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Comment by rootw0rm | Hacker News Reader

lack of law != anarchism. anarchism or voluntaryism is about the right of freedom of association. people chose to live in CHAZ, they weren't forced. disrespect of property rights is unfortunate and i don't condone that... but property owners, like the soccer field owner, could have hired private security. that's a perfectly anarchist response.

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Yeah a lot of local businesses did hire private security, but then there were a bunch of random plainclothes dudes with guns walking around, which wasn’t great for business. The soccer field is publicly funded so I guess the city government could have hired private security but I’m not sure the police union would’ve been happy about it

Also this sounds like the “no true Scotsman” thing. Some of the people in the zone were self described anarchists, they were setting up co ops and volunteer medical services, and if it had succeeded (meaning, not been overrun by violent crime) I’m sure people would have pointed to it as a model of anarchist principles in action.

I think you'll find that many (most?) anarchists disagree with the idea of accumulating property (it's where Proudhon starts, after all.)

It also doesn't sound very anarchist to prevent others from using your accumulated property with hired guns. That's the basis of capitalism!

What if someone hired even more private security, and just tore the whole thing down? What if they shook everyone down, took everything and bailed? Is this a 'perfectly anarchist response'?

It's a good response, and it proves that "hiring security" is not anarchist at all. Anarchy is about preventing power concentration, quite the opposite of guarding by force.

Where do you get the power to prevent power concentration?

You agree on rules in which accumulation is impossible, or naturally short-lasting.

That’s anarchocapitalist response.

Ancaps and anarchists have very little to do with each other, actually.

edit: to make it clear, I don’t want to “safeguard” the word anarchism, I don’t really care, I’m not part of that movement. But the anarchists that wrote the original article are part of a movement that take anarchism to mean something, while ancaps make it mean something entirely different.

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