Originally Posted by Matt1989

In an anarchist society, coercive mechanisms (DROs, collectives, etc.) would be subject to the regulation of the people

If that's the case, then one of two situations obtains.

1) The organizations in question are quite small-scale, so that all participants know each other; or

2) A formal mechanism exists for the articulation of the people's will.

In the first case, you have in effect a precivilized or protocivilized governing mechanism suitable for a small human society. In the second, you have in effect a state.

As there is no monopoly on enforcing justice in anarchy

If that's the case, then you have no effective means of applying coercion to those who would act in a socially disruptive manner, and we are back to chaos.

I'll set aside the "wrinkle" you mentioned because as you said that's a perpetual problem and the reason why modern democratic states have restraints on the people's will in order to protect the rights of minorities, such as our Bill of Rights.

Anyway, I do think you are overestimating the amount of chaos in Somalia that is caused by their lack of a central government (again, much of the supposed chaos is caused by outside forces), and it's probably worth noting that Somalia is one of the fastest improving nations in Africa with a sweet telecommunications system.

I read the article, which is interesting. What it looks like to me is that the country has fragmented into small states and proto-states which were at war with one another for a time but are currently at peace. This does happen. States are not always fighting each other. It may be that Somalia is not an appropriate territory to create an overall state. Or it may be that this situation is temporary. In any case, we can reasonably assume, based on history, that the current state of peace is itself temporary.

Somalia is not actually in a state of anarchy, it has merely lost its central government. This would be comparable to the U.S. dissolving into its component states; the U.S. federal government would be gone, but I would be living still under the State of California, which would by virtue of its independence become a full-fledged sovereign state, something it is not today. The state would have fragmented into smaller states, but not disappeared, nor fragmented into anything pre-state.

However, the fact that human societies have historically not been organized the way they ought to have been does not necessarily challenge one's analysis of human qualities. As my understanding of humankind is one in which the species' capabilities render its path as being decidedly non-deterministic and social, I'm not sure how your objection forces me to reevaluate my assumptions.

Let me put it this way. A state has undesirable qualities which you have been at pains to belabor. That being the case, it is reasonable to suppose that, while it might not be an impossible arrangement, it would at least be an infrequent one -- unless there is some reason why a state is necessary and the absence of one is an unacceptable situation. Since we do not observe civilized societies that are not governed by states, it is reasonable to assume that such reasons exist. Moreover, we can reason from knowledge of human nature what some of those reasons are likely to be: necessity of defense against other states, and necessity of internal keeping of order over an area and population larger than can be governed by informal governing systems.

I'll add that for most of the time when humans have existed on this planet, states did NOT exist. They emerged only when people had developed agriculture, bred larger populations supportable by agriculture which could not be supported by foraging and hunting, and collected those populations in cities. That goes back about 6,000 years, and since humans have been around between 100,000 and 200,000 years, we have lived under states between 3% and 6% of our time on this planet -- but 100% of the time that we have been civilized.

There is a clear connection between the material circumstances under which humans have lived (as controlled by technology), and the nature of their governing institutions. Informal government prevailed in a foraging/hunting society, tribal government in a pre-city-scale farming society, monarchical or aristocratic states in an agrarian civilization, and democratic republics in an industrial one.

However, even in precivilized times when states did not exist, territorial monopoly of force did. It was simply not exercised by a formal state. So that, the characteristic of states which you seem to find most objectionable, does seem to be inherent to human social organization. As to why, I have already presented a theory: because some people are miscreants. (Also because most people are miscreants towards those not considered part of "us.")

Originally Posted by haymarket martyr

I do not understand the libertarian insistence about contracts. It seems to me to be a phony issue set up as a intentional roadblock to prevent society from acting like... well, acting like society must act.It is simply semantics designed to rationalize the hatred of paying necessary taxes so society can function. And many libertarians are excellent at such semantics and rationalizations.

I think we're getting off track here. Even if taxes were necessary for society to function well, that doesn't mean that anyone else has a claim to your property.

I could go on and on but we all get the idea.

Yes, we all get how things work nowadays, but I'm not sure how that is relevant to this discussion.

When I began arguing with libertarians many years ago, one of the first intellectual rationalizations I found them using was the idea that "I never signed any damn social contract". It is important for the libertarian to separate himself from the centuries old idea of a social contract and elevate himself to the idea of an independent god.

(Ignoring the independent god strawman) The burden is on social contract theorists to show why their particular versions apply, not the other way around. It's not the libertarian's fault that they are entirely unconvincing and question-begging.

And then, of course, comes the response that your daily continued participation in the society of your own free will constitutes your agreeing to the social contract so your signature or even your verbal agreement to it is not necessary because your participation has sealed that deal.

Okay, I would agree that participation in society commits you to certain standards, but how on earth does it commit one to consenting to the State??

