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#21 |
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FFR Player
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People have too many flaws in their personality for anarchism to really work, people have a natural hunger for power, and ive never been a advocate for gov't or organized religion because it is just another way for someone else to control you through your fears, but anyway anarchism just can't work because of today's moral views and just the fact most people are so close minded that it cant be healthy
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#22 |
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FFR Player
Join Date: Oct 2003
Location: New York
Posts: 310
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What's your support for this disbelief? Even if we accept this premise, we still need to draw a line somewhere. How much central government is neccessary? How do you weigh this neccessity? Against the harm caused by government?
That's up to experts to decide. Nothing too powerful, but something that can maintain stability. The problem is, even if we accept that some central organization of the economy or of society was required, all evidence that I know of shows that as the size and influence of government decreases in both of these areas, quality of life increases and suffering decreases. This is directly proportional to the limitation of government. So, first things first, what's your argument in support of neccessity for even the smallest form of central organization? What evidence is there that there is a direct relationship between limitation on government and quality of life? I can see the relationship between dictatorial power and quality of life as inversely proportional, but that doesn't mean the opposite holds true.... Actually I'll do you one better than that; It's the fundamental question in contention to be found in virtually every political system, every philosophy, every economy and every individual. The weighing of suffering vs. happiness, that is. Not so much your contextualization, which is somewhat derivative in the sense of a decay. How is freedom vs safety at all related to suffering vs happiness? Too much freedom (say, inadmissibility of legitimate evidence in court due to stricter standards) will lead to no safety and thus suffering, too much safety will lead to police raids at any time, which is also suffering. The criticism isn't that this equilibrium isn't better than most forms of political system, but rather that the market would create a superior equilibrium. Ok, first I want you to understand how a free market built on voluntary cooperation operates. The voluntary nature of trade ensures that no product is produced which is not valued enough to support it, and that no product is purchased which the consumer doesn't consider good. Consumers consider transfatty chicken nuggets at McDonalds to be good, but quality of life and the value of such food are not high at all. Companies can always commit some stratagem or ruse to trick consumers into overvaluing their products. Before Sinclair's "The Jungle", people didn't know about the lack of health standards in meat processing, and so would support those practices. There needs to be government to protect against that sort of threat. The alternative (under an anarchist society) would be some way of mass information, a media, spreading the word about such products, but there is no guarentee word could ever get out or, that if it could, those profiting from sales won't assassinate those who might smear their good name. Now, I want you to understand the fundamental distinction between this dynamic, in which the desirability of something is decided as locally as possible by every individual, and between democracy wherein the values of as much as 49.999_% of the population are in conflict with the product provided. Understand the distinction? America runs on the principle of rule of the majority with minority rights. If those potential 49.9% were denied the right to express their views and influence the 51.000001%, then I would agree, but that is not the case. Now, the conception of Anarcho-Capitalism is to make everything, including the use of force, the boundaries of communities, the rules of communities; subject to market forces, which hypothetically ensures no service- no outcome, actually - occurs which doesn't meet the criterion for maximum valuation to value satisfaction. This is, at least hypothetically, a vastly superior equilibrium to democracy, no? Hypothetically it is superior, but what are the chances of, even under anarchy, every individual being given that sort of power? Popularity could become a very dangerous force; a minority and a majority will still exist for various issues, except the minority will have no ability to protect themselves. Do you think retribrution would cease to exist if government did? Hell, how do I even know in the current world with government still existing that I might not be shot dead by the first person I pointed my rifle at? If under an anarchist system everyone had easy access to weaponry then it might be a whole different sory, but I doubt that would happen; some enttity would end up with the monopoly on weapons, most likely, but that can't really be determined. Actually, who do you think government security protects the most now? A frequent marxist criticism is that government security in a capitalist state inevitably ends up benefiting those with the most capital. The government also, in both marxist and capitalist theory, inevitably ends up being used as a tool to procure and maintain wealth beyond ethical limits. When the rich have to pay for protection, that's just one more expenditure for them. I don't think I have to tell you what that means. I don't know...that sounds a little shaky. Though indeed the ability of the guilty wealthy to be represented in court more effectively than some innocent street kid is a shame to democracy, I don't think that is an inherent flaw. Who says laws would cease to exist? What is a law anyways, except