of violence, say, in international affairs. There's a very heavy burden of proof to be borne by anyone who calls for violence. Maybe it can be sometimes justified. Personally, I'm not a committed pacifist, so I think that, yes, it can sometimes be justified. So I thought, in fact, in that article I wrote in fourth grade, I thought the West should be using force to try to stop fascism, and I still think so. But now I know a lot more about it. I know that the West was actually supporting fascism, supporting Franco, supporting Mussolini, and so on, and even Hitler. I didn't know that at the time. But I thought then and I think now that the use of force to stop that plague would have been legitimate, and finally was legitimate. But an argument has to be given for it."
Lucid son of a gun.
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B: In my view anarchy does not seem a lack of organization or governance. It strictly refers to a lack of a single centralized state. With many 'governance providers' competing you have more organization in the system, not less. Different organizations offering governance as a service will exist which offer subscriptions to citizens. You can then choose the "government" you think best. Instead of being giant monopolistic entities that we call governments today, they shall be more like competing supermarket or clothing chains. Interactions between governance providers or conflict resolution organizations shall be handled by a set of Common Economic Protocols. These protocols (laws would be too inflexible a term) could be controlled in a decentralized fashion between different population centers by use of some kind of price network. In a world where warfare penalizes any centralization, this is the kind of result you should expect.
C: To get down to the 'practical realities' of anarchism, because the above might seem rather highminded or worse, obtuse, consider that there is actually quite a few suggestive trends to back up our view.
Consider that:
Sufficiently advanced nations cannot go to War due to MAD game theory. Many peoples on earth are stuck into 'countries' that they clearly don't belong to or don't have a nation state at all. The majority of voters don't feel their governments represent their interests and those governments are massively indebted, fragile. The rise of transnational corporations and the rise of NGOs is actually the best evidence for anarchism possible. Over two hundred or three hundred years ago, which is really not that long ago, neither of those things really existed. Corporations before that were just state/corporate monopolies with a charter like the Dutch and English East India companies. Guilds controlled inland trade and the power of the monarchy was absolute. Clearly there has been a huge flowering of diversity in the ecosystem of humankind.
Hm. I'm really not sure how the existence of NGOs or transnational corporations is evidence that anarchy would work. These entities still operate under the legal frameworks of the countries they're located in and international law. I also don't see how MAD would apply in an anarchic state. The reason MAD is effective is because of the reality of total annihilation in a nuclear war. So unless you're advocating that these "competing" governments also be armed to the teeth with nukes, which I believe is a really bad idea for a variety of reasons, I'm not sure how that would work exactly.
The exercise of power by those in a position to wield it does not end with the elimination of central government. Instead it shifts to those of a more localized, tyrannical, and less democratically accountable bent. This has happened throughout history with the rise of feudal states. The universal constant of feudalism is that it thrives in the absence of centralized state power. Feudal France, Tsarist Russia, Dark Age and Middle Age European feudalism were all a result of an absent of centralized government, the latter the result after the fall of the Roman Empire. And there are no lack of modern examples of how the absence of government gives rise to feudalism. Somalia, Afghanistan anywhere outside of Kabul, the Federally Administered Tribal Areas of Pakistan all serve as viscerally repulsive examples of feudal systems that are a consequence of anarchy in practice.
And who is to decide upon this set of Common Economic Protocols you're proposing? How do you expect "conflict resolution organizations" to come to an amicable resolution when there is no final arbiter? People are stubborn and people with entrenched interests even more stubborn. If the only deterrence to conflict resolution is going to war, then it sounds like there will be a lot of wars. Wars have happened throughout history and they happen today as the means of "conflict resolution". And when one side wins, they get to impose their rules on the rest. Out goes your anarchy. In rolls the despotism.
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I do agree that central government will be less and less powerful and private corporations will take on more and more of the functions of government. I differ in not thinking that this will be a particularly good thing ... In my view central democratic governments (again, however flawed, and they are VERY flawed) offer the only balwark against the tyranny of ever larger monopolistic corporations.
Very astute and I couldn't agree more. That's always been a fundamental pet peeve of mine that's bothered me about anarcho-libertarians and their ideology ... which is their seeming refusal to recognize that corporate tyranny is still tyranny. And I see no reason why corporate tyranny would be better and a lot of reasons why it would be a lot worse. At least now, in spite of our form of government being far from perfect there are at least checks and balances built in and levers of power and redress accessible to the public that gives us some forms of representation.
Chin up, I'm pretty sure most anarcho-libertarians know the deal when it comes to corporate tyranny :)
Chomsky gives a good talk or two on Anarchy. A good one can be found by searching 'conversation with history Berkeley Noam Chomsky' It's a good read with many basic lucid points to be had.
Ok. I apologize as I should have been more specific. I wasn't speaking of anarcho-syndicalists like Chomsky. I'm actually a great personal admirer of Chomsky even though I wouldn't call myself an anarcho-syndicalist. Of all the great intellectuals, Chomsky most definitely understands what corporate tyranny is. I was referring to the anarcho-capitalist wing of anarcho-libertarianism. Completely different beast which is the wing I believe Hungry ghost was referring to.
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Yep Chomsky is an excellent writer. Having worked my way through the book I mention above ( which has contributions from Rothbard, Lew Rockwell institute et al;) I am beginning to accept a form of left libertarianism. The 'libertarianism' often propounded on this site is described therein as "vulgar liberterianism"; ie a supposedly free market but with the current monopolies of power and property left unmolested in their possession of their ill gotten gains (often through outright past force, or granted to them by state favouritism). This has always been a sticking point for me. The book is an attempt to distinguish (as the title suggests) free(d) markets from the present form of monopoly capitalism. It's good stuff. I think I understand better now what some of the more mild mannered libertarians were trying to get across to me, but their message was distorted by the right wing libertarians,( neo liberals?) who use libertarianism as a justification for the current unjust distribution of wealth. (ie the rich deserve their wealth, the poor their poverty, and the only injustice is caused by excessive government)
It also draws a distinction between "state socialism" and free market socialism. Free market socialism would commonly be regarded as an oxymoron, but this is because the debate has been framed and distorted by right wing neoliberals. Free market socialism would consist of a truly free market, where without the barriers to entry erected by current monopolies; worker owned and run small scale businesses would outcompete capitalist ventures.
It's certainly a thought provoking read. Heavy going though.
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It is bullshit to say that US libertarian anarchists are ultra conservative. Ultra conservatives are against drug legalization, against separation of church and state, against abortion in all cases etc. Libertarian anarchy from a US perspective is like a hybrid of conservatism and liberalism.
When it comes to anything to do with money or business, it is very conservative. There should be no taxation whatsoever, no social welfare programs funded with force, no socialized health care, no FDC to approve drugs or food, no regulations on restaurants like no smoking or limited sized soda etc. Although libertarian anarchists are generally kind people and in favor of voluntarily donating money to social programs, they are against people being forced to donate. When it comes to businesses, they are regulated by the people in that nobody forces you to work at a place that allows smoking, nobody forces you to buy big sugary drinks, etc. They think that the monopoly on regulation should instead be replaced with a free market certification system, so a restaurant may get certified by a free market establishment that serves the purpose of auditing restaurants and reporting on their quality. The same for drugs, etc. The only social issue that it is conservative about is gun ownership, which they think should be legal and minimally regulated if at all regulated.
When it comes to everything else, it is highly liberal. Gay marriage should of course be legal, possession of CP should be decriminalized and age of consent lowered, drugs should be entirely legalized, intellectual property laws greatly relaxed (although this issue is debated by libertarians), prostitution legalized, abortion legal, and generally the laws should be relaxed and cut back to the bare minimum.
Libertarian anarchists are even more conservative than conservatives, they don't want to cut back on tax they want to completely abolish it. And that means abolishing public schools, public roads, etc. They are also more liberal than liberals, they don't want to just decriminalize marijuana they want to completely legalize all drugs.
So in summary, libertarian anarchists are not ultra conservatives, in regards to financial and business related things they are ultra ultra ultra conservatives and in regards to social things they are ultra ultra ultra liberals.