There is a sure fire way you can remove yourself from the social contract and the society which enforces it.... but that is ignored and excuses and rationalizations are found why it is not possible.... right now.

I'd love to hear how one can opt-out of a social contract.

The anarchist has no plan.... no program .... nothing to put in the place of what we now have as society and a nation...

Blah blah blah. Do you see why I know you're not listening?

Originally Posted by Matt1989

There's a bit of a difference in the questions: "Would you rather be broke and have negative liberty, or have money but no freedom?" and "Should you have money and/or freedom?" To the first question, there isn't a correct answer; it's just preference. But to the second question, I think the correct response is that you should indeed have freedom (as there is some principle violated by not being free), but there is no rightful guarantee to money.

When money is a prerequisite to liberty -- which it is -- then if there is a right to liberty, there is also a right to money.

Originally Posted by fruitcake

It's called a strawman argument.
It happens most often when your opponent cannot defeat your position so therefore he creates a distorted version of it.

This is what Odin is attempting to do:
1) create a strawman
2) attach the strawman to his opponent's position
3) attack the strawman

I still haven't seen a valid rebuttal of CoS and my argument about miscreants and the necessity of coercion. Several posters argued, justifiably, that oppressive state structures can create criminality, but they missed the point that I'm talking about individuals that are miscreants by their very nature, sociopaths, narcissists, and the like. Justin keeps making an invalid dichotomy between "organic, self-organizing" society and "artificial" state, as if the state were not a result of said self-organizing processes.

Originally Posted by fruitcake

Unlike Liberals, I do not subscribe to an ideology that says the world must revolve around my ass.


Let me give you an example of how a Liberal thinks.
If the market moves against them a Liberal will say, "OMG the market has failed!"
ahhh do you see?
There is no such thing as market failure --> only people who fail to understand that the market owes them nothing.
Of course the market will go up and also down, but that is not failure.

The next step a Liberal takes is to turn towards government and hope they "do something".
Liberalism is an ideology that advocates "going against" the market and believing they can win --> good luck!
I believe the actions that Liberals ask government to take to avoid loss are the exact same actions which will lead us to the next "Gilded Age" or the road to serfdom.

But you don't have to worry about me Kurt Horner
I do not plan on being one of the "serfs" in this new gilded age, I plan on being one of the aristocrats.

Wow, and you accuse ME of strawmen?

Matt asks

I'd love to hear how one can opt-out of a social contract

Move where this nation no longer has any authority over you. See the example of Pilgrims 400 years ago. Unless you are happy with living in hypocrisy, then continue to absorb the benefits of an organized and regulated society while railing against it.

Which reminds me, I'll have to re-read Heinlein's The Moon is a Harsh Mistress soon.

Originally Posted by Odin

Justin keeps making an invalid dichotomy between "organic, self-organizing" society and "artificial" state, as if the state were not a result of said self-organizing processes.

This comment indicates a lack of clarity on my part in the past (thank you, Odin!).

Of course, I've never intended to imply that any human institution was 'artificial' -- they are all, after all, made and maintained by people. So the dichotomy I've tried to illustrate is not 'organic' versus 'artificial' so much as 'organic' versus 'inorganic' (or, if you prefer, versus 'dead and gangrenous')

The state, as opposed to a stateless, paradigm represents the ossification of one particular form of social organization, and the quasi-religious (faith-based, ultimately) elevation of that form from the 'what we did that works out okay in some ways' to 'the tool by which our problems are to be solved'. I have a distaste for tool-worship, but in this case there is also the very real -- and constantly realized -- danger that the deification of the monopoly-form goes beyond the fact that it becomes itself a force against human thriving whose even most benevolent form requires constant effort to even keep held in place. It in fact introduces strong forces of inertia, insensitivity-to-stimulus, inflexibility, and ultimately inability-to-react into the society in which it takes root. And those are among the very most dangerous long-term weaknesses a thing existing in the universe can have.

Ossification means death, and since I've got an emotional bias in favor of things working out well for people, I'd really like them to be as far away from that kind of thing as possible.

Originally Posted by Justin '77

it becomes itself a force . . . whose even most benevolent form requires constant effort to even keep held in place.

That also describes civilization. We are "naturally" -- and I agree that term is open to being misleading, so I'll define it as "the mode of social organization for which our genes are suited by millions of years of evolution" -- suited to a life in small bands all members of which know each other, without formal government or formal religion, with food being acquired through foraging and hunting and all manufacturing done by hand by individual craftspeople. Such a situation does still require constant effort to keep in place, but it is effort that we are able to make instinctively. We are not suited by our genes to life in cities, or to the types of employment that we engage in today. Such an environment is, in that sense, "artificial" -- as is government, which is a necessity of life in such an environment. It requires constant effort to keep in place, and such effort is not instinctive with us.