an invented tool which would be useless if it couldn't be enforced? The nature of laws in an AC society would presumably shift towards voluntary subscription to the laws in the case of individuals who believed they needed them, no such arrangement among those who didn't, and the inevitable application of laws to criminals who violated the property of others. Even in this case though, criminals would presumably have more choice, which may at once be a criticism and a case-builder, because how do we know everyone accused of criminality is a criminal? I would not want to live in a place where there is a whole subset of people who feel that they do not need to subscribe to the laws of the region. And what force would or could apply the laws to criminals who violate the property of others? Again, the laws have little to do with it. In fact laws often have little to do with the operation of police forces even in this country. Sometimes police take actions extra-legally which benefit a person, sometimes they take actions which don't and which oppose both the spirit and the letter of the law. That's somewhat of a seperate issue though. That's true, but I think we've been talking so far about these systems in an ideal view. Thousands of years ago swordsmanship and strength determined victory. A lord could subsist by subjugating maybe a few hundred people. He could do so with the help of religion as well as force. Ultimately lords conspired together to cement their power in one of the most ancient forms of market consolidation, although it bears repeating that the market they controlled was not a voluntary market. Today, guns are an immediate deterent. They can be purchased anywhere for very reasonable prices, they can even be built simply and economically using pretty crude methods. There is no dramatic learning curve in firearm use. Is it possible that a security force could be so superior as to put down not only armed individuals, but also other security forces which would inevitably become involved as demand for their services skyrocketed? Sure; but it is extremely unlikely, and as the state of weapons development as well as of the course of the market in general continues to equalize things in this way, it can only become more unlikely. Though it must be annoying to hear me say this repeatedly, take a look at Somalia, or the Congo. I think it's actually more likely than not that any group with a charismatic leader and the potential could become powerful enough, guns or swords irrelevant, to defeat other such forces in the region. A smaller force with guns vs a bigger force with guns is equivalent to a small army of knights fighting a large army of knights. Including the one from which he fled. Enough said. Freedom to do something isn't as meaningful when the consequences are overwhelmingly, consistently, and humanly designed as negative. This is hardly a free or voluntary arrangement though, in the same sense "your money or your life" isn't. By most measures it's a system of 90% coercion. Actually, now that I think of it this is just another example of the equalizing effect of technological development, something which is expedited by a free market. In this case it occurs largely from within a power system though instead of externally through free-market cooperation, which makes it all the more fascinating. Yeah you caught me on that, but I'm not saying feudalism is freedom. It was indeed a political system derived by the exploitation of the weak and poor. I was being confusing, but I changed the point I tried to make in the middle. I actually think the fundamental problem here is when you start considering what's socially prevelent to be "political". When do folkways become mores? When do mores become rules? When do rules become laws? Ultimately, all these spring up from within individual human beings, be they as they might subjected to certain environmental conditions in varying degrees of uniformity or variance. The problem is ultimately human, all too human, and perhaps when psychology is refined to an actual science (through biology, preferably) we'll finally be able to look at the grand cause of the whole human mess rather than bothering around with these cumbersome languages of ideology. Ok! But that's actually an argument against anarchism of you ask me! Humanity by nature, through all these historical examples, tends to start folkways, then mores, then laws, and then civilizations. Ancient Kingdoms were brutal- modern kingdoms are not nearly as brutal. Maybe with time we've had a massive change in mentality (at least, the West), but the point I'm making is; whenever we try to start "anew," free from the corruption of a government (for example, the Roman Empire suffered heavily from corruption before leading into the period we are talking about), by human nature, folkways become mores, and mores become laws, and civilizations and governments develop, but in a very primitive form. A market-driven anarchy is utopian; it too will give birth to primitive government, due to human nature subjecting what starts as mere folkways of individuals, as you say, into uniform, societal law. But the problem is precisely that Anarchy is not chaos. Chaos was the beginning of human origin. The beginning of human society. Can we overcome our bias from having only seen anarchy once, at the start of our existence during this chaos? Do we know how this chaos arises or how it leads to such problems as the history of humanity articulate? I really hope so. The transitional periods between the fall of the roman empire to medieval europe, and weimar germany to nazi germany, and much more- these are all instances of chaos, instances of a government falling, technology lost along with organization. To create an anarchy you described, not based on this chaos, would depend, it seems, on heavy planning, but that's just unrealistic; people would have to ignore their daily lives to get involved in a grand agneda to revolutionize society, and there will be trouble getting schoolgirls out of malls and families to postpone their daily routine. Oh, this is geocentrism, or ethnocentrism, or some other-centrism if not a combination. There's really no grand official measuring stick of a system to compare the world against. I'm trying to relate this all to the best examples of modern democracies/republics...that's not ethnocentric.... Ok. Don't put your studies at risk for my sake, though. Nah it's ok. This is fun so I respond in my spare time. I've never really had a hardcore debate with an anarchist (or anarcho-capitalist?) before so you're clearing a lot of things up for me and teaching me interesting theories I've never known before. That's worth more than some AP test ![]()
