How long would it take for Anarchy to start working?

[deisik]

This is an interesting point that tipping point. I think you could be right but for a possible qualitative leap, i.e. is a major and sudden change in social structure or something related to it (and this definitely won't be towards self-sufficient, egalitarian communities). I am not that much into sociology and that kind of things, but at least I can explain how it happens in economics and why we are still advancing in technology...

We still advance in technology and therefore in additional complexity. But it generates shrinking marginal returns and shrinking growth.
The required additional debt reached the tipping point already. The private sector can't take additional debt anymore. That's why the state mafia is trying to compensate it by additional state debt.

That's what qualitative leaps are created for. You squeeze everything from the current system and then you get to the next level. As simple as that. Actually, we've been there before many times in history...

[Zarathustra]

This is an interesting point that tipping point. I think you could be right but for a possible qualitative leap, i.e. is a major and sudden change in social structure or something related to it (and this definitely won't be towards self-sufficient, egalitarian communities). I am not that much into sociology and that kind of things, but at least I can explain how it happens in economics and why we are still advancing in technology...

We still advance in technology and therefore in additional complexity. But it generates shrinking marginal returns and shrinking growth.
The required additional debt reached the tipping point already. The private sector can't take additional debt anymore. That's why the state mafia is trying to compensate it by additional state debt.

That's what qualitative leaps are created for. You squeeze everything from the current system and then you get to the next level. As simple as that. Actually, we've been there before many times in history...

Yes, but sooner or later we will also be back on a level, on which we have been a million or more years ago. A collapse of a society with aqueducts or pyramids is not the same as a collapse of a society with 500 or 5000 burning nuclear reactors. 500 or 5000 Fukushima events, but without cooling. An equivalent of 100 Million Hiroshima Bombs will be blown out into the atmosphere.

[deisik]

That's what qualitative leaps are created for. You squeeze everything from the current system and then you get to the next level. As simple as that. Actually, we've been there before many times in history...

Yes, but sooner or later we will also be back on a level, on which we have been a million or more years ago. A collapse of a society with aqueducts or pyramids is not the same as a collapse of a society with 500 or 5000 burning nuclear reactors. 500 or 5000 Fukushima events, but without cooling. An equivalent of 100 Million Hiroshima Bombs will be blown out into the atmosphere.

What you say looks more like some giant asteroid hitting Earth, not like a technological disaster. And still less a societal collapse. Societies usually either slowly vanish into nonexistence without raising hell or just get conquered by their more agile neighbors (which is right, in my opinion)...

[Zarathustra]

That's what qualitative leaps are created for. You squeeze everything from the current system and then you get to the next level. As simple as that. Actually, we've been there before many times in history...

Yes, but sooner or later we will also be back on a level, on which we have been a million or more years ago. A collapse of a society with aqueducts or pyramids is not the same as a collapse of a society with 500 or 5000 burning nuclear reactors. 500 or 5000 Fukushima events, but without cooling. An equivalent of 100 Million Hiroshima Bombs will be blown out into the atmosphere.

What you say looks more like some giant asteroid hitting Earth, not like a technological disaster. And still less a societal collapse. Societies usually either slowly vanish into nonexistence without raising hell or just get conquered by their more agile neighbors (which is right, in my opinion)...

No, it looks like a normal implosion of a complex society. Instead of the pyramids, the nuclear reactors will be digged up some million years in the future. The maya culture disappeared immediately as well. Our society (globalized the first time in history) will disappear within weeks as soon as the network (internet and/or electricity) collapses.

[deisik]

What you say looks more like some giant asteroid hitting Earth, not like a technological disaster. And still less a societal collapse. Societies usually either slowly vanish into nonexistence without raising hell or just get conquered by their more agile neighbors (which is right, in my opinion)...

No, it looks like a normal implosion of a complex society. Instead of the pyramids, the nuclear reactors will be digged up some million years in the future. The maya culture disappeared immediately as well. Our society (globalized the first time in history) will disappear within weeks as soon as the network (internet and/or electricity) collapses.

I don't think it is as globalized as it might ultimately get. Electricity is not globalized at all, Internet is a distributed network at that, thus they cannot simply collapse in the way you think they would (within weeks). If ever, it surely won't look like a collapse of a unified society. I think you are crying wolf really...