One may, based on this, argue for a return to a precivilized lifestyle and thus the abolition of the state. One must in that case accept the deaths of literally billions of people, but perhaps it's worth it in order to cease living in ways for which our genes do not suit us.

However, to argue for the abolition of the state without a return to a precivilized lifestyle is to demand the impossible.

And now to deal with another comment:

Originally Posted by Justin '77

Ossification means death

Not necessarily so. It depends on what is being ossified, to what degree, and what forces exist in opposition to it. A living organism certainly does require dynamic and mobile elements to its being, but it also requires static and rigid ones, in the case of large animals such as ourselves this describing the skeletal system, without which our bodies would dissolve into amorphous goo.

Transposing the metaphor to society, the rigid elements include not only the state but also tradition and (in the classic meaning of the word) conservatism. It's quite true that these elements can go too far, be taken to the point where the society is incapable of changing, and as material circumstances change with the creation of new technologies (and other factors), that would be a catastrophe. But it's also the case that the converse can go too far, and that a society without any conservative elements is one that can accomplish nothing because it lacks any coherent structure.

An organism needs bones as well as muscles. A car needs brakes as well as an engine. Et cetera.

Originally Posted by fruitcake

Unlike Liberals, I do not subscribe to an ideology that says the world must revolve around my ass.

I am a well-defined liberal, and I do not believe that the world rotates around my posterior -- or any other part of my anatomy. In fact the world could hardly care less about me and my interests. It is essential that I duck and jump as necessary to avoid what Shakespeare calls "the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune" (Hamlet)and that I accommodate some idea of what is best for humanity as a whole.

(Hint: enrich your life. Get as deep into Shakespeare as possible and you will learn much about philosophy, human nature, and even politics. Think about it: no country whose literati know MacBeth can ever have a fascist or commie government.

Let me give you an example of how a Liberal thinks.
If the market moves against them a Liberal will say, "OMG the market has failed!"
ahhh do you see?

I know human nature far better than you. Markets are human institutions, and they work no better than the human participants. I also know economics far better than you. I have never known of any market failure that occurred without some human folly, vice, or simple bad luck. Packard Motor Car Company used to make fine cars, only to decide to cut corners to cut costs more than it cut prices. Packard Motor Car Company is no longer in existence. Schlitz Beer was one of the best sellers -- until it came out with an ad campaign that suggested that its drinkers were so hooked on their beer that they would defend it with inexcusable force. Montgomery-Ward refused to follow middle-class America to suburban shopping malls -- only to lose market share to its competitors Sears and J.C. Penney. Arthur Anderson disappeared from the ranks of the Big Eight Accounting firms because it didn't challenge (as a CPA firm must) the squirrelly methods of accounting that one of its largest clinets (Enron) used in efforts to conceal costs and overstate revenues. The business graveyard is full of "me-too" efforts to enter saturated markets without doing anything better. Such is folly.

Yes, it's also full of small companies whose owners couldn't convince their promising sons and daughters to stay in the business instead of going into law, accountancy, dentistry, or the like. It's full of companies whose grandchildren of the founders who elected to drain the assets to live the Good Life that someone else had earned. Of course such an activity as oil wild-catting offers huge rewards for discoveries of oil, and nothing for dry wells -- which people expect in that business.

Panics and crashes? Sure; some powerful people ensure that asset inflation becomes the only reliable way of getting rich or even protecting wealth. They become fast friends with the politicians that they support through campaign finance; such is especially common late in a 3T. The wealth "created" in the corrupt boom becomes illusory, but people commit to it and blame themselves if they aren't doing as well as speculators. The illusory wealth in the end proves to be without foundation, and lots of people who invested their retirement savings in "the only game in town" find themselves broke. The hollow political leaders of the time have no clue of what to do next.

Enrob Corporation -- excuse me for the Freudian slip -- failed due to the scams of its executives. Texaco -- an oil company! -- went under because it attempted to manipulte the prices of another oil company illegally and got taken over. That was gigantic folly.

There is no such thing as market failure --> only people who fail to understand that the market owes them nothing.
Of course the market will go up and also down, but that is not failure.

You confuse the "markets" of academic economics and the vicissitudes of the valuations of assets such as real estate, corporate securities, and commodities. Economic markets eventually show the vacuousness of wealth created entirely on paper.

I can't tell you enough about economics; all that I can tell you is that people can produce and find all sorts of things, but the only value that anything ever has is what someone can get out of it or what one can sell it for. At one point a piece of paper that entitled one to 100 shares of Enron common stock could buy a big chunk of an ordinary single-family house in Houston. It now has value only as a collectors' item.

Eventually the market decides what has value and what doesn't.

The next step a Liberal takes is to turn towards government and hope they "do something".
Liberalism is an ideology that advocates "going against" the market and believing they can win --> good luck!

