Bitcoin Forum

Hey,

I have no feelings against any type of politics (except mild+ authoritarianist governments). In principle I really like the idea of personal freedom- everyone can do whatever they want as long as it doesn't affect me. However everyone is not a separate island and we do all affect each other. I'm going to illustrate with 3 examples:

In the UK seatbelts are mandatory otherwise you get a fine. All cars come equipped with seatbelts. I love seatbelts since they significantly reduce the risk to my life by many orders of magnitude. In Iran not many people wear seatbelts. Often many cars just don't have them. So if I want to take a taxi then I can only have the choice to risk the taxi or not take it. Add to this that road laws are virtually non-existant and
cars just swamp the roads (meaning road accidents are super high). My life is endangered by someone else having their freedom.

In the UK it is illegal to smoke indoors. Otherwise I would be the single person in a group that boycotts places which allow indoor smoking. Either my life is endangered through risk to my health by someone else having their freedom, or I am a lonely person. As someone with bad asthma, it's killing when in other poorer countries people smoke everywhere and I can hardly breathe.

Immunisation only works once a majority of the population has been vaccinated. Vaccination does not prevent you getting an illness- only makes it less likely. In this way the disease is less likely to transfer across to another person and it's more difficult to spread. So difficult that it disappears. However for the individual, it's not worth the cost. And for immunisation to be effective, it needs mass mobilisation. Who would organise a state-wide immunisation campaign for a net loss?

Thanks. Looking forward to feedback.

From my idea of an anarchocommunist
Some one has to pay for the roads the people that pay should create local rules. Its this road feels like then need seatbelts due to the amouth of cars they will have them. Also taxi with seatbelts will have more customers so they will want to have seatbelts.
People arent evil, they will respect you and maybe have smoking room.
If its an communistic anarchy there is no cash or class so whoever discovers the vaccine will give it out for free. Also people that dont partake in the communist areas will not get vaccination areas can trade goods to get it for themselves if they want it.
Hope this shows a point. Once again this is how i would solve them it maybe THAT STUPID not everyone is that nice. People are born evil. BUT I HOPE THOSE people answer his question and not my answers.

One thing that is important to make clear: free markets push to the best optimization in resource usage, balancing people demands and the scarcity of resources.

Nobody knows in advance what is the best optimization. That's the knowledge problem, better described by Hayek.

That said, let's try to answer you...


Until here it's just a matter of personal choice. It's simply absurd to punish somebody for taking risks, or force manufactures to put more safety devices on their cars.
I always wear the seatbelt and I find stupid not to. But I know people who simply detest the seatbelt and always avoid using them...


The lack of seatbelts in taxis and lack of smoke-free environments are a similar "issue".
You would like to have them, as I would. But these things come with a cost. Do you know if the cost for a bar owner for ex. to make his environment smoke-free are smaller than the benefits he would get of it? If they aren't, forcing them by law would be destroying wealth. If they are, then you don't need to force, he would do out of his self interest. In the Brazilian state I come from, as well in France where I live, such laws were approved in recent years. Many business owners reported losses due to such limits. In France, many people go out to smoke, making noise that pisses off the neighbors... that's a negative externality of the law, a cost payed either by the neighbors or by the business owner if he has to deal with the police... you see, there are several implications.

Remember: profit = wealth creation. That's because when someone has profit, s/he consumes X and produces Y where Y is more valuable for the society than X. The same way, losses means wealth destruction.

Regarding seatbelts, it's true that it's quite cheap to have them on the taxis, but maybe if taxists don't do it, it's because most of their customers prefer to pay a bit less than to have safety. I don't know how is Iran economy situation, maybe they're missing a bit more capitalism so they can produce things cheaper. Don't the sanctions they suffer make cars particular expensive for the population?

If you have free-markets for a while, society gets so rich that you can have stronger and more specialized competition. You'd eventually have the possibility to satisfy the most strict "tastes". Smoke-free environments would eventually come up, and safer taxis would probably come faster I guess.