[Zarathustra]

What you say looks more like some giant asteroid hitting Earth, not like a technological disaster. And still less a societal collapse. Societies usually either slowly vanish into nonexistence without raising hell or just get conquered by their more agile neighbors (which is right, in my opinion)...

No, it looks like a normal implosion of a complex society. Instead of the pyramids, the nuclear reactors will be digged up some million years in the future. The maya culture disappeared immediately as well. Our society (globalized the first time in history) will disappear within weeks as soon as the network (internet and/or electricity) collapses.

I don't think it is as globalized as it might ultimately get. Electricity is not globalized at all, Internet is a distributed network at that, thus they cannot simply collapse in the way you think they would (within weeks).

Electricity is getting more complex to hold up (50 Hz) every year. Europe is a supranational network, and the chance for a blackout is growing every year as well.

http://www.zeit.de/zeit-wissen/2012/06/Stromnetz-Winter-Blackout-Stromausfall
http://www.t-online.de/wirtschaft/energie/id_46657528/bei-stromausfall-droht-kollaps-der-gesellschaft-.html

If ever, it surely won't look like a collapse of a unified society. I think you are crying wolf really...

Wait for the next Lehman event. The collapse will undoubtedly be a global one in a globalized society. The USA is not working anymore without China et vice versa. A Bankrun, and the whole society comes to a stand still.

[deisik]

Electricity is getting more complex to hold up every year. Europe is a supranational network, and the chance for a blackout is growing every year as well.

If ever, it surely won't look like a collapse of a unified society. I think you are crying wolf really...

Wait for the next Lehman event. The collapse will undoubtedly be a global one in a globalized society. The USA is not working anymore without China et vice versa. A Bankrun, and the whole society comes to a stand still.

China is surely not as dependent on the USA as the latter on the former. Even if the USA disappeared entirely one day, China would go on. And Europe is not dependent on either. Actually, it is more dependent on Russia and their natural resources. In short, I don't see how the whole world could collapse all at once, unless there is some disaster by natural causes...

[Zarathustra]

Electricity is getting more complex to hold up every year. Europe is a supranational network, and the chance for a blackout is growing every year as well.

If ever, it surely won't look like a collapse of a unified society. I think you are crying wolf really...

Wait for the next Lehman event. The collapse will undoubtedly be a global one in a globalized society. The USA is not working anymore without China et vice versa. A Bankrun, and the whole society comes to a stand still.

China is surely not as dependent on the USA as the latter on the former. Even if the USA disappeared entirely one day, China would go on.

Never ever. The Chinese regime (state mafia) would collapse within a week and with them the banking system and the whole society. They need a maximum of state terror even now, when the economy is booming.
The just in time economy is globalized. Toyota had to stop the production worldwide after Fukushima, because some parts couldn't be produced anymore in Fukushima.

[deisik]

China is surely not as dependent on the USA as the latter on the former. Even if the USA disappeared entirely one day, China would go on.

Never ever. The Chinese regime (state mafia) would collapse within a week and with them the whole society. They need a maximum of state terror even now, when the economy is booming.

They didn't collapse for a few millennia having been conquered several times and now they would? China is still very underdeveloped country, so they would just get back where they started three decades ago. Not a long time really, taking into account the length of their history...

[Zarathustra]

China is surely not as dependent on the USA as the latter on the former. Even if the USA disappeared entirely one day, China would go on.

Never ever. The Chinese regime (state mafia) would collapse within a week and with them the whole society. They need a maximum of state terror even now, when the economy is booming.

They didn't collapse for a few millennia and now they would? China is still very underdeveloped country, so they would just get back where they started three decades ago. Not a long time really, taking into account the length of their history...

Yes, they are finished. Indebted already as grotesk as the globalized developed just-in-time-world, on which their economy is depending.

[deisik]

They didn't collapse for a few millennia and now they would? China is still very underdeveloped country, so they would just get back where they started three decades ago. Not a long time really, taking into account the length of their history...

Yes, they are finished. Indebted already as grotesk as the globalized developed just-in-time-world, on which their economy is depending.