No. The liberal expects the government to correct the mistakes of illiberal governments.

I believe the actions that Liberals ask government to take to avoid loss are the exact same actions which will lead us to the next "Gilded Age" or the road to serfdom.

I do not plan on being one of the "serfs" in this new gilded age, I plan on being one of the aristocrats.

You have shown incredible ignorance. First, you fail to recognize that the Gilded Age was a time of amoral greed overpowering all else. Second, you fail to recognize that the title The Road to Serfdom refers to a book, much praised among intelligent conservatives, by the late Friedrich Hayek, that presented an argument that efforts to subordinate economic life to socialistic tendencies would result in poverty and tyranny. Third, you claim that you will be one of the "aristocrats" of a plutocratic society -- only to forget the most obvious qualification for aristocratic status: being born or marrying into it.

Originally Posted by Brian Rush

And now to deal with another comment:



Not necessarily so. It depends on what is being ossified, to what degree, and what forces exist in opposition to it. A living organism certainly does require dynamic and mobile elements to its being, but it also requires static and rigid ones, in the case of large animals such as ourselves this describing the skeletal system, without which our bodies would dissolve into amorphous goo.

Transposing the metaphor to society, the rigid elements include not only the state but also tradition and (in the classic meaning of the word) conservatism. It's quite true that these elements can go too far, be taken to the point where the society is incapable of changing, and as material circumstances change with the creation of new technologies (and other factors), that would be a catastrophe. But it's also the case that the converse can go too far, and that a society without any conservative elements is one that can accomplish nothing because it lacks any coherent structure.

An organism needs bones as well as muscles. A car needs brakes as well as an engine. Et cetera.

Great analogy. "Ossification" and rigidity can be an asset

Originally Posted by haymarket martyr

The libertarian argument about theft - when it applies to income - always ignores or sidesteps the reality that a person lives in a society of people and was only able to earn that money because of others. No man is an island entire unto himself.... and if you don't like the consequences of that what you need to get your own island and support it yourself or with people of like mind.

If government were to "steal" my money and give me freeways, fire departments, and a food safety inspection department to keep the rat feces away from my hot dogs then I might not complain too much.

Unfortunately government more often then not does really stupid things like "steal" my money and give somebody $4500 to junk a car that still works.
The problem with Liberals is they have a VERY "Liberal" definition of what counts as taxation necessary for the maintenance of civilization.

Originally Posted by pbrower2a

I am a well-defined liberal, and I do not believe that the world rotates around my posterior -- or any other part of my anatomy. In fact the world could hardly care less about me and my interests. It is essential that I duck and jump as necessary to avoid what Shakespeare calls "the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune" (Hamlet)and that I accommodate some idea of what is best for humanity as a whole.

(Hint: enrich your life. Get as deep into Shakespeare as possible and you will learn much about philosophy, human nature, and even politics. Think about it: no country whose literati know MacBeth can ever have a fascist or commie government.



I know human nature far better than you. Markets are human institutions, and they work no better than the human participants. I also know economics far better than you. I have never known of any market failure that occurred without some human folly, vice, or simple bad luck. Packard Motor Car Company used to make fine cars, only to decide to cut corners to cut costs more than it cut prices. Packard Motor Car Company is no longer in existence. Schlitz Beer was one of the best sellers -- until it came out with an ad campaign that suggested that its drinkers were so hooked on their beer that they would defend it with inexcusable force. Montgomery-Ward refused to follow middle-class America to suburban shopping malls -- only to lose market share to its competitors Sears and J.C. Penney. Arthur Anderson disappeared from the ranks of the Big Eight Accounting firms because it didn't challenge (as a CPA firm must) the squirrelly methods of accounting that one of its largest clinets (Enron) used in efforts to conceal costs and overstate revenues. The business graveyard is full of "me-too" efforts to enter saturated markets without doing anything better. Such is folly.

Yes, it's also full of small companies whose owners couldn't convince their promising sons and daughters to stay in the business instead of going into law, accountancy, dentistry, or the like. It's full of companies whose grandchildren of the founders who elected to drain the assets to live the Good Life that someone else had earned. Of course such an activity as oil wild-catting offers huge rewards for discoveries of oil, and nothing for dry wells -- which people expect in that business.

Panics and crashes? Sure; some powerful people ensure that asset inflation becomes the only reliable way of getting rich or even protecting wealth. They become fast friends with the politicians that they support through campaign finance; such is especially common late in a 3T. The wealth "created" in the corrupt boom becomes illusory, but people commit to it and blame themselves if they aren't doing as well as speculators. The illusory wealth in the end proves to be without foundation, and lots of people who invested their retirement savings in "the only game in town" find themselves broke. The hollow political leaders of the time have no clue of what to do next.