Now, about traffic laws, that's lack of property rights. Every road and street should have owners, which should be free to set the traffic laws on their property. This way things would converge for an optimal solution for the culture/region in question.
By the way, you say lack of rules causes more accidents, but that's questionable... in Holland they've done some interesting experiments showing quite the opposite: http://www.examiner.com/civil-liberties-in-national/at-least-with-traffic-fewer-rules-make-for-better-behavior (http://www.examiner.com/civil-liberties-in-national/at-least-with-traffic-fewer-rules-make-for-better-behavior)


This is a non-issue. People self-interest will make them look for immunization. Private health insurances could require them as well. People wouldn't do it only when the immunization benefits don't outcome the costs (say, a very expensive vaccine for a disease not that dangerous..)

Try spending the day with a one-year old.  That might change your mind. ;D

I will say this again and again ad nauseam.

Incentives matter.

Free markets do not push to the most optimal resource allocation possible (aka "global optimum").

They simply push to a point in resource allocation space where no further optimisation by incremental change is possible (aka "local optimum").

In the real world the nature of resources and demand is changing all the time, so the market jumps from one local optimum to the next.


This property of free markets can be illustrated in a very simple economy:

Two identical ice cream vendors on a 1km long beach with a uniform density of customers.

There are only two variables in resource optimisation space: The position (x) of each ice cream vendor. The further away a customer is lying from a vendor, the less likely she is to make the trip to buy the ice cream.

The most optimal resource allocation would be if the ice cream vendors were evenly spread out (something like x1 = 250m and x2 =750m). In this configuration nobody ever has to walk further than 250m to buy an ice cream.

But in a free market, where the ice cream vendors compete against each other, this configuration is unstable. They would gradually migrate towards the middle of the beach (slowly grabbing each other's customers) until the free market equilibrium is reached where x1 = 500m and x2= 500m.  This equilibrium is globally suboptimal.

The answers go:

Your body, your decision.

The restauranteur's property, their decision.

Your body, your decision.

Good ideas so far- thanks.


Immunisation is a loss for the individual. For the group it is a gain. This is not a hard concept.

Example:
Voting is -EV (negative expected value). I have to waste time, effort, energy... And my vote has nearly 0 effect.
However the cumulative effect of a whole population voting is a gain for everyone together (from the viewpoint of getting people to vote).

In that same way, immunisation for an individual is useless unless a critical mass of the population also immunises themselves at the same time. For me it's a slightly -EV choice. For everyone together, it's massively +EV.

It's called The Insurance Company.

Insurance want to reduce chance of insuree getting into hospital. Perform a cost analysis, decides that it's cheaper to have everyone be immunized. Offer discount for immunization, moreso if x clients sign up....

Well, you get the idea.

This makes sense- that markets move towards peaks. This suggests that valleys pose a serious problem to the evolution of markets. Especially since evolution in nature doesn't only change incrementally (there's other selection processes which produce many forms very rapidly).

Can you explain why the vendors shift from a uniform to a normal distribution? What strategy causes this?

Would like to chat more with you and discuss ideas if you're on IRC or email.

I'm mostly libertarian, although I'm sure the more pure libertarians here would call me a fuzzy-headed socialist.

Anyway, for seatbelts:

Be careful comparing rich, Western countries to poorer countries.  As we get richer we value personal safety more, so we demand things like seat belts and air bags in our cars.

I believe that our politicians see that demand, then jump on the bandwagon and pass laws that basically everybody thinks are a Good Idea, and then take credit for making us safer.

I'm not 100% certain that is true for seatbelts; I haven't actually looked at the graph of traffic fatalities over time, to see if there is a bend in the curve when seatbelt legislation is passed.

For smoking:  we shouldn't be allowed to do things that hurt, or have a "reasonable" chance to hurt, other people.  Personally, I waffle back and forth over whether second-hand smoke imposes an unreasonable chance of harm on others.

I've looked at the evidence, and it seems that only people exposed to repeated, long-term secondhand smoke have an increased risk of death.  Like spouses or children of smokers.  And the smoking bans NEVER apply to private residences.  So again, I think politicians may just be jumping on the bandwagon and passing feel-good laws that do no good (although in the last couple of days I read that it looks like grotesque images on cigarette packs ARE measurably effective at reducing smoking).

For vaccinations:  "herd immunity" from vaccinations is a true "public good,"  in the strict economic definition of "public good." (http://econlib.org/library/Enc/PublicGoods.html)  I think it is fine and dandy for the government to provide true public goods, either directly or (usually better) by supporting/subsidizing private industry.  Follow this link (http://econlib.org/library/Enc/PublicGoods.html) for a reasonable, very-smart, mostly-libertarian perspective on public goods.