What do you mean by being finished actually? Through all their long history China has always been very closed society. What would change so dramatically in the life of ordinary Chinese people if the United States were to crash? They would just get to their villages and back to rice fields where their ancestors had been toiling for centuries...

[Hawker]

Hawker:

Ok so i think you have a fundamental misunderstanding of what we advocate. Which is totally ok because there is wide disagreement even amongst ourselves. Mostly anarchists want humans to be as free as possible and we recognize that its not possible to perfectly predict exactly what sorts of systems will manifest in the absence of a state to serve the functions the state serves now. So as an analogy, if this was the year 1800 and i was advocating the abolition of slavery, and you said "but with out slaves how will cotton be picked" it would have been quite a long shot for me to have correctly predicted that the answer would have been the tractor. With that being said i would be happy to give it a shot.

So basically this is how i imagine that it would work: Before engaging in commerce with someone you would want to be able to feel sure that they were not going to cheat you. Recognizing this fact you would realize that, when engaging in commerce, other people would be thinking the exact same thing about you. So what you would do in order to give yourself a competitive advantage in the marketplace is buy insurance against yourself, that way you could show people that you were transacting with that you had insured them against yourself, this is called assurance. If you were well behaved than this assurance would be cheap, if engaged in behavior that would indicate to the insurance company that you were more of a risk than your rate would go up. Things like being cruel to animals would be a huge red flag and would definitely cause your rates to skyrocket. This is a mechanism of internalizing the costs of antisocial behavior, same as the idealized vision of what law is or ought to be in a statist society.

So having assurance would quickly become the societal norm and rather than checking someones reputation yourself, you would just learn the reputation of various assurance providers and do a quick check to make sure that the person you were transaction with was assured by a reputable assurance agency.

This takes care of everything except people with EXTREMELY high time preference and people who are totally out of their minds. For those sorts of people you would just have to take the risk of being attacked by one of them, buy insurance, or keep a fire arm with you at all times. Your choice.

That doesn't make sense.  There are 3 central issues here:

1. Insurance is a contractual agreement.  It doesn't exist outside of contract law.  So the situation you are talking about requires contract law, a system of courts, lawyers and enforcement staff.  We already have all that - all you are doing is taking away the democratic controls on lawmaking we have spent centuries putting in place.  

2. People who beat their wives and dogs or who engage in female genital mutilation are not going to declare it on their insurance applications.  So you need an outside agency with a power to enter properties and do investigations.  We already have that - its called the police - all you are doing is removing the requirement to get a search warrant and an arrest warrant.

3. Your system turns female genital mutilation and animal cruelty into privileges.  "Want to cut your daughter's clitoris off?  Want to do the same to your dog?  Pay Acme Insurance £10 extra per month and hack away! Call now on 0800 CUTCLITS."

All of this is predictable.  There is a reason societies value the separation of powers into executive, legislative and judiciary.  The "insurance" scheme removes the separation and is thus a form of tyranny.

[Anon136]

Hawker:

Ok so i think you have a fundamental misunderstanding of what we advocate. Which is totally ok because there is wide disagreement even amongst ourselves. Mostly anarchists want humans to be as free as possible and we recognize that its not possible to perfectly predict exactly what sorts of systems will manifest in the absence of a state to serve the functions the state serves now. So as an analogy, if this was the year 1800 and i was advocating the abolition of slavery, and you said "but with out slaves how will cotton be picked" it would have been quite a long shot for me to have correctly predicted that the answer would have been the tractor. With that being said i would be happy to give it a shot.

So basically this is how i imagine that it would work: Before engaging in commerce with someone you would want to be able to feel sure that they were not going to cheat you. Recognizing this fact you would realize that, when engaging in commerce, other people would be thinking the exact same thing about you. So what you would do in order to give yourself a competitive advantage in the marketplace is buy insurance against yourself, that way you could show people that you were transacting with that you had insured them against yourself, this is called assurance. If you were well behaved than this assurance would be cheap, if engaged in behavior that would indicate to the insurance company that you were more of a risk than your rate would go up. Things like being cruel to animals would be a huge red flag and would definitely cause your rates to skyrocket. This is a mechanism of internalizing the costs of antisocial behavior, same as the idealized vision of what law is or ought to be in a statist society.

