Comment by ahultgren | Hacker News Reader

Comment by ahultgren | Hacker News Reader

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First of all, thanks for just the kind of explanation I was looking for.

> The main claim of left-anarchists is that in the absence of this oppression, a natural order based on community enforcement will evolve[...]

And my problem with such claims is that it seems like you're actually just proposing another kind of government; a local and decentralized one. After all a government is just an agreement between a set of people to organize affairs of mutual interest, right?

Would it be correct to say that anarchists (in general or the left kind) actually prefers several smaller societies rather than one big central one?

Also one could argue (as you kinda did) that once upon a time there were only such tribal societies, and that the societies we see today have evolved from those. So if you (with the belief you once held) argue that we should revert to such a system, how would you propose to prevent the inevitable "degradation" to the current system?

No problem.

>And my problem with such claims is that it seems like you're actually just proposing another kind of government; a local and decentralized one. After all a government is just an agreement between a set of people to organize affairs of mutual interest, right?

Agreed, but left-anarchists tend not to argue based on some absolute principal, so this is not an issue (as I mentioned in my disclaimer, our views were quite different from "classical" anarchists).

>Would it be correct to say that anarchists (in general or the left kind) actually prefers several smaller societies rather than one big central one?

Yes

>Also one could argue (as you kinda did) that once upon a time there were only such tribal societies, and that the societies we see today have evolved from those. So if you (with the belief you once held) argue that we should revert to such a system, how would you propose to prevent the inevitable "degradation" to the current system?

I agree, which is one reason why I no longer hold these beliefs. But the more important reason for me is that these societies just weren't as good as they were claimed to be. It's easy not to notice the problems in a society that you don't live in or even know very much about.

The only beliefs that I have in common with those groups are (1) that formal rights need to be closely scrutinized to see if they actually correspond to some rights in the real world, and (2) there may in some situations be ways of producing the best outcome that don't involve formal rights, but instead involve informal conventions that arise from the community.

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