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Every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilizations, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every hopeful child, every mother and father, every inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every superstar, every supreme leader, every saint and sinner in the history of our species, lives here on a mote of dust, suspended in a sunbeam. http://obs.nineplanets.org/psc/pbd.html |
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#23 | |||||||||||||||||||||||
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Little Chief Hare
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Your examples also don't strike me as all that coherent, no offense. Refusing to admit evidence is a form of restriction. Constant police raids similarly put both police and people in danger of each other. Quote:
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As a more immediate note, I'm sure you've heard recent uproar about how the FDA only inspects 2% of food, and other such things? Quote:
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What force could apply the laws? A private commisioned security force, likely to be held in common by subscription of citizens of any given "society". And this force would have one of the most powerful forces backing it. The force of the market. Quote:
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Well, actually I might need to investigate this last part a bit further, because although it is an argument, I'm actually somewhat skeptical of its tenability myself. Quote:
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It's interesting as well as flattering that you would place more value on this conversation than on your AP test; I just want to make sure you make your valuations under maximum awareness of their potential outcome, like any responsible seller should. Last edited by Kilroy_x; 05-12-2007 at 02:32 AM.. |
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#24 |
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FFR Player
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Has it ever occurred that a large part of the population would not be intelligent enough to support an anarchistic lifestyle? Maintaining Anarchy without some sort of government taking form would be near impossible.
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#25 |
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Very Grave Indeed
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If a bunch of people decide to elect some leader and put that leader in charge of themselves, it isn't a case of them being too stupid to work an anarchy, it is a matter of them making the free anarchistic decision to leave the system and form their own.
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#26 |
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FFR Player
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Putting someone as a leader and in charge of themselves would qualify as a government. A small government, but still a government.
Besides, making one anarchist decision does not mean you are living an anarchist lifestyle. |
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#27 |
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Very Grave Indeed
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You miss my point. The moment someone in an anarchy decides to establish a government, they are just deciding to leave the anarchy.
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#28 |
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FFR Player
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Oh, I get it. Thanks!
Well that means that a worldwide, or in actuality, any somewhat large anarchist movement would be hard to maintain. Being that many people would most likely leave at some point. |
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#29 |
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Old-School Player
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I'm into anarcho-capitalism myself.
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#30 |
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Very Grave Indeed
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Most people would leave at some point if they were put in the anarchistic system against their will. I rather suspect that if your anarchy was composed only of people who understood just what it was they were agreeing to, that the turnover rate would be much lower.
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#31 |
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FFR Player
Join Date: Dec 2006
Location: in a house
Posts: 5
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Then it would be a small group of highly trusting people who would eventually attack each other and only one would come out on top and turn into a dictatorship.
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#32 |
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FFR Player
Join Date: Aug 2006
Location: Storm Sanctuary!
Posts: 255
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It's kind of funny how people can stand the fact that there might be one god who can have all this authority like a king and yet no one values an anarchy by a mortal.
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#33 | |||
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Very Grave Indeed
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