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http://mises.org/daily/1121

There are.  Here is one that lasted for longer than the United States has been an independent country, before they had their first civil war.

This is absolutely eye opening.  This described the perfect capitalistic society.

Just the fact that wars were extremely costly and kept very short is enough to appeal to anyone.  And considering this was a time period without the luxury of the technologies we hold today, it's only that much more amazing it worked for so long.

My first thought was "More like, 'Why do people keep asking this question?'," but then I saw you were on my side. ;)

Before it was abolished, nobody knew how the cotton would get picked without slave labor. After they stopped using humans as property somebody figured it out.

Technically, Eli Whitney had it figured out well before that...

 +1

    Legislation encourages innovation.

I think the reason most people don't believe that Anarchy can work is that they don't understand the true nature of anarchism. It isn't spraypainting A's on buildings and acting a fool, as is shown in any news report about anarchists. I myself feel that any group of true friends in any city, town, state has the ability to function as an anarchist societal model. But that's just my two pennies.

There is more to it than that, as there have been many other names for the same basic idea.  None of them seem to ever be well received regardless of the common preception of the terms used.

Forgive me, I tend to oversimplify things.

Well, he figured out how to get the seeds from the fibers, but not the boll off the plant. All he really did was make slavery more profitable. ;)

How did humanity survive the past ten thousand years?

The best arguments in favor of anarchy I've seen required war, slavery, and ethnic clensing. I suppose they do work if you look at it this way. In the end, we will have to kill each other. One of us will claim to be the anarchist and the other a statistic to support the claim.

I don't know guys. I think anarchy is like communism. It sounds great on paper, but doesn't scale well beyond a commune.

Anarchy is everything you enjoy (http://www.freedomainradio.com/free/books/FDR_4_PDF_Everyday_Anarchy.pdf) in life, and violence is the opposite (http://www.freedomainradio.com/free/books/FDR_5_PDF_Practical_Anarchy_Audiobook.pdf).

Personally I might do well in an anarchy. But make no mistake I would organize an army and take what I want. I would charge you tribute or burn your village, take slaves, etc.
Join me and be with the strong! In exchange for your unwavering obedience and occasional military service I will allow you to live in peace.
Gota love anarchy!

What you describe is not "anarchy," but an attempt (by you) to set up a state.

Yes. I think my state will dominate any unorganized place. Join me myrkul, with your warrior skillz we will rule like Gods! Think it over, and please accept this slave girl as a token of friendship.

Ahh, so you assume that simply because there are no rulers, therefore there is no organization, no effective resistance?

Well, you know what they say about assuming.... (http://www.baenebooks.com/chapters/1416520724/1416520724___4.htm)

EDIT: They changed the site name on me. Link updated.

Where would you get the money to organize an army?

You wouldn't be able to print your own money. You wouldn't be able to borrow enough money either. Taxation is only working currently because billions of people believe it is morally right. Once that changes, you would be spending more money on bouncers than you would gain from pillaging. Especially with Bitcoin, where you can't even know how much you can pillage from a particular household.

Temujin is my template. I would start by killing my closest neighbors with a few friends. Temujin led about 3-5 warriors when he started. By the end of his career he had taken most of the ungoverned land he knew of. You would know him better by the name Genghis Khan. 

Assuming your neighbors are completely unarmed, it's possible.  But you'd have to eventually cower and hide away somewhere, giving orders to your men from an undisclosed location, as bullets have a way of leveling the playing field, so to speak :P

Exactly. We're not unarmed peasants, anymore. When you get some spare time, do read that short story I linked.

I'll take the slave girl.

Or she'll shoot you first.

OK, maybe she won't, but then you'll get hunted down by her relatives, and private police. Anarchy doesn't mean people cannot defend themselves.

Excellent find on that article.

"This was because free farmers could change allegiance between godi without moving to a new geographical location. "The legal godi-thingman bond was created by a voluntary public contract."

That fixes an issue I was having with decentralization, that in our day and age if they wanted to change state/allegiance they would have to move. But ye, allow that they don't have to move to change allegiance.

Interesting... I guess if you switch allegiance, you switch to their taxes, and wages (maybe need to work at a 'same allegiance' work place?), but what about if the state you lived in did not allow guns, but your new allegiance did? Or drugs?

If it's legal to defend yourself with a gun vs a burgler in your allegiance state and someone breaks into your house, though you live in a no gun state... then what? Because he's broken into your property it counts as your allegiance state?

I think it's the key idea for this to work in our day and age, just trying to wrap it around my head.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarcho-capitalism
See also: http://mises.org/document/2716

The anarchists I know cite many precedents for anarchist governance systems, but the ones that spring to mind first is Spain (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarchism_in_Spain), and I think there is some kind of tribal consensus based collectivist anarchism in Madagascar (http://www.souldish.com/2006/05/08/178/).  Of course, David Graeber is probably the best place to look for more examples like this.

Which is exactly what anarchy allows and encourages and makes necessary.

None of the above.

You might enjoy that short story (http://www.baenebooks.com/chapters/1416520724/1416520724___4.htm), as well. (Enjoy might be too strong a word. Learn from, perhaps.)

Thank you :)

There was also the germanic culture prior to the formation of a German state.  For hundreds of years a loosely cooperative culture existed that spread across nearly all of the northern half of the European landmass, that never formed anything remotely like a government or a state.  However, it's hard to use that one as an example of success, since they were also largely illiterate, so we don't really have any documation concerning their culture other than the records of encounters with other cultures; primarily the Roman Empire.  The Romans considered them to be barbarians, but the opinions of third parties (particularly those in a state of low level warfare) are not trustworthy.  We know that their economy was largely resource based, and mining was a major part of their trade and livelyhood.  What little trade that they did was usually in mined salt (as noted in the history book about the topic, simply called Salt) and they were also noted to have very colorful clothing.  The old germanic tales about dwarves were likely based upon their culture.

And then there was the long history of the Swiss culture, which was stable without a central government authority or structure for a thousand years.  But, of course, that's just one little example of a bunch of mountain hillbillies, right?

No problem. Some further reading:
The Market for Liberty (http://freekeene.com/files/marketforliberty.pdf), by Linda & Morris Tannehill. (also available as an audiobook (http://freekeene.com/files/The_Market_for_Liberty.zip))
The Machinery of Freedom (http://daviddfriedman.com/The_Machinery_of_Freedom_.pdf), by David J. Friedman.

Once you've read those, you should have a pretty good idea of how a modern market anarchy would work.

"what about the roads?!?" in 5...4...3...2...

Heh!

The publicly accessible roads in my home state have never been built by governments until very recently, and even now only at the county & city levels.  There are plenty of roads, mostly in the countryside, that are still privately owned.  I was recently looking at buying a 10 acre wooded lot that used to be part of a larger farm.  The road frontage, which is gravel, is shown to be 1/2 owned by the owner of that plot and 1/2 owned by the owner of the opposite side.  In other words, four or five feet of gravel is owned by one person and the other four or five feet is owned by the other person.  The only deed restriction is that the owners of those properties cannot deny the owners of properties further up the road "innocent passage" (English Common Law legal term, just look it up).  Likewise, as an owner of undeveloped land in the state of Kentucky (technically a commonwealth) I can't deny anyone innocent passage across my land as long as they are on foot, don't intend to cause harm and are not intending to hunt on my property (not harvesting my wildlife against my wishes, which would be a 'harm') and are not walking after dark.

Not that most rednecks would know that I have an old right of 'innocent passage' across their fields, nor would they consider such hiking to be 'innocent', but still.

I am sure that the anarchist society in iceland had no roads. Everyone had to live on the sea and take boats to get anywhere.

Because everyone knows that there would be no roads without government.

Working on Starting a Bitcoin town here:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=216139.0

And there IS record of Anarchy working. Look up "Town of Anarchy" and either Hong Kong or Japan. It was a building that survived in complete anarchy.

And ancient Ireland, no one even knew how to read or write, everything was passed on by word.

Actually, humanity has arguably known anarchism all over the world for tens of thousands of years - most of its existence. Historians label that period in time prehistory.

That's a good point. The first 90k years of humanity were exclusively free of any authority greater than the tribe. (as far as we know)
That era included some of humanities greatest challenges; such as the ice ages, competition with Neanderthals, and legendary adventures with Pleistocene beasts. I doubt we have ever been in more danger, or more free.   

Ireland and Iceland both prove the same thing.  A small weak society can survive as an anarchy until someone powerful comes along and decides that they want to rule the place.  Iceland was subverted by Norwegians)?) and that was that.  Ireland was invaded in autumn 1169 and by spring 1170, it was a Norman vassal.

I agree with you ,the reason why there were so few real anarchical communities in human history, is that they simply can't stand on their own in the face of the organized power of the states, or even tribal federations, after all, people are greedy, and xenophobic, they will sacrifice what they already have to authorities, in exchange for the chance to plunder more.

The highest form of struggle, according to Huntington, is not even the conflicts between the nations, but that between the civilizations--people unite under a certain set of ideas and customs, can form imagined communities beyond the border of nations, and even between different eras. This maybe why most of the largest religions in the world are monotheistic, rather than polytheistic, it's much easier to get people to follow one god, rather than many gods which may cause them to constantly argue about the precedence of gods and also create new gods to worship, which creates schisms.

Yeah you know what, I think I'll actually take up on that offer of yours of starting an army once anarchy kicks in. I'm your man!

Actually, I've got an additional idea. Once we've established sovereignty over a decent area of land, we could maybe figure out some sort of system to devoid future generations from exorbitant levels of tyranny? A system in which everybody could live in relative peace? I was thinking in lines of a balance of powers, or a trias politica? Maybe we could even think of number of rules, or 'rights' if you will, to protect individuals within out society? I think 'human rights' has a ring to it, but this is something we can talk about. Hey you know what, we could eventually even conceive of a system in which the people could rule themselves, a kind of popular sovereignty if you know what I mean? We could even have elections to determine who gets to lead at some point?

I know, I know, all of this sounds very futuristic, but hey, a man can dream right?

Anyways, yeah, it's time for this anarchy thing if you ask me; the sooner that happens the sooner we can work towards realizing these ideas!

No, it proves that Anarchy can work, until the anarchy becomes less sophisticated than the world around it.

And it always will be less sophisticated.  Violent men organised into states will always have more access to the tools of war than peaceable men organised into farms.  The Normans conquered all they came across from Ireland to Jerusalem.  All they conquered shared the same fate of dispossession and subjection.  They left behind a clear statement: if you don't have a state, you will be our slaves.  Its why we have states.

And nothing has changed....

Much has changed.

Fair point.  What I meant was the strong still invade the weak. 

Yes; but examples of cultures/societies that were more anarchist than anything else have existed, some of which existed without major issues for longer then the United States has existed in total.  I'm not an anarchist either, and I do agree that the world isn't really ready for a total self-governing society just yet.  But the key word there is 'yet'.  The age of the Internet has brought us real examples of voluntary associations able to perform complex social functions that only governments and/or corporations had the organizational structures to perform effectively before.  Bitcoin is one beautiful example of this; as it performs the function of a central bank & minimalist regulatory structure entirely without compulsion, and largely without any third party human intervention at all.  I can't imagine how the other problems may be solved (collective defense & funding of same, being the primary issue, and the one that you highlighted) but that is not to say that they are not solvable.

Furthermore, your complaint is an issue with sustainablility, yet history displays the error of your thinking; as nation-states are not much more stable than the odd anarchist culture.  They also, historicly, have a habit of invading one another every few generations.  The execeptions to that rule also happen to be the most anarchist of nation-states to have existed, such as the union of Swiss Cantons prior to this past century.  Who also happen to have had, and somewhat still do have, a clanish & militant culture; which is why they were not themselves ever conquered fro without; as any attempt to do so resulted in a loose union of city-states to band together and actually act like a nation-state in the shadow of any external threat.  The Swiss cantons were so stable, that they existed as functionally independent city states for eight hundred years, while the nations that go by the names and borders of Britian or France suffered through wars of succesion, military coups, popular revolutions and religious civil wars; functionally re-inventing themselves every couple hundred years at best.

The nations-states we commonly refer to as "Western" are all between 150-250 years old (excluding the entire WWI & WWII debacle) and are thus all getting a bit long in the tooth.  Hell, Britian itself is overdue for another religious civil war; and the French have been inclined towards killing their own leadership for a couple of tense decades already.  A quick move towards an anarchist-like nation-state might be the best chance to avoid getting sucked into another world war, no matter it's long term risk factors.

I agree.  And we are in a golden age in terms of non-violent bahaviour across most of the world.  Maybe being part of a huge inter-connected hive of humanity is having a positive effect.

Everything that can be done efficiently and fairly in the private sector should be done in the private sector.  Like you, I still don't see border control or defence being in that category but if both become redundant that changes everything.  If we continue to become more and more peaceful as we have done for over 30 years now, the future is very bright.

Interesting read MoonShadow, thanks for sharing. I always had a few unknowns regarding the Swiss people and their odd way of political organization.

Here is an example of it working.
http://ad009cdnb.archdaily.net/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/516ede78b3fc4b5898000113_infographic-life-inside-the-kowloon-walled-city_1292247210-hak-nam-kowloon-walled-city2.jpg
http://thediplomat.com/asia-life/files/2013/04/19890327hk-400x289.jpg
http://1-ps.googleusercontent.com/x/www.messynessychic.com/content.messynessychic.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/kowlooninfographic.jpg.pagespeed.ce.a7oky2SP6-.jpg

Sounds to me like it did not work.