@Gavin:

Seatbelt law: Fail to wear a seatbelt, you're fined. Fail to pay: http://www.nostate.com/116/the-penalty-is-always-death/

Smoking: You run a restaurant in a district that bans indoor smoking in "public" places. You're fined. Fail to pay: http://www.nostate.com/116/the-penalty-is-always-death/

Vaccination: You refuse to have your child vaccinated. Vaccination is required for school. School is compulsory. You fail to deliver your child to school. You are cited. Fail to comply: http://www.nostate.com/116/the-penalty-is-always-death/

Sure, we all want good outcomes. But the paths we take to get to them is of overriding importance.

AIDS comes from a polio vaccine.

I know most scientists think it is not true, but I'm still waiting for a better explanation.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OPV_AIDS_hypothesis

Would that be any different in an anarchy though? If you violate a contract the other party will demand compensation, if you fail to compensate they will attempt taking the compensation by force by hiring a PDA, if you resist that force by threatening to retaliate with violence, the PDA will also retaliate with violence, etc....

Eventually, if you refuse to negotiate and keep resisting, the outcome is likely to be death too, even in an anarchy.

The only difference is that under a state you enter certain contracts automatically (the act of getting a driving license and getting inside a car means an implicit contract between you and the state).

@forever:

Part of the background idea is that, absent a state, any kind of enforcement of forcible sanctions against victimless "crimes" would be prohibitively expensive.

To blow up your example, would you voluntarily contract with an entity that demanded compliance-or-death as part of their contractual terms? I wouldn't.

In any case, the whole seatbelt thing goes out the window in a voluntary society. The professed reason for seatbelt laws is to protect people. The real reason for them is to defend the privilege of the medical establishment/insurance against having to provide care under overbroad conceptions of insurance, coupled with state must-treat mandates (which themselves are a feeble attempt to balance the aforementioned privilege). If you're an operator of a roadway network in a free society, what possible motivation do you have to compel your customers to wear seatbelts? Okay, maybe some of your client base dies as a result of stupidity, and you lose revenue, but I doubt those costs come anywhere near the audit and enforcement costs.

Mind you, in a real free market you'd probably have a hell of a time getting medical insurance as a driver who habitually didn't use the seatbelt. But that's a matter in which your insurance carrier simply drops you as too risky or penalizes you via your premium. Again, no motivation to shoot you.

Secondhand smoke has been shown time and again to be harmful, and other people who are regularly exposed to it include waitstaff at bars/restaurants, for example.

You can argue that it's not the government's place to regulate that, and I'd pretty much agree with you, but if you think you shouldn't do things that harm others, or allow people to do so in your establishment, for example, then you shouldn't be smoking indoors around non-smokers or allowing smoking in your (owned) place of business.

Why would this be the most optimal resource allocation?

If your goal is to make ice cream available to the masses, then it make sense to allocate to places where people actually will buy ice creams?

There is something wrong on your quoting, kiba. I didn't say that. That was a response to me, actually...

Aren't you confusing free markets with gradient vectors? :D


Seriously now, what you may be calling global optimum (the "perfect" situation) is humanly unreacheable. My statement would have been better if I had said "free markets push to the best possible optimization in resource usage".

The "global optimum" is humanly unreacheable because it's humanly impossible to know all the information necessary to reach it, since we are dealing with people's opinion here, which are subjective. That is what I meant by my bold phrase above. It's impossible to know in advance what would be the best optimization.
Your own example is flawed, as kiba already noticed:



How do you know?
What if there are lots of ice cream lovers on an area of the beach, and a lot of women on permanent diet on another area?
What if some custumers won't take their lazy asses out of their chairs for an ice cream, but may eventually buy one when the seller passes by?
And by the way, your condition of "uniform density of custumers" is by itself impractical too.

What you did was a small attempt of central planning for a small economy example, and as you can see, you could already have done lots of mistakes. Now imagine how many mistakes will be done when you try to central plan a true economy. Nobody has the necessary information. If you let the free market process act, it will create the best set of incentives so that the individual actions benefit the entire society. Every time you initiate force though, you will be creating a bad incentive, either by distorcing prices, externalizing costs etc.

Why?
I've been taking vitamin C every morning since the wheather started getting cold... how effective that is compared to vaccines? People do like to protect themselves.

