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Comment by marricks | Hacker News Reader

I find it hard to believe you've talked to any real anarchists, or at least listened to them. People like Noam Chomsky deal with that question extremely head on. Below is what I said on another comment...

> Absolutely no form of government or system (anarchist 1000% included) will solve the problem of people being selfish or bad, all that anarchists contend (that I have seen) is that when there isn't those built hierarchies bad/selfish people don't amass power so everyone else can actually handle them on equal terms.

> Considering how Epstein was able to morph the whole political landscape to defend himself for over a decade, uh, any alternative can seem pretty reasonable.

Like half the comments on this thread are variations of "well bad people exist" and it's maddening because bad people exist in this system! And they're extremely powerful! We 100% do not deal with them largely because of the systems that are in place.

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> when there isn't those built hierarchies bad/selfish people don't amass power so everyone else can actually handle them on equal terms.

This doesn't really ring true to me. In a society where hierarchy is removed, the bad people will form a hierarchy to create power. It being "not allowed" in that society doesn't mean it won't still happen, due again to the people being "bad" in the first place. Two bad people will form a group and use that to derive power over any non-grouped individuals. Or 10 bad people over smaller groups, etc..

This is the problem with much of the spectrum of political rhetoric in America, they're almost all somehow unrealistic in their basic, shared presumption of a world without some over-determining Other (a black box concept that is somehow causal of all social woes) is the goal: feminists, a world without patriarchy, anarchists, a world without hierarchy, Nazis and White Supremacists, a world without racial degeneration, so on and so forth).

Socio-political issues tend to be more complex in causal factors than political rhetoric can possibly bare.

Look at how conservatives re-evaluate the value of "BLM" at every opportunity since it represents all Black politics to them even though Official BLM is a distinct political group in the Black community of whom not every Black person agrees with the stated manifesto on their website, there being more than enough easily searchable YouTube videos to learn the opinion of various Black commentators.

Actual feminists and anarchists have more nuanced views than you present here. (I confess I don't know enough "Nazis and White Supremacists" to say; perhaps they are just that simplistic. Nice implicit comparison, though!) It seems that upon hearing "let's have less X", you can't get past your instinct that X is the basis of all imaginable human life.

It is to your credit that you haven't had a similar reaction to those who oppose racism.

Your argument can be applied in the same way to the current economic system in the US (capitalism). The free market capitalist system has the shared presumption that free markets are efficient and will allocate resources effectively. This shared presumption is unrealistic in that same fashion, since entirely free markets are not possible (market manipulation, monopoly, etc...). No reasonable anarchist will say their solution solves all problems, but they would argue their ideal society would be better and would solve problems we are faced with today.

Monopolies may happen because of superior technology (or better placement, in short, it's much better for the consumers) or because of politics. If it's for superior technology, I think the monetary gain is justified. Also, in a world without patents or copyright, everyone is free to reproduce the technology, if they can.

For the market to be manipulated, you would need something that lives outside of market rules, namely politicians who can use violent threats to shape the market to benefit them and their friends.

In both cases, if we get rid of a government and we move law making and law enforcement in the hands of the free market, we end up with a system which is the closest representation of what citizens want. It may not fair or just according to someone's ideals, but it would be a close reflection of what people wants and it would remove the form of violence which is most commonly perpetrated in the world: state initiated violence.

You tell me the rules and I’ll show you how your free market can be manipulated from within the rules. How do you propose to prevent things such as collusion (free association) and price manipulation.

All systems of economics are also systems of power. If the only system of power is the economic one than your economy is your de facto government.

If a structure for “governmental“ power is identical to the economic structure you have zero ability to fix abusive power imbalances when they eventually arise. It’s the same reason it’s good to have many checks and balances within government itself. Every structure has flaws, and any singular structure of power will have it’s flaws exploited unchecked.

The difference is that in practice, most "pro-capitalism" individuals are actually okay with the state taking on a wide variety of tasks on some level: military, police, roads, public schools, environmental regulations, labor and health codes, zoning, etc. Sure, GOP-controlled (or your local right-wing equivalent) areas tend to have less of these things, but less isn't the same thing as none.

In contrast, anarchists are usually opposed to having any state whatsoever. The ideology tends towards being far more extreme and uncompromising.

> This is the problem with much of the spectrum of political rhetoric in America, they're almost all somehow unrealistic in their basic, shared presumption of a world without some over-determining Other

I mean, you can essentially formulate any world view that takes any clearcut stance into the in-group and out-group dynamic. People who are pro democracy are looking for a world without oligarchy/monarchy, making those who want to consolidate power around a few people as the out group. Etc..