It worked fine for the lower class chinese refugees who moved there or lived there, although by most accounts it was somewhat like the City of Rapture from the first Bioshock, without the amazing bio-tech.  Children were unlikely to be well educated by any modern measure, and by 12 most boys were running freelance jobs of their own; often specializing in providing their neighbors with drinking water, sewage handling, etc., as there was nearly no infrastructure other than the buildings themselves.

It didn't work for the British government, however, and the walled city did provide a safe haven for crime, both 'organized' and otherwise.  The famous "Triads" were rooted in the walled city.  And since the entire thing amounted to Hong Kong's version of a homeless squaters' tent city, the colonial government decided to tear it all down and run everyone off.  It still took many years, because the residents were not the type to be run off easily, and the cops were afraid of going inside even in large groups; and with reason.  Any kind of arrest that had to be performed inside the walled city was akin to ZeroDarkThirty in it's operation, and almost as risky for anyone who looked English or was wearing a badge.

EDIT: The closest modern example of the anarchist order of the Walled City would be the neighborhood of Ajegunle in Lagos, Nigeria. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ajegunle) The entire city of Lagos is an accident of history itself, and much of the city proper lacks "modern" infrastructure. (for which there is a particularly anarchist solution, with respect to drinkable water, known as "Pure Water" street sales.  Both the government and environmentalists hate it.  The government because it cannot be taxed and therefore undermines their own efforts at funding a municipal water distribution system, and the environmentalists because the empty bags are usually street litter afterwards)

Ajegunle itself is considered the 'darkest' and most crime ridden area of Lagos, and that is saying a lot.  Still, many of the young poor have been able to create their own way in life as a direct result of the DIY spirit from Ajegunle.  They tend not to have much respect for government regulations either, in part due to growing up in an area that is basicly ignored by government largesse.  Some residents of this area are highlighted in the economics book, The Stealth of Nations by Robert Neuwirth; which is something that likely could not have happened with residents of the Walled City since any old white guy walking around asking questions about how residents do business without governments is as likely to disappear as simply be ignored in teh Walled City.

But what about the punk movement....... Oh...... erm never mind ;D

Andy B

Some have argued that where there is greatest freedom on the planet today, are those places where the Vikings had invaded.

On behalf of one of those countries the Vikings invaded, allow me to say that some have bloody foolish ideas of what freedom means.

Indeed.  That statement needs to define what "freedom" means to the observer.  Rights are not the same as abilities, and permission is not the same as liberty.

Bitcoin works...

And correlation is not causation...

Which raises an interesting anthropological question.  What causes lead toward a society to remaining voluntary?

The answer is simultaneously simple, and complex. It can be best summed up with the quote, "Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty."

No-one knows.  A few countries can point to specific events that turn their history on its head and shaped their destiny.  For example, the Japanese can make a direct link between the arrival of Perry, the rulers seeing that if they didn't adapt damn fast they would be colonised and the Meiji era.

Most of the rest of us live in countries where cultures have evolved over centuries and are still changing.  The US, Ireland and the UK have a regard for personal freedom, taxation based on democratic consent and property rights that was clearly visible in the 1640s during the English civil war.  100 years before, none of those things mattered.  

And our shared political culture hasn't really had a major change since then.

Fortunately someone has already done plenty of research on that for us:

http://www.psychohistory.com/originsofwar/01_killermotherland.html (http://www.psychohistory.com/originsofwar/01_killermotherland.html)

By that, I assume you mean the majority consenting to tax the minority?

No - back then it was the minority taxing the majority.  Its only recently that the franchaise has been extended enough to include those without class or property.  By recently I mean the 1800s.

Then you meant to say "taxation based on the illusion of democratic consent," which is still going strong.

It did work, read the diagram. Just because they decided to do something else with it doesn't mean it didn't "work" it was a completely functioning city of anarchy.

No I meant what I said.  People fought to the death for this stuff - you may regard them as having been deluded fools but that doesn't mean it makes sense to re-write history so that only people who lived in the 1600s but had a 2103 perspective come out OK.

Then perhaps you are using a non-standard definition of "democratic"? Or maybe "consent"?

300 Trojans died at Thermopylae for freedom.  You could say it was for the "illusion of" freedom.  But that tells us nothing about them and a lot about you.  Likewise, over 100,000 Britons died for the right to have taxation based on the consent of the Commons. What exactly is the point of saying they died for "the illusion of" freedom.  Do you seriously imagine the concept of freedom in 350 years will be the same as it is today?  Are you arguing for the "illusion of" freedom yourself?

We're not talking about freedom. We're talking about taxation, democracy, and consent. Sparta (not Troy, btw) was anything but a democracy. I suspect the non-standard definition you're using is in deed "democratic," given that you keep referring to representatives and monarchies as your examples of "democratic consent." Let me correct that:


If you're looking for a Classical example, Athens would be your best bet.

But even then, Democracy is based on a logical fallacy: The idea that because an idea is popular, it is the best.

Again, that tells us nothing about history and a lot about you.  You think that you can apply your 21st century ideas to the people who lived 100s of years ago and that makes you superior. 

Let me know when you have a point to make.

My point stands.  We don't know how these ideas evolve.  We do know that our modern ideas of taxation based on consent, individual freedom and so on evolved between the War of the Roses and the English Civil War. 

Now I think you're using a funny definition of "consent." By definition, taxation applies even to those who do not consent, else it wouldn't be taxation.

I think you are being a pompous ass.  You look at the ideology of people that lived in the 1640s, say "Oh I know better now" and act superior. 

Get over yourself already.

This is the core of the discussion.

People like Myrkul don't seem to understand that freedom is not some sort of metaphysical concept. There are vastly differing concepts of freedom; a lot of people and cultures have their own interpretations of it.

Case in point: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rep-bernie-sanders/what-can-we-learn-from-de_b_3339736.html

Tsk, name calling? Really? I thought better of you, Hawker.

Besides, isn't this like saying "People who support the Heliocentric model of the solar system are pompous asses for saying they know better now than those who thought the Earth was the center of the universe."?

C'mon, man, science is all about discarding flawed premises as soon as they are found to be flawed, not holding onto them because people 500 years ago thought they were cool.

Great post.

But it did not last, which I would consider to be a pretty vital aspect of 'it working'. It didn't last, therefore it didn't really work.

So, is the Danish definition 'Freedom from anxiety about economic insecurity'?  I suppose you can use the ablative form to really twist freedom around.

Perhaps someone defines freedom as 'Freedom from making decisions.'

Politics is not science.  1000 years ago, slavery was fine and abortion a huge evil.  Now its the opposite.  That means morality changed - it doesn't mean that we are superior beings to those that were alive back then.

You are claiming that you are more moral or more clever than people who came before you because your ideas are more up to date than their ideas is pompous.  I'd love not to mention it, really.  But you do seem to want to lord it over the people who died for the "illusion of freedom" just because you don't agree with what they saw as freedom centuries ago.

Why did you skip
": the quality or state of being free: as
a : the absence of necessity, coercion, or constraint in choice or action"

It was top of the list.  And the Danish idea fits perfectly with it.

Because economic security is not necessity, coercion, or constraint in choice or action.  I understand there are those who think that 'economic freedom' is 'wealth equality', but that's an obfuscation of sub-definitions 'a' and 'c'.

Really? I'll ask a black man if he thinks today's society is superior to the one in the 1850s, see what he thinks. I'll let you know. (And yes, politics is a science (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_science).)

No, I want to build a society based on superior understanding of human nature, as opposed to clinging to old, fallacious traditions. You defending democracy this way is like defending slavery by saying "It was good enough for them."

Um.  Of course it isn't. But the absence of economic security creates necessity, coercion or constraint in choice or action.  So providing economic security can legitimately be called providing freedom.  You may not want it to happen because you believe that the threat of poverty is a moral benefit but you have to accept that not everyone will agree with you.

Yea, in the same way that an absence of someone telling me what to do creates necessity, coercion or constraint in choice or action if I'm unable to think for myself and make my own choices.  Again, this goes back to definition 'c', where freedom has to be qualified as freedom 'from' something.

In the 'Danish' case, that's Freedom from poverty.  My example of 'Freedom from making decisions' still stands.  So, is 'Freedom from making decisions' freedom?

fascinating story - thanks for posting

Oh ffs.  Politics is not Political Science. Providing a link to a political science page doesn't make politics a science.  If you want a forum where topics are limited to topics of a political science curriculum and posts use that kind of methodology, apply to the mods for a new forum.  It will be a very quiet forum!

Ideas evolve.  Regardless of what you want to achieve, acting superior to people who died centuries ago because you "know" what freedom is while they only knew the "illusion of freedom" is ridiculous.  

The Danes are free in both senses of the word.  They can make decisions but they are provided for if it all goes wrong.  I dont' get what your problem is with that.  Poverty is not a social good.  The absence of poverty does not mean the absence of making decisions.

As is pretending they were right. And again, I'm not discussing freedom. Never have been. Only consent, democracy, and taxation.

And we are back at my point about the evolution of ideas between the War of the Roses and the 1640s.  Thanks for the diversion. 


No-one knows.  A few countries can point to specific events that turn their history on its head and shaped their destiny.  For example, the Japanese can make a direct link between the arrival of Perry, the rulers seeing that if they didn't adapt damn fast they would be colonised and the Meiji era.

Most of the rest of us live in countries where cultures have evolved over centuries and are still changing.  The US, Ireland and the UK have a regard for personal freedom, taxation based on democratic consent and property rights that was clearly visible in the 1640s during the English civil war.  100 years before, none of those things mattered. 

And our shared political culture hasn't really had a major change since then.

And we're back to my point of those ideas being wrong. No more and no less than an earth-centric solar system. And for many of the same reasons.

Irrelevant.  If you want to discuss seventeenth century ideas and why they got it wrong, make a thread for it.  Its nothing to do with the NewLiberty's question.

Aside from you presenting those flawed ideas as an answer.

We both know that the two of us are not gonna have a fruitful discussion, so I'm not gonna get into one again, but I will tell you this.

Anyone who has a degree in political science can tell you (or: should be able to tell you) that the name is misleading, since politics does not adhere to typical scientific standards; it's not falsifiable and it's not repeatable (especially not in an enclosed environment).

That does not mean that political science (or any other non-beta type of science) is useless, or at least I do not think it is. I think it can certainly teach us useful stuff, but it is very important to realize that it is not science in the "traditional" sense of the word. We cannot prove anything in a scientific manner; the usefulness rests in the discussions more than anywhere else. We can pose ideas and discuss hypothesis, in this way we can even get to some sort of estimation of probability, but we must always realize there just is no real way of knowing anything in any scientific way.

In other words, political science is paradoxically only useful if you first realize that it's actually not science at all.

In this case, I think you are projecting modernism - the believe in progress as based on science - on non-scientific concepts like politics, or freedom. If political science tells us anything, it is that we can not do that. We can not say whether or not the concept of freedom has progressed, at least not in a scientific way as you seem to be suggesting.

See also: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-structuralism and/or http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postmodernism

Did you read the question?  I say the ideas were evident in the 1640s in a way that they were not during the War of the Roses which implies they evolved in that period.  That's debatable  - I could be a decade or 2 out - but to call that assertion "flawed" is stupid.

Did you?

No-one knows.  A few countries can point to specific events that turn their history on its head and shaped their destiny.  For example, the Japanese can make a direct link between the arrival of Perry, the rulers seeing that if they didn't adapt damn fast they would be colonised and the Meiji era.

Most of the rest of us live in countries where cultures have evolved over centuries and are still changing.  The US, Ireland and the UK have a regard for personal freedom, taxation based on democratic consent and property rights that was clearly visible in the 1640s during the English civil war.  100 years before, none of those things mattered. 

And our shared political culture hasn't really had a major change since then.

I don't have a problem with it, nor am I Danish.  I have a problem with the basis of a disagreement being centered around word usage.

I am trying to illustrate different uses of the term 'freedom', and how some uses require an additional qualifier, and how it is fallacious to then drop that qualifier and call it a different 'concept' of freedom.  It is a specific application of freedom.  If some subset of people hold 'Freedom from x' as their highest ideal, they have the freedom to do that.

When I refer to freedom, it means the absence of necessity, coercion, or constraint in choice or action.

It sounds like you are endorsing the idea that freedom includes a guarantee of a strong minimal standard of living to all.

I sort of like it too. Especially if we are moving to a society where machines remove the need for most workers. 

None of that drivel is about a voluntary society.

And correlation is not causation...

[/quote]

Nope, but it sure as hell gives a good idea as to where to start looking...


As to this, I have no idea.

And it looks like we have really touched a nerve today....

Is that what you think?  The first direct tax upon the citizenry of the new United States (as opposed to taxation of the states themselves) was the Whiskey Tax that resulted in the Whiskey Rebellion.  That was a tax on distilled alchohol that directly affected the livelyhoods of less than 1% of the population. 

Seriously, after all that you can't read the question?  

lol.  What's happened you?  You used be a smart guy.  Now one day you are threatening to beat people up and next day unable to read questions and being argumentative for the sake of it.  

What percentage of the population had the vote?

I can read it just fine.