And even if it's true what you say, and immunization is a loss for the individual (I can't see it this way...), it's still interesting for insurance companies to come up with incentives for people to take vaccines.
Actually, some authors predict that many of the rules today imposed by governments would be demanded by insurance companies. You may want to read "The Chaos Theory", from Robert Murphy (http://mises.org/books/chaostheory.pdf). It is a short book where he tries to predict how many things could work in a free society. He talks a lot about insurances.

This is a typical bland "central planning" solution. The free market admits much more flexible systems.

One vendor may employ a junior to take an ice cream cart to bring the wares to the furthest parts of the beach. The vendors might stagger their hours, with one starting early and one finishing late, and both serving the market during its peak. A third mobile vendor might cruise the length of the beach to service anyone who doesn't want to walk. Vendors might develop specializations (e.g. deluxe ice creams, or perhaps shaded seating) that would encourage some customers to visit them even if they aren't the closest vendor.

A free market is always much more interesting and vibrant than a planned one, even if it is "imperfect" according to someone's theory.

Considering that they passed the law, I have a hard time believing that there aren't other people who would have a demand for non smoking restaurants.

As gavin mentioned, the state just latches on to wherever it sees majority sentiment is. It pretty much boils down to this realization by government: Some people are still letting people smoking in their restaurants, but people are starting to be unhappy about it generally. There won't be enough people complaining about this to hurt us so we can take money from them until they comply with no risk to us.

Anarchy allows you to build whatever community you choose. I'd prefer a tribal community where people are organized by clan and sub clan with a mixture of commonly held clan property and private property along with very rigid social norms instead of laws. Why I prefer this is none of your business. Go build your own community which may include seat belt laws, no public smoking, etc. etc.

Things get interesting when the interests of two communities conflict. The cheapest and most civilized way to deal with this is through compromise. A network of alliances with neighboring communities raises the incentive to compromise for both parties. If one alliance gets too big and powerful, then 4th generation warfare is a tried and true tactic for tacking down global superpowers.

Thank you kiba.  As always.  I'm going to have to start a kiba fan page one of these days...

No, it is not a case of cheaper total cost for insurance companies. There are good math and epidemiology behind the drive to immunize everyone. Start by looking up herd immunity. Consider that for an epidemic to occur a certain critical number of susceptible people must exist within a certain area. Vaccines change those numbers such that it is much harder for an epidemic to occur. People are getting complacent because we have good vaccine coverage now and thinking that they can safely go without. As a result we are seeing outbreaks of terrible and dangerous diseases that have long been thought gone by the general public.

There is no good math behind immunizing everyone. A vast majority will do it willingly or even pay, they you have to turn up the pressure more and more to get the remnant. There will be a group who will resist you violently for sure. On top of this the marginal benefit is going down as nearly everyone is already protected. Imagine the very last person who isn't immunized, how much risk is he to the heard? And he'd rather die than have you stick a needle in him.

In a free world a balance will emerge. People don't want to get sick and plenty of people get a good feeling from helping others, even strangers.   Forcing people is bad and leads to bad results.

I'm curious as to which were gone and are back. I just watched the House where they thought Small Pox was back.

Whooping cough (pertussis) is a good recent example: http://www.usatoday.com/news/health/2009-05-26-whooping-cough_N.htm

Are you telling me you think that all of epidemiology is bullshit? Are you familiar with predator-prey systems and the like?

Oh, no. Only that the onus is on the person who thinks it's a good idea to convince people using words, not guns. 

The fact that rate of contracting whooping cough is 23x higher is a huge incentive, I'm not sure why you think people who turn that down are going to care if you threaten them. Plus it's common sense to a lot of people that you don't force someone to do things that are good for them, so you probably lower immunization compared to a non-force method, like good education.

Once you introduce more ice cream vendors and more types of ice cream, you are changing the parameters of resource allocation space. 

But even this new space has certain constraints (scarcity of resources), so mathematically, there will exist a new global optimum somewhere.

The free market may or may not lead to this global optimum, but it's by no means guaranteed.

I agree that the constraints of 1) there may be only two ice cream vendors 2) there may be only one type of ice cream, are somewhat artificial.

Still, this simplified model illustrates the general idea.