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On taxation:
Liberals: Want higher taxes to fund social programs
Conservatives: Want lower taxes
Libertarians: Want extremely low or no taxes
On Business Regulation:
Liberals: Want highly regulated businesses , restricted from allowing people to smoke inside, restricting portions of food they can serve, mandating that they do not discriminate based on race and/or various other factors, mandating that they provide services to their workers
Conservatives: Want little regulation on businesses, generally allowing them to operate as they please
Libertarians: Want little regulation on businesses, generally allowing them to operate as they please
On Gay Marriage:
Liberals: Want gay people to be treated equally under the law
Conservatives: Want to discriminate against gay people and keep marriage as between a man and woman
Libertarians: Want the government to have absolutely nothing to do with marriage, de facto causing them to be in support of gay marriage
On Government Safety Programs:
Liberals: Want a lot of government programs like the FDA to approve drugs and food, etc. Lots of government restrictions, testing, approvals, certifications, etc
Conservatives: Want a lot of government programs like the FDA to approve drugs and good, etc, but not as much as liberals
Libertarians: Want the government to have absolutely nothing to do with approving drugs, food, devices, etc
On Health Care:
Liberals: Want to have socialized health care, where everybody has access to health care regardless of their ability to pay
Conservatives: Do not want socialized health care
Libertarians: Do not want socialized health care
On the right to bear arms:
Liberals: Want the right to own weapons to be extremely restricted or revoked
Conservatives: Want the right to own weapons, although with some limitations
Libertarians: Want the right to own weapons with few if any limitations
On censorship:
Liberals: Are generally against censorship other than in extreme cases such as CP possession
Conservatives: Are generally in favor of censorship of things that offend them, including pornography in general
Libertarians: Are generally against censorship in all cases, including extreme cases such as CP possession
On enforced racial equality:
Liberals: Are generally in favor of things such as affirmative action , requiring businesses and education institutions to have a certain percentage of people from various racial backgrounds
Conservatives: Are against things like affirmative action, leave it up to the institutions to decide their own policy
Libertarians: Are against things like affirmative action, leave it up to the institutions to decide their own policy
On prostitution:
Liberals: Are generally in favor of the government regulating prostitution, and it being legal, particularly legal for the people selling sex
Conservatives: Are generally in favor of prostitution being illegal for all who participate in it
Libertarians: Are in favor of prostitution being legal
On drugs:
Liberals: Are generally in favor of decriminalizing drug possession and legalizing soft drugs such as marijuana
Conservatives: Are generally in favor of increasing penalties on all drug crimes, and keeping all drugs illegal
Libertarians: Are generally in favor of legalizing all drugs
On intellectual property:
Liberals: Are generally in favor of abolishing or greatly reducing intellectual property laws
Conservatives: Are generally in favor of maintaining current intellectual property laws
Libertarians: Are split about 50-50 between maintaining current intellectual property laws and reducing or abolishing intellectual property laws. Particularly in the case of pure information, libertarians tend to be in favor of at least reducing the current intellectual property laws.
On age of consent:
Liberals: Tend to favor 16
Conservatives: Tend to favor 18
Libertarians: Tend to favor lower than 16
on abortion:
Liberals: Tend to be in favor of legalized abortion even into later pregnancy
Conservatives: Tend to be entirely against abortion and in some cases even contraception of any sort
Libertarians: Tend to be in favor of legalized abortion, although the exact cut off date is debated
on government surveillance:
Liberals: Tend to be against heavy government surveillance
Conservatives: Tend to be in favor of heavy government surveillance (If you have nothing to hide....)
Libertarians: Tend to be extremely against almost all government surveillance
On War:
Liberals: Tend to be against war in most cases (ie: Vietnam, Iraq, etc)
Conservatives: Tend to support war in most cases
Libertarians: Tend to be against war in most cases (ie: Vietnam, Iraq, etc)
On education:
Liberals: Tend to be in favor of science
Conservatives: Tend to be largely anti science and pro religious
Libertarians: Tend to be in favor of science, although they are against public schools in the first place
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Really the best way to describe American Libertarianism is "Anti - Law"
Liberals are pro law because they want to use the law to force equality
Conservatives are pro law because they want to use the law to force their religious beliefs
Libertarians are anti law because they want people to be as free as possible
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So in summary, libertarian anarchists are not ultra conservatives, in regards to financial and business related things they are ultra ultra ultra conservatives and in regards to social things they are ultra ultra ultra liberals.
Maybe he should have been more specific but I'm sure Chomsky was referring to the economic ultra-conservatism of the US wing of libertarian anarchy, the economic ideologies of Hayek and Nozick's Libertarianism. Not social issues. Only a complete noob would have misunderstood him on this point.
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So in summary, libertarian anarchists are not ultra conservatives, in regards to financial and business related things they are ultra ultra ultra conservatives and in regards to social things they are ultra ultra ultra liberals.
Maybe he should have been more specific but I'm sure Chomsky was referring to the economic ultra-conservatism of the US wing of libertarian anarchy, the economic ideologies of Hayek and Nozick's Libertarianism. Not social issues. Only a complete noob would have misunderstood him on this point.
It is just that he used the wrong word, is all. Saying Libertarians are ultra conservatives is like saying liberals are Marxists.
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It is just that he used the wrong word, is all. Saying Libertarians are ultra conservatives is like saying liberals are Marxists.
Minor point but he didn't really use the wrong word as much as he should have just prefaced "ultra-conservative" with "economic". Otoh it's debatable whether Marxists are really are a subset of liberals. I would call them radicals. :)
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A thought experiment for anarchists of all persuasions to consider. The absolute monarch of a state becomes enamoured of libertarian thought. He abdicates and abolishes all law and government, taxation, police, legal system. Henceforth the free market will be the single mechanism regulating all interaction between citizens in this state. However immediately before performing this noble action, he bequeaths all the land and industries to his extended family, to be their private property.
Since these new owners have something of a head start, the free market will benefit the rest of the population little..
This is of course an extreme example, but I hope you see what I'm getting at. I can imagine a society based purely on voluntary contracts between private individuals working. I'm not saying it would be perfect but neither is our current system. But how do we get there from here?
Much of the land and capital of the world is now in private hands. Often it came into their possession by outright force in the past, or by government grant, or by state distortion of the market (corporate welfare). How then are we to embark upon our libertarian project?
I'm not after an argument about definitions of various sub branches of US political thought. But we clearly cannot decide to have libertarian year zerowithout first deciding who owns all the land, minerals, infrastructure etc.
I have heard some libertarians on these pages suggest that pretty much the current owners will have the right to allocate their property as they see fit. This is ludicrous.
This to me is the absolute central issue. We can't begin a free market with some of the players holding all the high cards.
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"Also Anarchy is NOT a form of government, in the same way that Atheism is not a form of religion. Anarchy is the lack of government. Anarchists correctly believe that all government is inherently coercive, and they prefer a free market approach to society instead. Anarchists recognize that taxation is theft, that people going to prison for drug crimes are slaves, etc. Government is always inherently criminal and rights violating, they steal our money, they enforce seemingly arbitrary laws on us (often religious based), they restrict what we can do (beyond not restricting others freedoms). Anarchists are purely pro-freedom and they correctly view government as inherently pro-slavery."
BINGO!
Would anarchy work? Define "work." I fail to see how it could be any worse than the totalitarian global empire we slave under today.
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Arrrragh! The libertarian socialists are back! Back demons! I shall return hither once I have prepped my ad-homs. :)
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I also have a couple of questions I have been meaning to ask US based libertarians:
(I'd also like to make it clear that I don't pose them in a spirit of confrontation. I have spent the last few months since finding this site trying to read as much as I can about libertarianism as it was a new idea to me. Its been kind of like the training montage in a kung fu film; running up steps with tiny cups balanced on body parts: repeatedly striking a wooden pole until it wears away etc. I am genuinely interested in finding out more about how it would be implemented, but there seem to be some vexed questions that are hurried quickly over in a vague manner. I'd also like to make it clear I am not advocating state socialism)
How do you feel about labour unions ?(notice the proper spelling of words like 'labour'. )
How do you feel about immigration to the US, particularly from central and Latin America?
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Would anarchy work? Define "work." I fail to see how it could be any worse than the totalitarian global empire we slave under today.
The thing is, as far as the international system between states goes, we already HAVE anarchy. There is no world government and so relationships and disputes between states are decided by process of negotiation and voluntary arbitration, as it is suggested individual disputes would be in an anarchist society.(I'm pretending the UN doesnt exist here, as the members of the security council often like to)
What this effectively means is that powerful states (currently US and China, to some extent Russia) do whatever they want, mediumly powerful states, (most European states, Japan, India and many others) achieve their goals through a combination of alliances, negotiation and threat of force, and weaker states are forced to accept terms as dictated to them by the stronger powers.
If we make the analogy with anarchism/libertarianism among individuals, we can see more than ever hoiw vital it is to sort out who owns what before we begin.
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I also have a couple of questions I have been meaning to ask US based libertarians:
(I'd also like to make it clear that I don't pose them in a spirit of confrontation. I have spent the last few months since finding this site trying to read as much as I can about libertarianism as it was a new idea to me. Its been kind of like the training montage in a kung fu film; running up steps with tiny cups balanced on body parts: repeatedly striking a wooden pole until it wears away etc. I am genuinely interested in finding out more about how it would be implemented, but there seem to be some vexed questions that are hurried quickly over in a vague manner. I'd also like to make it clear I am not advocating state socialism)
How do you feel about labour unions ?(notice the proper spelling of words like 'labour'. )
How do you feel about immigration to the US, particularly from central and Latin America?