Enrob Corporation -- excuse me for the Freudian slip -- failed due to the scams of its executives. Texaco -- an oil company! -- went under because it attempted to manipulte the prices of another oil company illegally and got taken over. That was gigantic folly.




You confuse the "markets" of academic economics and the vicissitudes of the valuations of assets such as real estate, corporate securities, and commodities. Economic markets eventually show the vacuousness of wealth created entirely on paper.

I can't tell you enough about economics; all that I can tell you is that people can produce and find all sorts of things, but the only value that anything ever has is what someone can get out of it or what one can sell it for. At one point a piece of paper that entitled one to 100 shares of Enron common stock could buy a big chunk of an ordinary single-family house in Houston. It now has value only as a collectors' item.

Eventually the market decides what has value and what doesn't.



No. The liberal expects the government to correct the mistakes of illiberal governments.



You have shown incredible ignorance. First, you fail to recognize that the Gilded Age was a time of amoral greed overpowering all else. Second, you fail to recognize that the title The Road to Serfdom refers to a book, much praised among intelligent conservatives, by the late Friedrich Hayek, that presented an argument that efforts to subordinate economic life to socialistic tendencies would result in poverty and tyranny. Third, you claim that you will be one of the "aristocrats" of a plutocratic society -- only to forget the most obvious qualification for aristocratic status: being born or marrying into it.

wikipedia says
"Too long; didn't read" (always abbreviated to "tl;dr") is a pointedly concise reply to someone who described something in a verbose way.

Originally Posted by fruitcake

wikipedia says
"Too long; didn't read" (always abbreviated to "tl;dr") is a pointedly concise reply to someone who described something in a verbose way.

Abbreviation appropriate for you:

TiSB

(Thinks in Sound Bites).

Originally Posted by Brian Rush

That does not make them the same issues. One can be in agreement with the anarchists about all of them, and still be in disagreement about the desirability of overthrowing the state. By the same token, an anarchy is a stateless society -- and may or may not be an egalitarian, feminist, or sexually liberated, or democratic society (actually I might argue that the last is incompatible with anarchy) -- and vice-versa.

ἀναρχία, anarchía, "without ruler"

By some definitions of "the state" being thrown around here, any community that exists and lasts is a state. What I'm interested in is whether or not they need rulers: and what kind of powers, accountability, and limitations those rules have. Direct democracy doesn't even imply rulers unless you want to claim the majority will can be somehow personified. That doesn't mean its an ideal form for protecting individuals of minority opinion, but its absolutely one of those incremental steps toward anarchy if you're comparing to the repressive monarchies that inspired its return.

And yes, a society without rulers would be by its very definition egalitarian in terms of rights and power. Man cannot be above woman, priest cannot be above man, king cannot be above priest. Without rulers, you're only left with one class: humans.

Money is the most important thing in the world, if you have no money. Having been there, I know this. If you have money, then you can be concerned about such things as political freedom, which becomes more important (or at least more urgent) than money -- but only because that money stuff is taken care of already. The starving are never free. An adequate income and the meeting of material needs are prerequisites to liberty.

I wouldn't even necessarily disagree, but it seems like modern neo-liberals see individual liberty as a great threat to these materialistic goals that evolved out of ... a philsophy of individual liberty!

You say money is the most important thing when you have none, but I bet if we went to the poorest neighborhood in town they'd unanimously choose poverty over imprisonment or slavery - even if it included hot meals and a roof over a dry bed. Many risk imprisonment to escape poverty, but the very word risk implies a chance you'll get away with it.

Plenty of mid-19th century conservatives held power under the myth of the white man's burden. This myth just keeps popping up: If we don't put 100 police in the town's ghetto, riots will break out! If we don't tax the poor out of their bad behaviors, they'll get lung cancer eventually! If we don't crack down on drugs, the poor will suffer! So we surround them with police and regulations, and once in a while they might get more in welfare benefits than they pay out to the system.

Of course, you can't have a real meritocracy if people are born in to hunger. Unfortunately, most of our tax money and economic intervention is actually being used to fortify the power of the ruling classes. And while we still have hunger, we've only succeeded in segregating the hungry and surrounding them with police.

No, but I would submit that while political philosophy can never perfectly match reality (just as no model can perfectly describe the thing modeled), still it ought to have at least a nodding acquaintance with it. The great flaw in Marxism is in the complete divorce from reality that pervaded its predictions and prescriptions. This required those committed to Marxism to engage in totalitarian oppression (which is certainly opposed to the Marx' thought) in order to force reality into a Marxist mold that it did not want to fit. Anarchism suffers from the same drawback.

Well here's my nod. It turns out we didn't need god-kings. We don't need popes and bishops. Turns out we don't need any kings at all. People are starting to wonder if we need bankers. I have a hunch we don't need career politicians or federal czars, either.