You seem to be having some serious comprehension issues, though.
To illustrate, My answer to the above question:

Question was "What causes lead toward a society to remaining voluntary?"
Context was a statement that societies invaded by Vikings were more likely to be liberal.
My answer, whether you agree with it or not, was "No-one knows." 

Now please stop being stupid and either give a better answer or move on.

I suppose it could seem that way, when you paste in a quote that I did not make as if it were mine.

The quote is not marked yours.  Its from the question I replied to.

So, I'm a little lost now.  Did you agree the idea of freedom from necessity can mean a guarantee of a strong minimal standard of living to all?

Neither is Praxeology (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Praxeology) but it is most certainly a science.  The root goal of science is to be able to develop theories of the natural world, with the goal of making predictions.  As with anything outside of the hard sciences, it's very difficult or impossible to make a controlled test of a hypothesis; this does not mean that a well formed theory cannot be used to make effective predictions.   Praxeology is damn good at making predictions.  Other social sciences have varying degrees of usefulness in this regard.


Well, If I had kep[t reading, I would have noticed that you already agreed with me.


I disagree with this last part, at least partially.  While we can't prove anything, we can certainly demonstrate that the general trend has been towards greater freedom for the individual, however that is defined.

I can garrantee that Myrkul would not agree that a freedom from want would not be a human right.  When Myrkul says "freedom" he generally means "liberty to excercise our basic human rights, without interference from third parties", but that would result in an awful lot of typing if he had to write it that way every time.

Freedom from want is not a human right, but a human does have the right to not be prevented from seeking out their wants by others; with the cavet that their wants do not harm others in their pursuit.

Would Praxeology really have forecast that after 5 years of quantitative easing, inflation would be a thing of the past and deflation our main danger?  My recall was that in 2010 the Austrians were predicting hyperinflation.

http://www.hyperinflation-us.com/

Yet now inflation is a distant memory: http://coppolacomment.blogspot.com.au/2013/05/inflation-deflation-and-qe.html

I don't mean to pick on Praxeology.  I just think that things like politics, economics and sociology can never be sciences in the "the is a correct answer" sense.

Oh I agree.  I was replying to wdmw :D

Personally I think the state providing a bare minimum is enough.  In the UK, no-one can ever be homeless or hungry unless a terrible thing like drug addiction makes life impossible.  The Danes obviously go a lot further.

"No one knows"? That's your best answer to how a society remains voluntary? And you back it up with a buch of bullshit about previous non-voluntary societies. And then, as the icing on your little shit-cake, you have the unmitigated audacity to call me stupid. I gave a much better answer than that nonsense in the first reply to that question:


Now, would you like an in-depth explanation? Because I think I can dumb it down enough for you if the above quote doesn't explain it sufficiently.

Again, read the question.

I agree that freedom from necessity would mean a guarantee of a minimal standard of living to all.

I do not agree that freedom includes a guarantee of a strong minimal standard of living to all.

The difference between those two statements is the difference in definition I was pointing out earlier in this thread.

That's been the case for over 100 years.  The funny thing about using machines to replace workers, is that those workers always seem to find some other useful skill for which to spend their time.  Just stop and think about how much more work you would have to do every day without a flush toilet.

I have, and I answered it. You didn't. Maybe you might want to re-read it.

True.  100 years ago there was no manicure profession.

The question was what causes societies to move towards being more voluntary.  You may think that eternal vigilence caused it but that doesn't change the fact that it seemed to emerge in the 1600s and that it wasn't there in the 1500s.

I'm going to stick with "No-one knows."

Gotcha.  So you personally don't feel that freedom includes a guarantee of a strong minimal standard of living to all.

Incorrect.  This isn't about my feelings.  This is about the definition of freedom, and how I am not expanding that definition onto an abstraction, then removing the reference to that abstraction and calling it the definition.  Is that more clear?

Here is an example:
Freedom from necessity would mean a guarantee of a minimal standard of living to all.
Freedom does not include a guarantee of a strong minimal standard of living to all.

You think the Danes are wrong then?  That your definition of freedom is better than theirs?

That's not at all true.  Go back and read this thread, there are definable examples to at least 1291 (the foundation of the old Swiss Confederacy, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_Swiss_Confederacy#Foundation) and some credible, yet undocumentable, examples of same that go back much farther.  Do you contest that the Swiss Confederacy was founded upon ideals that would be consistant with a modern sentiment of a "voluntary" society?  Bear in mind, that the foundation 'myth' (can't be supported with any historical documents) of the old Swiss Confederacy is the story of William Tell (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Apple_and_the_Arrow) leading an uprising against a tyranical & absolute monarch, and that the 'Founding Fathers' of the United States appealed to the Swiss for financial support during the Revolutionary War because they believed they would find ideological like minds.

They did, and some rather wealthy ones as well.

EDIT: That particular book is part of my kids' homeschooling curriculum, for kindergarten.

No, it was what leads a society to remain voluntary.

"What causes lead toward a society to remaining voluntary?"

True.  But I did precede by saying I was talking about the political culture of the UK, Ireland and the US, all of whom are greatly influenced by the Bill of Rights which followed the civil war.  

Be careful here.  Mild trolling is tolerated here, if the content has redeeming value.  But if you're just trying to stoke a semantic argument (one greater than the one that, largely because of you, has already be burning in this thread) I may decide to intervene.  To some degree, it matters how entertaining you are.

What?  At least I'm an honest mod.

That distant rumbling sound you hear is me banging my head on a desk.  Sorry  >:(

Fair point - and it turns out I was the one misread the quote so a lot of heat but little light generated.  I'll leave your thread in peace - if there is a way to delete the bits between me and myrkul without excessive work on your part go for it.

Which, in turn, was greatly influenced by the old Swiss Confederacy, as well as the Five Tribes Confederation. (http://www.iroquoisdemocracy.pdx.edu/)  I'm sure that you are used to being the smartest guy in the room, but you would be wise to not present your viewpoints with such confidence lacking support.  There is much that certain members of this strange forum in this little backwater of the Internet will teach you if prompted.  How they are prompted will determine if those lessons come soft or hard.

Apology accepted.

Are we talking about the same bill of rights?  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_of_Rights_1689

Either way its off topic to historical examples of anarchism so I'm out of the thread.

Opps!  I just got caught with my own pants down.  You were referring to the English bill of rights!

Well, even then those idesa din't just spring up suddenly, they were largely deveopled over generations alongside common law, which itself developed due to a general lack of  interest or interference from the monarch or the noble class.

I'm sure if you look into it you can find remnants of that same society somewhere in the world. Where did they all go?

Actually, most of those who grew up in the Walled City stayed in Hong Kong, and the ethos infected the remainder of the middle and lower classes across the city.  That is one of the contributing factors that makes Hong Kong the capitalist light that has largely led (nominally communist) China out of the darkness.  China would not be the industrial powerhouse without the established culture of Hong Kong to draw upon, and Hong Kong would not have been the same without the Walled City within; and I mean that in both a good and bad way.  Bear in mind that once upon a time, the communist leadership in China believed that they could teach rice farmers to refine iron and make alloy steel in grass fired clay kilns across the countryside; and that was how they were going to be able to keep those evil capitalist American navies out of their business.

Really?

I mean, I know bureaucrats are out of touch with reality, but this strains credulity.

Yup.  It was a key part of Mao's ironicly named "Great Leap Forward" campaign...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Leap_Forward#Backyard_furnaces

God, I love Wikipedia.

I for one have been both entertained and enlightened by the erudite (if occasionally irritating) and authoritative responses along with the liberal sprinkling of references, so thank you all for your engagement in responding to my honest question regarding the particulars of what elements engender societal voluntarism.

It's not the bureaucrats' feat, but that of the revolutionaries. Bureaucrats wanted to maintain the status quo, revolutionaries wanted to change(read: impose their ideals of Utopia upon common folks) something, thus the tragedy.

One generation's revolutionary is the next generation's bureaucrat.  That was a great part of the problem; Mao lived in an information bubble of his own making.  He didn't trust the "intellectuals" but those whom he did trust were no more worthy of such faith, and tended to be less informed upon the subjects for which they were expected to advise than the intellectuals who proceeded them.  Like anyone else, they were just trying to maintain the little fiefdoms that they had built up during the revolutionary period, even if that required deceiving the monarch in order to maintain political favor.

When I get tired, my mild dyslexia creeps in through strange places.  I swear that was all correct when I typed it.

Yup exactly(in fact it's even worse, with the intellectuals evicted, the honest peasants refused to fill in the positions left by them, as they knew they are not qualified for such work, those who in the end occupying those positions were then, literally, thugs), so if it ends up being the same, better no revolution which causes far more deaths then you can possibly imagine during the peaceful times.

Aside from that, the Great Leap Forward had much to do with Mao's revolutionary ideal(yeah, he was a peasant, he should have known, right?)

"A punk rock song won't ever change the world, but I can tell you about a couple that changed me!"
Johnny Hobo And The Freight Trains
There's something to be said about otherness for the sake of otherness. Empathy toward oppressed people is easier if you can get the flavor in your mouth.
Poor-ish people actively and enthusiastically rejecting sets of values as a cultural bonding mechanism can be a lovely way to direct chaos into squatting, art and travel.
Anarchy is order, State Capitalism is a buggy glitch. History is an interesting library, but anyone interested is going to realize that that library doesn't have everything.
Next time any of you see a filthy, beer swilling, heroin addicted trainhopping tattoo-faced scumbag, strike up a conversation about bitcoin, willya?
I dunno. I had very little hope for the world before I got into bitcoin.

A mother should dote a bit, don't you agree?
What caused this to happen, for this bastard mutant community to exist? The state set up the parameters.
Running water, an amenity as it can fairly be called isnt as basic as it might seem. When a state takes control of a resource, people lose.
The state presuming to insist on mandatory taxes sets people up to fend for themselves or suffer, most often both.
To survive at all outside that paradigm while still being crowded by it and under its thumb is a proof of concept, albeit a sloppy one.

I like how you call me a tyrant for only wanting to pay for the services I want and use.

Try all you want, you can't make voluntaryism into a bad thing.

It's not voluntary if you're forcing people to not harm each other with your tyrannical non-aggression principle!  What about the murderers, thieves, bullies, and rapists, huh?  What makes you better than them, huh?

Also, Tyrant!!

You're right... I'm a bad person. :'( And so is George (https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=endscreen&NR=1&v=PGMQZEIXBMs).

That was not Anarchy. That was Patriarchy. Matrilineal Communities 'are the only historical records of it working'.

I'd be interested in what you would actually consider anarchy, then... Because the Icelandic commonwealth is one of the best historical examples, as is the Somali Xeer law system.

Anarchy is the non-patriarchal, non-monogamous, autark, selfsufficient, matrilineal community, which is not taxed and dominated by masters, rulers, strangers. That was human being until the neolithic revolution, and, at some few remaining territories, until today.

Most 'libertarian anarchists' believe in individualism as the opposite of collectivism. They are wrong. Individualism exists exclusively in collectivist (state) organisations of 'citizens'. The opposite of collectivism/individualism of the citizen is the human in the self sufficient community. A citizen is not a human, at best an undead cartoon of it, as I wrote already in another thread.

So, only an agrarian, matrilinear society is truly free?

You have a very limited world-view.

...said the capitalist.

Sucessessful? Who labeled it that? The only point is that they figured out how to survive without state assistance. I might grant that achievement a measure of success, wouldnt you?
No recourse equals no recourse equals no recourse, whether one is surrounded by lunatics that tell you about how they own all the water or not.

The perfect is the enemy of the good.  There are no perfect examples of a free market, or of a communist nation, or even an absolute monarchy either.

Myrkul isn't a capitalist in any real sense.  Most people don't even know what it means.  I'd wager that you don't really do either.

I suppose it's only in my mind that if I don't pay to support the bombing of innocents on the other side of the planet, men with "IRS" on the back of their jackets and pistols at their hip will show up at my door and "politely" inquire as to why?

Well, it's a made-up term, coined by an enemy of the system it represents. One who didn't fully understand that system. It's bound to be wrapped up in all kinds of confusion.

Printing and framing this quote.
I wish I could have gotten Myrkul to say something acknowledging that the burning rats nest we call capitalism is a complex misnomer.
Folks with a good grip on how to identify sociopolitical -isms are about one in a billion.

Fixed that for you.

But I'm not the only one. We do call that mess capitalism and with reason. Is your definition unlike a burning rats nest?
Also, there is a distinct 'we' that sees that anarcho-capitalism is an oxymoron.
Then again, this isn't a capitalism thread.

Indeed there is. And that's because that group's definition of "capitalism" requires a State. It's like saying "anti-State statism."

Capitalism, as properly defined, even using the terms Marx used, is simply private ownership of the means of production. A carpenter who owns his own tools is practicing capitalism, as is the owner of a chair factory. That doesn't need a State, merely the respect of the people for the right of the individual to own property.

It's not my fault you don't understand what objections I have to the State. If you don't want to open your mind, it's your loss, not mine.

Let me rephrase:
I suppose it's only in my mind that if I grow a certain plant, people with DEA on the back of their jackets and pistols on their hips will come and throw me in a cage?

Anarcho-capitalism is indeed an oxymoron. There is (and has never been) no such thing as an anarchic, unruled, untaxed economy/market/capitalism. Capitalism is collectivism and always a state bastard. Anarchy is the self-sufficiency of a blood-community and therefore the absence of economic interaction with outsiders.