So having assurance would quickly become the societal norm and rather than checking someones reputation yourself, you would just learn the reputation of various assurance providers and do a quick check to make sure that the person you were transaction with was assured by a reputable assurance agency.

This takes care of everything except people with EXTREMELY high time preference and people who are totally out of their minds. For those sorts of people you would just have to take the risk of being attacked by one of them, buy insurance, or keep a fire arm with you at all times. Your choice.

That doesn't make sense.  There are 3 central issues here:

1. Insurance is a contractual agreement.  It doesn't exist outside of contract law.  So the situation you are talking about requires contract law, a system of courts, lawyers and enforcement staff.  We already have all that - all you are doing is taking away the democratic controls on lawmaking we have spent centuries putting in place.  
2. People who beat their wives and dogs or who engage in female genital mutilation are not going to declare it on their insurance applications.  So you need an outside agency with a power to enter properties and do investigations.  We already have that - its called the police - all you are doing is removing the requirement to get a search warrant and an arrest warrant.  
3. Your system turns female genital mutilation and animal cruelty into privileges.  "Want to cut your daughter's clitoris off?  Want to do the same to your dog?  Pay Acme Insurance £10 extra per month and hack away! Call now on 0800 CUTCLITS."

All of this is predictable.  There is a reason societies value the separation of powers into executive, legislative and judiciary.  You "insurance" scheme removes the separation and is thus a form of tyranny.

1) Do you really think that its the state that enforces contracts? if you really truly believe this than im sorry to say that you have been living under a rock my friend. In order to get a contract enforced by the state you have to be willing to give up 10+ years of your life and about $300,000, hardly ANYONE does that. Maybe walmart inc. can do something like that but certainly not ordinary people like you and I.

In reality contracts are enforced by reputation. Suppose you make a contract with apple stipulating that if you send them money in exchange they will send you a phone. Even without courts, laws, laywers, and enforcement do you really think apple would risk damaging their reputation over a couple of hundred dollars?

2) Refusing to allow the insurance company to have a quick check of these things for themselves would be just as damning to your reputation.

3) Ok so a few points here. Assuming society generally disproves of these things, assuring these sorts of people would damage the reputation of an assurance company pretty severely, meaning that it would be more than a few extra dollars to convince them to dismiss this sort of behavior.

However with that being said some people are lunatics, thats just the reality of the situation. There is probably someone out there who would pay the premium. To stop those who are very committed and would be willing to pay the exorbitant rates you have insurance. Assurance is the first layer, it is important because it makes the next layer, insurance, cheap. Assurance takes care of all of the marginal cases, making insurance cheap because it only has to deal with the statistical outliers. If you dont like people genitally mutilating their kids (funny how you keep going on at length about female genital mutilation when circumcision is so much more common, but i digress) than buy an insurance policy. 1 million dollars to be payed out to you if anyone can find proof that someone mutilated their kid in your geographical region. This gives the right incentive structure to actually get the problem solved, police dont give a shit about preventing crime, the higher the crime rate the higher their budget.

The next point is that what you are claiming here, this fatal flaw of anarchy, is exactly how the state works. Do you think the poor get the same "justice" in government courts that the rich get? Do you think statist legal systems dont give privileges to certain people? Do you think bankers, politicians, judges and the all around extremely wealthy are subject to the same laws ordinary people are in any country? OF COURSE the right to commit crimes is a privilege that can be purchased for the right price, thats how it is in all systems, thats just life.

Finally no one is going to claim that anarchy would be utopia. No one is claiming that it would solve every problem. Of course under any system bad things would sometimes still happen to good people. Only that it would be better than what we have now. Only that it would be better than the state which locks people in dungeons to be sexually tortured for years on end for having an innocuous bit of vegetation in their pocket. Better than a system where >90% of convicted criminals never see the inside of a court room because they are faced with the prospect of either "confessing" and going to prison for a year, or taking it to court and spending 3 years in prison just waiting for the proceedings to begin. Better than a system where a president has direct access to a fleet of killer robots and claims the authority to kill anyone he wants anywhere in the world with out due process. Insert your own egregious violation of human rights here, there are plenty to chose from.

