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Comment by mandelbrotwurst | Hacker News Reader

Ah, thanks, that's fair since most people are going to make those sort of voluntarist associations. I guess I was imagining an edge case for people who opt to not do that, but that feels an awful lot like when people today make arguments like "well, nobody's forcing you to carry a phone!"

I suppose this all comes back to the point that nobody is pragmatically advocating for absolute anarchy - it's simply a valuable concept to reference as we collaborate to build actual, functioning social systems. Or, at least, that's how I tend to think about it ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

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Anarchy should be the ultimate (and always moving) goal of any healthy society.

Once hierarchies solve the issues they are born from, they cease to be necessary. Hence a government that permanently solves poverty and thus crime in the most common sense, eliminates the need for an authority to regulate interactions between individuals.

I think we're just using different definitions here.

There will still be a non-zero amount of hierarchical order within social systems even if it doesn't come from the government.

We actually agree, hierarchies can exist and be good, they just need to be voluntary and not in the capitalist sense, where you can "voluntarily" choose between homelessness or wage slavery.

I just wanted to elaborate (since I agree) on your point that Anarchy is "a valuable concept to reference as we collaborate to build actual, functioning social systems".

I won't exclude that Anarchy could eventually concretize though, who knows!

We definitely agree and I also wouldn't exclude that!

I tend to speak this way because I lean towards discussing near and mid-term futures as opposed to longer term ones in many conversations for a number of reasons.

I do this in part because I'm biased toward the now both subconsciously and out of pragmatism as a material being living in the present, but also largely because I find that other people I encounter tend to be even more that way and struggle to envision the longer-term possible that may require a number of intermediate steps.

Anyway, to our future, voluntarily!

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