US Libertarians think all borders should be open. People should not be restricted from moving from place to place. The main debate in US around this issue is of course between liberals and conservatives. Liberals like immigration because they are pro wealth redistribution, poor people who come to US vote for them because they will get free hand outs. Conservatives are against immigration for two reasons, on one hand they will lose political power if minorities start to grow in numbers, and for two they will be forced to fund social programs that support the newly immigrated minorities. Libertarians are against force being used to fund social programs, so they are okay with anybody moving anywhere, but they are against anybody being supported by social programs that are funded with force. So for libertarians it is really not an issue, the primary reason immigration is such an issue for conservatives and liberals is because of government funded social programs.
Libertarian also have nothing against labor unions. Everything is contractual, there is nothing wrong with a group of workers voluntarily contracting together to form a labor union.
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US Libertarians think all borders should be open. People should not be restricted from moving from place to place. The main debate in US around this issue is of course between liberals and conservatives. Liberals like immigration because they are pro wealth redistribution, poor people who come to US vote for them because they will get free hand outs. Conservatives are against immigration for two reasons, on one hand they will lose political power if minorities start to grow in numbers, and for two they will be forced to fund social programs that support the newly immigrated minorities. Libertarians are against force being used to fund social programs, so they are okay with anybody moving anywhere, but they are against anybody being supported by social programs that are funded with force. So for libertarians it is really not an issue, the primary reason immigration is such an issue for conservatives and liberals is because of government funded social programs.
I'd say it's more about the vote and political power than it is about funding social programs. Minorities tend to vote democratic, and higher turnout favors Democrats.
It's not like immigrants immigrate here and go on the dole. They have to have skills that are in demand or an employer sponsor to legally immigrate here in the first place. Illegals aren't going to be eligible for the dole or any benefits. Social programs, the big ones being medicare, social security, welfare, aren't exactly programs they'll be eligible for right away anyway. In fact, as working and productive citizens they'll be necessarily paying taxes and paying into the trust funds that fund those programs.
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Would anarchy work? Define "work." I fail to see how it could be any worse than the totalitarian global empire we slave under today.
The thing is, as far as the international system between states goes, we already HAVE anarchy.
Which is why the state must go.
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Hey .. sorry about this but could someone help me with 0.3 btc for shipping on an order please?
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US Libertarians think all borders should be open. People should not be restricted from moving from place to place. The main debate in US around this issue is of course between liberals and conservatives. Liberals like immigration because they are pro wealth redistribution, poor people who come to US vote for them because they will get free hand outs. Conservatives are against immigration for two reasons, on one hand they will lose political power if minorities start to grow in numbers, and for two they will be forced to fund social programs that support the newly immigrated minorities. Libertarians are against force being used to fund social programs, so they are okay with anybody moving anywhere, but they are against anybody being supported by social programs that are funded with force. So for libertarians it is really not an issue, the primary reason immigration is such an issue for conservatives and liberals is because of government funded social programs.
I'd say it's more about the vote and political power than it is about funding social programs. Minorities tend to vote democratic, and higher turnout favors Democrats.
It's not like immigrants immigrate here and go on the dole. They have to have skills that are in demand or an employer sponsor to legally immigrate here in the first place. Illegals aren't going to be eligible for the dole or any benefits. Social programs, the big ones being medicare, social security, welfare, aren't exactly programs they'll be eligible for right away anyway. In fact, as working and productive citizens they'll be necessarily paying taxes and paying into the trust funds that fund those programs.
Something that neither of you mention is immigration causing wages to fall due to a surplus of labour. Obviously this isn't a problem for a libertarian. On this at least I agree. If all border controls in the world were removed, wages would tend to equalize worldwide. (Workers in low paid countries would leave, causing labour scarcity, higher paying countries would experience labour surplus.)
Its long been a belief of mine that since capital knows no borders,
Labour should be granted equal freedom
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Something that neither of you mention is immigration causing wages to fall due to a surplus of labour. Obviously this isn't a problem for a libertarian. On this at least I agree. If all border controls in the world were removed, wages would tend to equalize worldwide. (Workers in low paid countries would leave, causing labour scarcity, higher paying countries would experience labour surplus.)
Its long been a belief of mine that since capital knows no borders,
Labour should be granted equal freedom
You're gonna have to explain what you mean by that one a little better Hg. Legal immigration doesn't cause a "surplus of labor" because only those with skills that are in high demand due to a shortfall of labor in their skill set are allowed to immigrate. And even then the supply of skilled labor from legal immigration doesn't come remotely close to meeting demand. So it doesn't cause wages for white collar professional jobs that Americans want to fall.
Unless you're talking about illegal immigration. Yes, illegal immigration does cause wages to fall for UNSKILLED labor, which is an entirely different beast. These aren't jobs that your average American wants.
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Illegal immigration is an incoherent term if we are still talking about anarchy :)
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Illegal immigration is an incoherent term if we are still talking about anarchy :)
You're a sharp one. But why stop there really? Immigration altogether is incoherent in anarchy. :)
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Illegal immigration is an incoherent term if we are still talking about anarchy :)
You're a sharp one. But why stop there really? Immigration altogether is incoherent in anarchy. :)
Pretty true. In pure Anarchy there are not even recognized states, so there is no such thing as immigration, in the traditional sense of moving from under the authority of one government to under the authority of another government. Most Libertarians in the US are not full blown anarchists though, and still support the concept of a state. A lot of them even support the idea of taxation, but to a much more limited extent than is currently done, primarily for funding the police and the military, and little else.
However, even these borderline Anarchists (I believe they are more correctly called Minarchists) tend to be for open borders. Just like Liberals and Conservatives, Libertarians have a spectrum of members. The pure free market Anarchists are at one extreme, and at the other extreme you have someone that looks a lot more like a conservative, although who isn't influenced by religion (so they hold conservative financial beliefs, support small government and light taxation, but they also tend to hold more mainstream liberal beliefs on social issues like gay marriage etc).
Anarchist libertarians are beyond ultra conservatism with their financial beliefs (keep 100% of your money, zero taxation, zero government services, zero government regulations), and beyond ultra liberalism with their social beliefs (bare minimum laws, pretty much only don't steal kill or rape and derivatives of these things). The average libertarian is pretty similar to a mainstream conservative from a financial perspective (small government, little tax, few services, few regulations), and a mainstream liberal from a social perspective (few laws, relaxed laws, tolerance). And some of the particularly mild people who call themselves libertarians are closer to traditional conservatives than anything (low taxation, no socialized healthcare or foodstamp type programs but still things like police, military and even public schools), they are just less influenced by religion than the neoconservatives (gay marriage is fine, drugs are not such a big deal, laws can be relaxed a bit). A lot of the more mild libertarians probably used to be Republicans before fundamentalist Christians took the party over.
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Something that neither of you mention is immigration causing wages to fall due to a surplus of labour. Obviously this isn't a problem for a libertarian. On this at least I agree. If all border controls in the world were removed, wages would tend to equalize worldwide. (Workers in low paid countries would leave, causing labour scarcity, higher paying countries would experience labour surplus.)
Its long been a belief of mine that since capital knows no borders,
Labour should be granted equal freedom
You're gonna have to explain what you mean by that one a little better Hg. Legal immigration doesn't cause a "surplus of labor" because only those with skills that are in high demand due to a shortfall of labor in their skill set are allowed to immigrate. And even then the supply of skilled labor from legal immigration doesn't come remotely close to meeting demand. So it doesn't cause wages for white collar professional jobs that Americans want to fall.
Unless you're talking about illegal immigration. Yes, illegal immigration does cause wages to fall for UNSKILLED labor, which is an entirely different beast. These aren't jobs that your average American wants.
I was actually talking hypothetically about an extreme libertarian society where the terms legal and illegal will no longer apply. In the real world I'm generally in favour of relaxing border controls for the reason I mention. It's interesting to think about though, in an anarchy would there be borders erected by private groups of individuals? It always comes back to property. Who has a right to own it?
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To elaborate (and no doubt digress somewhat); if we are talking about a borderless anarchy it probably makes more sense to talk about migration rather than im or em. Many south american unskilled laborers are going to migrate north, since as pointed out few north Americans want these jobs currently, so there is demand for their labour. And in a truly free market wages for unskilled agricultural labour will thus equalise between the north and south. And this is all fine I guess as far as it goes.
BUT, the agricultural land they are working on both continents is currently owned by large capitalist agribusiness. These business use the labourers to work their land. No matter how hard a farm laborer works its unlikely he will ever own his own land to farm. Thus he has no choice but to work the land for the agribusiness for wages.
Things were different in the past. During the western expansion of the united states, wages for unskilled labour were high, as if the wages offered were too low the labourer always had the choice to head west and farm his own land (and these high wages were the pulling force that caused the vast migration of Europeans to the states during this period)
Unfortunately those days of opportunity are gone. Nearly all the worlds agricultural land, mineral wealth and other resources are already in the hands of capitalist owners, who employ the rest of us to work their capital in one way or another, for which we receive wages, and they take the (much greater) profits.