You seem to have some definitional issues. Let me fix that:

As I explained already: an anarchical community is not a society. A society is a collectivistic, state (mafia) based organisation (patriarchy). Most of history, the nonpatriarchal, matrilineal communities were not agrarian, but hunters and gatherers. The stockbreeding and animal husbandry was followed by human breeding and human husbandry: unnatural, perverted, monogamous pairing families and harem families, constructed for the purpose of submission and taxation by organised violence.

Tsk... Again with the definitional issues. It's almost as though you are using an entirely different language that, confusingly, uses many of the same words as English, but with completely different meanings.

Oh my, it seems I have touched a nerve. If you want to educate me, it would be wise to not start with insults. Few people are receptive of wisdom from those who spout hatred at them first. I know exactly what freedom is: Absence of coercion. Government is organized coercion. Every government. Not just the one that calls itself mine. Just because you refuse to see the elephant in the room doesn't mean it's not there. And I did not vote in the last election, not because it's "all a complete sham," but because I have no desire to initiate coercion, even by proxy.

And if we're going to have a discussion, it's helpful to agree on what the words we're going to use mean, don't you think? I find the dictionary very helpful when I am unsure of what a word means.

"Societies are communities". Here you can see, what kind of bullshit we 'learn' in the dictionaries of the authority. I agree with @blablahblah.

Well, if you want to continue to define words however you feel like, I see no point in continuing a conversation with you. Have a nice day.

Yes, my language is not the perverted patriarchal language of the authority. It is an anarchal language. Have also a nice day!

You're mistaken. Coercion is the use of force, or the threat of force, to obtain compliance or material gain. The absence of that is freedom.

Glock elbow watermelon Chinese macaroni chicken?

I hereby decree a meta conversation.
For the record,
I agree wholeheartedly with Zarathustra's definitions.
I agree with Myrkul's partial rejection of the state, and maintain that capitalism and statism are symbiotic.
I agree with blablahblah's partial rejection of capitalism, but disagree about the implications of anarchism.
People don't always have the same meanings for words. Arguing about definitions is semantic bullshit.
EDIT:
That was a bad post and you should feel bad.

Judging by a private message I just got from zarathrusta, he has a different perspective on democracy, since he's in one of the few places where it actually kind of works.

That being said, I don't really care for the WORD capitalism, as it has been defined to include the state for so damn long. I've been an anarchist and a free market advocate for many years, so that is the term I'll use: Free Market.

Socialism is the PUBLIC ownership of the means of production, and is necessarily statist.
Fascism is a form of socialism in which the means of production is mixed, i.e. certain privileged individuals hold title to the means of production, but what they can produce, how they do it, and to whom they may sell or distribute it is controlled by the state. It is also known as a "mixed economy" or, especially by marxists, Capitalism.

Adam Smith's definition of markets works better.

When LET TO BE (Laissez Faire) markets tend to be smoother, and work out their own knots. The anti capitalists like to point out free market failures, but in truth they almost always happen in the most regulated of markets if they happen big. Yes, a new business is likely to fail, but the MARKET does not. The individuals involved screw up somehow, and it gets corrected. The so called invisible hand.

Unfortunately, I am in the middle of moving across the freakin' country, so I don't have time to pursue this. I will say that I fall largely on the same side as Myrkul, from what I've seen so far. I will also state, for the record since I am new to this forum, that I was at one time a communist. I rejected it because as elegant as it seems on paper, it's adherents CANNOT explain how to get goods from a to c with any sort of regularity, other than just saying you don't "need" them. Free markets (including black markets) actually work regardless of belief. Realistic theories of polity have to accept that there is no such thing as an ideal world, and that what works BEST is better by orders of magnitude than what is simply pretty. The Communist Manifesto is pretty. Markets are not. Markets have WORKED since time immemorial. Communism has either accepted certain market elements or failed utterly.

There are certain elements of socialism that I think could be implemented within an anarchic society, but they would require SMALL VOLUNTARY communities, and those communities could not enforce their will on OTHER communities and individuals who chose to act and think differently. Even within that, all sides would have to respect the property of the others. This does not require a state, but it does require arms.

In a couple of weeks I'll be back online. I look forward to this discussion.

Myrkul and Zarathrusta, you both have valid points. Cool your jets and you'll get farther into each other's heads. This is good advice from a life long hothead. :)

Words matter. If we can't agree on the definition of words, communication becomes impossible.

On the meaning of freedom:

https://dl.dropbox.com/u/146411/freedom.jpg

I'd point out that Dr. Paul agrees with my understanding of freedom. Mayor Giuliani seems to be more in your camp.

If I were to direct you to a non-fiction book that laid out, in great detail, an ongoing, unruly, untaxable & mostly free market society; would you bother to read it?

If I haven't already...

This is not true, we can have plentiful and meaningful meta discussion. If I strain to replace your "capitalism" with "free market," I can avoid earing my hair out every time I get on here until I can convince you to acknowledge the connotations and unavoidable trappings of that word.

Quoting politicians for the win?
To frame a meaning of freedom in terms of government and economic opression is to misrepresent the idea of freedom. Wrong assumptions about the elements of the human animal are being used to come to a conclusion about the conditions under which freedom happens.

Glock elbow watermelon Chinese macaroni chicken?

Find an actual quote where I say anything of the sort.

Roughly translated,
"Imtrolololllinandnobodycanstopme.exe"

Your ultimately correct but greviously miscommunicated clutching onto invalid, absolutist, inapplicable sociopolitical definitions is showing.

No, I'm asking you a legitimate question. Respond to it, if you would please. Or, admit you can't understand the question because I've made up definitions of the words I used to suit my own desires, and thus ruined any possibility of communicating.

I have no problem with using the word Free-Enterprise if you have 'trigger alert' issues with the word Capitalism.

The politics of holyshit I just cut my hand on a bottle - Johnny hobo and the freight trains

He talks revolution for an hour without using any verbs. She acts the rage which is most of her problem. In love with everyone until she wakes up tomorrow. Another Saturday night. Another fucking shitty Saturday night. I'm spinning in the next room. Slurring along to my isolation At the top of my lungs. I'm sitting here next to you. Sore throat from jokes about all the dumbest things I've done. I don't want to be anywhere at all. Here or at my house kicking at the wall. If home is where the heart is Then I live in my upper chest. I'm gonna drink until these tears Start to taste like the cheap beer. I'm gonna drink tonight until these tears Start to taste like the cheap beer. The bottles are stacked like they show how we're different. And that maybe if we were sober we could explain what this all meant. But pints of Vodka don't write poetry. You can't rearrange crushed pills into melodies. But I swear to fuck; That a brick through a broken Starbucks window means more. And I swear to fuck; That we fight more systems when we're passed out on the floor. Than the words of Kurt Vonnegut ever could. And all the works of Karl Marx ever fucking could. I'm puking in the next room. Sorry about the carpet, Clean it up or your mom'll be mad. I'm pretending that I'm too good for you. So you can't see the worthless pathetic person I am. Better to seem like an asshole, Than what you are. The billionth teenage boy with social problems To plays the guitar. I'm not sure what I want you to say to me. But I know the look on your face that I want to see. If home is where the heart is Then mine is a cigarette. I'm gonna drink until these tears Start to taste like the cheap beer. I'm gonna drink tonight until these tears Start to taste like the cheap beer. I'm not you and that's good enough for me. The only word that I use is fuck, So you can forget the dictionar[. I can't tell what question you're asking. I don't care 'cause no is my answer.
Another Saturday night. I kissed everything on a Saturday night. I'm bleeding in the next room. happen 'cause maybe the blood-loss will add to my high I'm here beating up on you. e I'm just drunk enough to be sure that I'm ready to die I don't care that you don't care that I don't care. The only card game I know is strip solitaire. If home is where the heart is Then I got evicted this week. I'm gonna drink until these tears Start to taste like the cheap beer. I'm gonna drink tonight until these tears Start to taste like the cheap beer.
2angsty4u?
Umadbro?
Inb4 tl;dr.

I'm assuming the bold part was the actual answer?
"So you can forget the [dictionary]. I can't tell what question you're asking. I don't care 'cause no is my answer. "?

I'm afraid "no" isn't a valid answer to that question. If you need me to repeat it, I can. Or you can admit that you would like me to use the standard English definitions for the words I use in my sentences, so we can communicate. I suppose there is a third option. You can continue to troll this thread and waste everyone's time.

Nah. Glock ain't got enough recoil to hurt your elbow unless you're really small, and watermelons don't go well with macaroni. At least in my experience.


Sorry, dude, I had to.  :D

Why can't anyone understand what I'm saying? That answer makes no sense, using the definitions of the words I have decided on!

I guess I will just have to explain them to you, since nobody gets the meanings I chose.
"Glock" is an interrogatory, indicating that the speaker desires to know the reason for the specified actions.
"elbow" is a verb, meaning take the trouble to do something.
"watermelon" is a preposition, used in conjunction with "elbow" to indicate the subject of the sentence.
"Chinese" is a noun, and the first part of the subject of my question, denoting the language we are currently using.
"macaroni" is a plural noun, and the second part of the subject of my question, indicating the single distinct meaningful elements of speech or writing.
"chicken" is an adverb, used in this case to mean "since that is so." It modifies "elbow."
So, I ask again, if you're going to pick out of thin air the meaning of the words you use, glock elbow watermelon Chinese macaroni chicken?

Actually, my reply was intended to make your point more than anything else. Since it was arbitrary, I cherry picked. Mostly for lolz.

I know, and I chose to use that as a springboard for a rant, and to further make my point.  ;) It's nothing against you personally.

I guess Ron and Rudy get to define Freedom in Standard English, then.
I pick 3.
No is to reject your sentence's purpose, which was to bring language's subjective fluidity into a mode of uselessness, parodying the concept that any meaning beyond the meaning you need is wrong.
You, your source material, Rudy, and Ron don't, according to me, get to to exclusively decide how an agenda driven 'standard english' works.

These meanings do not sufficiently convey the depth of the subject matter they are intended to encapsulate and limit.
I like metadiscussions. Its like zooming into something.

Nor was I trying to. "freedom" has a meaning, agreed up on for many, many years:
This can be "distilled" down to a very simple phrase: "absence of coercion."

Then you're trying to cram too much meaning into the word. This is why new words are created, to hold the excess meaning, when the old word is insufficient to convey the concept. Or clarifying words can be added, for instance, your concept of "capitalism" is more properly "State capitalism" and edges into the "new" words "corporatism" or "fascism."

"Anarcho-capitalism" is much easier to write than "free market anarchy with strong individual property rights," but it conveys the same meaning, because capitalism is a free market system, with strong property rights, and adding "anarcho-" to that indicates that indicates that it is an anarchy, and thus all rights are held by the individual.

I agree with this. For a while on YouTube I used the term market anarchist, but it doesn't convey the meaning nearly as well. Besides, I got tired of trying to please people rather than making my point.

But back to the title question, there have been several anarchic or nearly such societies in history. Three I can think of off the top of my head. Medieval Iceland and Ireland, and surprisingly, given my experience living here, Pennsylvania prior to the establishment of the Commonwealth.

However, lack of full historical precedent is a pretty weak argument as to whether or not it should be tried. I am on a mobile device @ the moment, but when I have a proper keyboard I am going to start a thread on that very subject.

Pennsylvania was full anarchy. The only difference (and what allowed it to be taken over) is that the Quakers were full-on pacifists, rather than the "porcupine pacifist" of a N.A.P. respecting anarchy.

That's not the only thing that led to the downfall, there was a lot of religious bigotry that resulted in civil strife.  An irony, considering the main reason why most of the early settlers were escaping religious bigotry in Europe.

Yeah. Now its a nearly perfect example of the end result of a collectivist society. Like the Borg, without the intellect. I am so glad to be LEAVING!!!

This is awesome! Thanks for posting this!

Do try and keep in mind that that quoe was in response to this:
It was his claim that only an agrarian, matrilinear society community could be free from oppression, not mine.

There isn't. That doesn't make it an unworthy goal.

They're not word for word, if that's what you mean. But they convey the same meaning.

So, there is no way for anyone to be completely free from coercion, so I should stop fighting it, huh?

Well, no matter what you do, people are still going to rob, rape and murder. Should we, therefore, accept these actions? Just shrug and say, "Well, it happens," when a crime is committed?

Fightting it? Why dont you go plant a garden, Batman?

If there's a point to your rambling, let me know.

The white moneyed slaveowning wifebeating powdered wig imperialist bastards who agreed on that can kiss my ass.
Anarchism covers what youre getting at.
The meaning Anarchocapitalist actually conveys is negative, implying an easy interface with today's ultraconservative, entrenched power structures and a willingness to compromise on the use of privatized violent coersion to control resources you deny to the appropriate commons.

Sure thing Batman.
Your crusade of crimefighting might go better if you did something other than prop up capitalism, like planting food.
DO YOU EVEN PLANT?
Or do you hire immigrants to do it for you?
ZING.[/list]

The only meaning of freedom I'm willing to accept is one that does not need to mention the forces that cancel it, a meaning that stands alone. A positive meaning that explains what it is as opposed to what it isn't.

Your hippy is too thick for me to penetrate, you're on your own from here on out.

Hrmm, you may have a point.  Then again, you are a bearded guy wearing plastic cat ears in drag.