I'm not suggesting forcing people, and I agree with Epictetus who said, "Only the educated are free". I only meant to counter the sentiment the vaccination is some cost-saving measure cooked up by insurance companies. Unfortunately, regardless of eduction, there always seems to be some portion of the population who would rather believe the simple, easy answer than the more complicated, difficult one, even if the latter is the truthful one. I suppose there's not much to be done about them but try to make the vaccines better for the people that will use them.

There is just no good reason why one should put something in someone's healthy body without his agreement.  No matter how hard you tried to convince him.  If at the end you failed, you just can't force him.  Period.

I can't really call myself a libertarian or an anarchist, but I'll give it a go:

The roads' owners will make the rules to which drivers and their vehicles must adhere. However, if someone controls a pass for which no other reasonable alternatives exits and that person tries to enforce an unreasonable unicycles-only rule, the people have the right to re-appropriate that pass.

Libertarian ideology doesn't satisfy me in addressing this example. Unlike most other drug use, smoking tobacco, cannabis, or whatever doesn't require a specific context to put others at risk besides proximity. While consuming drugs differently, one typically has to try to operate a heavy machine in order to impinge upon others. We share the air and I see no wrong in communities collectively deciding how best to use it.

The government should not force immunization on the people, but I see no wrong on schools forcing it on students, businesses forcing it on employees, or hospitals and insurance plans forcing it on customers.

Exceptions are of course, dangerous.

We invent it in the time of danger, never to waver again. Sometime we invent exceptions so we can arrest that person we don't like.

True, but don't we need reasonable contingencies for unreasonable behavior?

You have to think through your example.

Suppose that bridge have access to a single village and the bridge owner decides to institute an annoying rule to annoy travelers and village people. That village will die out. The bridge will fall into disrepair and the owner will be left with a bridge that doesn't make any money.

In other words, the bridge owner have some incentive to maintain links or else he have to find another job.

Of course, if he doesn't have a profit motive, that's another matter.

However, the same thing can happen to people who put their money into a scam, or willingly sell the bridge to an evil property owner who have preferences outside of human norms.

If you institute a regulatory authority of some kind or have some kind of mob rules, the rule of laws will disappear, and the uncertainty cost will increase. This lead to less capital formation that alleviate your bridge problem.

Seat belt laws are not designed to protect people, they are designed to give police a blanket excuse to intimidate. If the police were directed by their masters to actually protect the citizens, why are the police more responsible for violence and murder than any other organised group?

Anti-smoking laws (and anti-drink driving laws) are not designed to protect people, they are designed to kill the public houses and restaurants where people talk to each other about the issues of concern. It is far safer for the tyrants to have everyone at home watching TV. All revolutions in the history on my race have started in the beer halls.

Forced immunisation might have started with good intention but that has been subverted. Now it's just another method of conditioning the masses to do as they are told, to make the impression that the government (that is owned by the secret wire pullers) owns the people and not the other way around. Consider that if the programs were truly for our benefit, why are people often poisoned? Why did the recent bullshit flu epidemic kill almost nobody but the vaccine killed thousands, including one of my own dear friends. Forced vaccinations is the "killer app". I predict that someday after everyone is lined up for some required injection, the whole mass of them will either die, become sterile or homosexual. Oops - sorry! Genocide in a syringe.

What if the bridge owner suddenly became evil. Must the village put up with him?

If a bridge owner knows he is not evil, and if only evil doers have to fear the mob, where is the uncertainty?

What is this I don't even

The mobs might just be looking at him as a witchhunwfricklet.

Human judgement are fickle.

However, you could easily solve this problem by villagers owning the bridge outright.

In my country (somewhere in the south of Europe) the cars got seat belts before it was mandatory by the government to wear them, so it was just a matter of choice.

Yes! The thing many people fail to realize when it comes to anarchy, is that the freedom to design your community as you see fit will end up with thousands of different blends of local governance (or no governance,) private property, common property, public property, vice laws, no vice laws, etc. etc., all existing side by side. Anarcho-capitalism doesn't have all the answers, neither does social anarchism.

I see many advantages to common ownership (and even public ownership) of certain infrastructure and resources at a hyper-local level. Ancaps may see things differently, and design their communities accordingly.

Vinnie is spot on here.

Oh sure. Anarchy is short-sighted and immature.

Consider "Area F" of Nanaimo has no building code or official community plan. They have an asphalt plant in a residential area and a sawmill next door to the elementary school.