[Hideyoshi]

So your ideal society is one in which people get killed by "Professionals with black clothing and silenced weapons" hired by anyone who thinks they are cruel to animals.

It is not ideal society, it is society that may be better than what we have now, or at least not worse, since we have people which get killed by professionals with blue clothing, called on by anyone who thinks they are cruel to animals. Besides, it not necessary to kill. Give very stern warning to these people, maybe with warning shots, and it may be enough to give them notice that they are being watched. This is not so much possible with just calling police who may just come, investigate, and leave if they can't come into house to investigate.

A lot of anarchists come across as morally confused.  They talk about freedom but want to impose their own views on other people in a totally undemocratic way.  Your idea of being able to have people killed without trial if they are suspected of being cruel to animals is an extremely good example of this moral confusion.

It is not my view that is being imposed on anyone. You are confused about anarchy. Anarchy does not mean that anarchists remove the rules that your government imposes on everyone, and replace them with rules that anarchists impose on everyone. There are no unified anarchy rules to impose. That is why it is called anarchy. Anarchy means that each individual decides what he wants to do, and each individual is free to try to impose their own rule on someone else, while taking full responsibility for imposing those rules. It is up to each individual to have good morals and logical ethical position.

If you found yourself in such anarchy society wish such animal abuser, what would you do? That is all anarchy asks of people. If you think killing is bad, then obviously you will not try to get this person killed. I would not either, as tempting as it may be. I believe most people will not want to kill such a person, either, otherwise we would have had majority vote to make law that says animal cruelty should be punished by death.

I am opposed to female genital mutilation and I am happy with the present system where people who do that to a girl are named and shamed in court proceedings and their children can be taken into care.  Anarchists say that female genital mutilation is a personal moral choice of the parents and that they should be left get on with it.

Yet more example of you confused about anarchy. Anarchy is not every person should be allowed to do whatever he wishes. That is what media portrays anarchy as, making it seem violent, scary, and every man for himself. In anarchy, every person makes their own decision. This also includes decision to name and shame people who do female genital mutilation, and refuse to interact or do business with them. Anarchy is community where everyone is equal.

Do you want everyone to face the risk of mob law?  That often misfires.  For example, in Wales, a paediatrician was driven out of her home because the locals thought paediatrician is a synonym for paedophile.  Or do you want a system of courts whose approval is required for any violent acts and a system of police who are trained to use violence in a minimal way.

Democracy is mob law. If more people believe something is wrong, they will rule that it should be illegal. Look at how much time American mobs spend on voting to support religions, protect children from sex, and making drugs illegal. Everyone is so afraid sex and drugs that their law system is very broken.
And courts can also be private, people can agree to take people to court to stand trial, and private security can be trained to use violence in minimal way. People liked the idea of trials in courts. That is why we have passed laws to agree to such a thing to begin with. So it is likely that people will continue to want private courts too. And it is more costly for private security to commit violence (lost ammunition, damaged property, lost or damaged employees) than for police to engage in violence. Police always get their paycheck no matter what. Even if they kill a child by accident, they just get warning and keep working. Compare how many civilians police in America killed, to how many civilians gangs like Yakuza and Cosa Nostra killed. At least those gangs don't shoot children when they get scared of children with plastic guns.

[deisik]

It is not my view that is being imposed on anyone. You are confused about anarchy. Anarchy does not mean that anarchists remove the rules that your government imposes on everyone, and replace them with rules that anarchists impose on everyone. Anarchy means that each individual decides what he wants to do, and each individual is free to try to impose their own rule on someone else. There are no anarchy rules to impose. That is why it is called anarchy. It is up to each individual to have good morals and logical ethical position.

This form of anarchy I call the only true Anarchy, and this is not what most "anarchists" here would consider as anarchy. So you would go for a sort of heretic among them...

[Hideyoshi]

Yes, they are finished. Indebted already as grotesk as the globalized developed just-in-time-world, on which their economy is depending.

China debt is not nearly as serious as USA or Europe debt, because debt in USA and Europe is to citizens in forms of pensions, medicine, and social security. Plus those citizens have much personal debt in credit cards and mortgages. China does not have many social programs, and many people save much money and have large savings, so if China collapses, they have enough to live on for a long time.

