Hacker News Reader

Comment by errcorrectcode | Hacker News Reader

Anarchy scales so long as there are no bad actors.

"If all men were angels, no government would be necessary." - James Madison

It highlights the flaws of utopian thinking. Since this isn't the case, government is necessary beyond a certain scale.

Let me amend that: anarchies cannot deal with external threats when hierarchies have the military edge. I don't think the bit about angels has much to do with it.

Cf. Orwell, "The Atom Bomb and You"

https://www.orwell.ru/library/articles/ABomb/english/e_abomb

> It is a commonplace that the history of civilisation is largely the history of weapons. In particular, the connection between the discovery of gunpowder and the overthrow of feudalism by the bourgeoisie has been pointed out over and over again. And though I have no doubt exceptions can be brought forward, I think the following rule would be found generally true: that ages in which the dominant weapon is expensive or difficult to make will tend to be ages of despotism, whereas when the dominant weapon is cheap and simple, the common people have a chance. Thus, for example, tanks, battleships and bombing planes are inherently tyrannical weapons, while rifles, muskets, long-bows and hand-grenades are inherently democratic weapons. A complex weapon makes the strong stronger, while a simple weapon — so long as there is no answer to it — gives claws to the weak.

And I would think that bad actors scale exponentially. It seems like it would be morally easy to steal from someone you have never met and will likely never see again. Much harder to steal from someone in a small community where everyone knows everyone.

This is just my conjecture, no real world experience or data. Would be interested in seeing if anyone had any.

> … morally easy…

Maybe it's not about morality; maybe it's about getting caught.

1. The certainty of being caught is a vastly more powerful deterrent than the punishment.

3. Police deter crime by increasing the perception that criminals will be caught and punished.

https://www.ojp.gov/pdffiles1/nij/247350.pdf

That's wishful thinking, sadly. Domestic abuse was rampant throughout history, and small communities, rather than correcting them within couples/family units, more often normalised/hushed these because of the abuser's role within the group. Dominant/subservient dynamics, source of most of bad actions, are not related to scale.

I haven't read any classics from anarchism but the notion I got from Noam Chomsky is that anarchism isn't about a complete lack of power structures, it's about demanding that there are adequate reasons for them to exist. So government wouldn't necessarily be gone under an anarchist system, it would only disappear if the collective decides that it is unnecessary.

It also is about decentralizing power. There would be no one executive being who decides something is or is not legal. But the collective would be able to vote directly on how things should operate. And that includes the ability to punish / exile / whatever bad actors.

So.... you're saying Anarchists really just want to have Athenian Democracy?

Direct democracy might work well for a city state where even poor citizens are independent land owners, but I'm not convinced it would work for a large nation where there are enough powerful bad actors that they can use marketing and patronage to get control of the political process.

Not athenian democracy, because that had hierarchy inherent in it. But yes, we believe in Direct Democracy.

>Direct democracy might work well for a city state where even poor citizens are independent land owners,

One of the principal beliefs of Anarchists is that property is theft[0]. So no one would be an independent land owner. Everyone would be equally involved and have equal rights as we would all be members of the Commune/Council/Community/Collective/Union/whatever term the community wants to use to describe their collective. I prefer either Commune or Union personally.

>But I'm not convinced it would work for a large nation where there are enough powerful bad actors that they can use marketing and patronage to get control of the political process.

A lot of people have this idea that Anarchism would break down at larger levels. And that's kind of true, but we have organizational techniques to avoid this. One such technique is the idea that you have your commune and it's you and your neighbors or coworkers (you can be in multiple communes) and it will be a small commune where everyone knows each other. This is the group that handles most of your day to day governance and issues. These communes will federate with other communes, and create a commune that are represented by a member of each member commune. These representatives would represent the will of their source commune in the larger federation, and can be instantly recallable if they start making power plays or decisions that the source commune doesn't agree with. There could be multiple levels of these federations, each keeping the group in session small (less than 80 people) but no one really being in a position of power or permanently having their job. Each commune that's part of the federation can choose how they choose their representative. Some may want the most charismatic person. Some may choose at random. Some may consider it a duty of the members of that commune and so it switches every few weeks. These representatives don't get special perks or privileges for being chosen. They just represent their federation and their commune in order to expedite the process.

