How long would it take for Anarchy to start working?

[Ekaros]

I thought about this question when it comes to Anarchy.

How long would it take for majority to adapt to anarchy, that is start to follow rational non-aggresive principles. And majority of the destructive forces to be forced out of market by consumer choise?

That is if we were to start now?

We started over 3 billion years ago and we are still working on it. 

So we can only hope we are done in 5 billion years...

[Walter Rothbard]

I think those of you, guys, who deem themselves as anarchists are terribly misusing the term...
Considering what you say here (small isolated settlements, ostracism, communal efforts and all that nonsense) I would rather call you hippies...

Or maybe an anarchist is just an age-worn hippie?

Not all anarchists are hippies, but I'm not so sure the reverse is true.

For the most part, anarchist support decentralization to it's logical extreme within a social context.

I would probably accept the name hippie, but I doubt you'd identify me as such by my appearance.  I do use the CND logo a lot - does that count?

[deisik]

I think those of you, guys, who deem themselves as anarchists are terribly misusing the term...
Considering what you say here (small isolated settlements, ostracism, communal efforts and all that nonsense) I would rather call you hippies...

Or maybe an anarchist is just an age-worn hippie?

Not all anarchists are hippies, but I'm not so sure the reverse is true.

For the most part, anarchist support decentralization to it's logical extreme within a social context.

I would probably accept the name hippie, but I doubt you'd identify me as such by my appearance.  I do use the CND logo a lot - does that count?

So now we have hippies in the thread... How long will it take for punks to arrive or would they rather  ignore us with contempt? I think punks with their strong anti-establishment views and the promotion of personal freedom would make perfect True Anarchy zealots...

Anybody?

[Biomech]

This is what you're missing: there's a difference between obeying a law willingly, and obeying a law unwillingly.  The anarchist society does not require you to observe any law unwillingly; the state, however, does.  This can only occur if you're not in control of law whatsoever.  When you say have to obey the accepted law, you're referring to the state; otherwise, if you agreed on that law, you wouldn't have to follow it; instead, you should obey the accepted law, which infers to anarchism.

Now I have to ask you the same question that I asked here and which was left unanswered. That is, what are we going to do with those people who did not agree on the laws in the first place? Should they give in to the majority or we'd better send them to concentration camps for subsequent extermination?

I am (slowly) writing a rather long post on these subjects, but here's kind of a short form.

Those who will not conform in a given society would likely move, as they would find it impossible to interact with those around them. Those who aggress, on the other hand, would likely find themselves on the wrong end of a gun sooner or later. NOT just for "chewing gum" to use the previous example, but rather such things as robbery, rape, attempted murder, etcetera. Actual crimes.

I think you'll find that's another thing that most of us (anarchists) subscribe to: For a thing to be a crime there absolutely MUST be a victim. Defining something as undesirable (by whatever criteria) doesn't make it a crime in the anarchist's philsosophies. The idea is that like minded people will tend to cooperate and accommodate one another. This in itself will lead to a greater decentralization as people have a lot of disparate ideas on how to interact with one another and disparate goals as well.

No matter what form of social organization exists, there will always be a small element that defies it, and an even smaller element that is operating with ill intent. Anarchism seeks to reduce the opportunity for the truly criminal, whereas statism generally just tries to make it so PETTY crime is difficult, while openly rewarding truly large criminal enterprises, such as wars. Criminals are opportunistic parasites. All societies depend on the productive to exist. Anarchism both removes the incentive for parasitic activity and punishes it harshly by default, whereas the statist model, particularly democracy and communism, openly reward it. Not openly as in a stated goal, but more along the lines of "the best place to hide something is in plain sight".

[deisik]

Those who will not conform in a given society would likely move, as they would find it impossible to interact with those around them. Those who aggress, on the other hand, would likely find themselves on the wrong end of a gun sooner or later. NOT just for "chewing gum" to use the previous example, but rather such things as robbery, rape, attempted murder, etcetera. Actual crimes.

So you are actually in favor of concentration camps and barbed wire. Why in the first place would those who disagree move anywhere if they are in their own right? Moving on "their own accord" when the majority makes the life of the minority unbearable is not much different from forced evictions. That is what is actually meant by "finding it impossible to interact with those around them". The law and the state behind it seem to be by far fairer here. At least they don't tell between whether you like it or not...

[ErisDiscordia]

First off, I will say that anarchy on a grand scale was probably impossible prior to the existence of the internet.

Quoting this to stress this important point.

Besides that: great post Biomech! Please finish your book - "anarchy is not chaos" is something I might name my own book about that subject  

I often find myself pondering the possibility, that maybe government and hierarchical power structures have indeed been inevitable and indispensable in achieving the level of organization and technological advancement we have achieved. Maybe. But this is why the internet is such a powerful and transforming invention. Thanks to its decentralized nature it allows for ways of organization and information flow, which have been impossible until now.