I dunno, they kind of cancel each other out.

I have never understood why folks need modifiers for their anarchism. These schisms only serve to confuse, imo.

Thanks. I also eat trash, squat dumpsters, hail satan, disregard grammatical constraints when it suits me, listen to gabbernoise muzak, refuse to ever touch money, and am actually a radical queer furfag beardedladychick in like four layers of meta drag who plans on being a cyborg. I enjoy long walks in the rain, not paying rent, and character assassination.
Meow.
Tits or gtfo I suspect is the next post, hm?

I've ignored and reported myrkul. Apparently my post about how anarchy works for me in my lifestyle as well as the lifestyles of several easily marginalized anarchist countercultures has rustled some serious capitalist trolljimmies.
Was report to mod inappropriate here? You tell me.
********
EDIT: Unignored to doublecheck for uncontributing troll to find only an implication that my flags aren't black and pink and solid black.
2 confirmations for shitposting troll.
********

Well, you're the anarchist who refuses even voluntary hierarchies, you tell me if asking the boss-man to delete a post that offends you is Kosher.

I will admit I was out of line. Personal attacks are not necessary here, your ideology speaks for itself.

Read Rothbard and Konklin. your understanding  of anarchocapitalism as stated here is completely fallacious. I have found no other stated anarchist philosophy with LESS willingness to use coercion, except possibly mutualism.

Will read.
The notion of capital relies on the assertion that "this capital is mine and nobody else's.
Appropriation by a workforce, for example, interferes with that assertion.
Can any sort of noncoersive strategy (private police, chains, higher limit on wages) be used by the capitalist to maintain control?
Using robots makes the question moot. In the meantime, we still have the employee/wage slave archetype toiling away, wasting life, in the real world.
I'd like for you to explain the shortcomings of Anarchism without modifiers compared to an anarchism that utilizes a heirarchy of ownership in a way that justifies the extra ten letters.

+1 Ideas like true will and eudamodia are vastly more helpful than ideas like the NYPD.

I've read this topic with interest, it has been a wide ranging discussion and at times a bit cantankerous.
The original question, posed in this forum, has always struck me at a bit of a gadfly.  Out of place, but worthy as a question nonetheless, even though the answer might be plain and simple.

One might as well inquire why there are no bitcoins in history to question that bitcoins can not succeed.
If we only look to history for our plans for innovation, we will have precious little of it.
Social systems arise through will, through agreement, and through force. 
We have new mechanisms for attaining agreement that didn't exist even one generation ago.
None of our parents met on the internet dating sites.
We are changing in ways, as a society, rapidly.  Be ready or be left behind.

I will try, as I have asked the same question. Right now, I can't type well due to an injured hand. But the gist of the reason for the modifiers is that anarchy itself is so often interpreted to mean chaos. Thus you kinda have to let even other anarchists know where you stand. Unfortunately, there are a few major and a million minor variations of anarchic theory. Less than there are of statist theories, but still problematic.

As for agorism, and it's cousin anarchocapitalism, the REAL point of contention between social anarchists and agorists is the definition of property, not the division of labor. Agorists in particular envision the world as about six billion potential independent businesses.

My finger is killing me. I'll get back to you later.

And about six billion independent governments. :)

Get well soon. I might suggest a voice to text program in the meantime if you feel up to it.
I find that the name anarchocapitalist will turn nearly all other anarchists and some capitalists off.
Perhaps it would be better all around to drop the modifier and the prejudice it brings as a possible misnomer and let such subideology stand on its own, and add to.the sum of anarchist thought without polluting it with the trappings of capitalist ideas.
While we cant just grow 50ft tall and alter the ideological structures ourselves, we can use our own language to identify ourselves and our solidarity in more fitting ways.

The anarcho-communists say: ""You mean I can't steal my employer's stuff?" The pro-state capitalists say: "Without the state, who will I pay to remove my competition?"

I have some bad news for you. Most anarchists are now of the Voluntaryist/AnCap stripe. Black and Gold is winning over Black and Red. You're a relic of bad economics.

I may try text to speech. But then again this shouldn't take long to heal.

I actually prefer the term agorist or voluntaryist. The economic side of the socialist anarchist theories simply doesn't work. I want to start a thread regarding several of these points. I've been working on a book for several years. So of course when I'm basically ready to go I screw up my hand :P

I came to my conclusions regarding governance pretty independently, then found that others had arrived at similar conclusions and had labled them. You kinda have to go with what is to work towards what might be.

Looking forward to it.

Oh, you confirmed that in my mind long ago. 'Round about your third glossolalia verbal diarrhea post.

The reason why anarchocapitalism is an oxymoron, is the fact, that the one and only anarchistic (=not ruled by supra-bloodcommunity-authorities) people who ever lived in history - the non-patriarchal, non-monogamous, autark, selfsufficient, matrilineal community - do not accumulate capital and property. Accumulation of capital and property is a taboo in those anarchistic, unruled communities. The homo oeconomicus (patronized collectivist/decadent/protection money payer) is an unknown species in such environments.

This statement is false.  Many of the modern legal/corporate structures are finely grained in their differences in specifying both the possession and control of the collectively owned and maintained capital of the company.


Only in the sense that said appropration is by force, against the will or consent of those with a prior claim to that capital.  We do have corporate structures that are specificly designed to limit corporate ownership to present and/or former members of the corporate workforce.


Can a capitalist enply non-coercive methods to maintain control of his capital?  Yes.  But the strawman you set up above should be set alight, because those are all examples of coercive methods.  Just because the cops are private thugs doesn't make it a non-coercive solution.


How are you going to afford the service robot?


Good God, where do you people come up with this crap?

Show me this ideal culture that you refer to.

That was human reality (and still is at some unmissioned territories) most of the time in history, until the birth of the tragedy around 10'000 years ago, with the submission of the bovine first and the human later: the patriarchy.

Show me the place
where the word became a man
Show me the place
where the suffering began

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WCtoVoE5Mm4

Re: If Anarchy can work, how come there are no historical records of it working?

"Those who know do not speak; those who speak do not know."

That's just bullshit.  There is not now, nor has there ever been, a society that did not value "capital".  You just don't know what the hell capital actually is.  There have been a number of different cultures that treated personal property in a different manner that I can think of, but none failed to "accumulate capital" and managed to survive long enough to develop writing, or at least be noticed by a culture that had already developed writing, in order to be noticed by history.  If you can name a culture that you believe satisfys your conditions, name it so that I can point out your errors of fact. Otherwise your  just another socialist troll.

This would most welcome news indeed if it were true. do you have a source?

dunno if it's true, but we are certainly more vocal in the last couple years!

oh yea, we are growing much faster than they are, im sure of that. the big question though is do we outnumber them right now? i would be VERY interested to know that.

No hard numbers, no. Just a general sense of the community.

unfortunate. i have a feel for the size of our community but i dont have much of a feel for the size of their community so i personally have no idea how many of them there are.

"Because of Iceland's geographical location there was no threat of foreign invasion, so the demand for a national military force was absent.  "

Seems like the existence of the "other" always brings about the creation of military force and a government.

Knowing where the problems lie helps to formulate solutions, does it not ?

Yes, isolation has helped

it is my understanding that whales was borderline anarchic for about 100 years during which time they were under constant attack from the centralized state of brittan.

it is also my understanding that the Icelandic civilization collapsed due to internal corruption within the legal system (power that had been highly decentralized for years came under the control of a cartel of 5 prominent families). the invasion was a product of societal collapse not the other way around.

Ireland stood up for 600 years (out of a 1000 or more as a stateless society) under the assault of the Britons, finally falling when their technology lagged.

another good example. how about afganistan today? obviously its not an anarchist paradise but it may suffice to reiterate the point. their society is highly decentralized and subject to numerous attacks which they have had great success defending themselves against.

It's certainly a fine example of how hard it is to "win" against a decentralized foe.

Since a guy named Alexander was kicking around. The Hill Men have never been defeated in the long run. They understand what the American military has forgotten, even though the lesson has been thrust upon them again and again. Armies are made to fight armies. Militias are made to fight invaders.

A generally armed and competent polity is unbeatable. The goal of a militia is not to gain points on a scoreboard, like it is for two armies. It's goal is to make the invasion unsustainable.

This tactic has generally been called guerilla warfare until just a bit after September 11, 2001. Now it's called terrorism, which is only an element of the strategy to begin with. Terrorism is intended to demoralize an enemy and render them so afraid that they overreact and overcommit. For an easy modern example, look to the United States. In the name of protecting "us", by which the sons of bitches mean themselves, agencies such as the KGBDHS come into existence. The likelihood of them stopping or even slowing a determined guerilla unit is almost nil, but that doesn't stop them from oppressing the peoplesheep. The very existence of such agencies is a victory for the terrorist tactic, and neither prevents nor aids the guerilla warfare. But the heightened fear and excessive police state will eventually lead to the downfall of the targeted government.

In a more direct militia confrontation, that is a minor element. The major element is attrition. Militia perform terribly on a set-piece battlefield. Armies perform terribly against militia who are properly utilized. A man with a rifle cannot stand against an armored division. But sooner or later the people in those tanks will have to take a piss. Then that man, and his confederates, will take ONE shot. One less tank crewmember, and the militiaman has faded back into the general populace.

The Army will then escalate, committing more atrocities, but doing nothing to make themselves more secure. They further inflame the populace, leading to active recruiting to the militias without any effort on the side of the defenders. Where this is organized, such as Switzerland, the nation becomes literally uninvade-able. I cannot recall the names of the generals involved, but during World War Two, there were a million Nazi troops on the Swiss border. The Swiss general and German general spoke to one another. This is paraphrased cuz I don't feel like looking it up right now. But it's close.

"What will you do now sir, with your vaunted 500,000 man militia, with a million german troops on your border?"

"Well sir, my men will fire twice and go home."

Bravado? Perhaps. The Germans stayed on their side of the border!

But it also illustrates the point! The State soldier, while possibly idealistic, is fighting for the State's goals. I won't debate the merit of that right now, my sig should tell you where I stand on the issue. But nevertheless, the state soldier is fighting for an abstract, whereas the militiaman is fighting for his home, wife, children, and property. Who do you think is the more motivated?

And of course there is the issue of sheer numbers. You cannot defeat the entire population of an area without exterminating them. That is usually infeasable and usually political suicide. Genocide, while bandied about quite a bit, always proves unpopular with the neighbors.

Knowing the foregoing, it is wise for EVERY man to get well trained and adequately armed, regardless of the current state of his affairs and that of his current rulers. Things can and do change for the worse overnight. Fortune favors the prepared, and the most prepared tend to be individualists, the most prepared individualists (IMAO) are anarchists.

Well, that can't really be improved upon, except to recommend this excellent book (http://www.amazon.com/How-Wars-Are-Won-Ancient/) as further reading.

Anarchy is not a democracy.  :)

Well, how's this for "hard" numbers:
Quick G+ search:
Anarcho-capitalism: 1493 members. (plus several sub-communities, one for NYC with 37 members, a private one for San Francisco, and a private one for AnCap Bronies)
Voluntaryism: 304 members
Voluntaryists (probably some overlap with Voluntaryism): 127 members (and one with 24 members for Bay area voluntaryists)
Libertarianism: 8063 Members

Anarcho-syndicalism: 25 members (last post was a month ago, and I quote: "anybody willing to cooperate on giving this community some life?")
Anarcho-communist: No results.
Communist anarchy: No results
Libertarian communism: No results
Voluntary communism: No results

Maybe Facebook has more commies, but the Googles is an AnCap haven.
Edit: Anonymous seems to be a red/black collective. Of course, that's about as far from "hard numbers" as it gets, so...

If somebody of both of us is a socialist troll, then it's you. Capitalism is the interaction of socialized, collectivized humans: the citizens, which are forced to do business for the purpose of paying protection money to the state mafia. In matrilineal, pre-neolitic, pre-patriarchal, non-business-doing communities, there was nowhere and never such a thing as accumulated capital. They are not accumulating, they are sharing.
Some of the penan communities for example are still not missioned by the state mafia, and therefore, they do not accumulate, they do not grow rampant, either economically or territorially.
Capitalism began with the patriarchal, the perverted organisation of the homines sapientes around 10'000 years ago, as they began with the submission of the animals. Capital (lat. caput = head) is the head count of the accumulated and submissed cattles. It seems that you know nothing about the  history of the pre-patriarchal homines sapientes. It seems that you really believe that the socialized,  business doing cartoon of the homines sapientes, the citizen, is the norm in nature. That's very sad that there are so many Believers of this collectivist Bullshit-Religion, and that they call themself anarchists is a sad joke.
Pardon for my english language, the globalized hegemonial language is not my native language.

They couldn't accumulate capital because they were too busy murdering each other (http://www.psychohistory.com/originsofwar/07_childAbuse.html) and engaging in rituals to placate the voices in their heads.

Greatest Bullshit ever; it's very sad that the so called anarchists in this forum use the collectivist propaganda of the christian terrorists. These are post-neolithic, post-matrilineal communities (reservates in territorial stress within rampant growing civilization). Today, you can find a suicide cult also in territorially stressed communities. But the cause of it is not tribalism/anarchism, but civilization/collectivism.

google trends derp

I was just doing some research on Anarchy, this thread is really an amazing collection of great opinions!  Thanks!

if you are looking for awesome resources you should check out the relatively short playlist i made for youtubde intended to serve as a super basic introduction to the concepts.