Most "liberal triumphs" involve elevating the political power and freedom of oppressed classes. Every one of them was feared as a descent into chaos and the end of civilization as we knew it. Anarchists broke ground in these causes, often about 1/2 saeculum before it achieves a majority consensus.

So bring on the end of civilization as we know it: every step so far to free the individual from arbitrary power has brought us three steps toward a more dynamic and productive society.

Of course, if all you're looking for is an inspiring ideal, and you have no pretense that what you're talking about can ever be a real political/economic system, then there's no need for any connection with reality. That's not really what I'm about, but if it's where you're coming from and if we have mutual understanding on the point, cool.

I don't think its entirely impossible to have an egalitarian society that values individualism. Yes, there would have to be some limits on how members infringe on the will of others, and there will likely be some limitations of financial freedom for the purpose of public utility.

What would the institutions look like? Damn fine question, but one without a good answer. We could play theoretical games and construct an ideal one to match a philosophy, but short of a bloody revolution we're more likely to incrementally change the existing ones. Institutional inertia is serious stuff.

But we could always try to let our ideals guide us, it might not be so bad at all...

• End the War on _________.
• Repeal case-by-case immunity laws.
• Prosecute law-breakers - regardless of their status as millionaires, political rulers, or limited liability corporations.
• Give people a more direct say in which laws get passed.
• Nullify criminal laws that punish completely personal activities.
• Make central banking transparent and accountable.
• If we're going to spy on anyone, let's spy on the politicians and stream the audio/video to the internet.
• Stop trying to inflate the monetary base in order to feed the ruling investment class.
• The baseline in America is so bad that I think a truly progressive tax code might even be an incremental improvement toward achieving a greater quantity of liberty for the individuals who are most lacking of it.

Originally Posted by independent

ἀναρχία, anarchía, "without ruler"

Is a "ruler" a person who rules, or is it anything that rules? If you mean a person, then the U.S. currently is in anarchy, which frankly is absurd. If you mean anything, then you broaden the definition to something more in line with what I'm using.

By some definitions of "the state" being thrown around here, any community that exists and lasts is a state.

Certainly not mine. First of all, while communities often have/are governed by states, no community IS a state. Secondly, many communities have existed and lasted for a very long time with no state at all. They were all precivilized or protocivilized, not civilized, but they were stable.

I would define a state as a formal structure of government. I would define government in turn as a social mechanism for collective decision-making and the enforcing of collective decisions. A state then becomes a formal structure for doing these things, which differentiates it from the informal government structures that prevail in precivilized communities.

Finally, I would observe that states only exist in a context of civilization, and that they always exist in that context. You will not find states where people are not living in cities, and you will always find states where they are.

Direct democracy doesn't even imply rulers unless you want to claim the majority will can be somehow personified.

Direct democracy suffices as a method of collective decision-making but not as a method of enforcing collective decisions. For that, you need delegated authority, which need not be a single executive (or "ruler"), but does need to be some more compact body than the entire citizenry. Ancient Athens was a direct democracy (if you can accept the idea of women and slaves not having the vote), but it still had an Archon who enforced the voters' decisions and also commanded the armed forces. The Roman Republic was not really a democracy, but laws were passed by assemblies of the citizens, not by representatives -- yet it also had elected magistrates who carried out the law as the Assemblies passed them. Both of those governments constituted states as defined above.

I wouldn't even necessarily disagree, but it seems like modern neo-liberals see individual liberty as a great threat to these materialistic goals that evolved out of ... a philsophy of individual liberty!

That depends on whose individual liberty to do what we're talking about. A slaveowner's individual liberty to own slaves is incompatible with the liberty of the slaves, but the slaves' individual liberty to live as free people is not. That's an extreme case, but it serves as the template. Are we talking about the liberty of a privileged class to oppress, or of everyone else to be free of oppression? The first is incompatible with the basic prosperity that is a prerequisite for liberty. The second is almost synonymous with it.

You say money is the most important thing when you have none, but I bet if we went to the poorest neighborhood in town they'd unanimously choose poverty over imprisonment or slavery - even if it included hot meals and a roof over a dry bed.

True. I exaggerated. However, I'll tone the statement down a bit and say that for the hungry, money is more important than freedom of speech, religion, assembly, etc., or indeed anything except life, limb, and "freedom" in the most basic sense of not being in prison. (I'll add to this that in some extreme cases, it might actually outweigh even that most basic freedom. There are cases of people choosing to commit crimes and get caught in order to eat, and also in the ancient world of skilled people selling themselves into slavery in order to have financial security. But that hierarchy of values is not obvious nor consistent.)

It doesn't take a lot of money to reach a point where it ceases to be the most important thing, but in general I'm going to agree with FDR that economic rights are just as important as political liberties.

