Quote from: astor on May 11, 2013, 10:46 pmQuote from: pine on May 11, 2013, 09:17 pmAm I the only person that thinks anarchism means not-state, the absence of a state?There's an infinite number of models possible, just as there being many many forms of state based governance, from despotism to democracy to republicanism to communism.Y'all can add on extra features for your favorite form of anarchism, but don't expect the next anarchist to agree.But what is the point of anarchism? What do you hope to achieve?Because if it's the whole thing about state violence, I agree with the poster above, state violence merely gets replaced by private violence, private police, private armies. What you really get is a de facto plutocracy, which is much worse that the various forms of western democracy, despite their many dysfunctions.I have what may sound like contradictory ideas about all this, but bear with me, it makes sense in the end I promise.For pine, anarchy is not a political concept in of itself. It is a "mode", so I am calling it now. Sometimes we use words so often and for a variety of meanings that they become laden with historical or social baggage that we don't mean to put upon them. So let's think about anarchy-as-mode.A mode is something that affects the entire human race, so you should imagine the earth from space as if you were an alien analyzing our collective behavior patterns as some sort of cosmic anthropologist. To us scurrying about like so many ants this is invisible or irrelevant, it is only from a great distance above our heads that you can see discernible patterns emerging. These may not be literally visible patterns (although they could be too), but instead they are alternations in the flow of information throughout human society.We need to think of these things in the same way as a geologist thinks about "deep time", of unknown trillions of particles being laid down over immense periods of time to form layers of the earth, if people are those particles then modes are an impersonal concept not congruent with everyday experience of society. So I don't hope to achieve anything with anarchy in particular, since the idea is meaningless. Even whole nations are merely actors, being are unable to influence at this level of organization, let alone poor old pine. I think of "statism" and "anarchism" as being analogous to hierarchical vs networked "modes" in human civilization. They are like huge cycles in human society which take place over very very long periods of time. e.g. The rise of a Roman Empire is the ascendancy of hierarchical modes, the Middle Ages is the reverse. This is not to imply one is superior to the other, it cannot be simplified like that. You might say that it took less energy at one point in history to form the Roman Empire, and then it took more energy so that the Roman Empire disintegrated and the Middle Ages became a more energy efficient equilibrium, even if it was at a lower level. At the level of individuals this is a non-deterministic process, but at the mode level all this is quite deterministic and predictable (but it is extraordinarily hard to make money knowing this kind of information, it simply takes too long!). Put simply, if you didn't do something to encourage mode X when it was prevalent, and you fought against it with all your power and resources, it wouldn't matter very much because the mode can produce endless counterparts to do you battle. Types of people are produced, literally like products, by modes. Socialists call this concept "commodification of human relations", but they are only half right, it's a much more general principal than just Capitalism. This is because a mode is mostly about economics at the deepest levels, and we know that as physics is the substrate of chemistry, so too economics is the substrate of society and politics.It should be noted that I completely disagree with the concept of anarchy as being "without leaders" or without "hierarchy" or structure. It is the difference between one dominant hierarchy (like state communism) and many many networked forms of it (like a market with its corporations). I consider an absence of leadership to be completely non-describable and fundamentally unnatural. Any power vacuum is a very dangerous thing in all places and times, which is why people intuitively rebel at the idea of anarchy (or too strict hierarchies, like a caste system, because the system doesn't produce enough entropy to be healthy).I think that Statists and Anarchists are sometimes guilty of anthropomorphizing reality and Pine is probably not an exception to this. That is to say they are putting a human characteristics on something that isn't really human at all. Calling some paradigm good or evil is an example of this. People who talk about "the State" or "Anarchy" are always Systems people, they specialize in thinking about systems all the time, that would be you and I and lots of others on this forum. If you suggested this was a genetic predisposition, I would say you might be onto something. It is not a good thing to be a Statist in an Anarchist world mode and visa versa, since your ideas shall go unused.Pine believes we are entering a transition period between the two modes, from hierarchy to network. From here on out since the development of the Internet, anarchist ideas about the world shall much more rapidly develop in complexity and power, most explicitly the Common Economic Protocols but in other ways too. State and anarchists shall battle it out on a bunch of levels, but fundamentally we shall win because economics shall favor us on this round. In fact this has been the case for several centuries now, this back and forth is not a recent phenomena, it's like a cosine wave or see-saw. Originally we had Kings and Queens (H). Then it spreads out a bit and we had the Feudal system (N), then we had the beginning of Leviathan (H), the nation state came into existence. Small but exceptionally powerful. In turn the market (N) hugely prospered for two centuries or so while the nation state remained tiny at relative size. Then suddenly in the 20st century the Leviathan (H) ballooned to be enormous extremely quickly (due to democracy, debt and war), larger than any centralized system in history in both absolute and relative terms as a percentage of the economy. The logical consequence that happens next is collapse followed by market based state function replacement (N). This could seem to happen suddenly, but take many decades to play itself out fully. Then after that aggregation will probably take place at a higher level we haven't conceived of yet, and the cycles starts