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL93BDC716ED0C525F

since i care about these ideas a lot, if you watch the whole playlist ill even send you my appreciation in the form of a small bitcoin donation

Deeply appreciate your recommendations will certainly go through the list :)

This is really excellent.  Am going to suggest it to my kid for viewing together tonight.
Viewers are paid to attend to it by the content, even more than by the offer of bitcoin.

No, it's not.  Capitalism starts with the definition of capital.  You don't even know what it is.


There is no such thing as a non-business doing community.  Even the hippy-nerds who trek out to the desert each year for Burning Man are doing business, even if they might consider the thought offensive.  Capital accumulation is a required feature for survivival.  There are no mammals that I know of that do not do it, and it's even fairly common among insects.  Stop and think about what you believe.  How did you get there, and did you consider the root principles to get there?


Ah, now we are getting somewhere.  So you believe that a gift economy isn't business?  How would anyone give a gift, without accumulating capital first?  What are they going to give, prayers and well wishes?
The Penan are hunter-gatherers.  They hunt and gather, capital accumulation by definition.  The snare is capital, so is the bow and arrow.  The gathering basket is capital.  And even if none of this were true, the Penan consider the forests that they inhabit to be their property, and thus logging to be a crime against themselves and their culture.  It's a collective form of property, certainly, but it's a very real concept of property.  Thus, by definition, the Penan consider the forest that grows their food to be their capital.


Capital is anything required to produce.  To the hunter-gatherers, the tools of same are capital, as is the lands traversed.  To the sheepherder, the sheep, the sheepdog, the grazing fields, the shearing tools, etc are capital.  To the farmer, the plow and workhorse, and the fields, are capital.  So yes, the root of the word is a "head count", but no it's not about submission of animals per se.  If you want to be a hunter-gatherer, go do it.


You make assumptions about my beliefs you cannot support.  The modern concept of capitalism isn't the natural form of same, but capitalism certainly has a natural root. 

I need to learn to stop responding to Markov chains as if they are people.

Ok.

All marxists that I have ever interacted with do this, and unfortunately a lot of anarchists who ought to know better.

So here's the deal.

Capitalism is NOT a political system!!!

Let me repeat that. Capitalism is NOT a political system!!!

Fascism is a political system whereby capitalistic enterprise is allowed to exist, but regulated by a central authority.

Communism is a political system that INTERNALLY makes all capital common property (still capitalistic at it's root, but that's a story for another time.)

Modern democracy is closer to fascism than communism. The big problem, aside from the dehumanization of the individual, with communism and it's derivatives is and always has been NO realistic means to figure out exchange. Sure, absent allergies you can figure out food, but anything non necessary but desirable cannot be evaluated without TRADE, which is the root of capitalism.

A free society is necessarily based on production and trade. A totalitarian society (which communism MUST be unless limited to extremely small groupings) still needs to trade, but it's rulers can make the value decisions. Poorly.

Capitalism is an economic system whereby PRIVATE INDIVIDUALS own the means of production and trade freely amongst themselves. In a truly capitalistic system, money is just another commodity, not some magical "declared to be of value" piece of promissory paper.

BTW, for all of you socialists and statists, the corporation is the primary economic basis for fascism. Mussolini's fascist party, for whom the term "fascist" came into common usage, described their system as corporatism. While the organizational structure of a corporation is legitimate in some ways, the "juridical person" of a corporate entity is BY DEFINITION a 'person' created by the state. Without states, there are no corporate persons, thus the shield against personal liability by corporate officers goes away.

Absent the state, free trade does and always has existed. Through most of history, barring external events, prices start high on new goods and trend downward as competition enters the game, thus in the long run benefiting everyone involved. Yes, there is fraud in the marketplace, and there always will be. But there is LESS fraud when the penalties are market based than when you can "insure" against them with "public" monies. Adam Smith's Invisible Hand at work.

To some extent, every system of polity from the most totalitarian to the most anarchic has some element of capital accumulation and trade. This is NECESSARY unless you want to be a wild animal, subsisting solely on what you find that day and at the mercy of the elements, since even basic tools and clothes are capital. The basic derivation of the word basically has the meanings of wealth or things of primary need. If it can be used and possessed, it IS capital.

Free market anarchism, or Libertarian Anarchism, which is commonly known as anarcho-capitalism or volutaryism, is a system whereby EVERY HUMAN old enough to live on their own is considered a sovereign person, duty bound to make their own way so long as they do not violate the Non aggression principle. Mutual trade to be carried out based upon contract and agreement, not who has the bigger dick. States, and it is my decades long consideration that a collective version of anarchy is going to be at least a minimal state, has a "middleman" at all times, taking a piece of, or frequently ALL of the action and leaving the individual to rot. Agorism, the system to which I ascribe, is inherently subversive in a way the communists could never imagine nor pull off. We aim to outcompete the state, subverting it by making it respond to us via it's own weaknesses rather than violent revolution. Bitcoin actually serves that purpose quite well. It's an intangible currency, much like their fiat, but it's decentralized nature makes it difficult to track and impossible to control. Yet coming down on it in a meaningful way exposes them for what they are, which they cannot afford unless they ADMIT to being totalitarian. And probably wouldn't work anyway, as it would just go underground. The long term goal, of course, is to smash the state. The means is to make them chase their tail so long and so enthusiastically that they smash themselves.

You don't even know what it is: caput = head (count of the cattle), which is the start of patriarchal business doing.


If you are autark and selfsufficient as a community, then you are not doing business. Very simple to understand. A selfsufficient community therefore is not doing business with others, because it is autark and selfsufficient. Also very simple to understand. You never heard anything about autarky and selfsufficiency, and about the difference to the non-autark collectivism (business)?



Yes, it isn't business. Gift economy is another oxymoron. A gift is a gift and an economy is an economy. „It's the economy, stupid!“

Selfsufficient, autark communities do not grow rampant and do not destroy their environment, because they do not have to do business, which has to be growing rampant for the purpose of paying protection money (census) to the rampant growing state mafia and interest to the creditors. Interest on debt is a derivative of the census (tribute) to the state mafia. Capitalism is by definition a state bastard (quote: Dr. Paul C. Martin)


A gift is a gift. Has nothing to do with business. Gifts never grow rampant.



BS. Selfsufficiency, autarky and sharing (non-business) by definition. No growing mountains of material, money, gifts, gold etc.


Uhh, and the bonobos are capitalists because they use some tools? What a perverted ideology, which has its roots in vienna, where some elitist aristocrats brought a lot of collectivist BS to paper.


Property? That's the sad view of a deeply brainwashed capitalistic collectivist. If you cannot see the difference between autarky and collectivism, thats your problem.

Biomech nails it on the head.  He has displayed a working knowledge of how the world really works.

Zarathrusta; however, has displayed that he doesn't even know what an economy is, much less what the words "capitalism", "capital", "business" or "property" mean.

A different question, Zarathusta, what about Bitcoin attracts you to this forum?

EDIT:  I noticed that you never would commit to reading a book, if I were to recommend it.  I see now that my prior choice would have been presumptive.  I might recommend a different set of books as a starting point.  I was going to recommend The Stealth of Nations by Robert Neuwirth, but perhaps The Beeman by Laurie Krebs would be more your speed.

Old enough for what? Dress themselves? Most kids can do that by five.
Cross the street? 7, maybe 8 for the slow ones.
Drink responsibly? Hell, even some adults aren't mature enough to handle that.
Age is a number. Maturity is not measured in years.

An economy as a state bastard by definition is the state patronized interaction between people, which are not autark and not selfsufficient. They are not autark, because the autark communities are forbidden and have been destroyed by the state and church mafia, wich replaced the matrilinear communities by perverted, monogamous pairing families and harem families, for the purpose of doing business and paying protection money. These are the roots of accumulation and these are the historic facts.
The reason why in anarchistic communities you cannot find ever rampant growing mountains of material, money, gold etc. is the fact, that they are not forced by the state mafia to accumulate such mountains of material by destroying their environment. Neither the Penan nor the Bonobo is a homo oeconomicus. In a capitalistic collectivist society, the mountains of accumulated things as well as the production grows rampant hundredfold in 100 years. In an anarchistic community (Penan) we find no production growth and no growing mountains of accumulated things.



I am looking for anarchists in this forum. But I met hero collectivists who are enthusiastic to interact and doing business with unknown people in the globalized hypercollectiv. As for me, I view Bitcoin as a subversive tool to end the state and with it the economy (homo oeconomicus). As soon as the mission is accomplished, Bitcoin will be obsolet.



To starters I would recommend this essay:

http://www.miprox.de/Wirtschaft_allgemein/Martin-Symp.pdf

Macht, der Staat und die Institution des Eigentums
(Power, the State and the Institution of Property)
*
Paul C. Martin
**
(Preliminary version of 26 October 2003)
Abstract

Private property as de iure institution needs a foregoing state to come into existence. The state needs foregoing power and foregoing power needs armed force. The ultimate “foundation of the economy” thus is the weapon, where possession and property are identical because the possession of it guarantees property of it. Armed force starts additional production (surplus, tribute). The first taxes are contributions of material for the production of attack weapons (copper, tin). Thus non - circulating money begins. Taxes as “census” and money are the same. As soon as defence and protection of the (property-) title power executed by armed force in war and peace needs mercenaries (soldiers from outside the power system) the one – way -money turns into circulating “genuine money” in modern sense and its material changes from weapon - fitting to precious metal and actually into any material which can be monopolized by the state.

Interest also at first is the tax (census) itself. The state, that must exist before property and
property-based contracts which only can be executed with use of armed force, can’t be
financed out of property or income which can only appear after its existence. Therefore the
state faces the problem of pre-financing itself (power, sovereignty) and it must draw on later
tributes or taxes. This “interest”, which always starts with power-based and never with
“private” titles is nothing but a discount, thereby rather a discount of the state-owned property
(monopoly of armed force) or property rights (monopoly of taxation) than any private
“property premium” or even an mysterious item that “enlarges” something. Interest than is the
partition (cession) of forced or expected income (as measured in the state-owned monopoly to
declare “legal tender”) or property (goods) by the party which will get this income or property
(goods) with other parties. The more (existing) property is ceded by the state to the private
sector or can be created as income after cession to the private sector in the private (non-state) sector the longer the process called “creation of wealth” (recte: later income or property) can endure, because the more power-sustaining taxes can be imposed.

Ahh. I missed that bit about being old enough to live on their own. But the point is moot. I place no such restrictions on treating people like people, and not property. I place no arbitrary age limits on competency. Age is a number. Maturity is not measured in years.

Simply repeating or restating your, already circular, definition does nothing to change the issue of understanding.  We, apparently, don't see the world in remotely similar contexts.  Our worldviews are, thus, incompatible.  Without some degree of effort towards reconciliation of our worldviews, and use of language, we are almost literally speaking different languages.  Your half-assed answer above does nothing to improve the reader's comprehension of what an economy is, and thus is not a real definition.  Please try again.


First, are you a German speaker?  Because I don't know of any English definition of "autark" that would make any sense in this context, and even a google search sheds no light.

Second, the above excerpt just sounds insane.  I've never had any interaction with anything that resembles a church mafia (although the state mafia is hard to avoid) and your claim that (I assume) traditional marriage was "for the purpose of doing business and paying protection money" is far from a fact, and you fail to provide any support for the claim.  Your calim is, therefore, quite literally baseless.


The problem of unsustainable growth that you refer to has much more to do with the effects of fiat money and fractional reserve lending, further juiced by the past 150 years or so of the industrial oil age, than it does have to do with any actual fault with capitalism or even traditional marriage contracts.  You have identified a longstanding problem of the modern world and completely misinterpreted the underlying causes.

You seem to have more in common, ideologically,  with a communist hippie commune than you do with any flavor of 'anarchism' for which I am aware.  I don't think you're going to have much luck finding fellow travelers here.  Bitcoin literally has zero chance of ending the economy.  I really don't think you know what the word means.  Is English your first language?


First off, I've read it before, and he is somewhat full of shit, although not completely.  He is wise enough  to 'condition' his statements to apply to the modern state of things.  

Second, I wasn't asking for your recommendations.  Have you read it, or are you just throwing out  philosphophers in order to sound smart?  I ask, because he starts off with this...

"Private property as de iure institution needs a foregoing state to come into existence. The state
needs foregoing power and foregoing power needs armed force. The ultimate “foundation of
the economy” thus is the weapon, where possession and property are identical because the
possession of it guarantees property of it."

With the condition I highlighted, 'of the day', the author is deliberately avoiding discussion of natural property rights, as that is not the state of things today and not what he is talking aobut in the essay.  That said, the basic premise of the essay is roughly correct.  Namely that the modern state requires property rights as part and parcel to it's justification for it's existance, and further requires the monopoly of the use of force, i.e. "the gun".  Not simply a gun, but all of them, and this is a root cause of the 'gun control' efforts the world over across all of human history.

You should be very careful in this forum doing what you seem to be trying to do.  You will find that you are not the smartest guy in the room, if you ever were, and most of us cannot be bullshitted.

