Your Freedom Is My Freedom: The Premise of Anarchism
humaniterations.net
humaniterations.net
That is not true. Government can provide incentives to people without enforcing that everybody follows those incentives.
Government is defined by its constitution (or lack thereof) which can be amended by democratic means. Democracy is not aggression. But government must and can coerce people not to cheat in elections. Else the powerful people with guns would show up on the voting sites and prevent minorities from voting.
Anarchy would probably mean that there are elections, right? Anarchy would simply mean there are no laws enforced except the rules of your local bullies, who might or might not call themselves "anarchists"
Of course a state can have too much power, that is the case in dictatorships. But without a democratic state enforcing the constitution the country would descend into dictatorship.
When voter-suppression happens even in democracies, how much more would it occur without any central authority ensuring constitution is not violated?
But the only way it can do that is by coercing other people. For example, if the incentives are monetary, the government must first obtain that money – which it does through coercive taxation.
It's coercion all the way down.
If one wants to present an alternative, it's incumbent to provide something more concrete than declaring it "requires complex resistance, continual struggle, with no easy resolution, no comforting collusion". Democracy is, famously, the worst system, except for all the others.
The author claims to "dare to see beyond the suffocating language of power", but I'm not really seeing much "beyond". I'm seeing a not-inaccurate (albeit hyperbolic) criticism of the theory of the state, but without seeming to understand the history of how we got here or providing any deep thoughts into the alternative.