So, I ask again, if we are to adopt anarchy, or libertarianism, or in some other way do away with the state, law and government, are the current owners of all the land and resources going to retain their possession?
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Unfortunately those days of opportunity are gone. Nearly all the worlds agricultural land, mineral wealth and other resources are already in the hands of capitalist owners, who employ the rest of us to work their capital in one way or another, for which we receive wages, and they take the (much greater) profits.
So, I ask again, if we are to adopt anarchy, or libertarianism, or in some other way do away with the state, law and government, are the current owners of all the land and resources going to retain their possession?
Wow Hg, you sound like a full blown syndicalist, or dare I say communist now? ;) The only thing missing is your references to the proletariat. ;D
Couple points I'll make on this. First, unlike the robber baron days of 19th century capitalism, unskilled labor currently makes up a small overall portion of the workforce of industrialized nations. Second, not all the profits from the agribusiness landowners are kept for themselves. These businesses obviously have to be competitive in the marketplace so some of their profits are passed on to the consumer in the form of lower prices. For instance, studies have shown that the cheaper labor from illegal immigration not only benefits high income earners with access to cheaper labor, but low and middle income earners with cheaper prices and greater availability in areas like food, medical care, and housing that less skilled labor produces.
So what are the implications of an anarchy with no borders? Well, the danger of no government and therefore no government regulations coupled with no borders is of course wage slavery. Gone are any worker protections, environmental regulations, and regulations outlawing exploitative child or slave labor. What good is a union when they'd be so easily smashed to pieces by the importation of unskilled laborers destitute enough to work at a bare subsistence level? Hey it'd be great for the agribusiness owners and average overall consumer, basically anyone employed that didn't have to have such a hellacious existence working for dirt pay in such backbreaking jobs. But I don't consider any society built on the backs of wage slavery to be "progress". It just harkens back to the economy of the American south during the 1800's built on the backs of slaves prior to the civil war, and then built on the backs of wage slaves as freedmen became no more than landless laborers who earned just barely enough to survive and lacked any opportunities for upward mobility while working at the subsistence level.
Nor do I consider a society built on the backs of exploitative child labor that could easily happen in an anarchy "progress" for obvious reasons.
Nor do I consider an anarchic society with no environmental regulations where businesses have free reign to shit as much pollution as they want "progress". Now I can already hear the potential argument of an anarchist claim that the population would boycott such companies. To that I say bullshit. If they're all doing it to stay competitive in the marketplace, who is the population going to boycott? All of them and starve? And deprive themselves of basic necessities? Not fucking likely. There are plenty of corporations engaged in unsavory practices now that the public couldn't give two shits about boycotting. They happily choose to purchase goods from those who offer them the lowest price. This is the reality of brutal and uncaring "free market" which would be all the more free when unshackled in anarchy.
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I guess the Marxist language is a bit dated; But the same game is still being played: if you work for a wage, then somewhere along the line a capitalist is using your labour to enlarge his capital. The point I want to make is that this has nothing to do with the free market. Capitalism and the free market are two different things. You can have one without the other and vice versa. They are often talked about as if they are inextricably linked.
An economist who's ideas I am enjoying at the moment is Ha -Joon Chang, he's a Korean who has an interesting outlook on free trade and its mythos
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I guess the Marxist language is a bit dated; But the same game is still being played: if you work for a wage, then somewhere along the line a capitalist is using your labour to enlarge his capital. The point I want to make is that this has nothing to do with the free market. Capitalism and the free market are two different things. You can have one without the other and vice versa. They are often talked about as if they are inextricably linked.
An economist who's ideas I am enjoying at the moment is Ha -Joon Chang, he's a Korean who has an interesting outlook on free trade and its mythos
I know where you're going with this Hg. ;) And here is why I think what you're pushing is flawed.
How do you really expect a business to be democratically self managed? That would be one seriously inefficiently run company AFAICT. You want to take out management making more than workers because that's what syndicalism rails against, management profiting off the labor of the workers. But management does perform a vital function. There is division of labor for a reason and it comes down to efficiency. The workers have their individual expertise, but would not be attuned to economic events unfolding and would HAVE TO rely on those who did take it upon themselves to know what signals the market was sending and how it would affect production. That's just one example of a vital responsibility of management. Management does perform numerous vital functions.
Now I'm sure you believe the wealth should be shared equally between management and the workers. But wealth is not a fixed commodity. Someone needs to create the means of production and there needs to be incentives to create wealth.
As a parallel to the anarcho-capitalists who believe all taxation is theft, anarcho-syndicalists believe all property is theft. I find both maxims equally absurd.
Now, if you're willing to concede that management does perform a vital function but insist that they be paid equally to workers let me ask you this. If the market places a higher demand on management because their knowledge and skills require more years of education to acquire and thus are more scarce, why shouldn't they be paid commensurate to the market? But syndicalists rail against this. They call it exploitation because they say its the workers that are creating the wealth and any profits by management that aren't shared with the workers is exploitation and theft of the workers.
I just don't find that plausible.
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Briefly, the managers could still be employed by the workers at the going market rate. I'm certainly not suggesting that corporations be run democratically, as you say that would be absurd. Under the present system the managers are employed by the shareholders, whose interests are only tangentially connected to those of the workers. The shareholders can often be more concerned about the short term price of their shares than the long term success of the company.
I'm not sure you do know where I'm going with this, for the simple reason I don't know myself:-)
I don't really have an ism to sustain me. To paraphrase Churchill, the current "democracy" is the worst system until you consider the alternatives. The libertarians have a superficial, easy to defend position, simply because it consists of one idea, the free market is good and all forms of government instituted by force are bad. Its like arguing with religious fundamentalists who respond to every argument with 'but that's what it says in the Bible/Koran'.
The libertarians wheel out the "men with guns, the state monopoly on violence"
I personally prefer a state monopoly on the use of force to a free market in violence! It very much depends on the nature of the state though. I have noticed several libertarians finish their description of their vision of the future with "anyway, I will have a big fucking gun". Right. I think whatever kind of society you end up with you will be paying men with guns....and the element of choice is going to remain minimal
I'm largely happy with the current mish mash of policies most governments adopt.The world is a complicated place and I think a mixture of free market tempered with redistributive taxation works.
Internationally, the developed nations are forcing extreme free market ideology on developing nations, ideology they did not subscribe to themselves in their period of development.
Ha joon Chang makes the analogy of his young son. He is currently hugely protected from competition in the market place by his parents subsidizing him. Perhaps it would be better if he went out to work now and this would make him more competitive (I can hear libertarians going "yes! Exactly!"). But if he did this he might become a skilled street trader or shoe shine boy. Unlikely to become a brain surgeon or computer chip designer though.
In the same way developing countries need their infant industries protecting from foreign competition, else they are unlikely to develop as anything other than primary industries, selling their raw materials or low value labour intensive goods. He uses the example of his own country, South Korea, which used a mixture of protectionism and free trade to go from a third world country to one of the most hi tech exporters of technology (think Samsung)
He points out the US used the same mixture during its development.
Now the neo liberal consensus behind the IMF and world bank are mistakenly pushing extreme trade liberalization on developing countries, intending to create wealth, at the cost of increased inequality. The inequality is increasing but not the wealth.
I don't know how this fits in with anarchy, or libertarianism WITHIN states. I guess there will be no states or international in the extreme version of these philosophys
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There is no employment under anarchism and there is no private property. Because of this it is impossible for any form of corporation to exist other than a workers co-operative. These institutions would be run by the workers for the benefit of the workers and not focused entirely on profit. Libertarianism, minarchism, and anarchocapitalism are all misguided because so long as there is a state, it will exist solely to enforce private property. No state, no property, no employment. It is impossible to extract capital from the labour of workers under anarchism, any system that facilitates this is just a bastardized version.
Also please regard the difference between personal and private property in socialist terms, they mean very different things, no anarchists are ever going to take your home.
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There is no employment under anarchism and there is no private property. Because of this it is impossible for any form of corporation to exist other than a workers co-operative. These institutions would be run by the workers for the benefit of the workers and not focused entirely on profit. Libertarianism, minarchism, and anarchocapitalism are all misguided because so long as there is a state, it will exist solely to enforce private property. No state, no property, no employment. It is impossible to extract capital from the labour of workers under anarchism, any system that facilitates this is just a bastardized version.
Also please regard the difference between personal and private property in socialist terms, they mean very different things, no anarchists are ever going to take your home.
The type of "anarchist" the above poster is talking about is more correctly called a "socialist" or maybe "communist" even. The arguments from so-called "Socialist Anarchists" tend to baffle the mind. For example, if you have two cars, they are prone to think that you are stealing the second by having it when some have none. I find it hard to believe the above poster would not advocate stealing a home from someone if they have several, to give to someone who has none, although of course in their minds they are reclaiming it from the home hoarder who stole it from society by having extra.
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I've been pondering this for a while. What do you think?
It depends on what you mean by saying it will "work." This implies an end goal for society, and so whether or not it will work is contingent on what your end goal is.
