Oh God. Hipsters playing with fusion. We're doomed. Have a bitcoin.

You could always set your own exchange rate.

However, the spontaneous organization and self management in Cairo's central square seems anarchistic, even if the protesters don't actually seek anarchy in Egypt.

Dairy farms can also make use of the spent grain from the brewing process. Cattle will eat it. The spent grain can also be fermented to produce methane fuel, or combined with peanut butter to make dog biscuits.

As for distribution of the brewery's profits, I would think that it would go according to the total amount that each worker will have invested. In addition to their labor, the original workers will have also had to acquire the building and equipment. It seems fair that they should receive more of the profits. Over time, as the brewery grows, the new workers' labor investments will grow larger than the original workers. I think the cooperative would also have to allow for outside investment. For example, if a builders collective builds the building which houses the brewery, their work would count as an investment entitling them to a decreasing share of the brewery's future profits. I don't think such an arrangement would qualify as unduly capitalistic because the profits get distributed according to real contributions. Furthermore, the workers could always refuse or undervalue investments that would otherwise reduce their shares to nothing.

Anarcho-capitalism seems to have come about out of a misunderstanding of anarchism which opposes both the state and capitalism, although not necessarily markets. Think of it as listening to someone confuse tea with coffee: both hot, liquid, contain caffeine, and served in similar cups, but not the same. People understandably get frustrated when they ask for coffee and get tea. Anarcho-capitalists shouldn't take offense with the correction. In and of itself, it doesn't mean anarcho-capitalists hold an indefensible position, but rather one that simply doesn't qualify as an anarchistic.

The brewery workers would also have to deal with capitalistic suppliers and customers. I wonder if workers would pay less taxes if they filed as co-owners instead of employees.

You seem to imply that God has some kind of authority over you. Contradiction?

Nor do they necessarily have any interest in trading fairly. Desperate workers and tenants benefit employers and landlords most of all, as long as their discontent isn't so great as to provoke mutiny.

Anyway, I'm not trying to argue for one type of political theory or another. I'm just not convinced that anarcho-capitalism is anarchism. If I thought it was, I would have never created the thread. I doubt a brewery would function differently under anarcho-capitalist ideals than most do in our current society. How workers of a traditional anarchist persuasion might create, run, and make a living off of one interests me much more.

Do your friends have a navy? In the tradition of individualist anarchism, I think, I don't really like the idea of revolution or snatching remote islands. Can't we just adopt anarchistic behavior, in whatever little ways we can, to slowly convince our neighbors and change our present society? What if I were to start a brewery that embodied anarchist ideals in our present society? Could it work?

That question spurred my recent curiosity in anarchism. Apparently, an anarchist society would rely on voluntary cooperation instead of coercion.

I won't argue that such systems don't work. However, that they qualify as anarchism contradicts what I've read on the subject.

What free person would ever choose to work in a sweatshop or as a sharecropper? It's hard for comfortable people to see it, but in subscribing to the anarchist point of view, capitalism is just a means of oppression. The property holders just have to wait for times of scarcity to bust out the prima nocta.

Authoritarian communism is just state capitalism, wherein the state controls all the property, rationing it to the obedient and withholding it from the disobedient. If a state should not have this power, why should individuals or corporations?

Fine, but the slave and his master are not anarchists.

As I understand it, anarchists do not tolerate any use of coercion.

Under capitalism, aren't employees subject to their bosses? Aren't renters subject to their landlords?

Isn't private property the basis of monarchy, wherein the king owns the kingdom and its inhabitants?

That anarchists would tolerate any kind of slavery seems counter-intuitive.

But capitalist relationships are authoritative and require hierarchy, which anarchists reject.

Isn't that an oxymoron? Doesn't proper anarchism reject capitalism, insofar as capitalism promotes the subjugation of the poor by the rich?

Cool. How do we know it's not a honey pot or just a rip off? Perhaps who ever runs it should reduce prices to attract customers and build its reputation.

Plenty of solar power though.

Good quote or best quote?

I suppose space pilgrims could also use a custom client that would ignore bitcoins generated after the communication delay got too long. They could continue to trade with the bitcoins they started with.

How long is too long, by the way?

So, if a group of nodes separates from the rest of the network for at least ten minutes, bitcoins created after that point could become invalid. Vulnerability?

Fed up with the state of the Earth, a group of people decide to build a space ship and find a new habitat among the stars. Due to weight constraints, they can't bring very much stuff. Luckily, bitcoins, weigh nothing. As their favorite earthly currency, they decide to bring it with them to their new home.

Assuming that they can find another habitable rock, get there without succumbing to the hazards of space travel, not trash said rock and annihilate themselves, and then reunite somehow with Earth, will the bitcoins they will have generated still work?

I noticed a 15 Mhash/s boost with the latest binary on my Nvidia GTX460. Well done!

In coming to reject intellectual property laws, I found it helpful to imagine examples of life without them. Against Intellectual Monopoly, by Michele Boldrin and David K. Levine, really helped me out with that. However, I have trouble imagining life without coercion, the anarchist ideal.

I've heard folks explain that an anarchist society would depend on contracts, with protecting one's reputation as the incentive to honor one. But what's to stop someone from enforcing a contract with blackmail or violence?

Back in the brewery, what's to stop the new workers from not honoring the original owners' investment on the grounds that they presently use and occupy the brewery?

"The coercion-free beer for discerning anarchist!"

As a homebrewer, I understand beer. I do not completely understand anarchism though. If I can figure out how a brewery might function in an anarchist society I suppose I might learn some more about anarchism.

Apart from my own fascination with beer I would think that some aspects of a brewery might allow for some interesting discussion in the context of a hypothetical anarchy. For example, breweries require substantial amounts of grain, water, and hops. However, the inhabitants of said society would also desire grain and water, and farming hops also requires water and land that could otherwise produce grain. Breweries also generate lots of heat and require either fuel or electricity to do so. How would the society reconcile the competing demands for these resources without coercion, governmental or otherwise? Unless the population found itself particularly susceptible to alcoholism, I don't think the brewery could sell enough beer to significantly affect the prices of the resources I listed. Furthermore, if the resources became scarce, the demand for beer would decrease in the face of more pressing needs. Then again, in the absence of dependably safe drinking water, the society would come to view beer as a necessity. But, I digress.

I suspect that a brewery could function free of coercion if its workers had come together to build it and now own it as partners. But what if they sought to expand and bring on more workers? How might these new workers also come to own shares of the brewery and avoid mere wage labor? Would they simply own shares of each batch? How is that fair for the original owners, having already laid out the capital and effort to build the brewery? Would the newcomers have to buy in?

I guess I really want to know how anarchists expect to avoid economic coercion through wage labor. Bonus points if you can stick to the beer theme in your responses.