Hmmm, no, it's a false equivocation. What do you do with really bad / evil people who got caught doing evil things (there's enough evidence to put them in prison). I never heard a good answer from an anarchist.

You have to realize there are truly evil people out there. People who will assault innocent people, who will torture, who will rape, who will murder, who will do all of the above to a toddler. And will force the parents to watch. I don't want to live in a society where such people are simply let go, or get some bullshit therapy and let go.

I mean, do you like that those people get off now if they’re powerful? Or if a cop decides to do that either nothing happens or they get let go with a million dollar pension?

At least in a flat society you’d have an equal say to advocate for w/e you thought is just.

Personally for me, and many others who lean left, prison or death doesn’t sit right because it doesn’t address the root of the problem and it’s often used to quash dissent. This is perhaps what you find unsatisfying but if you were magically placed into an anarchist community you’d have more ability to advocate for what you thought was fair.

Holy whataboutism!

With no laws, no police, no jails, no courts, and no justice system, everyone on of those incredibly evil people mention in the prior comment goes 100% free to continue their reign of terror.

Yet, of course, that's exactly the same as some people who slip through the cracks of a justice system that catches many such people a year. Prosecutes them with attempts to be fair. Puts them in jail so they can't hurt others.

Yup. Because someone might slip through the cracks, well.. that's precisely the same as what the prior poster said!

What a false equivalency.

I mean sure in a society where no one holds anyone accountable that would happen. That’s not what anyone is actually advocating for.

You cannot just give people stern looks.

The end result is, you need to be able to use violence, against those willing to use it against you. Note, that can be a last step, but without it?

Those who care not about stern looks, "talking tos", or cold shoulders will literally take everything you have, and kill everyone.

So now you fall to mob rule, lynchings, and what? Power of the strong man?

As soon as you organize, to provide for a response to organized thugs/criminals/rapists/murderers, you now have a government. That's how governments came into creation ; shared defense.

And you need that 24x7. And the people doing it for the community need to be paid. And you need a way to judge, and sentence, and on and on and on.

You cannot simply wave this away.

Thank you. Government is the logical conclusion of anarchy. The minute you have two people who want to do something together, you need rules.

Why can't they establish their cooperation rules between them, using existing static material (contract templates...) if they want to, without any third-party (for example a government) being mandatory?

First, who enforces the contract?

Second, it doesn't really matter. Two people working together is pretty much politics. It's government. It leads there. Cooperation requires coordination.

> who enforces the contract?

In any healthy small community everyone tries to, in order to keep a good reputation. In case of misunderstanding any third party appreciated by both parties may act as a judge/referee. The need for a government, especially central, only arises when the group isn't anymore a community but a large set of (on average) loosely related and interacting persons.

> Two people working together is pretty much politics. It's government. It leads there. Cooperation requires coordination

Coordination nor politics doesn't imply any government.

And thus you invented government. As soon as you have an independent third party deciding who is right, that's your judicial branch. And then you will need the police to enforce the decisions of that judge/referee.

And then when you start having insane judges who rule that raping a child is perfectly fine, you will want to stop it, and thus you will invent your standardized laws.

> As soon as you have an independent third party deciding who is right, that's your judicial branch

There IMHO is major differences between "a single government, dedicated to regulate" (which attracts people willing to control others, often letting the most unscrupulous gain power) and "any chosen third party".

Where most people are most of the time reasonable they will oppose insanity, if necessary forcefully.

People who are reasonable most of the time don't need that much laws to govern them. It's the cases of conflict, violence, murder, property ownership, property destruction, and other negative things that inevitably lead to the invention of government, judges, police, prisons. Every country in the world has them, and for multiple reasons.

Is it just the names that bother you?

Anarchy is the "I can do it over the weekend" of politics. It glosses over so many details.

You can organise without a government, using the free market. Having competing law enforcement firms would bring competition to a state monopoly that does little to nothing to prevent actual crime and persecute tons of innocent people.

Most laws govern interaction between two or more people, how exactly are you going to have that work with privately selected sets of laws? Is everyone going to have a little glowing icon above their head so I know what agency I'm dealing with? For N law sets, will we have N * N law set combinations when people from two different law sets interact? What about if there's three or four or five different ones at once?

Who are these people who we have evidence for such crimes and are let go?

Just don't pretend like killings of career criminals resisting arrest (like George Floyd) is what we're talking about.