Now that we are equipped with tools to handle most if not all human affairs in a much more efficient, decentralized way, the old institutions can start to fade into irrelevance. Of course they won't just fade, they will be dragged, kicking and screaming, into the dust bin of history   And it will probably take generations.

[Mike Christ]

Now I have to ask you the same question that I asked here and which was left unanswered. That is, what are we going to do with those people who did not agree on the laws in the first place? Should they give in to the majority or we'd better send them to concentration camps for subsequent extermination?

You keep saying "the laws" like there's just one list of laws that everyone must follow; you've yet to understand how this works.

Lets do an exercise: name your top 5 laws you'd like to live by.  I'll list mine:

1. No murder
2. No thievery
3. No rape
4. No physical abuse, aside from defense
5. In other words, no acts of aggression

So lets compare this to the punishment you've listed:

Should they give in to the majority or we'd better send them to concentration camps for subsequent extermination?

If people willingly go into concentration camps, they'd be lunatics; to get people to get into them requires force, which violates my 4th law.  If I violate my 4th law and manage to kill people in attempting to get them into the camps, I'd violate my 1st law, as well as "exterminating" them would violate this law as well.  If I profited from this law-breaking, I'd violate my 2nd law; and I won't get into my 3rd law, as that's rather disgusting.

These punishments require me to break my own laws; I would then be a criminal.  Assuming I've broken the world's most common laws, I'll never be able to interact with popular society again; I would have to either willingly subject myself to their punishments (which likely will not include death, for I'd otherwise never see the point in it), or continue to live as an outcast until someone, who can spare the blow to their reputation by killing a man, puts a bullet in me.

If you think about it, how would you get away with crimes against humanity?  The excuse of "We're doing it to take care of criminals!" doesn't fly with anyone who is halfway awake; just look how that's working out with America and "terrorism".

Punishment works like this: if you interact with the person who has violated a popular law, you then become known for conversing with criminals; people don't want to do business with you then, lest they appear as criminals as well.  To stop this, you refuse to interact with the person, and if they're violent, ready to protect yourself if need be, or call the local hired protectors to do it for you.  The violator can't get a job; his employer, nor his employees, don't want to work with a criminal, so the violator can't make any money to make a living.  The law-violator eventually subjects himself to whatever punishment that would satisfy his peers, or tries to find an area that is more accepting of his type, if that exists, and so lives in his own personal hell.  If the violator was dangerous enough, and people agreed that he needed to be killed before he killed another, so he would be.  If they'd like to waive or reduce the punishment for the killer, that's how it goes.

There is nobody who "didn't agree on the laws in the first place" since there's no single law-system to agree upon; you have your beliefs in justice, other people have theirs, and if your beliefs clash with other people's, either they or you must adjust.

[hawkeye]

First off, I will say that anarchy on a grand scale was probably impossible prior to the existence of the internet.

Quoting this to stress this important point.

Besides that: great post Biomech! Please finish your book - "anarchy is not chaos" is something I might name my own book about that subject  

I often find myself pondering the possibility, that maybe government and hierarchical power structures have indeed been inevitable and indispensable in achieving the level of organization and technological advancement we have achieved. Maybe. But this is why the internet is such a powerful and transforming invention. Thanks to its decentralized nature it allows for ways of organization and information flow, which have been impossible until now.

Now that we are equipped with tools to handle most if not all human affairs in a much more efficient, decentralized way, the old institutions can start to fade into irrelevance. Of course they won't just fade, they will be dragged, kicking and screaming, into the dust bin of history   And it will probably take generations.

I don't know if it was impossible.  It's just that government is an easy way of solving problems not requiring much thought.  Or at least it appears that way on the surface, of course, when you look closely you find it to be incredibly inefficient at best.

So it might be that government has allowed people to be somewhat lazy in some regard and not explore alternatives to problems.  Much in the same way that believing in God means people don't have to seek true answers to questions about existence.  You could make the argument that if this is the case, then government has actually stagnated human progress.  In it's absence we would have been forced to be much more creative in finding solutions to problems. 

I would always be very hesitant to claim that government was a necessity at any point in time. 

[BitsPoker]

I thought about this question when it comes to Anarchy.

How long would it take for majority to adapt to anarchy, that is start to follow rational non-aggresive principles. And majority of the destructive forces to be forced out of market by consumer choise?

That is if we were to start now?

According to Merriam-Webster Online, anarchy is "a situation of confusion and wild behavior in which the people in a country, group, organization, etc., are not controlled by rules or laws"

By that definition, I feel like it would be impossible to call a working thing "anarchy."