I think I would personally prefer to live in a society in which the right to execute force, the government's monopoly on violence, were decentralized. By this I mean that the problems which the government currently uses its monopoly on violence to resolve, for example protecting my person and property, could be resolved through other agencies, for one example me owning a gun and accepting personal responsibility for the protection of the aforementioned rather than depending on government and the current system to provide those services.
And I don't mean I want there to be no police and for everyone to shoot each other all the time. I just mean that the only thing which defines government is its exclusive "right" to use force so in an anarchy no one institution has any more right to use force than any other, as there is no government, but all the same institutions and organizations of people exist. If it were such a world that the people as a whole didn't recognize the right of any one monolithic group to wield force, I think conditions would be more favorable because I think the benefits of having a government are largely idealistic and lacking in practice, while the shortcomings innate to the concept of government are numerous and unavoidable and problematic.
There is nothing stopping a corrupt mafia from taking over an anarchist community but really that is all government (western democracy) is. Only with government its on the largest scale and dressed up with rhetoric to make you think the government operates with your permission and that because of this there are rules to protect you and direct the execution of force according only to certain values which represent the attitudes of the majority of the taxpayers. This is a scam however because the government doesn't get its power from the consent of the people. It gets it from the prisons it operates and the lethal weapons and military hardware with which its agents are armed.
Sure, it makes sense for forcefulness to be regulated in a society by a single all powerful trustworthy entity, but only if that entity were actually bound by its own rules, the rules in which it becomes self evident how its power is justified and consequently why that power must only ever be applied in very particular ways. If the US government reflected its constitutional design, it would be a very just nation in my opinion, only it does not resemble the constitution in any way at all presently and is an out of control monster. The preferential aspect of doing away with it altogether is based on the fact that it operates on pure raw force, but its operations are only directed by words, and inevitably that raw force is going to be exerted in all sorts of ways which defy the words behind it. I think that in a world where we recognize the nature of forcefulness and then accept responsibility to protect ourselves from the aggression of others by whatever means, (organizing a cooperative militia with one's neighbors to the mutual benefit of all, hiring a private agency to insure property and enforce justice on one's behalf, or any other voluntary arrangement to protect yourself,) other than deferring the task to a central monopolistic agency, (a government), who will be inefficient in this task and will abuse the power they wield, i think that in such a world the injustice perpetrated by private individuals against private individuals, such as the poor old lady who can't defend herself getting raped to death without consequence, which would happen, I think those issues would not outweigh the injustice perpetrated by government today against private individuals, in terms of imprisoning non violent offenders, executing innocent people, micromanaging people's lives and denying them the potential to act in certain ways.
I think the wasteful violent injustice which government perpetuates, even sometimes inadvertently, would outweigh the wasteful violent injustice which some people would get away with in a world without laws by a significant order of magnitude. So I accept that some chaos would result which offends my moral sensibilities, but I think it would not be as bad as the current scenario of what governments do which offend my moral sensibilities. (I had to edit because I realized i had a sentence fragment and then I got carried away writing more.)
Taking voluntary action involving trade and cooperation with others to protect yourself from aggressors should be no different than trading and cooperating with others to acquire food and other essential goods. The two tasks are equally important, but we don't ask government to feed us, (sometimes we do), we ask government to protect us, and they make it impossible to protect ourselves neither from each other nor from them. So I am inclined towards anarchy as a libertarian and also as a moral relativist. I'm not saying anarchy works because there is nothing I want to achieve with it. I just think it is favorable to a government run society in principle and in practice for the reasons outlined.
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Briefly, the managers could still be employed by the workers at the going market rate. I'm certainly not suggesting that corporations be run democratically, as you say that would be absurd. Under the present system the managers are employed by the shareholders, whose interests are only tangentially connected to those of the workers. The shareholders can often be more concerned about the short term price of their shares than the long term success of the company.
Yes, this is no doubt one of the major flaws of our current system of capitalism that there are really no easy answers for. When I have some time I'd like to look into what sorts of solutions have been proposed by academics or think tanks that have tried to confront this problem.
I'm not sure you do know where I'm going with this, for the simple reason I don't know myself:-)
I don't really have an ism to sustain me. To paraphrase Churchill, the current "democracy" is the worst system until you consider the alternatives.
Ok, sorry about misrepresenting your position. Maybe I misunderstood earlier that you were starting to consider anarcho-syndicalism as actually a viable alternative. I wouldn't mind debating someone who could robustly defend that position as the concept to me seems to suffer many of the same incoherencies that anarcho-capitalism does to go along with its own set of unique problems.
The libertarians have a superficial, easy to defend position, simply because it consists of one idea, the free market is good and all forms of government instituted by force are bad. Its like arguing with religious fundamentalists who respond to every argument with 'but that's what it says in the Bible/Koran'.
Can't argue with you here. :) The "free market is always right" axiom that some anarcho-libertarians love to tout while demonizing government interference and saying the state must go just appears negligent of the essential role of government in free market economy. The "free market" that would exist in a system of anarchy would be a crude and inefficient bastardization of what we see today without government playing an active role in creating rules and conditions that allow it to operate efficiently.
Even just the starting with the raw basics, without a criminal justice system the criminal organizations in a state of anarchy would take over large sectors of the business community. That's what happens without centralized power, hence the rather immediate transformation as I cited before into smaller despotic feudal states, with each state having their own sets of arbitrary rules ... talk about an inefficient "free" market.
The problem with anarchy is that there's just no way to enforce the state of anarchy. It'd be a practical impossibility.
The libertarians wheel out the "men with guns, the state monopoly on violence"
I personally prefer a state monopoly on the use of force to a free market in violence! It very much depends on the nature of the state though. I have noticed several libertarians finish their description of their vision of the future with "anyway, I will have a big fucking gun". Right. I think whatever kind of society you end up with you will be paying men with guns....and the element of choice is going to remain minimal
Yup. What I think is funny is that once you start describing anarchy as being about who has the biggest gun, or who is able to organize the biggest hired guns to do battle with other hired guns it really ceases to be even anarchy anymore. It's chaos. ;D
I'm largely happy with the current mish mash of policies most governments adopt.The world is a complicated place and I think a mixture of free market tempered with redistributive taxation works.
I agree. Of course it's far from perfect, but it's still far more functional and fine tuned to the needs of the people than governments of the past or an every-man-for-himself-and-his-tribe-dog-eats-dog world of anarchy. And the mishmash of policies is a result of that fine tuning process which is always going to be a work in progress.
Internationally, the developed nations are forcing extreme free market ideology on developing nations, ideology they did not subscribe to themselves in their period of development.
Ha joon Chang makes the analogy of his young son. He is currently hugely protected from competition in the market place by his parents subsidizing him. Perhaps it would be better if he went out to work now and this would make him more competitive (I can hear libertarians going "yes! Exactly!"). But if he did this he might become a skilled street trader or shoe shine boy. Unlikely to become a brain surgeon or computer chip designer though.
In the same way developing countries need their infant industries protecting from foreign competition, else they are unlikely to develop as anything other than primary industries, selling their raw materials or low value labour intensive goods. He uses the example of his own country, South Korea, which used a mixture of protectionism and free trade to go from a third world country to one of the most hi tech exporters of technology (think Samsung)
He points out the US used the same mixture during its development.
Now the neo liberal consensus behind the IMF and world bank are mistakenly pushing extreme trade liberalization on developing countries, intending to create wealth, at the cost of increased inequality. The inequality is increasing but not the wealth.
I don't know how this fits in with anarchy, or libertarianism WITHIN states. I guess there will be no states or international in the extreme version of these philosophys
The scourge of neoliberalism and economic warfare through the institutions of the World Bank and IMF. Couldn't agree more and apt illustrative metaphor by Mr Chang.
I wanted to return for a minute what you mentioned about the international system between states being anarchy. I'm very aware of the component of anarchy in international relations theory. But someone else used this as a justification as to why the state must go which I have to point out is a misguided and poorly thought through mistake at best and a reductio ad absurdum at worst.
It's true that there is no one sovereign worldwide government to resolve disputes and enforce law. And therefore governments have created the legal framework through treaties and international trade law to facilitate commerce and cooperation between them. So you think yeah, sure, why not. If countries can cooperate and reach mutual agreement among themselves then why not organizations and businesses without a state governing them?
Uh ... but there are only 190+ countries in the world. There are 30+ million businesses in the United States alone and 900,000 some multinational corporations in the world, each having to work out individual treaties and standards for cooperation with each business they do business with? Or even worse, trying to reach consensus on adopting a framework for economic cooperation? Talk about a massively inefficient fucked market. I don't see how any anarchist could claim that's not a whole lot worse than what we have now. It's hard to see how throwing out the last 200 years of knowledge and progress we've achieved in commerce and trade by abolishing the state and starting over in anarchy is anything but a really bad idea. :(
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In truth, everything is in , and has been, in a state of anarchy. It is a shared delusion that our world is under any sort of "control' by any person, group, or organization.
