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A rational case for anarchism

Unless, of course, he took the bullets out of it while she was sleeping. Then he takes it away from her and clubs her to death with it.

That is why you need large families ready to go to war with each other over exactly this kind of thing. Why bother with one death when you can get dozens over decades?
 
There are a lot of things I'd rather not do myself, but while one has to accept the inevitably of a certain unpleasantness in life, there's a great deal that you can pay others to do for you.

I don't know about you but I'm not friends with everyone I need to be. I hope you know how to operate a firetruck...and a paving machine...AND know how to fix phones...AND know how to perform open heart surgery...
 
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I have a Yellow Pages.


Why would your future Anarchist's Yellow Pages have the number of a heart surgeon?

Think about the implications of a stateless society: An individual needs to provide for himself and his own defense with certainty and celerity. That puts pressure on people to choose careers that begin to pay off as soon as possible. After all, the longer one is in school, the longer one has to rely on others for protection.

People would also feel pressure to choose careers that encapsulate skills they need to learn otherwise. Hunting, trapping, farming, carpentry, private security - these are things that a person can make money doing but also provide direct personal benefits.

So, in a system where a person has to be self-sufficient as quickly as possible, I don't see a lot of people signing up for the 12 years of primary and secondary education, 4 years of college, 4 years of medical school, 4 years of residency, and 2 years of fellowship necessary to become a Cardiologist. Even if society values Cardiology so highly that they'd give a qualified person a million dollars a year, the investment in years is still too high.

So, by the way, is the investment in money. Many people are only able to become doctors by borrowing over a hundred thousand dollars to finance their education. One of the reasons banks lend money is that they feel a certain security that they'll be repaid. And one of the reasons for that sense of security is that the banks trust that a foreign army won't just show up and shoot them, that criminals won't try to rob them, and that government services like courts and police will help them collect their money from delinquent payors.

Without a central government, banking becomes impossible. So does all long-term investment.

In an anarchy, there are no cardiologists.
 
What do states protect people against that those people could not protect themselves against through voluntary associations?
You are asking the wrong question. It makes no difference at all whether or not there are things people can protect themselves against through voluntary associations. The state is the result of voluntary associations, so everything it does could theoretically be done through voluntary associations, but not everything can be done without a defacto state.

Agreed, I think. A state is actually only going to be advantageous to evil people if there are good, or at least naive, people to profit from.
That's not what I was talking about. I was talking about the fact that a state cannot exist for a long time and be effective if it does not consist of mostly decent people. Mean and selfish people just don't organise very well.

Perhaps highly militaristic and autocratic states could exist, but as you correctly point out, these do not last long. They are simply too inefficient from an economic point of view.
Many militaristic and autocratic states have exited for very long times, but you are right; they do tend to be economically inefficient.

The state has to bring about total economic collapse, though. Once that happens...
Large crises never have a single cause, so there will never be a total economic collapse caused by the existence of government that could conceivably have been prevented by not having one. Some will blame the failure of government, some will blame the failure of the market and they will both be right just like in the present financial crisis.

Still... Where was atheism prior to the Enlightenment? It was still correct back then, despite being unpopular.
There was no way to determine it was correct (and there still isn't) so don't assume anarchism's unpopularity is proof that it is "correct". Let's not forget that for social change to occur, popularity is often more important than "correctness", and that anarchism is actually quite popular despite not having a lot of success at social change.

Yes... Agents of the state coerce others by their own individual volition. You are correct. They are ********. Of course, their position is justified with propaganda. Those being coerced aren't consenting, though.
Depending on how effective a government is, the ******** are either the coerced or coercers. In some countries with effective governments it is mostly the bad guys who are in jail and the good guys in cushy government jobs.
 
Would it be possible for them to exist without a black market revenue stream created by government prohibition and economic sanction?
There is no reason to assume that they would stop doing what they do if they were allowed to do it.

Would their business be viable if everyone had equal effective access to the weapons they do, and there weren't government restrictions against innocent people defending themselves?
There wouldn't be equal access to weapons. Some people can't afford the weapons someone else might be able to. And criminal gangs probably would not allow people to have the same weapons they do.

Would death and violence be the most economically viable way of settling disputes if there were a cheap and peaceful dispute resolution mechanism available to the industries organised crime typically operates?
There is already a cheap and in many countries peaceful dispute resolution mechanism available. It's called the government. For many organisations it is indeed the most economically viable way of settling disputes. But criminal organisations tend not to use it, because they know they would lose many disputes.

In an anarchistic society the cheap and peaceful dispute resolution organisation will face a terrible problem: by whose rules do they settle disputes? Does it have to follow the rules of the gang that trades women in forced prostitution rings, or the gang that wants to liberate those women? And what happens when one of the parties in the dispute doesn't accept the decision? It is much easier with a government mandating a single set of rules for everyone than everyone trying to make up their own rules as they go along with no one's rules more important than anyone else's.
 
Right here and right now, what have anarchists accomplished? Why should they be listened to?
 
Right here and right now, what have anarchists accomplished? Why should they be listened to?
Possible answer to your second question:

Some of them have lethal weapons. You may ignore them at your peril. Depends on if they are nice, fluffy anarchists, or mean and nasty anarchists.
 
Possible answer to your second question:

Some of them have lethal weapons. You may ignore them at your peril. Depends on if they are nice, fluffy anarchists, or mean and nasty anarchists.

I believe he meant 'listened to' in the sense of "having their concerns taken seriously by the public at large" rather than "monitored by law enforcement to preempt them from acting as crazy as they talk"
 
I believe he meant 'listened to' in the sense of "having their concerns taken seriously by the public at large" rather than "monitored by law enforcement to preempt them from acting as crazy as they talk"
You're no fun anymore. :( I guess I need to use more smilies on posts like that.

(Wasn't "fluffy nice" enough of a flag for tone? :confused: )
 
You're no fun anymore. :( I guess I need to use more smilies on posts like that.

(Wasn't "fluffy nice" enough of a flag for tone? :confused: )

Sorry, I was just flashing back to Bob Klase's "we can't be dismissive of people who are fervently committed" bit and it seemed like you were saying something similar about people who are potentially threatening.

It's a jungle of Poe in here.
 
That's because they can demand money from you, and if you refuse or resist you will quite quickly have their armed colleagues show up to take you away.

I challenged a parking citation in court. No "armed colleagues" ever came to take me away. If a disagreement with parking enforcement escalates to the point of armed confrontation, you're doing it wrong!
 
Rational people can disagree exactly how much government is needed. But to say that none is, is just crazy.
 
Rational people can disagree exactly how much government is needed. But to say that none is, is just crazy.

It worked for the Inuit. They had threither government, nor police, nor laws. Everything was accomplished by way of a strong common culture of shared principle, outside of hierarchy. How do you know that kind of culture couldn't be modified to fit a dense urban populace?
 
It worked for the Inuit. They had threither government, nor police, nor laws. Everything was accomplished by way of a strong common culture of shared principle, outside of hierarchy. How do you know that kind of culture couldn't be modified to fit a dense urban populace?

Wiki says that although the laws were unwritten, there were clear traditional rules enforced by the priest class, that there were periodic raids on enemy clans, and that when they got enough health care that their children stopped dying, the whole 'unwritten-rule' system fell apart with the growing population.
 

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