So bring on the end of civilization as we know it

Here's what I mean by "civilization," and it need not be followed by those other four words. I mean a human society that lives in cities. That's all I mean. It might be agrarian, it might be industrial, it might be some kind of post-industrial society. But it always involves large populations living in large communities called cities. Whether "as we know it" or otherwise, civilization requires some sort of state. (See definition of state, above.)

I would not necessarily disagree, and in most cases would completely agree with your prescriptions listed in bullets. What I don't see is why you consider them anarchic. Again, anarchy should not be confused with egalitarianism, which most of your prescriptions are.

from Fruitcake

The problem with Liberals is they have a VERY "Liberal" definition of what counts as taxation necessary for the maintenance of civilization.

Perhaps you skipped that Government class you were suppose to take in high school but you would have learned that those decisions are not made by liberals or conservatives or moderates or any other narrow slice of the body politic. They are made collectively by the elected representatives of the people in a system called representative democracy under Constitutional limitations.

Your own independent island would afford you the opportunity to substitute your own values, priorities and judgments above those of an entire nation. Good luck with that.

Brian is making a reasonable stab at differentiating between the formal 'state' and anarchy. He mentions that by the time cities are built, there will generally be a state. Formal rules and structures seem to be involved in states. He is willing to concede that early groups of humans lived in a stateless society.

I'm not absolutely sure I'm agreeing with him.

One of my perspectives on human organization is Toffler's Waves of Civilization. Brian's line is drawn roughly where the hunter-gatherer life style morphed into agricultural empires. The bow and arrow, writing, domesticated animals and metal use resulted in a profoundly different way of life.

(Some claim the key was the invention of beer. Given beer, one must clearly have agriculture. It all went down hill from there...)

Much of it first arose with the river valley civilizations. Extensive irrigation systems developed. Locals could no longer maintain control of local resources. A common authority had to control the water resource or the people lower down the valley wouldn't get sufficient water. Once a few such civilizations developed large territories and large armies, their neighbors were almost required to follow suit or risk military domination.

One might imagine hunter gatherer villages operating without any sort of formal rules. One might imagine the adults of a village talking things over, deciding how things might be done in an unstructured environment, with a chief expected to implement the resulting decisions. Very informal.

In fact, villages even in hunter gatherer times didn't exist entirely independently. Tribes or clans covered multiple villages or nomad groups. There were hierarchies of leaders. Most decisions might be made at the village level, but there were larger issues that required cooperation between villages. Even in hunter gatherer times, single village civilizations couldn't compete militarily with multi village alliances. In New England, the tribes controlled areas larger than our modern counties but smaller than states. There were larger tribal areas elsewhere.

These tribal structures were certainly less formal and less authoritative than might be typical in the agricultural empires. Indeed, the natives of New England practiced agriculture, so they might not be ideal examples, though they hadn't started building cities nor developing true empires such as the Inca and Aztecs further south.

I don't have a great disagreement in principle with Brian. It might be possible to draw some line where societies have to develop formal governments that are distinctly different from what came before.

But is this border a matter of degree or of kind? Is this border sharp and clear, or blurry? Were the governing bodies of all hunter gatherer groups informal? Might it be possible to find hunter gatherer tribes that might have been more rules driven than some cities?

But my more important difference would be with the anarchists. I am a bit dubious of a proposition that men lived without government in pre-historic times. In a less complex time, the government could be less complex. If men desire freedom, government might not have imposed rigid rules and structure on their people than what was required to take a living from nature and defend territory from neighboring groups.

But these were somewhat difficult times. Some discipline and cooperation was required. The government would have been much simpler, but it still would have been government. A libertarian walking through the woods would still expect to encounter groups, territories, leaders and rules.

But while we might not all be able to agree on a definition of what a 'state' is, I believe plausible definitions for sake of argument could be created. Said definitions might exclude hunter gather cultures from being formal states, while including the agricultural empires.

But humans would have been humans on both sides of this arbitrary line.

Originally Posted by independent

• End the War on _________.
• Repeal case-by-case immunity laws.
• Prosecute law-breakers - regardless of their status as millionaires, political rulers, or limited liability corporations.
• Give people a more direct say in which laws get passed.
• Nullify criminal laws that punish completely personal activities.
• Make central banking transparent and accountable.
• If we're going to spy on anyone, let's spy on the politicians and stream the audio/video to the internet.
• Stop trying to inflate the monetary base in order to feed the ruling investment class.
• The baseline in America is so bad that I think a truly progressive tax code might even be an incremental improvement toward achieving a greater quantity of liberty for the individuals who are most lacking of it.

Indy's wish list is pretty good, too.

Originally Posted by Matt1989

I don't follow..