The average person , who makes a conscientious effort to follow and abide by all the laws, inadvertently breaks several per day without their realizing. Laws are not enforced with equality, only picked and chosen by whomever plays the part of an authority- usually to that person's own convenience or benefit.
Charles Manson said ,( Holding a Law book in his hand ).".this book states I may not kill a person, but I can take this book and break your skull open with it." So what power is in the rules, when they can be broken or bent by any such person's whim.....because we believe in them?
The governing body ,and their rules do not create order, or uphold justice, nor hold off the agent of chaos. Only maintain their monopoly on violence.
Chaos is always at work , we just chose to perceive we hold dominion over it. A huge delusion.
Anarchy is at work all around us.
We just don't believe it is.
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Somalia is proof of the success of Anarchism.
As well, Anarchism would require all people to think and act alike in a manner that contributes to everyone and everything as a whole so as to keep society in harmony. Isn't this contrary to the idea of total freedom?
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Somalia is proof of the success of Anarchism.
As well, Anarchism would require all people to think and act alike in a manner that contributes to everyone and everything as a whole so as to keep society in harmony. Isn't this contrary to the idea of total freedom?
Saying that Somalia is proof anarchism or free market capitalism is defunct is an extremely tired meme. I suppose that Hitler was voted into power democratically is also proof that democracy is defunct. Certainly had a bigger effect on the world than Somalia, that's for sure.
In the "birthplace of democracy", Athens, this happened:
The city of Mytilene in Lesbos had revolted against Athens and, like Melos, surrendered unconditionally after internal dissent. In this case the Athenian assembly voted to kill all males of military age, but retracted the decree the following day. Even so, over one thousand Mytileans were executed as instigators of the revolt.
How do you think the citizens of Mytilene felt about democracy? If that happened today there would be teenagers in Mytilene walking around with t-shirts saying "Democracy. How's that working out for you?"
Yet we know this is not the true picture. Lazare faire capitalism has created levels of wealth and sophistication in Hong Kong that is close to science fiction it's so astonishing. Hong Kong has a government so tiny that it's more like having a chain store of 7/11s running the country. Modern republican democracy is a major step up from the Feudal system and divine right of Kings.
So the world is a complex place, it has levels.
Some people take a statement such as that to mean relativism, that everything is true for a given value of true, but I don't mean that. Just because things are complicated doesn't imply there aren't unchanging principals. You'll notice that it's not just so called "anarchy" that isn't working for Somalians. You can, reasonably, say that democracy, socialism, communism and free markets aren't working for Africans either, because that's what the data says. It annoys me when armchair ideologues propose X is the solution for Africa, because they have problems so basic it's scary. First of all, they do have a "government" in the Congo, which is just 1 country in Africa and it's about 25% of the size of the entire European subcontinent. What they really have, if they are lucky, is a tribal system. Or a vile feudal system without any of advantages! The politically incorrect, but entirely accurate description of what they have, is a savageocracy. It is an incredibly, incredibly dangerous place to be. As they themselves say: "This is Africa".
So I never want to hear ever again, about how "anarchy" is not working out for Somalians. Somalia is not the worse place in Africa by a long shot, and believe me, I know that is saying something kind of crazy.
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@ jpinkman
Much of what you say is logical and correct to my eyes. I do think that you're overlooking something though, and that results in what I call "present blindness". Sometimes knowing how the system works results in increasing confidence that it is in an optimal state, an equilibrium point, which while you may or may not consider it utopian, is seen as superior to other alternatives, even when there is no evidence for such a thing and in fact the system is evolving into a new form that will tear up old assumptions. It's just that it's not fleshed out yet and we don't see the bigger pattern.
The fastest way to appreciate this a real hoodwinker, is travel. If you visit China and talk to their intelligent intellectuals, you get the same present-blindness. Then you realize you've got the same problem yourself!
Your idea of anarchism may be some anarchist's idea of anarchism, but it certainly is not mine.
The key thing you overlook, is the time period involved. I do not expect anarchism to suddenly flourish out of nowhere within a few short years. I think it shall gradually evolve (well... probably more punctuated equilibrium than gradualism) into a new mode of societal structure over many decades, centuries even. It is not a lower order organizational concept like "democracy" or "corporation". It is a higher order concept like "nation state". Most anarchists think of anarchy as a grass roots concept. I do not.
To take a brief detour, consider capitalism. What is it?
Capitalism is not about corporations, it never has been. If it was, we'd still have guilds. People who say that competition is the main difference don't _quite_ get to the nub of it either, although they are near the truth. There is a quote from an economics essay that expresses this well:
Those who object to economic planning on the grounds that the problem is solved by price movements can be answered by pointing
out that there is planning within our economic system which is quite different from the individual planning mentioned above and which is akin to what is normally called economic planning. The example given above is typical of a large sphere in our modern economic system.
Of course, this fact has not been ignored by economists. Marshall introduces organisation as a fourth factor of
production; J. B. Clark gives the co-ordinating function to the entrepreneur; ProfessorKnight introduces managers
who co-ordinate. <emphasis>As D. H. Robertson points out, we find "islands of conscious power in this ocean of unconscious
co-operation like lumps of butter coagulating in a pail of buttermilk."'</emphasis>
-- The Nature of the Firm
A market is not the sum of activities by the corporations within it. Don't read that sentence too quickly, it's an important understanding and at first blush it may sound absurd.
A market is the sum of *interactions* between those centrally directed organizations, usually mediated by information such as prices.
It's not so much the butter, as the buttermilk.
Things like "property rights", "contracts", "derivatives", "corporations" are lower order organizational phenomena. You cannot understand why a market works as a drastically superior alternative to one centralized central planner, OR, less appreciated by naive libertarians perhaps, why it is superior to us all becoming 1 man/woman corporations ourselves and trading in that way like survivalists, without having that context.
Similarly, if you look at the patterns of the 20th century, you notice an evolution towards a network system that is similar to that described by some anarchists or pictured in the science fiction novels of Neal Stephenson.
The dominant societal institution in the 18th century was monarchy. All world powers were monarchies. The rest it is fair to say were populated by savages of varying degrees of savagery. Being under a monarchy was a good deal then. If you were a white, male person with some money, you were about as free as anyone could claim to be, which also explains why everybody had god tier mustaches.
The dominant model in the 19th was not democracy in the direct sense (except for Switzerland, they are almost supernaturally civilized people), but democratic republics, or liberal democracy. This started in the 19th and effectively completed for the developed world in the late 20th.
In the century just gone, we had a major conflagration between Statist Communism and liberal democracy, but I think it's safe to say state based communism is a meme that has been laid to rest to a greater or lesser degree. Few influential left wing intellectuals support it.
Anyway, my point is that we see an interesting trend when you step back from all of this.
First you have feudalism, leading to monarchy, then the monarchy builds a powerful apparatus (using its coercive powers to enforce property rights and establish the first corporations, albeit with monopoly charters at first) which eventually allows free market capitalism to flourish in a fashion such as the world had never seen before in history. Truly, it was unprecedented. Then the existence of free markets, which brought forth enormous wealth creation, leads to the establishment of the middle class, Marx's much loved bourgeois. This in turn leads to a decentralization of power. The end result of that is liberal democracy republican hybrid that illiterates and children call "democracy" (I bet you've met people who think we vote the president into power! I swear it's like a subtle Jedi mind trick or an urban legend or something.).
Now that we're up to date, we see the majority of the population is now "middle class", or else they are funded by the central government. Blue collar labor is extinct in whole areas, and with advancing robotics it's becoming more and more true all the time. Now that power and wealth are sufficiently dispersed (relatively to history, I'm not claiming there's no complaints, bourgeois are expert complainers), the result shall be a new form of government.
Why? Because quite simply, the original role of the nation state was to enforce property rights. If you read the laws, they are entirely based on principals of ownership. Regular people paying taxes is actually a new idea, 100 years ago it was only the wealthy who paid them. The mechanism for enforcing property rights has actually become the biggest threat to them. The nation state was a single digit % of GDP everywhere in the civilized world 1 century ago, now in most states it's creeping past 50%. So we are approaching contradiction point.
Despite what Hayakians think, this is not the slow route to Communism. The nation state is suffering from what programmers call "feature creep". It's not that the functions it does are unnecessary, it's just that it does them ass backwards most of the time. The result is that the central government spins off its functions in order to get anything done. See the following:
- Blackwater accounts for a huge number, some say a majority of military enforcers by the USA, at least half of the Iraq occupation was done privately. The numbers of contractors are ten times what they were in the first Iraq war. In a separate bu related development, it has become extraordinarily expensive for nation states to go to war on a heap of levels.
- The majority of new infrastructure construction is done with public/private partnerships, usually this translates to public money, private corps. As pissed off left wing types will inform you, this was not always so.