[Mike Christ]

According to Merriam-Webster Online, anarchy is "a situation of confusion and wild behavior in which the people in a country, group, organization, etc., are not controlled by rules or laws"

By that definition, I feel like it would be impossible to call a working thing "anarchy."

Yes, semantics are fickle; one word can hold a hundred different meanings.  In the context we're speaking of here, we refer to the political philosophy of anarchism, not the synonym of chaos, which can be briefly summed up as a society revolving around voluntary interaction:

Anarchism is a political philosophy that advocates stateless societies often defined as self-governed voluntary institutions, but that several authors have defined as more specific institutions based on non-hierarchical free associations.

This is why I don't like anarchism; not because I disagree with the philosophy, but the word is beyond repair, so much so common dictionaries fail to define it properly; here's dictionary.com's take on it:

an·ar·chism  [an-er-kiz-uhm]  Show IPA
noun
1.
a doctrine urging the abolition of government or governmental restraint as the indispensable condition for full social and political liberty.
2.
the methods or practices of anarchists, as the use of violence to undermine government.

[ErisDiscordia]

I would always be very hesitant to claim that government was a necessity at any point in time. 

oh I am very hesitant about claiming that. What I've written above is the maximum praise I am able to give government. It is and always has been a primarily reactionary force, debilitating peoples ability to think and act creatively and independently.

[deisik]

Lets do an exercise: name your top 5 laws you'd like to live by.  I'll list mine:

1. No murder
2. No thievery
3. No rape
4. No physical abuse, aside from defense
5. In other words, no acts of aggression

Why should I bind myself in any way by listing any laws? When you interact with people you rely primarily on your instincts, not on however short a list of laws. Our social nature has already given us everything to talk or do things with other people. In fact, these laws you refer to are nothing more than just a formal expression of that social nature of humans...

[deisik]

If people willingly go into concentration camps, they'd be lunatics; to get people to get into them requires force, which violates my 4th law.  If I violate my 4th law and manage to kill people in attempting to get them into the camps, I'd violate my 1st law, as well as "exterminating" them would violate this law as well.  If I profited from this law-breaking, I'd violate my 2nd law; and I won't get into my 3rd law, as that's rather disgusting.

Oh, I like this doublespeak you, guys, stick to here! I used the reference to concentration camps as a metaphor only. In real life it would mean something along the lines of "finding it impossible to interact with those around them" and "finally having to move somewhere". And you didn't exclude psychological abuse from your list of rules... How come?

[deisik]

There is nobody who "didn't agree on the laws in the first place" since there's no single law-system to agree upon; you have your beliefs in justice, other people have theirs, and if your beliefs clash with other people's, either they or you must adjust.

Now you confirm in your own words that anarchy as you see it doesn't in fact differ very much from what state actually is all about. If we clear away the verbal husks of what you say here, we necessarily come to a system where majority would suppress minority in any possible way... How's that different from what state does?

[hawkeye]

Here in Australia, and I think this true for much of the Western world, people go to government now to solve almost any problem.   Just about whatever it is, the first thought is always "what can we get government to do".  

Because of the abstract nature of government, people don't realise what they are really saying is "what can we force people to do, and pay for, to solve x".  

Forcing people to do things at the point of a gun is always easier than trying to negotiate and figure out solutions to problems.   It just has many unintended consequences because fundamentally, people generally resent being forced to do things.

Problems are more significant than ever but people just aren't making the connection to the near constant application of force on society.  

[crumbs]

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Because of the abstract nature of government, people don't realise what they are really saying is "what can we force people to do, and pay for, to solve x".  
...

This really makes me think twice about reporting potholes.  Thanks.

[Ekaros]

...
Because of the abstract nature of government, people don't realise what they are really saying is "what can we force people to do, and pay for, to solve x".  
...

This really makes me think twice about reporting potholes.  Thanks.

And there is somekind of penalty probably involved if you go and fix it yourself... Atleast on paved roads...

[Kiki112]

...
Because of the abstract nature of government, people don't realise what they are really saying is "what can we force people to do, and pay for, to solve x".  
...

This really makes me think twice about reporting potholes.  Thanks.

And there is somekind of penalty probably involved if you go and fix it yourself... Atleast on paved roads...

yeah
they have paid professionals to do so, so a sloppy job from a guy who never did this before wouldn't be very helpful

[User_513]

Oh noes! I can't possibly imagine living in a world with no government where certain bad people would no doubt try to steal from me and hurt me to help themselves! So therefore, it's necessary to submit to certain bad people who are the government who steal from me and hurt me to help themselves!

Statism = Logical failure

[Anon136]

Considering we are already 99% of the way there (no one uses a gun to force you to brush your teeth or post on this forum ect...) it should be easier than one might suspect to bridge the gap on that final measly 1%.