I'm thinking of starting a dogfish rendering plant in the mobile home park. Maybe I'll buy the bridge over to that part of town and demand tribute in song from all who want to cross.

Go Anarchists Go! And go more - just keep going - past the sewage treatment plant in the backyard of the seafood restaurant - go go go!

What properties of anarchism allow for such a scenario?

I doubt anyone will want to live in that community.

My mother's tribe has no building codes or official community plan yet maintain a peaceful, quiet coexistence with one another via a strong culture of social norms and family ties. This community is called Taos Pueblo, and is about 1500 years old.

Oh, they do. It's highly coveted land, and many free thinkers live there, but their anarchistic ways are causing problems now.

>My mother's tribe has no building codes or official community plan yet maintain a peaceful, quiet coexistence with one another via a strong culture of social norms and family ties. This community is called Taos Pueblo, and is about 1500 years old.

Oh PUHLEEZE! Stone aged savages existing on the handouts provided by another race. Find something else to be proud of.

That's about the only thing I admire about anarchy - it does not interfere with Darwinism or run counter to the principle of survival of the fittest like the current "pay monkeys to breed" program currently dragging humanity down to the lowest common denominator.

Oh please indeed. You shouldn't talk smack about things you know nothing about.

Nanaimogold seem to have gone irrational.

Nanaimo, under what circumstances is it okay for people to initiate aggression against me in your opinion?

Maybe we use 'anarchy' differently, but if your answer is never then that is just semantics. 

You bring this racist shit into almost every post you make.

> My mother's tribe has no building codes or official community plan yet maintain a peaceful, quiet coexistence with one another via a strong culture of social norms and family ties. This community is called Taos Pueblo, and is about 1500 years old.

No building code or community plan? Try to build something there. You will be told that you don't have permission and your vision is not part of the plan.

No code or plan. The place is basically a human zoo exhibit governed by the federal government. But in your twisted mind there is some racial superiority at play.

Assault or property crime is an offense as described by the code of law that distinguishes civilization from savagery.

Anarchy is life without rules and is impossible for social creatures.

Where I live you can't dig a post hole without finding a murder victim. Life under anarchy is short and brutish to be sure.

Anarchy is no ruler, not no law.

I must be bothering you. Sorry about that. What I speak of has less to do with race and more to do with cultural context. As far as building a community, cultural context has everything to do with anarchy. As far as I am aware it is in these off topic discussion on anarchy, etc. that I bring my experiences up. They are examples of different ways people can organize themselves, and they are proven to work.


I have built something there. It's rather nice to have the freedom to build whatever kind of home you want, with whatever materials you want, without having to ask anyone's permission. Outside of that it is very socially restrictive to live there; there are some areas of life where there is complete freedom, and in others there is very little. The important aspect of this particular example is that residents here have the option of moving 2 miles down the road and into a typical American community if they want to. I'd like to multiply the options of communities available to everyone, so that if your local clan elders, mayor, city council, *whatever* starts making your life hell you can just pack up and leave them to rot in their little fiefdom while you find a better place to live.


::)

We have rebelled twice against those who claim to govern us, once against the Spanish (successful) and once against the US (unsuccessful.) There are indeed severe problems in Indian Country. Dependence on social services is one of them. Our traditional system of governance and economy was smashed and replaced with dependence. I'm not too happy about that and am working to remind my respective tribes that these handouts are poison, fed to us by our "zoo" keepers to keep us inept and out of the way. In short, I'm working to rebuild truly independent tribal nations. Economic independence is high on my list of priorities. You should be happy about that.

It appears we are speaking of very different definitions of anarchy. No serious anarchist I know advocates for Hobbes' state of nature. Many younger leftist anarchists are misguided into thinking that they need to smash all authority, property, rules, laws, etc. These are really just bleeding heart progressive liberals who care more about race and gender issues (and being totalitarian about it) rather than allowing people to live and organize themselves as they see fit.

Icelandic Commonwealth (930–1262)

Classical ("Thing system") Iceland (also called the Icelandic Commonwealth or the Icelandic Free State) was an example of society where police and justice were guaranteed through a free market.
This Icelandic "Thing system" survived for several centuries. It was eventually destroyed by the Christian church, which bought up all the godards (defense agencies) creating a state monopoly.