Also, Anarchists do not believe in the concept of the City State, or the Nation. Borders are violent[1].

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Property_is_theft! [1] https://crimethinc.com/posters/borders-the-global-caste-syst...

> So no one would be an independent land owner.

So nobody owns their home or vehicle? It's all shared property?

> Also, Anarchists do not believe in the concept of the City State, or the Nation. Borders are violent[1].

What stops some communities from being violent? Various groups of pirates, marauders and bandits existed in the past. The Vikings were well known for it.

You would own the home you live in or the car you drive. Those would be your personal property. But you cannot own multiple homes that you rent out. Or a fleet of cars that you run a ride share company with. Thats private property and (private)property is theft. No one wants your toothbrush, but they do want the toothbrush factory

>what about violent communities

Anarchists are not liberals. We believe in armed Resistance and fighting back. Google the CNT-FIA, the EZLN, the YPG, and The Revolutionary Insurrectionary Army of Ukraine

That is nice, until you get an enemy which is much more organized and wipes all the small unions out, or plays them against eachother.

Like I said to the sibling comment, look up the CNT-FAI, the EZLN, the YPG, and the Revolutionary Insurrectionary Army of Ukraine. There is nothing wrong with having the federation create a militia for the purpose of self defense and furthering the revolution

I will, though I must say it also sounds a lot like the ideas in Common Sense by Thomas Payne.

I am also interested in the ideas by Nicholas Taleb on fractalistic societies. You familiar with his work?

Pierre-Joseph Proudhon was the first person to use the term Anarchism to describe the political philosophy that we (anarchists) believe in. He was born the same year Thomas Payne died. So while Payne wouldn't have described himself as an Anarchist, we definitely recognize that he was in many ways espousing Anarchist philosophy.

https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/william-m-van-der-we...

>Nicholas Taleb

I'm not familiar, and Google doesn't seem to bring anything up under his name or under fractalistic societies. Unless you mean Nassim Nicholas Taleb, the author of Black Swan? If so, I'm also not familiar with his work outside of knowing about that Book.

Interesting.

Yeah, Nassim Nicholas Taleb, the author. Highly recommended to read Black Swan.

Here is his essay (wip) : https://acataleptico.files.wordpress.com/2019/05/principia_p...

What prevents a repeat of the Articles of Confederation? It was supposed to be exactly this kind of setup, but the federal government didn't have any authority to enforce the states providing funds, and the states tried to avoid their responsibilities so someone else would pay for it. This resulted in the federal army not having the funds it needed to do its job.

And once the federal government got the power to ensure it could fund itself, it has bit by bit expanded until it completely dominates the states.

How do anarchists propose to ensure the central military force is able to, at the same time, ensure cooperation by its members, and also can not come to dominate them?

Ah yes, it reminds of the form of government I created - "goodocracy". We're against bad things but for good things.

It doesn't make much sense to say things like "we demand there are adaquate reasons for the existence of power structures" because there's nobody on the opposite side asking for unreasonable power structures. Everyone wants good/reasonable things and doesn't want the unreasonable. Problem is, people disagree about what is what.

A group definition is meaningless if it doesn't specify a group. As is, every major political ideology would be anarchist by this definition.

This strongly depends on your definition of "adequate", "reasonable", etc.

When Noam Chomsky wrote this, I'm fairly certain his definition of "adequate" included things like "the power structure does not exist to serve itself or the people in it, but to serve the larger society around it".

And there are definitely people asking for power structures whose purpose is to be self-serving and/or enrich those in it. Obviously they don't come right out and say that, but come on...

Sounds like Noam Chomsky argued that anarchy meant ideal democracy. In that case we are working towards an anarchy everywhere in the west, some corrupt elements hinders those efforts but still we try to get there and there is no reason to try to change course other than fight corruption.

> anarchism isn't about a complete lack of power structures, it's about demanding that there are adequate reasons for them to exist.

Power structures will appear no matter what you do, the only question is if the system you have is powerful enough to fight power structures. If a guy who promises free virgin slaves to every soldier who fights for him can take over your anarchist state then it is too weak to exist and will disappear almost immediately. So someone with at least that much power must be present. It can take the form of a king, a president, a general, a dictator, or even a council of many people, but the power has to be held by someone or someone else will take that power and become that person themselves.