Since 2001 we've spent $7T killing a million people and turning millions more into refugees. The only result is that the money was spent and the people are dead and in exile. This evil folly didn't make us any safer. The "really evil people" I can think of were the ones who did that. I don't want to live in their society, but what choice have I been given?

> What do you do with really bad / evil people who got caught doing evil things (there's enough evidence to put them in prison). I never heard a good answer from an anarchist.

I think most anarchists believe in self defense. So in that sense the really bad people are self-eliminating -- they try to kill and instead they get dead, and then they don't bother anybody anymore.

Obviously this is imperfect, but it doesn't seem dramatically more imperfect than the status quo.

As a guy who doesn't want to have to fight to the death, your version seems much worse than the status quo. As a guy who doesn't want his wife and daughters to have to fight to the death, your version seems even worse.

You don't actually have to do the fight to the death, all you need is a society in which people are willing to do it. Because that provides deterrence, which eliminates most of the would-be murderers, the same as the existing system except that you don't have to deal with getting it wrong based on second hand accounts or corruption because the people handing out the consequences are the witnesses.

Notice that for the would-be murderers who aren't deterred by the threat of death, you have to do the fight to the death even under the existing system.

Anyone in any society will try to defend themselves from murder by any means available to them.

So if that's all the defense Anarchism has from murderers, it will definitely have more murderers than any society that adds any extra countermeasures.

Not necessarily. In a society where people are expected to run away and rely on the police to catch them later, more murderers may get away, because more of the victims run away instead of defending themselves but then the police never catch them.

It's obviously easier to "catch" a murderer while you're still in the room with them than after they have a ten hour head start and you have to depend on unreliable third party testimony to even identify them.

In an anarchic society with no government to protect people, the people would pay whoever likes this line of work to protect them. A system of private law enforcememt could emerge out of anarchy. The interactions between different law enforcement agencies (whether with simple agreements or third party private arbitration courts) and the different internal rules would create a market in which consumers are free to choose what laws make sense for them, or at least where laws converge towards what all people want. "The Machinery of Freedom" contains a more in depth description.

As an addendum, in an anarchic society victimless crimes wouldn't be crimes so there would be significantly less people to imprison / execute / send to force labour camps.

So we end up in Feudalism, because what prevents those agencies from establishing their power over territories and demanding payment for protection?

> is that when there isn't those built hierarchies bad/selfish people don't amass power so everyone else can actually handle them on equal terms

But how do you stop a bad person from amassing power in an anarchist system?

As a simple example, how would you deal with highway robbers? Those were omnipresent in societies before states gained strength.

I mean, did they rob peasants or the lords of the land with their amassed stolen wealth...?

A community can decide to cast someone out, reprimand them, imprison them, etc. The whole idea of restorative justice can actually exist when a community is able to address it.

They robbed anyone and everyone.

Some people just give 0 fucks about anyone besides themselves.

Most people give 0 fucks about anyone outside of a moderate group of acquaintances and friends.

....any travellers. And the point is they were outside communities. Right now we take for granted that we can travel from point a to point b without worrying about such threats.

What the? A "community" which makes "communal decisions" is a form of government, not anarchism! How can you cast someone out, without gates? Guards? Walls?

How can you throw them out? Prevent them from returning?

Do you think the robbers will just stop, because you said "Stop!". I feel like you're trolling here. I could of course be wrong, but it feels that way.

Anarchism is a form of self-governance.

Which has nothing to do with a government.

But it has everything to do with "A "community" which makes "communal decisions"", whatever you call it.

I hope Merriam-Webster clears that up:

"Definition of government

1 : the body of persons that constitutes the governing authority of a political unit or organization"

I specifically said that "community" which makes "communal decisions" is not anarchy. You've simply claimed it does, then mentioned "governing authority", which is not entirely in line, now is it?

You're right on the strength of my argument, but you're wrong on anarchy not being able to create governments (in the M-W definition above). But I'm not going to argue this any more.

I honestly don't understand how that is unique at all. It sounds like every government that has ever existed. Once you define the community, its mechanism of decision, and the reprimands and punishments, I'm not sure what's less government about this than current government.

How do you amass power in an anarchist system? In capitalism you generally amass power by amassing capital. What's the equivalent under anarchism?

Anarchism and capitalism are compatible, see anarcho-capitalism. You may be interested in checking out this explanation: https://www.politicalcompass.org/analysis2

That said, I agree with your criticism of communism / anarcho-syndacalism: if you remove capitalism, you are moving power into party politics, which creates even greater inequality to what we have today and explains the horror of communism we've seen in the past century.