- The size of the private intelligence, regular policing and security sectors has absolutely ballooned in size in the last 12 years. I don't think I need to make citations to prove it. Look at Statfor, Palatir and so on. Even the NSA has outsourced huge amounts of work out to private contractors. I am convinced that they are roleplaying as the Praetorian Guard (to those who don't know them, this is a huge insult :)).
- The central executive issues unusual numbers of orders to bypass the usual processes, not (just) because they are power mad, but mostly because they can't get anything done. The old levers aren't functioning as expected. Power is draining away from the central executive and they intuit it.
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What you are seeing here, is the slow motion implosion of the nation state. These trends are continuing to their logical conclusion, which is:
Collapse.
Eventually the principal agent problem (closely related to public interest theory) shall lead to whompingly high levels of what pine terms "official corruption", in both meanings of the word 'official'. Slowly at first, and then virulent like cancer.
This scenario has already happened, it was called the Fall of Rome.
This is precisely how the Roman Empire fell. Precisely. As. In. To. The. Fucking. Letter. The parallels are just hysterical and I can't get into hardly any of them now. It seemed like a great idea to outsource protection to the Visgoths at first, but ultimately it led to downfall. This is happening right now to the governments of the developed and developing world, only on a much faster time scale than the Roman fall (it took quite a while, it was obvious it was inevitable only in retrospect).
However nothing in history repeats itself *exactly*. As Mark Twain said, it doesn't repeat, but it rhymes. So I expect something different to happen this time.
Yes, the central executive loses its meaning. There is some decay and decline, yes yes. But unlike Roman times, there is this dispersion of power and wealth among the population, with a hugely successful means of multiparty communication called the Internet.
So I expect to see, ultimately, self organization to ultimately produce a system of political economy best described by anarchy. There will be all kinds of organizational structures appearing at first, a veritable Cambrian explosion of systems. This will seem very stochastic to us, and we'll call it anarchy in the derogatory sense of the word. However in this Cambrian explosion, certain forms of organization will be heavily penalized, such as people readopting centralized planning or the traditional national state they shall probably feel very nostalgic for.
In the end, our modern weapons turn centralization into weaknesses. Once you have a satellite picture of your enemies, they are effectively dead meat. Any center becomes a target. Being anonymous means being alive thanks to drone technology.
Likewise, our economic system, the market, makes it very difficult to obtain fixed arrangements such as that communism could in theory provide (if, as The Scientist adds, if we were actually robots).
All evolution works by natural selection. The outcome will be biased towards various forms of loose confederations with a diversity of lower order organizational forms such as direct democracy, tyranny, oligarchy and more. This network of competing, cooperating entities are what I call anarchy. Or perhaps panarchy to be pedantic.
Like corporations in a marketplace, the average expectation of one of the entities within a confederation won't be very long. We could switch between democracy and oligarchy in the same way people expect presidents to change. The most important factors in peoples lives won't necessarily be the sector they are in geographically, but the ideology that they follow, what clique, what network (subnet?) they belong to, and NGO things like "Common Economic Protocols" shall posses enormous power. Before you ask "how to enforce the CEPs?", you're thinking of the wrong question, look at Bitcoin. Bitcoin is in my estimation, the first common economic protocol. It's in a nascent form, but it's true that this is what it is nonetheless.
In short: Anarchy is the buttermilk, the other forms of organization are the butter. It's like how under the umbrella of "nation state" you have a huge number of contending forms of state based organization.
-- Last words --
Finally, with some sense of irony, I agree with Karl Marx. There is a pattern to history. Perhaps not the one he envisioned, but there is certainly an order.
Some people are no doubt going to be compelled to say that these "entities" I mention as parts of these "confederation" are essentially modern nation state government forms anyway, and that there is no practical difference. But this is wrong. I'm not saying there won't be things *called* governments. I am saying they won't matter. In my idea of the future, saying there is a government, would be a bit like a British person today saying they have a monarchy. The label exists but the practical meaning has expired. Ultimately your "government" will be reduced to the same level of import as liking the the Nestlé fanpage on Facebook. Governance is an important product or service, but then again so is food production and distribution and society does not hold Walmart to especially elevated levels of reverence.
Unlike Mr Marx or Mr Fukuyama, I do not believe there is a 'final stage' to human societal development such as Communism or Democracy respectively. I think it is a product of technology, esp. the information part of society, and population size, and so it can scale up and down over time like the zig zags on a BTC chart, but that there's a general trend to higher levels of complexity over time.
P.S. I'm currently working through Edward Gibbon's The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. I have to say it's massively influencing my thoughts, it is quite a magnificent work. It's also titanic, so I expect not to finish it for ages. Can't wait to see how it ends! :D -.- state of book bliss -.-
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Good to finally hear from you again pine, an interesting and wide ranging post. I haven't the time to respond in kind but a few points:
Hong Kong; indeed hong kong is a shining example of the success of laissez faire. However, like the deregulation of the City of London, it is only the fact that it is LESS regulated than everywhere else that draws so many financial services to it, and makes it so lucrative. If everywhere else was equally laissez faire, it would perhaps not be such a source of wealth. The whole world cannot be in the business of providing financial services to each other.
The history of hong Kong is hardly free market at its finest though. It was founded by force by great Britain in a spectacular act of market interference. The Chinese were forced at gunpoint to accept a trading colony on their coast to help Britain with her trade imbalance caused by the craze for Chinese tea. British companies were given title to the land upon which your SF skyscrapers now stand by their government. This is now the most expensive real estate in the world. The land was'given'back to the Chinese in 1999 who 'allowed'the current owners to retain possession.
You see what I'm saying? You cannot argue the illegitimacy of the Nation state, while respecting property rights originally conferred by it.
I therefore suggest that Hong Kong is as disingenuous an example as Somalia.
Decline and fall of The Roman Empire. "Another damned thick book! always scribble scribble scribble eh Mr Gibbon?"(the Duke of Wellington)
A fantastic book, one I love and return to again and again. Still, the Fall of Rome was a bit more complicated than hiring mercenaries. Gibbon took 8 volumes(at least in my edition) to describe it and it took 1000 years. So the parallel with 20 years of US administration privatising defense is not entirely convincing. I do agree that the replacement of much of the military by private contractors is worrying. As you will know from your reading, there was a couple of hundred years where it was pretty much the army that chose the emperor and they did not always choose well.
Another major factor in the decline of Rome was the difficulty in ruling such a vast empire when communication took weeks. Indeed this was the reason for the initial split into east and west empires, with four rulers, in an attempt to make the task more manageable. I think you will agree that communication is not the same problem today.
Neal Stephenson:
Again, love his books. I guess the two you are thinking of are Snow Crash and the Diamond Age? (Anathem being set in a monastery like "math" in a parallel universe, the baroque cycle more a historical epic)
Snow Crash didn't read like much of a utopia to me; a future where people gather for self protection into clannish 'burbclaves' in a kind of cyber feudalism.
Diamond Age was somewhat more attractive, however, it was predicated on humanity having gained such control over the environment through nanotechnology that all human needs could be met by constructing goods at the atomic level from magma......which is a fairly big assumption.
Again I think it comes down to property rights. I got my thought experiment about the island monarchy from Rothbard himself:
An absolute monarch decides to convert his domain to libertarianism, however immediately before doing so he presents his family with title to all the land and industry. Are we to respect the private property rights of the new owners? You can see the parallel with the British and Hong Kong
I have to admit I tend to adjust my outlook in response to what book I have most recently read, too. Hence my wild swings between libertarianism and socialism. I dont think anyone here was arguing for centrally planned economies though.
Must go now, just started watching "house of cards"
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Anarchy *might* work if people all over the world wake up one day in an anarchistic world where everybody has the same idea what anarchy means AND all memories/proof from how life was, before that day, were all erased.
In most other cases I think it would initially lead to unseen chaos before things would start to settle and settling might take longer then you want.
I might be proven completely wrong already all over the thread or missed the point completely but I have only read small parts so pardon me.
Just my quick 2 cents.
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Also wanted to say about Neal Stephensons Snow Crash: got to admire an author who calls his characters "Hiro Protagonist " and "Yours Truly"
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Good to finally hear from you again pine, an interesting and wide ranging post. I haven't the time to respond in kind but a few points:
Hong Kong; indeed hong kong is a shining example of the success of laissez faire. However, like the deregulation of the City of London, it is only the fact that it is LESS regulated than everywhere else that draws so many financial services to it, and makes it so lucrative. If everywhere else was equally laissez faire, it would perhaps not be such a source of wealth. The whole world cannot be in the business of providing financial services to each other.
Hi HG, I politely disagree. It is in fact the book the Wealth of Nations that banished this mercantilist view of the world. Mercantilism seems logical, but upon examination there's no evidence for it. Every nation can improve its productivity enormously without detriment to the others. That less regulated locations exist is of enormous economic advantage to the other more regulated locations, but they would all prosper similarly if they adopted such policies universally. Every nation has the capacity to be a Hong Kong, that is what is so exciting. Hong Kong, Japan, Singapore are all places with no natural resources but they have done marvelously well in comparison to other Asian states with less free market orientations.