Ah, yes.  The classic issue of children in an anarchy.  This is where Myrkul and I have had great disagreements in the past.  It's not a simple question.  If a child is born, does s/he have full rights immediately?  If so, who may excercise those rights on their behalf?  For how long, with what limits?  Under what conditions can the child assume their own rights entirely?  The standard answer is that parents have those rights in an 'escrow' of sorts, and that the child assumes those rights upon reaching an arbitrary age of maturity.  But what about those children who mature early, or those adults who will never mature completely?  What about the parents that violate the rights of their own children?  There is a huge rabbit hole here, and before this goes further, please consider whether or not another thread would be more appropriate.

It can be measured pretty well in years. An average person is a proper adult (brain fully developed) at around 23-25 years of age.

Still - as you point out, some are more mature at a younger age than their peers.

Are anarchism and collectivism exclusive?
My understanding of collectivism is simply that people work together, depend on each other, help each other, trade, interact, cooperate, etc.
My understanding of anarchy is that there is no use for a perpetual governing body.
Not that I see myself as any of these -isms, so I welcome learning if your understandings of these terms are different.  It seems there may be many definitions of the labels you are using.

I don't know that Bitcoin is in any way subversive in and of itself.   It seems more of a backstop that provides economic resilience in case of the failure of that which all too-big-to-fail failures are aggregated, fiat currencies.  Getting it to a point of full utility in advance of any such failure is a collectivist endeavor by its very nature so perhaps it would be surprising to find non-collectivist subversives in abundance in this forum, would it not?

More likely I imagine that the mission you maintain as your own (ending economies) will not ever be complete, and thus Bitcoin will not become obsoleted, but I can't see tomorrow, much less such a distant future.  It would seem a de-evolution to stop collecting ourselves into cooperative groups, but to each their own.

Generally collectivist refers to those who view everything as common property. Your view above, cooperation, is more along the lines of voluntaryism. Other than that I largely agree with your conclusions here.

Except one thing. The decentralized nature of Bitcoin is potentially subversive, simply because it is nearly impossible to be centrally controlled.

Thank you for sharing your understanding of these terms.  I would be more likely to use the word "communist", or "socialist" society to describe common property social systems, and to use "collectivist" to refer to group decision making and social cohesion irrespective of property rights, though I respect that collectivism may engender the former (or not).  For example, I would view Japan (especially the older generation) a collectivist but not communist and only somewhat socialist society.

My view of Bitcoin is also more like a group of philosophically and technically savvy vanguard taking steps to provide a more resilient alternative for commercial interactions more suitable to the digital age.  It does not seem any more overtly political than something like twitter or Facebook, which could certainly be used for subversive activities but are by no means dedicated toward it beyond the individual actions of those that employ the technology, so I agree that it has that potential.

Noted.

I am looking at it from the agorist viewpoint. Anything that is difficult for the government to control, yet popular, draws a lot of their resources. Something as difficult as Bitcoin, should it go mainstream, will tie their regulators in knots for decades. Anything that clogs the system is good for those who want it to fail. Exploit the bastards any chance you get. I'm even strategically in favor of using their various welfare programs (though it leaves a bad taste in my mouth) as a means of guerilla market strategy. ANYTHING that clogs their system up.

Empires are rarely conquered from without or fall to revolution. They eat themselves.

As to the term collectivism, my first exposure to it was in the writings of Ayn Rand, and later, Murray Rothbard. Both used it as a generic term for socialist/communist "people's republics" and their ilk. I think your definition is of some utility as well, as I've long liked the idea of a capitalist commune. Again, something I'll go into in detail after I get moved. I'm kinda lurking on the forum between moving heavy shit right now :) Probably the computer will go in the box tomorrow morning, so if you don't get a reply from me on anything for a couple weeks, I'm not ignoring anybody. Just moving 2200 miles.

No such grandiose goals here.  Such a massive failure is not an experience I would much enjoy.  I take my cue on that from those who have been through the USSR dissolution.  Perhaps I'm too optimistic as I'd rather hope for the best and prepare for the worst.

But that (USSR) is basically because people had become so dependent on the state.  Which btw, is what is starting to happen in the West.   It's a scary pattern.  More and more people becoming dependent on the state until the state buckles under the weight, then you have all these helpless people with no-one to look after them.

That's why we are saying now, let's start preparing for the end of the state NOW.  If we can reduce as many people's dependence on it as possible then when it gets to the point where it is ultimately dissolved, hopefully there won't be too many helpless people and there'll be enough free market independent people and capital that we won't have a great disaster.

It's time to put an end to these risky situations where you have a state which encourages dependence on it and then eventually collapses leading to all kinds of calamity.  The way to get out of this cycle is to work towards the end of the state as a concept.

You even cannot spell the name of the most famous figure of the entire history of philosophy.


Uhuuuu. Yes, Swiss German spoken and therefore my English language is loaded with some weakness. But you never heard about autarky/autarkic/autarkical? How is that possible not to find it with google? Am I really discussing with somebody who didn't hear anyting about autarky? That explains a lot.


I see, you do know really nothing about anarchy and its opposite: the patriarchy. Collectivism/Patriarchy has always been a complicity between state and church (militarism and religion). Without any knowledge of the patriarchy and its  historical genesis, you will never realise what anarchy is (and always has been). Zero chance. For citizens without any knowlege in anarchy and patriarchy, I can recommend to read here:

http://gerhardbott.de/das-buch/summary-in-english.html



Completely wrong. All empires did expand and grow rampant, whitout any fiat.
You are story telling on the basic of ahistoric science fiction. The non-business-doing, non-patriarchal, anarchistic communities do not grow and expand, because they are self-sufficient and autarkic. No surpluses are produced, as it is the case in capitalism/collectivism, where the surplus is demanded and forced by the state/church.



Indeed, with your ronpaulian pseudo-anarchism I do have nothing in common. It represents nationalism and christianism, the most monstrous hypercollective ever, regardless if he may be less evil than the Bushs and Obamas. On the opposite, I am a representative of the Nature, while you are a representative of a collectivist organisation of economic destruction of the Planet.



Yes, very difficult to find real anarchists. If Bitcoin, cryptography and other subversive tools do not speed up the end of collectivism/capitalism/economism, it will end in itself, as all societies did in human history.
 
That's the difference between never growing/expanding anarchistic communities on one side, and growing patriarchal expanding/growing/business doing societies and empires (mafia) on the other (your) side. „They eat themselves.“ (quote: @Biomech)




This is a shitty (to speak in your language) statement of somebody who impressively demonstrated, that he has no knowlegde about history, patriarchy and anarchy. So, the statement is worthless.



I knew it: as a collectivist by heart and soul, you think you are speaking not only for yourself, but also for 'most uf us'. Thanks for outing.

Best regards

I'm lucky to be able to spell anything correctly.  That has zero bearing on my accuracy.


Autarky is a german word.  It's meaning in English is "self-sufficient", but considering that you regularly used both terms, in English, together to describe your ideal community, I was curious if it had some othermeaning for which I am unaware.  Otherwise you are fond of redundancy, which would imply that you were quite young.


Heh.  Girls and their ideas. 

http://www.sinfest.net/archive_page.php?comicID=4059

You really don't have a supporting argument here, do you?

Okay.

Indeed, they do 'eat themselves'.  Eventually.  Neither of us are likely to live to see that day, however.  And if you do, you won't really enjoy the fall.  Be careful what you wish for; as someone else has already noted, the Soviet Union collapsed upon itself (after decades of "eating itself") and during the 90's the average life expectancy of a Russian male fell by 2 decades.  Said another way, a whole lot of people died, and a whole lot more people suffered for a long time.  The most likely to prosper either had huge families with access to arable land for which to grow food for their extended families, had longstanding ties in the mafia or other criminal trade organizations or both.  The Swiss, quite literally, are too numerous in this modern age to be able to grow enough food to feed their own population.  The Russians could do it, and the US might still be able to do it; but nearly all of Europe will not be able to do it.  Maybe the Greeks and Spanish.  If what you think you want comes to pass, many of you will resort to cannibalism before you get to your stable matriarchy.



Says the matriarchial anarchist looking for others like herself!

It appears we are in agreement on most things, however I might diverge with you (and Zarathustra, and probably lots of others here) on what might not be an insignificant point.

IF bitcoin achieves a notable measure of success... then by the mechanism you describe above (reducing dependence, et al) we may also serve to AVOID the collapse of the state by lessening its burden, not just prepare for it.  For myself, that would be a very acceptable outcome, and even preferable.  I don't carry any ideal political agenda of what makes for a perfect society, but I would be very happy to discover myself living in a better one, and Bitcoin is hopefully one very small step toward effecting that.  By increasing personal liberty, entering the marketplace of monetary choice with a viable offering suitable for our new world, and by playing well with others.

So by succeeding with Bitcoin, we are not (necessarily) deconstructing the state, but perhaps increasing the resilience of our society and its economy, which may have the effect of saving the state as much as deconstructing it (for example, by allowing it find a more manageable size).  Whether this happens or not is far outside the scope of influence we are likely to have, but either way, Bitcoin provides many social goods.

Consider the example of the USA, it tends to become more like the things that challenge it.  When Communism is its big threat, it adopts more communism; when terrorism is the threat, it adopts more terrorism.  So if personal liberty is ever perceived as such a threat, perhaps it will simply adopt more liberty?  We can not predict the outcome, but our influence on it seems very positive.

Zarathustra does appear to have a point: that society is influenced by many factors, not just its money.  From someone on the sidelines, a little less labeling of people into broad categories might help that one find what is sought.

Oh really? Thanks for these brand new informations. I have a house in Russia and relatives.



You even can not read. You have no idea of Patriarchy and Anarchy. There has never been such a thing as a matriarchy. That's feminist science fiction. Matrilineal communities were anarchic, but never archic. It makes no sense to talk about things of which you have no idea. Thanks in advance.

Hi NewLiberty

My point is that, as soon as the state is eliminated and private debt/money is replaced by assets (gold, gold 2.0 etc.), the economy will have lost its motor. A 'barter economy' is ahistoric science fiction. (read G. Dalton: Barter). The motor of doing business and creating surpluses is the state enforced tax (census) and its derivative, the interest on debt owed to creditors. Even Ludwig von Mises knew it:

„There is no means of avoiding the final collapse of a boom brought about by credit expansion. The alternative is only whether the crisis should come sooner as the result of voluntary abandonment of further credit expansion, or later as a final and total catastrophe of the currency system involved.“

That means: Even if all the debt is going to be replaced by assets, it will only be a crackup boom, but in the end the economy comes to a standstill, because the motor (debt and interest) is missing its fuel.


The stateless communities in the rain forests theoretically could have a barter economy, but in reality, they don't. A blood-community is not economically interacting with people from outside. And if, then in a very minimal amount.  They avoid doing business; there is simply no need for a self-sufficient community of doing business with strangers. Otherwise you would observe growing economies and growing 'capital' in the rain forests, but you don't.

Hey, I'm still here for a minute :)

Anyway, yes that is possible. And yes, I have thought of it. It's a bit beyond the scope of what I have posted.

I cannot recall who said this, but it was one of the wiser abolitionists right around the time of the War Between the States. He said that slavery would likely end in increments, but that the abolitionist must at all times call for full, immediate abolition or be compromised beyond repair. That's a paraphrase, the man in question was more eloquent. This is more or less where I stand. I am a radical even in my own circle. This doesn't mean I would turn down incremental improvements in liberty. Quite the contrary I would applaud them while pointing out how much further we need to go. The agorist goal is to deconstruct the state piecemeal in such a way as to render it redundant, insignificant, and ultimately extinct due to no longer even being PERCEIVED as necessary. A truth that even the die hard statist will acknowledge is that states do not EVER produce anything. There's is the power to confiscate, redistribute, and destroy. Mao was correct when he said that all political power comes from the barrel of a gun.

Money is indeed only one factor. But it's a very large one. If it gets to the point where merchants will only accept a limited currency or a few of 'em (ex. Gold and Bitcoin/hypothetical other) then government becomes restrained in what it does by the very fact that the printing press and it's Keynesian policies are no longer relevant. No matter how draconian a government is, it still works with the consent or apathy of the producers. When they cease to be apathetic and withdraw consent, the government collapses.

Anarchism, like all social theories, is constantly evolving. I am a rather modern anarchist. I don't want to go back to the trees like some of them do, nor do I want society to devolve into warring tribes. What I, and others like me, want is to change the focus of the public from building bigger empires to building better humans. Every man who is able to do two things is a defacto threat to rulership that cannot be eradicated without them revealing their true nature.

1. Stand alone (produce what they need to survive)

2. Trade with others. (produce more than they need, exchange it for goods they want.)

That, then, is the ultimate goal of the individualist. Individualism is by necessity both anarchic and cooperative. Systems of polity based on these ideas preclude the governmental meme of a monopoly of violence over a given territory.

As you have already demonstrated a working mind, you can see that those two straightforward points are neither easy nor simple, but they are achievable. Past societies, regardless of Zarathrusta's (lack of) understanding of history, have achieved this. Voluntary cooperation ALWAYS produces better results than coerced cooperation. Even in the case of actual slavery, it was quickly noted by more civilized societies that the freeman working for a wage outproduced the slave by a significant amount. All humans try to profit by their endeavors, and any system that denies that will ultimately fail. Which is why I am not a socialist. I like a lot of the ideas behind socialism, and have incorporated those that make sense into my personal philosophy, but there is a core to it that doesn't work. A Vow of Poverty, more or less, that makes it impossible to maintain on a large scale. (I think it could work in small groups, but only  if there were an exit strategy for the disaffected and ambitious).