They most certainly are not. Some right-libertarians have convinced themselves that they are anarchists so that they can pretend to be radicals but that does not make it so. Anarchism and capitalism are incompatible, anarchism is a left-wing ideology that among other things, seeks the end of capitalism.

I don't know why you interpreted my comment as being a criticism of communism or anarcho-syndicalism (it was just a probing question to understand what somebody thought anarchism would look like), and neither does your criticism of those ideologies make much sense. I don't think you actually know what anarcho-syndicalism is if you think it involves party politics.

You still would amass capital. Guns, food, persons, other resources.

The destruction of fiat currency wouldn't prevent the accumulation of valuable goods/commodities.

Governments replaced those robbers, you just cannot escape nor defend yourself :-)

Most people couldn't escape or defend themselve from robbers if they wanted to, let alone vote against them. That's why governments replaced them.

AFAIK (at least in most European countries) such robbers didn't attack villages, and people willing to travel tried hard to do it in groups (pilgrims, merchants).

You now have nearly no way to escape your (Occidental) government. Wherever you go, whatever you do, whoever you associate with.

If you really believe you can change the power-that-be by voting let's say we disagree.

Escaping your government is easy. There are plenty of places on Earth you could go that have essentially no (functional) government. People tend to run from these places, not to them.

> Escaping your government is easy.

It isn't, and technical progress (transport and communication means) made it more and more difficult.

> People tend to run from these places, not to them.

It depends. Historically see for example the Zomia ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southeast_Asian_Massif#Zomia ) , and some Spanish cities during the civil war ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarchism_in_Spain#Anarchist_p... ). For an ongoing case take a look at Rojava ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autonomous_Administration_of_N... )

I figure that you imply, that you are the real anarchist or at least familiar with their way of thinking? I have a question for you then and please disregard if you are not a real anarchist.

How is the current system of any consequence for you to live the anarchy dream? Why can't you just ignore it and do what you wanted to do in the hypothetical anarchy? If I had these beliefs (i.e. the lack of social hierarchy and organized violence to uphold it) I would be very happy as I could immediately live in my ideal society by just ignoring the existing hierarchy and organized violence since all I could do about it in the true anarchy I can do already (i.e. submit to the organized violence or die challenging it).

Any ideal model can be used to describe the current state of affairs as its pathological case. In the ancap paradigm, the existing government can be viewed as a really powerful corporation. In a left-flavored anarchist paradigm, the existing government is a large scale social contract. Or as you've said, an othered government is just a hostile group to be avoided. What matters is the overall heuristic of trying to shrink the structures to be more local and manageable. Anarchism in all its various flavors isn't a prescription, but rather a rebuke of prescriptivism.

Concretely, most anarchists still have a sense of justice, possibly even a stronger one. Murdering someone and then succumbing to (possibly organized) violence makes sense. Smoking a plant and then being attacked does not.

Well, everyone has a sense of justice. Some people think that murder for "dissing" them or being too rich/white/gay/smart/stupid/etc is just and some think that smoking evil plants like tobacco is abomination and kills everyone who gets a whiff of smoke. We already have a solution for reconciling individual views on justice that works much better than what anarchists managed to show in their CHAZ/CHOP, for example.

This does not answer my question though. Why anarchists are not happy? Why can't they live in their desired society right now?

Your comment isn't very coherent, and it's hard to assume good faith. Reading any anarchist philosophy will quickly lay out criteria for recognizing versions of justice that can actually be considered reasonable.

As for answering your question, that's exactly what my comment attempted but you didn't engage with what I said. You're effectively just arguing against straw men, and have invoked yet another with "their CHAZ/CHOP".

I get you, anarchists have some literature that describes their views on justice, I am fine with it. For all I care they might have some fashion magazines that provide guidelines on the reasonable attire for a sensible anarchist.

My question is still not answered by this and I don't see how is this related at all, to be frank. It's almost as if your answer is not quite coherent.

The reason I referenced anarchist definitions of justice is that you brought up a straw man version of justice that doesn't survive the slightest critique:

> Some people think that murder for "dissing" them or being too rich/white/gay/smart/stupid/etc is just

The problem with your initial "question" and subsequent replies is that they revolve around a sophomoric understanding that collapses the philosophy into meaninglessness.

What I said in my first reply:

> What matters is the overall heuristic of trying to shrink the structures to be more local and manageable. Anarchism in all its various flavors isn't a prescription, but rather a rebuke of prescriptivism.