You bandy about the word rightful, as in high taxation on the rich is theft because the rich are the rightful owners of the wealth that is being taxed. On who's authority is that property deemed rightful? Apparently on your authority. And so I ask, who made you God? That is, how is it that you believe you are one who can determine for others, what is and what is not rightful?

Originally Posted by Mikebert

You bandy about the word rightful, as in high taxation on the rich is theft because the rich are the rightful owners of the wealth that is being taxed. On who's authority is that property deemed rightful? Apparently on your authority. And so I ask you made you God--as in one who can deem what is and what is not rightful?

Well, a close reading of God's Word (as I understand it) calls on the rich to give what they have to the poor and to render unto Caesar what is Caesar's.

Originally Posted by Bob Butler 54

In fact, villages even in hunter gatherer times didn't exist entirely independently. Tribes or clans covered multiple villages or nomad groups.

There is no example of a hunter-gatherer society organized that way. You're probably thinking of certain Native American tribes. They were for the most part not hunter-gatherers. A very few primitive exceptions existed, mostly in California and the Pacific Northwest, but even the Plains Indians farmed, although they also hunted bison. Aside from those primitive exceptions, Native Americans before Europeans arrived ranged from protocivilized to civilized; they were not precivilized.

But is this border a matter of degree or of kind? Is this border sharp and clear, or blurry?

The transition was not overnight. There were stages that human societies went through between precivilized forager-hunters and civilization. Remember, I defined civilization as life in cities. The Iroquois Federation, or the Zulu Empire, didn't live in cities, but they weren't forager-hunters, either. The Aztec, on the other hand, did live in cities; they were civilized. What do you call a people that practices agriculture and lives in larger groups than a forager-hunter band, but hasn't yet congregated into cities? I've used the term "protocivilized." They're on their way to civilization, but they're not there yet.

Precivilized societies were all (I'm assuming -- certainly without any known exceptions) informally governed. Protocivilized societies had tribal governments such as you describe. Civilizations have states. I can't think of a single exception to that rule.

Might it be possible to find hunter gatherer tribes that might have been more rules driven than some cities?

We know of none. And think about it for a minute. You're living in a group of maybe, at most, 50 or 60 people. Most of them are relatives. All of them are personally known to you. All share the same simple culture, with the same religious beliefs, the same moral values, the same lifestyle. There's none of the diversity you would find by bringing 50 Americans together at random. The number of jobs people have to do are small: hunter, forager, basket-maker, tool-maker, clothing-maker, plus of course all the purely human things, the arts, thinking, storytelling. The number of vectors for conflict are limited. Some way to resolve conflicts is needed, sure. But look at the rules in the U.S. Constitution for apportioning Congressional districts, or for electing the president, or the precise enumeration of powers of Congress. Look at the long body of written law in any modern nation. Look at the complexities of any modern civilized court system. Can you imagine a small band of 50 or 60 people (usually less) putting together something like that, or having any need to, or even understanding the concept? (Remember, too, these are people without written language; that is a civilized development.)

But my more important difference would be with the anarchists. I am a bit dubious of a proposition that men lived without government in pre-historic times.

I said that. Anarchists have not. And actually, it's not quite what I said; I said that all precivilized societies were stateless, which is not quite synonymous as without government. What I meant was that precivilized bands were governed informally, with leaders chosen by informal popular agreement. They were still governed.

Originally Posted by Brian Rush

Ha! Interesting. Not necessarily, and I was merely repeating the standard line without serious investigation. Obviously I need to look into this a bit more.

The original purpose of patents was to encourage innovation. But that is not their actual value. Patents serve the same role for industry as scientific publications do in academia. The "publish or perish" mandate in academia means that everything academic researchers do, if at all coherent, gets published. Much of what industrial research does never gets published. It exists in company files and eventually gets lost. Patents, by providing exclusive use of new methods for a period, provide an incentive for industry to publish really useful information. Sure, for 17 years nobody can use this information, but after the patent expires it now serves the same role as academic research. Since academic research is typically 10-20 years away from commercialization, while patents are commercialization-ready, expired parents are about as "fresh" as academic papers.

Without patents, know how developed decades ago would remain forever unknown. Technology would have to be reinvented over and over again.

Originally Posted by Brian Rush

We know of none. And think about it for a minute. You're living in a group of maybe, at most, 50 or 60 people. Most of them are relatives. All of them are personally known to you. All share the same simple culture, with the same religious beliefs, the same moral values, the same lifestyle. There's none of the diversity you would find by bringing 50 Americans together at random. The number of jobs people have to do are small: hunter, forager, basket-maker, tool-maker, clothing-maker.

Actually these crafts were all done by individuals within households. All household foraged, hunted and engaged in crafts. That some individuals were better at these things than others helped create status, just as the kids who were best at sports had higher status than others on the playground. But the status did not create a separate reality for the person (i.e. a social class). On the playground you might be picked last for the team, but you were still picked.