You're conceiving wealth generation as linear, as a slider that can be adjusted up or down, with those least regulated having a fixed advantage over the other sectors. In actual fact this is not the case, which is actually why Pine is a capitalist. The less tax there is, the higher the division of labor extends itself. The result is for each 1% less tax, there is an exponentially larger and larger quantity of wealth generated, and that this applies to any industry. This is hard to visualize and few people appreciate it outside certain circles, which is why I recommend you read a chapter or two of this:
http://www.econlib.org/library/Smith/smWN1.html#B.I,%20Introduction%20and%20Plan%20of%20the%20Work
There is no disadvantage to less taxes (other than what in our current system is used to enforce property rights and a short list of other necessaries such as a Land Registry and so on). The trouble is that it's always possible to articulate seemingly rational reasons to raise taxes, due to the fact the alternative, the huge amount of wealth that would exist in place of that apparently inconsequential decision, is invisible, an alternative history, and so nobody feels any pain. That is at the heart of why technocracy, which is superficially more logical, is actually far more barbaric than a laissez faire system. It literally took us thousands of years to realize this. It is similar to the recent adoption of Probability Theory in mathematics, or the Theory of Evolution in biology, it seems obvious today, but all of these things were really counterintuitive realizations, I would say capitalism is the least understood process of the three.
If you went back 200 years ago, it would have seemed absolutely outrageous that the vast majority of the population wouldn't be involved in the production of food, and yet here we are. The division of labor has been so bountiful that the majority of people do things that are (seemingly) unrelated to our direct survival. This would have seemed illogical to a person from a few generations back, unsustainable, as ridiculous as the idea of everybody providing tertiary services such as finance to others is to yourself.
The history of hong Kong is hardly free market at its finest though. It was founded by force by great Britain in a spectacular act of market interference. The Chinese were forced at gunpoint to accept a trading colony on their coast to help Britain with her trade imbalance caused by the craze for Chinese tea. British companies were given title to the land upon which your SF skyscrapers now stand by their government. This is now the most expensive real estate in the world. The land was'given'back to the Chinese in 1999 who 'allowed'the current owners to retain possession.
You see what I'm saying? You cannot argue the illegitimacy of the Nation state, while respecting property rights originally conferred by it.
I therefore suggest that Hong Kong is as disingenuous an example as Somalia.
All of those things are true, but Hong Kong only recently turned into the powerhouse it is today. Hong Kong was a tiny, inconsequential place for many years until John Cowperthwaite came along and deliberately fostered the correct free market conditions for it to grow.
If that had not happened, Hong Kong would still be a tiny fishing village and a hideout for small time smugglers. Now they both have much bigger boats! :)
My point is that it is not the actions of the British in founding Hong Kong that caused Hong Kong's prosperity. It simply does not explain the data. The Treaty of Nanking was signed in 1842 but it's not until roughly 1946 that Hong Kong starts to become wealthy. If the coercive practices of the British with their Opium trade had anything to do with Hong Kong's prosperity, I should reckon on a century being enough time to demonstrate it!
http://www.quebecoislibre.org/06/061029-5.htm
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I think perhaps you're fighting a strawman a bit here, since I'm not claiming that the Nation State is illegitimate (if we are to discuss economics, and not morality, which seems to me to be a quite separate issue, since slavery is also quite economic!) in the past or even presently, I don't think Capitalism would have been possible without a very powerful (but small and austere) State such as that of Holland or Britain in the old days. I view it as a necessary step to this present point, and that ultimately that the governments shall dissolve by new economic structures (CEPs) that push political power away from the State (NGOs), some of which don't yet exist at all but which I'm confident they will.
Decline and fall of The Roman Empire. "Another damned thick book! always scribble scribble scribble eh Mr Gibbon?"(the Duke of Wellington)
A fantastic book, one I love and return to again and again. Still, the Fall of Rome was a bit more complicated than hiring mercenaries. Gibbon took 8 volumes(at least in my edition) to describe it and it took 1000 years. So the parallel with 20 years of US administration privatising defense is not entirely convincing. I do agree that the replacement of much of the military by private contractors is worrying. As you will know from your reading, there was a couple of hundred years where it was pretty much the army that chose the emperor and they did not always choose well.
Another major factor in the decline of Rome was the difficulty in ruling such a vast empire when communication took weeks. Indeed this was the reason for the initial split into east and west empires, with four rulers, in an attempt to make the task more manageable. I think you will agree that communication is not the same problem today.
It really is huge! The Fall of Rome may not be all down to the mercenaries, true enough, but they acted as the catalyst that sprang all the other fuck-ups into motion. You're right that the trend with privatization is recent, but then again the USA is a very new nation, it is Rome on fast forward as it were. For the USA to last as long as Rome, is in my estimation: impossible. No, communication is not the same problem.
But in those days lack of communication lent itself to decentralization. Then we have a massive centralization since the 1700s, with States growing more and more centralized, with the previous century being the most pronounced. That was in part down to higher bandwdith communication links e.g. post office, telegraph. And then I believe that with a multiparty massively parallel communication system i.e. the Internet, that this trend will reverse itself (over our present century, which is in historical time spans quite suddenly and dramatically).
Neal Stephenson:
Again, love his books. I guess the two you are thinking of are Snow Crash and the Diamond Age? (Anathem being set in a monastery like "math" in a parallel universe, the baroque cycle more a historical epic)
Snow Crash didn't read like much of a utopia to me; a future where people gather for self protection into clannish 'burbclaves' in a kind of cyber feudalism.
Diamond Age was somewhat more attractive, however, it was predicated on humanity having gained such control over the environment through nanotechnology that all human needs could be met by constructing goods at the atomic level from magma......which is a fairly big assumption.
I am slightly more optimistic than Neal, I think he is too, it's just more interesting to write dystopia :)
Again I think it comes down to property rights. I got my thought experiment about the island monarchy from Rothbard himself:
An absolute monarch decides to convert his domain to libertarianism, however immediately before doing so he presents his family with title to all the land and industry. Are we to respect the private property rights of the new owners? You can see the parallel with the British and Hong Kong
I have to admit I tend to adjust my outlook in response to what book I have most recently read, too. Hence my wild swings between libertarianism and socialism. I dont think anyone here was arguing for centrally planned economies though.
Must go now, just started watching "house of cards"
No, in that case you need Land Reform. This is one of the counterintutive things about Capitalism. In order to bootstrap the Free Market, it was initially necessary to establish some centralized agents (Land Registry), establish universal rules enforced with coercion to ensure property rights prevailed as a non-fantasy concept and break with old customs so that land was transactable between regular people and not just enormously rich Landlords and those with Titles.
This does not imply that because the police prevent you from assuming ownership of land you didn't pay for, that a free market exchange is coercive. Backed by coercion to prevent theft, but that is a necessary condition or the logic of the system breaks down. Myself and kmfkewm had an debate related to this, about slavery. Kmfkewm's argument was that a person could sell themselves, with certain caveats, and mine was that free market exchange is permitted in every particular with the exception of selling yourself, because it ultimately could lead to institutions for destruction of the free market system itself, like pulling the plug out of a bath because a woman's child is a dividend to the slaver and the child can't break out of the loop without contradicting the ownership concept.
To say Free Markets = Coercion, which most socialists do, is the route to total relativist incoherency. To look at it from the other way around, it would be like a Capitalist claiming that universal health insurance is a Capitalist concept, because without a Free Market economy we could never be taxed due to the fact there wouldn't be enough wealth in existence to sustain such a concept as universal health insurance.
Both positions are quite mad. Just because two things are related to each other does not make them the same thing. Capitalist and Socialist concepts are like the lego blocks of society, you need to build them correctly and in order to create patterns that make any sense. A world where free trade reigns supreme does not imply the extinction of Socialism nor visa versa.
Also wanted to say about Neal Stephensons Snow Crash: got to admire an author who calls his characters "Hiro Protagonist " and "Yours Truly"
He's a cowboy, you should read his non-fiction essays online, they're very good.
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Anarchy *might* work if people all over the world wake up one day in an anarchistic world where everybody has the same idea what anarchy means AND all memories/proof from how life was, before that day, were all erased.
In most other cases I think it would initially lead to unseen chaos before things would start to settle and settling might take longer then you want.
I might be proven completely wrong already all over the thread or missed the point completely but I have only read small parts so pardon me.
Just my quick 2 cents.
If you're thinking of the hippie-lets-all-work-together-to-build-a-better-world anarchy, then you're probably right. But that is not my anarchy at all. My anarchy is the literal meaning: without-state. My other posts explain the 'pine-anarchy' concept properly.
As for the chaos and settling down duration, you might be right, there's no way to know. I think that humankind would self organize itself fairly quickly, but since this is a first in world history (according to me anarchy is a new concept and hugely dependent on the Internet to work) there is really no way to know in advance.