You may have a hard time seeing this as the essence of anarchism, as it is a general desire shared among most people. But really, we've got lots of anarchist thought in our political discourse. Blue team: drugs, prisons, nondiscrimination. Red team: guns, taxes, business regulations. But we have very little anarchism in our actual political results, except for maybe ancap for big businesses.

If you read this thread, I am sure, you will find that you brought justice first. Neither I brought any straw men (is it some new trend on Tweeter because I have seen several people in the past couple months using "straw man" in some strange and unknown to me sense, all I know is a discussion technique of making a different argument for one's opponent and arguing it instead of the actual one. But nothing of this sort could be applicable here since I have not made any arguments, I am just asking a question).

So, to prevent any possibility of stramaning, are you now saying that anarchism is disagreement with some laws and not the rejection of the institute of government?

Every one of your "questions" has included your own caricature of anarchism. At this point I can no longer assume good faith. If you earnestly want to know the answer to your questions, then you need to do the work of understanding.

The current geopolitical situation prevents anarchists from living in their desired society because there is zero (or practically zero) free land to create such a society without it existing within a state that is not anarchist. This should be obvious.

That's my question! How is "free" land is different from any other? It's just a convention established by the government i.e. if you try to settle on somebody's land then eventually armed people will show up and make you go. So how is it different from the anarchy? Who will provide the "freedom" of the land and is incapable to do it now?

I'm struggling to understand what you're trying to argue, to be honest.

Not the same poster, but I think his point is:

Consider a world where society lived by the anarchist principles. In that hypothetical world, most people self-organized in a large group where:

- They decided to democratically appoint representatives that flesh out large-scale agreements and called it law

- They decided it is necessary to have people dedicated to securing the lands where they live from both internal and external threats

... and so on and so forth, until they effectively self-organized into the equivalent of our current society.

Is there any difference between that world and ours? Why can't an anarchist assume that this is what actually happened (there's some merit to the idea) and be happy to live in an anarchist world, our world?

This is one explanation. The question I have is more of the "what are you going to do when some people will get together and apply concerted violence to you (not dissimilar to the way the government works right now)?". I have not seen a single attempt to answer this in the few hundred comments. It appears most anarchists do not even realize this possibility even exists.

Right-flavored anarchism (eg anarcho-capitalism, cryptoanarchism) addresses this question directly - a plurality of competing defense companies that would be incentivized away from actually fighting as it would be unprofitable.

If you don't mind me asking, what is the difference with feudalism where plurality of land lords provided the same service?

Peasants didn't have much mobility between lords, therefore they were seemingly coerced. Would anarcho-capitalism as stated necessarily play out similarly? Who knows.

The core of anarchism is the heuristic of rejecting hierarchies and coercion. A negative doesn't make for a compelling mass movement, hence all the different flavors are attempts at imagining structures that could replace the current ones. They all have obvious potential failure modes, but the core remains - downsizing the structures of arbitrary authority.

This is exactly my impression too. E.g. the OP article begins with characterizing anarchists as out of touch dreamers: Anarchists are simply people who believe human beings are capable of behaving in a reasonable fashion without having to be forced to. Judging by the name of the site it appears to be a positive characteristic too, which adds to confusion.

Free land is a land where I can live without someone threatening me with violence if I don't share part of the profits I make with my labour.

The freedom can be provided by the inhabitants of such land, either by getting weapons themselves or by paying some members of this community.

By this definition all land is free as you can go ahead, inhabit it and get weapons or pay some members of the community.

> I find it hard to believe you've talked to any real anarchists, or at least listened to them

True scotsman fallacy aside, what the top minds on anarchy think is not as relevant as what most people/anarchists understand of it, if we are talking about a non-hierarchical self-administering system, because performance of the system will approximate to the median (mis)understanding of them.

I've heard the reasoning, it just sounds like utter nonsense.

> when there isn't those built hierarchies bad/selfish people don't amass power

This is where the reasoning falls apart. What stops them from amassing power?

The responses to this question always sound really convoluted and 'reach-y', ala, "people just won't, like, do that, maaaan!" or "others will stop them, in a completely non-hierarchal way without any explicit use of force".

There are TONS of situations in real life where people are nominally equal, but in practice hideously unequal. The way anarchists talk just reminds me of what some feminist movements discovered in the twentieth century: removing explicit power structures and hierarchies didn't put everyone on equal terms, it just made the power differences less transparent and regulatable.

Of course, anarchists are free to say whatever they want: the very fact that there basically haven't been any state-equivalent anarchist communities existing for a long time in recent memory means they're free to theorycraft to their heart's content. You don't have to grapple with any flaws if your system doesn't actually exist.

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