And to Zarathrusta, Patriarchy, regardless of feminist bullshit, means rule by FATHERS, and has been a quite successful paradigm in past societies (e.g. ancient Israel prior to Saul, The Bedouin, The Turks prior to the Ottoman Empire, The Cherokee (my people), and many others. Further, a society that produces no excess starves to death during bad times. We have a common word for such societies. Extinct.

The Feminists use the term Patriarchy in place of Paternalism (substitution for fathers) because they desire to (and have successfully) create a false dichotomy in which you look the wrong way while they are doing exactly what they pubicly decry. In debate, this logical fallacy is known as a red herring. It is very effective against the unprepared.

No where did Von Mises say that the economy comes to a standstill. He in fact showed exactly the opposite. He was pointing out that such credit fueled booms are UNeconomic and eventually destroy the currency and credibility of what is being traded.

You also don't see the rainforest populations living to old age, building computers, overcoming famine and disease, or becoming anything greater than they are. As for them not trading?

Dude, check your premises. They trade with other tribes frequently.

Hey Biomech,

I quotet, what LvM said. And I wrote, what that means in reality (collapse and catastrophe = end of the production based on credit). And yes, the communities in the rainforests are not building computers. They are building nearly nothing, except that, what they really need. The reason why they have hundredfold less production than collectivist societies (in which everyone has 50 ore more energy slave aequivalents in tow), is because they are not forced to, by tax and interest on debt. There is no market in the rainforest. Self-sufficiency is self-sufficiency! (not to be confused with today's half-civilized communities)

I really wish I hadn't got into this right now! I'm out of time. I leave tomorrow morning and there are a million and one things to be done. So I won't be replying anymore today, and probably won't be back for a couple of weeks. I love it when people make me think.

All of ya, go right on and keep pickin' at me while I'm gone. I'll be working on some stuff to post. Probably start a couple new threads, as this one is going everywhere.

Zarathrusta, I disagree severely with your analysis, though I do see where you're coming from now. I think the language barrier has been my problem. Your english is a bit confusing. At any rate, when I get back online, I'll do a bunch of catching up.

Cheers!

Kevin Biomech.

Uuhhh, out of time! Yes, you see the difference to the communities in the rainforests? They have plenty of time, because they are not busy! ;D



We can discuss in German, or French, no problem!
Cheers, good luck and good business! ;)

They still have to do stuff and cannot be two places at one time. They may not be busy, but they are not magical.

Yes, though certainly Zarathustra was jesting, I suspect the day is just as long for them as it is for us. :)
On the broader point, being less busy/productive/active does not seem as much a virtue as might be their own happiness. 
For my own happiness, I enjoy doing things and not being idle so Biomech's activity is more attractive than the unbusy foresters, though I respect their choice and the choice of any that would join them in that unbusiness.

I really wish I could. That's my problem, not yours. Just bear with me :p English is the only language I'm proficient in. I can make myself understood, verbally, in Mexican Spanish, but that's about it.

One last thing, though. As a much younger man, I spent a year homeless, mostly in the wilderness living a hunter/gatherer lifestyle. The circumstances that got me there are long, boring, and not the point. I did choose to do it deliberately, and I had a great deal of fun. In that I was not against a clock, I was not as busy as within human society. But I probably worked harder physically than any other time in my life. I don't regret doing it in the least, and am certain that I could do it again if the need arose, but the desire will not. It's not an ideal life by any means. Though it probably is a good experience for anyone at least once.

All of society is an artificial construct, and that is not in itself a bad thing. Just that the construct needs constant revision and pruning. I think that governance was necessary at one time. I also think we are CAPABLE of growing beyond it while not discarding the things that ARE good in the societal constructs.

And with that, I really must stop with the internet!

Thanks for the well wishes, and the same to you.

They were wrong and provablely so.  While it's true that every society that formed writing also developed commodity money systems, the development of money was always a concurrent development with the rise and growth of the barter economy.  Commodity money just made such barter arrangments more efficient and easier to negotiate.  Barter most certainly did exist in the past, and most certainly still exists pretty much everywhere today; most people don't recognize it as such.  Construction workers do it regularly, as they will oftern trade hours.  For example, a plumber might need his house repainted and the painter needs his toilet replaced.  The only money that moves is in the purchase of the paint and toilet from outside suppliers.

Another place barter is alive and well is the school cafeteria and recess yard. Kids trade crap all the time.

because history is written by the winner. . . and we all know who won.

Well, that's also true enough.

I didn't say that.

+1 Id snip this, but I have about five sq inches to work with and regard for page length went out the window long ago.
Seems like procapitalism people really like insults and rebranding.

Using convoluted legalese, some of the "its mine" can appear to be mitigated. In actuality, capital is still withheld from use by those who might use it.
That prior claim is invalid and based on imperialism. The workforce has only force to use. Any basic understanding of union politics wlll show this.
The strawman belongs to anarchocapitalists, not me.
Control of private capital requires violent defense.
With my liberated community capital. Capital is not bad, capitalism is bad.
Derp.
Anarchism has lots of variants. some oppose others. Some are misnomers.

I think the real issue is when can they voluntarily enter into contracts.  For instance, I'm sure my son would have traded 20 years of service for a box of cookies when he was five.

Capital withheld from those that might use it is sensible in the absence of mutual agreement.
I am happy to provide capital to those that use it well for our mutual benefit, and for some meaningful benefit for others.  
I am not so happy when forced to yield it to others by threat.  
This unhappiness is coupled with a sadness in the notion that what I have built is likely to be unappreciated by those that have taken it from me.  

Again, I know adults whom I would not put much past such foolish choices. Maturity isn't magically granted at 18. That's just an arbitrary number our society has selected. And worse, by selecting it, we've prevented those under that age from gaining much responsibility.

The withholding of capital (in this case, the growing forest and the land it grows upon) is using it.  In one sense, it's savings.  In another sense, the growing forest itself is capital at work.  Seriously, you guys don't understand what you are speaking about.

Says you.

Bullshit.  I am not a slave to my employer.  If anything, I am a slave to my government to the same percentage that they take my income in taxes.

More bullshit.  I'm presently a member in two different unions, and own stock in both the company that I work for and several other companies.  You are not prevented from doing the same.


Maybe, maybe not.  The key word is defense.  You don't agree with my views on property and rights; fine, don't work for me.  If yo utry to take my stuff because you think you have the right, expect a vigorous, and perhaps violent, defense.  This would not be different in any socity, no matter how primitive or "ideal" in your view.  What belongs to them, belongs to them.  You can choose to work for them, under their rules, or not.
"Liberated" capital?  Theft is worse.


Derp, Derp.  Some are simply deluded.

http://www.tomwoods.com/blog/the-question-libertarians-just-cant-answer/

This is strangely appropriate.

Even more appropriate: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AMSMQHpIEQU

Nike and Coke are not among those as sane and reasonable as you and a number of others.
Threat only occurs in the face of oppression.

Amen, brother.  I'll show this one to my kids later.

@MoonShadow
Sup with all the namecalling and aggression?
Don't just dismiss me out of hand.
I'm talking about the blatant imperfections of capitalism in practice, and what happens when wage slaves rise up to knock their bosses out of their position.
As a member of a union, you must have frustrations with union politics, unless youre the person folks are frustrated with.
A global perspective, you don't have.
Get one.
At yer local third world malwart manufacturing plant.
Or office building.

When did I call you an unsupported "name"?


I haven't been.  I generally give your side every opprotunity to argue your case, but that doesn't happen.  Most of the time; when the claimant doesn't simply assume that the superiority of his position is 'self evident' s/he resorts to 'feelings' of 'fairness'.  Make an argument.  But it has to be your own argument, not just a hotlink to some published somebody.  If you feel said somebody makes a good point, restate that point in your own language.  If you can't, then you didn't understand the point to begin with.


I don't agree that what usually happens "when wage slaves rise up to knock their bosses out of their position" is a fault of capitalism, in practice or in theory.  Therein lies your problem, not everyone agrees with your worldview.  If you want to found a communist collective in the middle of a anarcho-capitalist utopia, you can.  No true anarcho-capitalists would prevent it.  They may not trade with you either, but that's a different issue.  However, your position (anarcho-communism) does not permit a dissenting sub-culture to exist.  The very premises that such a worldview is founded upon cannot ever achieve it's end goal without completely destroying competing worldviews, as the random 'capitalist' would take advantage or undermine the social structure of the communist non-state (a contradiction unto itself).  Ultimately, communism requires a state to enforce the worldview upon the people, because there will always be those who disagree.  


All life is poitics.


Son, you really don't know me, and you are not guessing well either.


My wife graduated from college with a BS in MicroBiology.  Got a job within her field doing product testing at P&G.  Worked there for 6 years, never earned more than $12.50 per hour and hated her job.  After she had our first child, she quit P&G; taking a part time job about a year later as a cashier at WalMart.  She worked there for 4 years, loved that job making $7.75.  She was offered health care coverage, even though she was only part time, as well as other less common perks such as a great employee discount on damn near everything, and a legal assistance benefit.  The discount was so good, the company had to safeguard who all got the discount cards, mine had a photo id on it so that no one else could use it.  My wife was not eligible for health care coverage at P&G because I already had a family coverage plan, and they never offerered legal assistance.

At the time, I was a full on 'drink the cool aid' unionist, and she applied to WalMart, in part, to yank my chain.  She even noted during her interview that she was married to a 'salt' union orgainizer in the construction trades. (I can't remember why that even came up)  It didn't even matter, she got the job without issues.  She was, quite literally, the smartest person in the store anytime she was there.   She was offered management after 9 months, but didn't want full time work.  She only quit that job because the demands of increasing motherhood and homeschooling took precidence, and considering that I have made over $100K every year for nearly a decade now, we really didn't need the (by then) $8.50 an hour cashier's work.

I know from second hand experience that, although WalMart certainly isn't the greatest employer ever, it's nothing like what it's often portrayed as in union propaganda.  I may not have a 'global' perspective, but I certainly do have a 'local' one.  From where I've been standing, your worldview makes no sense.

And I know from first hand experience that while Wal-Mart is decidedly anti-union, it's a very good employer. Reasonable pay, very nice benefits. And no other breakroom I've ever been in has had rotisserie chicken up for grabs in it - even occasionally.

BTW, if you have ever heard the statistic that many unions put out about how a part-time employee at Wal-mart is so much more likely to be collecting welfare or some other government aid while working than, say, Target.  (often referred to as the 'working poor')  The legal assistance benefit is the reason why; because in many states (particularly California) a single mother is eligible for a great deal of government aid at a much higher annual salary than, say, your unemployed white male under 40.  The legal aid department was very good at identifying aid programs for which these part-time single mom's qualfied for.  It's not that the part-time single mom's who worked at Target didn't qualfiy, they just didn't know to apply.  My wife never qualfied for any of that crap because she was married, I was working full time, and she's white; but she did know a few cashiers who were able to get something along those lines even in Kentucky due to the help of legal aid.  My wife wouldn't have wanted a handout anyway, but learning about that perk and how it's commonly used greatly affected my perspectives regarding Walmart and the trustworthyness of the propaganda that spewed forth from my union.  That revelation might have been the turning point for me; as I was once a Democrat so blue that I was a county delegate to the Demcratic Party's state convention.

Hell, as a still younger man, I was a card carrying Green!

If you are not a communist at 20, then you have no heart; if you are still a communist at 40 then you have no sense.

And if you are a capitalist collectivist (collectivist capitalist) at 60, you are somebody without any knowledge about history.

I know all these utopian and ahistorical arguments of the so called ancaps very well, and I found, that most of these enthusiasts are employees, not self-employed. They even don't realise, that they are enslaved. They are too busy to think, while the real homines sapientes in the non-business-doing communities in the rain forests are dancing and living. This enthusiasm with production, markets and trade within a worldwide hypercollective has its origin in the christian labor (slave-) ethos, and the ancaps are unfortunate victims of this collectivist religion which is destroying the planet with exponentially increasing speed. Collective, suicidal folly in perfection. The opposite of this collective, sucidal folly is represented by tribalism, where we find no growth and no expansion, either economically or territorially.

I hate that phrase.  I was never a communist or socialist if you prefer.  I knew it was nonsense even back then before I learned anything about libertarianism.

How about this,

If upon learning of libertarianism you don't embrace it then you have no heart and it doesn't matter what age you are. 

I like that better.  I left "not having a brain out" deliberately.

For a start Ancaps are NOT utopians.

Yes, I am enslaved.  Here's how I define slavery.  Being forced to give up the fruits of your labours.  Having authorities tell you what you can and can't do, where you can and can't live and under what circumstances you will be permitted to earn money.    All of this comes not from any justified authority, merely from historical tradition which when you examine it closely is revealed as complete BS.  ie.  the situation we are in right now that ancaps seek to extricate ourselves and everyone else from.

And what does it matter if an ancap is an employee or self-employed?

If the real people are dancing and living in the rain-forests why not go join them?  Is it because it is a life of virtual poverty?  There's a reason most people don't do that kind of thing anymore.

Black and pink flag o'er here!

Confirmed for scab union boss.
My gender's on my profile. I'd prefer kiddo. That "I dont know what capitalism is" is your whole arguement.
Capitalists see reds everywhere.