It is much easier to parse this by unpacking the word anarchism itself through its root terms 'an' (without) 'arch' (ruler). So anarchism means "without rulers" (not without governance or without coordination). Anarchists strive to organize small group, workplace, community and broader geographic decision making as horizontally as possible so that each individual has equal input - with small groups and workplaces making decisions by Consensus - and with larger groups, companies, or broader regions using Consensus in Spokescouncils.(Spokescouncil Examples: A Spokescouncil was used to successfully coordinate the 1999 anti WTO protests in Seattle, and The Brazilian Landless Workers Movement (MST) uses a spokescouncil structure.)

(NOTE: Consensus works much better when it is 'Modified Consensus' in which, as a last resort, decisions that must be made soon but are contentious and aren't reaching consensus, can be made by a supermajority vote of 2/3rds or higher.)

Here are some resources to examine these basics:

CONSENSUS:

- Consensus: http://www.actupny.org/documents/CDdocuments/Consensus.html - Consensus Decision Making: http://www.seedsforchange.org.uk/consensus - Consensus in Large Groups: http://www.seedsforchange.org.uk/conslarge.pdf - Affinity Groups & Spokescouncils: http://www.reclaimingquarterly.org/web/resources/DA-Process-...

EXAMPLES OF ANARCHISM IN PRACTICE:

- The Zapatistas (EZLN) Chiapas, Mexico: https://nacla.org/news/2019/01/18/spark-hope-ongoing-lessons... - The Brazilian Landless Workers Movement (MST): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Landless_Workers%27_Movement - The Rojava (Syria): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rojava - The Mondragon Corporation (Spain): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mondragon_Corporation - The National Confederation of Labour (CNT) - Spain: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confederaci%C3%B3n_Nacional_de... - The Evergreen Cooperatives (Cleveland, Ohio): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evergreen_Cooperatives - The US Federation of Worker Cooperatives: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Federation_of_Wo...

Also, for a vast body of discussions on, and descriptions of, modern anarchism, search the phrase ‘Renewing The Anarchist Tradition’ at: http://radio4all.net

Depends on how you define "government". I think that with a little imagination you could figure out how to set up some system of mutual rules and decision making that didn't involve dramatic imbalances of power. After all "anarchy" means "no rulers" not "no rules".

Democracy has the exact same problem. But only one of these two is a centralized, single point of failure that distributes its mistakes civilization-wide.

Anarchy scales despite bad actors. It's hard to be the big boss hog when more than half the town refuses to sell to you or buy from you. How are you going to manage that? Go betweens? Good luck, you'll have to pay more. A gang of confederates? It's the few against the many. Anarchy in my opinion works because it doesn't have a central command structure, so it's hard to destroy the social order. It also means societies throughout it will radically diverge beyond their initial premise in many ways. The down side is obvious: it's slow as hell. But I'd rather have sluggish but resilient anarchy than the current state of things where we have social norms that justify a handful of people having a title claim to trillions of dollars worth of assets that they themselves can never direct nor consume.

I don't think that is the case. The wild-west, Russia during Yeltsin, China in the 1900s, Somalian warlords. People would have no choice. They have to submit or else they may "rebel" and they may win, or they may lose but it will be a violent battle.

This assumes enough people don't gravitate to strong charismatic leaders who turn into big bosses. That's happened plenty of times in history.

You seem confident that society can survive bad actors. Would you like to post your home address right now, to test that theory?

Wow that's the silliest argument you can propose? Also, mailing addresses are easily bought from the USPS for junk mail purposes and yet no one is going around using them to go murder people en masse. So your theory is already invalidated by that fact. Please stop being such a Hobbesian pessimist. I mean I've seen far worse in my life than I'd like to admit just within my family but even that is still vanishingly rare in terms of occurrences. So keep on with your own pessimism but as someone who's literally survived decades of abuse I'll be a happy anarchist instead, it's much better than the alternative of constant paranoia and cynicism.

Every kingdom was started by a bad actor who did exactly what you say is too improbable to worry about. Anarchy is so unstable that we don't even notice them before they devolve into some form of authoritarianism.

As a great philosopher once said, "everybody has a plan until they get punched in the mouth."

Hmm. It's not?

I mean your original sentence still stands...

Reply on news.ycombinator.com