over again. But let's not get ahead of ourselves!If you look at most advances in technology of recent years, I think it is reasonable to suggest it supports the Network, not the Hierarchy. This is not necessarily pure technological determinism, I just think society is ready in this century for the change. There are more NGO type organizations at this time in history than any other, and the power of non-state actors continues unabated as all think-tanks recognize while the obstacle course for States becomes ever more treacherous. The State shall be hollowed out and eaten alive. Whether I "like" this (I suppose I do, it's like making money by playing Jenga) is irrelevant, it shall happen. We are generally biased as a species to think of the future in a dystopian way, and indeed I think that there will definitely be civil strife and war concerning this transition, but ultimately the networked form shall result in a more advanced world. So simultaneously the future is bright and there will be horrible (Net)wars.I think our ancestors will say that the world wars of the previous century were indicators of a transition from hierarchy to network (monarchy to republican democracy), and that the events of the 21st century were part of that ongoing transition. It seems to me like every network or hierarchy ultimately puts down the seeds for its future demise and a return back to the other mode. It is like the heart beat of human civilization, it is what makes our species the most successful I think, that we have optimized this process by virtue of being able to communicate directly.Cryptoanarchy *is* a political concept, or at least the end result is intended to be such. It is really an anthropomorphism. We are putting a shape on the system, giving it a political information theory, a narrative. This is because we (genetics!) wish to take advantage of the transition to the network mode and get rid of our opposition, who are the current leaders of the hierarchical mode. Basically we want power and money and this is how we're going to get it, by riding the wave of state dysfunction and rise of the Network. Perhaps Pine has altruistic plans (building platypus sanctuaries for my dear little friends) but collectively we don't.I think all that needs to be done, is for a great clash to begin with any two great State powers. Once accomplished, they shall beat each other senseless, adhering to old memes about state power and nationalism. Every up-surge in nationalism and protectionism is to be privately welcomed by us, because it means the beginning of the end. Deep inside, the woodworm of network participants is eating away at the concept of State, often literally selling out their own due to crude self interest. The privatization of the army, even the NSA, it's all the beginning of the end. The populations of those states engaged in war shall decide nationalism isn't worth the trouble after their countries are turned into burnt out shells of their former selves. Populations are much more hyper-sensitive to war than they used to be, a Muslim fellow on another thread said as much and he's right. Look at how dizzy civilian America becomes at the cost of arming and carrying out pitiful struggles in half baked countries like Iraq and Afghanistan. Is this the greatest superpower on earth? I think no power on earth has been so conflicted about its role on the world stage as America. It cannot decide whether its a imperial world power or a freedom loving liberal democracy. What is happening is that the logic of nation state war is becoming increasingly expensive and the logic of Netwar is becoming increasingly cheap. I salute ex-Lieutenant General Paul Van Riper. A man with real brains and courage. He knows that the national security apparatus with its demented self contained narrative is fast becoming the biggest threat that could ever exist to its host the State. He is no Cypherpunk, but he understands the Netwar.http://www.globalsecurity.org/org/news/2002/020906-iraq1.htmThe Pine Program for Government:In fact I think if you're a real patriot, the most noble thing you could be doing for your country is to dismantle large parts of the State deliberately and replace them many more loosely networked (mostly non-coercive) organizations instead of hierarchical ones. "To get yours in first" as it were. That would slow down the fall of the empire sufficiently to maintain some degree of control. These new NGO-style orgs would be to a greater or lesser degree self sustaining without direct assistance from the politburo i.e. tax farming or fund raising. The problem is that this "NGOing" process shall derive the State of much 'direct power' of which they are used to handling, the benefits aren't that obvious to a mandarin because it's mostly about indirect forms of power. And conservatives shall attack you for frivolity since they believe that America can be saved with sufficient budget cuts, despite all evidence to the contrary in that we don't have that power of self control in a democracy. For example it is highly interesting to Pine that Prediction Markets aren't employed by the State anymore. This is an extremely interesting development for me, here they are clearly throwing away tools that work because of the Principal Agent problem. The problem is that those people in the State who recognize all this, such as Lt Gen Paul Van Riper, really don't have a narrative on which to hang their concepts of the future, you cannot get a fish to pretend its a frog, whereas the Cypherpunks have a great coherent narrative suitable for a networked society, that is our great strength as a future political mass movement. Violent action is not likely to be our strong suit so we should avoid it at all possible costs, because in the future winning the media war will be more important than winning the actual war.So, in summation: Is this the right thing to do? I wouldn't know, I don't think the question matters very much. I'm just along for the ride. It'll happen anyway, so I'm just paddling out to the deeper water on my torified surfboard with the rest of you to catch the next wave.tdlr1; The state will trend to a straitlaced technocratic authoritarianism though narrow self interest by principal agents, which shall backfire in the media war. Trust in the state is at all time lows and is getting worse. Meanwhile the Common Economic Protocols shall act like Wolf Packs on the fleshy thighs of the State, resulting in the people blaming the State for everything at the same time as they BitTorrent, BitMessage and Bitcoin their way to the central authority's oblivion.tldr2: Mwahahahahahahaha! :D