PWNED BY CHURCH

Libertatia (1670s–1690s)

Libertatia was a legendary free colony forged by pirates and the pirate Captain Misson, although some historians have expressed doubts over its existence outside of literature. Historian and activist Marcus Rediker describes the pirates as follows:

These pirates who settled in Libertalia would be "vigilant Guardians of the People's Rights and Liberties"; they would stand as "Barriers against the Rich and Powerful" of their day. By waging war on behalf of "the Oppressed" against the "Oppressors," they would see that "Justice was equally distributed."[11]

The pirates were against the various forms of authoritarian social constructs of their day, monarchies, slavery, and capital. The pirates practiced forms of direct democracy, where the people as a whole held the authority to make laws and rules, and used systems of councils with delegates, who were supposed to think of themselves as "comerads" of the general population, and not rulers. The pirates created a new language for their colony and operated a socialist economy.

MIGHT HAVE HAPPENED

Free Territory (Ukraine) (1918-1921)
In March 1918, Russia (led by the Bolsheviks), the Ukrainian People's Republic, and the Central Powers, signed the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk to pull Russia out of World War I. The Treaty resulted in the occupation of the territory of the weak Ukrainian state by the German and Austro-Hungarian empires. This was done without consulting Ukrainian population. Various insurgence groups arose, including the Revolutionary Insurrectionary Army of Ukraine, led by the anarcho-communist Nestor Makhno. They won popular support due to their attacks on the Austro-Hungarian puppet-leader Hetman Skoropadsky and the Nationalist Petliurists.
Although the movement was forced to spend great energy and resources to fight off the invaders, they still managed to carry out a social revolution according to the principles of anarchism.
The Makhnovist movement was quite a threat to the Bolsheviks. The Bolsheviks clung to the idea that the “masses” were unable to carry out a social revolution on their own and perform self-management. This was proven wrong by the Makhnovist movement, prompting Bolshevik attacks. Even in the military area it seemed that the anarchist answer was superior. The Makhnovists defeated on several occasions armies up to 30 times their size, and had great morale.

LATER PWNED BY OUTSIDE FORCE

Autonomous Shinmin region (1929–1932)

The apex of Korean anarchism came in late 1929 outside the actual borders of the country, in Manchuria. Over two million Korean immigrants lived in Manchuria at the time when the Korean Anarchist Communist Federation (KACF) declared the Shinmin province autonomous and under the administration of the Korean People’s Association. The decentralized, federative structure the association adopted consisted of village councils, district councils and area councils, all of which operated in a cooperative manner to deal with agriculture, education, finance and other vital issues. An Army to fight for the defense of Shinmin was also set up and spearheaded by the prominent Korean Anarchist Kim Jwa-jin which had great successes against the Imperial Japanese Army and the Bolshevik Red Army, using hit-and-run guerrilla tactics. KACF sections in China, Korea, Japan and elsewhere devoted all their energies towards the success of the Shinmin Rebellion, most of them actually relocating there. Dealing simultaneously with the Soviet Union's attempts to overthrow the Shinmin autonomous region and Japan’s imperialist attempts to claim the region for itself, the Korean anarchists had been crushed by 1932

LATER PWNED BY OUTSIDE FORCE

Spanish Revolution (1936–1938)
Much of Spain's economy was put under direct worker control; in anarchist strongholds like Catalonia, the figure was as high as 75%, but lower in areas with heavy Socialist influence. Factories were run through worker committees, agrarian areas became collectivized and run as libertarian communes. Even places like hotels, barber shops, and restaurants were collectivized and managed by their workers.
The communes were run according to the basic principle of "From each according to his ability, to each according to his need", without any Marxist dogma attached. In some places, money was entirely eliminated. Despite the critics clamoring for maximum efficiency, anarchic communes often produced more than before the collectivization. The newly liberated zones worked on entirely egalitarian principles; decisions were made through councils of ordinary citizens without any sort of bureaucracy.

PWNED BY OUTSIDE MILITARY

Hungarian Revolution (1956)
The Hungarian Revolution of 1956 can be seen as an excellent example of a functioning anarchy. From October 22, 1956, Hungarian workers refused to obey their managers or their government, in the face of authoritarian soviet rule. Claiming sovereignty for their own workers' councils they organized economic, military and social production on an increasing scale. An example of the anarchic social organization was that vast sums of money were freely donated for injured revolutionary fighters, and that this money was left unattended in the street for days at a time. Peasants supplied the workers with food on a voluntary basis. Between October 22 and December 14 Hungary's economy and society was governed by the democratic opinion of workers councils and voluntary associations.

