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Comment by Yokohiii | Hacker News Reader

> THE CYPHERNOMICON

I've peeked into that one. I've expected those people to be radical to some degree, but I didn't expect they write it down so clearly.

This writing wants to see the collapse of governments and democracy. I find it painful to read such radical statements. So I didn't get very deep.

But I am riddled how those people think a collapse of that scale will work out in their favor. They are deeply reliant on technology and the first thing to happen on collapse, is that many lights turn off.

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This is the thing I don't understand about (a superficial interpretation of) anarchists; while governments are often not ideal, a lack of one wouldn't be better. And trusting people to self-organize is idealistic, but in practice it'd mean we go back to tribalism and "might makes right".

There was this really good short story illustrating this: (edited to add: "Cloak of Anarchy", Larry Niven, thx to below).

A park where anything goes ... because sentry robots keep the peace. When the robots break, things get scary quickly.

I've become convinced that a well-governed society is the perfect foundation for a limited anarchist commune set up on property legally purchased. Libertarian, essentially. Or Amish.

Cloak of Anarchy, Larry Niven.

We have a bunch of temporarily embarrassed tribal warlords among us.

I get the impression that even the definition of "anarchy" itself is subject to anarchy, with lots of disagreements and infighting. The more even-keeled anarchists that I've seen stress that they're not against hierarchies, only involuntary hierarchies, with the idea being that individuals should be welcome to organize themselves into hierarchies into which they delegate power, as long as that power can be revoked at any time, which sounds like a reasonable proposition. And then there's crypto-anarchism, which is just right-libertarianism in a Scooby Doo monster mask.

> as long as that power can be revoked at any time

I understand the idea that "justice delayed is justice denied." But within reasonable governance time-frames for a municipality/region, why would revocation latency be a litmus test for the type of governance model?

This just sounds like an implementation detail masquerading as a philosophical ideal.

It's the anti-establishment impulse taken to extremes. Anarchism is one of the niche destinations of that mindset. Another, ironically, is full blown communism.

What's sort of funny, is how all these seemingly polar-opposite anti-establishment flavors are actually far closer to each other than they are to mainstream political left or right.

The anti-establishment part ends up overriding everything else

That's how you end up with Bernie/Trump crossover voters

How is it ironic? Anarchists were a big part of the First International and left-anarchists can usually be considered to be socialists. They are not polar opposites, rather communism and (left-)anarchism are the statist and republican/federalist (loosely authoritarian and libertarian) expressions of the same underlying ideology of human equality.

> expressions of the same underlying ideology of human equality

I have no clue how any equality minded person could vote republicans or trump.

I get that you want to point out the overlap of the ideologies, but I don't see how they are remotely attributable to the current political landscape. (Strictly in the equality matter)

I didn't mention anything about the current political landscape? I did write republican/federalist, but republican is meant in the dictionary sense, not the US political party.

Trump is not a socialist or an anarchist of any kind (I have a hard time believing he has any political ideology or even ideas about governance at all), and neither are the vast majority of the political establishment.

Well the previous commenter mentioned the trump/sanders crossvoting, I guess you just ignored that to focus in the ideologies.

Maybe it just reads weird or I read it weird, to read trump at some point and someone else ending the sentence with equality.

Ah interesting history there, thanks. Maybe I'm using the term incorrectly

The continuum I was picturing is: big central planning government <--> little-to-no government (anarchy)

In any case, I guess I'm just restating a version of the old horseshoe theory

> This is the thing I don't understand about (a superficial interpretation of) anarchists

I think most superficial interpretations of anarchists are based on edgy LARPers rather than real political ideology.

Fun fact: Anarchy means "without rulers", not "without laws" or "without social order". There's a wide diversity of political thought under this umbrella, but the key underlying common denominator is (on some level, at least) a rejection of hierarchy (and often a rejection of capital).

Though it's fun to imagine what the philosophical and political beliefs that underpin a colloquial understanding of the word might look like, the answer is usually simply: Teenagers.

Maybe don't be so dismissive of that which you lack a thorough understanding.

Recommend reading "Against the State" by James Stout, wherein he describes history of various Anarchist societies, including Barcelona during Spanish fascism, Myanmar where they are very successfully fighting the junta which wrested control from their civilian government, and Rojava where he personally visited and gives a firsthand account.

Sure, but these are still Societies.

Not the absence of a society, where utter lawlessness reigns. Most people's colloquial idea of anarchy is a Mad Max film.

I'm not being dismissive at all of anything except the public's misconceptions.

Understood, apologize for my misconception of your assertion. Mass media, of course, is only too happy to cultivate such misconceptions on the part of the public.

The idea is it wouldn’t work on trust, each element would be bounded by forces other than a single structure; getting to the state in which self-regulation is possible is the difficult, or maybe impossible, part. When in the regulated state, power grabs wouldn’t work.

The way they would self-regulate (self-organize) is into tribes/gangs. And that works (for some value of "works") until one tribe/gang becomes too powerful.

Maybe so

It’s interesting to think about the ‘best’ way to organise a society; its enticing to think that society could be contained in a single encompassing structure, but such a structure is impossible.

Human-implemented anarchism might be futile, because it is already implemented, and there is no sovereign with agency above our institutions. It becomes apparent, in the second quarter of the 21st century, that any co-operative agreements and intergovernmental treaties are just as vulnerable as gang treaties.

If the world only stratified, with no balkanisation, it would form a homogeneous structure, but something prevents this. What?

> The way they would self-regulate (self-organize) is into tribes/gangs.

I assume you mean "gang" in the sense of, "Hey honey, a non-rivalrous gang converted this luxury hotel into a mutual aid hospital, let's go get that rash looked at."

If not, your assertion is at odds with what Orwell described in Homage to Catalonia.

I'm not even a fan of anarchism, but I am a fan of reading about these things.

This is an interesting subject; would you recommend any other books? For someone with very little knowledge of things like this.

Its not a rational position, rather a kneejerk emotional one. Various other extreme positions share the same setup (nazism, communism etc).

Try talking to some anarchists and its pretty obvious their ideas don't go deep nor can stand well some questioning. Once you are in fairy land, anything may seem like a good idea to tackle ie some injustice.

People who want to get rid of "the government" are not thinking too deeply.

"Government" is the creator and enforcer of the rules of society; it's merely a matter of flavor of what that looks like: democratic, Church, warlord, corporate state, etc.

Nature abhors a vacuum and a power vacuum will always be filled -- I'd rather it be a democratic version, which is the least-worst option.

The collapse of the government does not imply the collapse of civil society.

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