[Hideyoshi]

It is not my view that is being imposed on anyone. You are confused about anarchy. Anarchy does not mean that anarchists remove the rules that your government imposes on everyone, and replace them with rules that anarchists impose on everyone. Anarchy means that each individual decides what he wants to do, and each individual is free to try to impose their own rule on someone else. There are no anarchy rules to impose. That is why it is called anarchy. It is up to each individual to have good morals and logical ethical position.

This form of anarchy I call the only true Anarchy, and this is not what most "anarchists" here would consider as anarchy. So you would go for a sort of heretic among them...

That is anarcho-capitalism as I understand it. You can do whatever you wish, so long as you are aware of consequences of your action, and everyone else is free to react to your actions as they wish, without relying on law or police to tell them how they must react. How is my anarchy form different?

[Zarathustra]

Yes, they are finished. Indebted already as grotesk as the globalized developed just-in-time-world, on which their economy is depending.

China debt is not nearly as serious as USA or Europe debt, because debt in USA and Europe is to citizens in forms of pensions, medicine, and social security. Plus those citizens have much personal debt in credit cards and mortgages. China does not have many social programs, and many people save much money and have large savings, so if China collapses, they have enough to live on for a long time.

That's funny. Where ever people have 'much money and large savings', there are people that have much debt, because money is debt.
China went to 300 percent Debt/GDP within the greatest speed in the history of capitalism/collectivism. To avoid the economic collapse after the Lehman event, the chinese state terrorists did more QE than the Benbernank. They know that the guilloutines are ready for them as soon as the debt machine stops to grow at 20 and more percent annually.

[Zarathustra]

It is not my view that is being imposed on anyone. You are confused about anarchy. Anarchy does not mean that anarchists remove the rules that your government imposes on everyone, and replace them with rules that anarchists impose on everyone. Anarchy means that each individual decides what he wants to do, and each individual is free to try to impose their own rule on someone else. There are no anarchy rules to impose. That is why it is called anarchy. It is up to each individual to have good morals and logical ethical position.

This form of anarchy I call the only true Anarchy, and this is not what most "anarchists" here would consider as anarchy. So you would go for a sort of heretic among them...

That is anarcho-capitalism as I understand it. You can do whatever you wish, so long as you are aware of consequences of your action, and everyone else is free to react to your actions as they wish, without relying on law or police to tell them how they must react. How is my anarchy form different?

The one and only form of anarchy in the history of mankind is the self-sufficient community. There is no such thing as individualism in the human nature. A human is neither an individualist nor a (hyper-) collectivist (citizen). Anarchy in the world of the reality means individualistic (stateless, unruled) communities.
Matrilineal anarchy was slowly replaced by patriarchy (= organized violence, state and church) about 10'000 years ago.

[Hawker]

So your ideal society is one in which people get killed by "Professionals with black clothing and silenced weapons" hired by anyone who thinks they are cruel to animals.

It is not ideal society, it is society that may be better than what we have now, or at least not worse, since we have people which get killed by professionals with blue clothing, called on by anyone who thinks they are cruel to animals. Besides, it not necessary to kill. Give very stern warning to these people, maybe with warning shots, and it may be enough to give them notice that they are being watched. This is not so much possible with just calling police who may just come, investigate, and leave if they can't come into house to investigate.
...snip...

If your idea of anarchy is worthwhile, it has to offer something better than what we have now in our real lives.  You offer a society in which "Professionals with black clothing and silenced weapons" are killing people for animal cruelty and then seek to justify that by arguing its exactly how things work now.

You can prove any point if you make things up.  Why not compare your "Professionals with black clothing and silenced weapons" instant execution system with the real world in which a death sentence requires a jury and years of careful examination of the facts?  Your idea is certain to involve a lot more people being killed.

Try to look at the logic of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Separation_of_powers

Any decent society will have a clear separation between the judicial act of deciding to kill someone and the executive act of killing them.  "Professionals with black clothing and silenced weapons" type systems where private individuals select victims and have them killed breach this principle.  That's tyranny - not freedom.