PWNED BY SOVIETS

Freetown Christiania (1971–present)

Christiania was founded in 1971, when a group of hippie squatters occupied an abandoned military barracks in Copenhagen, Denmark. One of the more influential people involved was Jacob Ludvigsen, who published an anarchist newspaper which widely proclaimed the establishment of the free town. The people of Christiania developed their own set of rules—independent of the Danish government—which include the prohibition of cars, stealing, guns, bulletproof vests and hard drugs. Cameras are not allowed, and locals will wave their hands and shout "No photo!" if they see a picture being taken. Famous for its main drag, known as "Pusher Street" as hash was sold openly from permanent stands until 2004. Such commerce is controversial, but cannot be removed without complete community consensus. For years the legal status of the region was in limbo, as the Danish government attempted, without success, to remove the squatters.

STILL UP MAY NOT BE PERFECT

Zapatista Autonomous Municipalities (1994-present)
The indigenous peoples of Southern Mexico rebelled in 1994, partially in response to the signing of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), reclaiming their lands in what is called "a war against oblivion".
Laws in the Zapatista Autonomous Municipalities are not passed by "leaders", as such, but by "Good Government Councils" and by the will of the people (representatives in these councils are truly representative of their communities, rather than professional politicians). This is very similar to the delegate structure that many anarchists engage in with spokescouncils, or with unions. In many communities, general assemblies gather during the week to decide on various things facing the community. The assemblies are open to all, with no formal hierarchy. The decisions made by the communities are passed to elected delegates whose only job is to give the decided upon information to a council of delegates.[clarification needed] Like anarcho-syndicalist organizations, the delegates are recallable, and are also rotated. This way, massive numbers of people are able to decide things with no formal hierarchy, and without people speaking for them.

SOME AREAS TAKEN BACK BY MILITARY STILL UP

INTERNET EXAMPLES
Aspects of the Free Software community, like the Free Software movement, the GNU Project and its copyleft principle are a type of a gift economy for information and software; a gift economy is the preferred economic system of anarcho-communists.[67] Programmers make the source code of their programs available for anyone to copy, modify and improve. Individual programmers gain prestige and respect, and the community benefits from better software. Markus Giesler, in his ethnography Consumer Gift Systems, explored music downloading as a system of social solidarity based on gift transactions.[68][69] Some organizations such as online commons (such as the Wikimedia Commons), wikis and Indymedia are held up as examples of functioning anarcho-communistic organizations.

DONT REALLY COUNT BUT...

Stuff in bold is how it got crushed, as you can see non fell apart from the inside due to murder or violence, I don't count Somalia as a anarchy due to it being run by unofficial governments like the crime gangs financed by the USgov, there where a short period at the beginning where it improved the region compared to the rest of South Africa.

I'm referring to getting off of the teet of federal "assistance." So I suppose what I mean is being self sufficient.

Self sufficient mean making your own food, house, etc. Interdependent mean that you are relying on trade partners, and trade partners relying on you.

This. Self sufficient in that we pay our own way and certainly engage in trade to do it.

I really hate the "show me where it worked before" thing.

All I'm suggesting is that the world will be better if people don't initiate violence on each other. I could give a damn whether this has happened on a large scale in history. That said, history is interesting.

+1

When chattel slavery still existed, opponents of abolitionists would cry, "Oh show me where freeing slaves worked before."  or "How are the slaves going to feed themselves???"

You don't know what you're talking about.

This kind of thing is trivially taken care of by property prices. The sawmill will buy the land next to the asphalt plant, because no-one wants to live there. The land by the school will cost a little more, and people will choose to use it for living rather than for a sawmill that doesn't gain any advantage from being near a school.

There may be some problems to be solved by voluntarists, but land use planning is not one of them.

There can be no liberty without personal responsibility.

Anarchy is what we have now. The government has no rulers or rules as it clearly ignores its own "laws" and agreements. The slaves are expected to follow arbitrary dictates of the kleptocracy and property rights are non existent.

Somalia actually has a thriving airline and telecommunications sector. Look it up if you dont believe me . :)