For those thumbing through the brochures..

POSTED BY: Fremdfirma
UPDATED: Wednesday, March 26, 2008 16:50
VIEWED: 5289
PAGE 1 of 1

FREMDFIRMA

Sunday, March 16, 2008 11:29 PM

For some of our posters who've expressed interest, I stumbled upon a really well written piece by CJ, which I will share here in it's entirety, as us Anarchists don't much care for locking up and strangling information, and if he didn't want folk to read it, then he wouldn't have wrote it.
I've properly credited the source and author at the bottom.

(Disclaimer: We're all as different as cats, so each individuals outlook my differ radically, and thus his perceptions may or may not be the same as mine.)

Why I Am An Anarchist
By Caleb Johnson
03/12/2008 - 06:29

I suppose that our evaluation of others is based, not so much on who they are as themselves, but rather on the face that they present to the world, and thus it is that often others are surprised when they learn that I am an anarchist. And I suppose that I can empathize with the initial confusion, for I myself only gradually came to accept the label of `anarchist' for many of the same reasons.

Now, I can only imagine what gruesome scenario enters the mind of each person as he envisions just what, exactly, anarchy might mean for the world, but I know what it used to mean to me. The mental picture that I formed of the anarchist was of an angry young man throwing a homemade bomb. The society he hoped for could only be one of chaos and disorder, where organized bands of thugs plundered with abandon and citizens huddled in the darkness of their homes, shivering for fear and praying for some escape back to civility and civilization. And this melancholy picture, of course, is as offensive to me as it is to you, being as I am a peaceful person, more at home sipping tea in a coffeeshop than I am burning effigies, and more inclined to vacation at a tropical paradise than to the heart of Somalia.

So, I permit the reader a degree of astonishment at the revelation that I am an anarchist. It was, in fact, only reluctantly that I adopted the anarchist label; I learned that many other anarchists have also eschewed the anarchist label, preferring a more obscure and therefore less-maligned designation. So why is it that I unabashedly claim to be an anarchist?

An ancient Jewish scripture makes what I deem to be an accurate observation, that "one man rules over another to his hurt.” At every time and at every place throughout history is found the same story: man's states achieve the subjugation of the masses under the control of the rich and powerful. War is routine. Tyranny runs rampant. Minorities are oppressed. Men are conscripted and enslaved. The belongings of the poor are plundered to pay for greater and greater extravagancies by those who enjoy the reins of power. The masses starve while a few live in shameful luxury. Justice is perverted, and people live under constant threat that their security will be undermined. We tolerate this depravity for one reason, and one reason only: We are convinced that, for as bad as the State may be, it is better than the chaos of anarchy. And it is for this reason that the state must do everything in its power to demonize anarchy, to equate it with chaos and disorder.

But it seems to me that a great lie has been perpetrated on mankind. Every war that has ever been fought was created and nurtured by states. War, that great scourge of mankind, can only exist among states. When individuals disagree with each other, the argument may escalate to fisticuffs. Yet, when states squabble, the end result is too often war, with the millions of deaths and injuries, as well as the poverty and disease that war entails. And yet the state, the sole author of the scourge of war, is held on a pedestal. We sing songs to honor it, make oaths and pledges to it, place its banner in our own places of worship. We display our loyalty to it with countless banners and emblems, placed prominently so that all may see our pride. We are not averse to even permitting our children to be sacrificed in its interests.

Meanwhile, we deride the anarchist as “reactionary”, but we do not even comprehend what we mean by such a statement. For it is everywh

SERGEANTX

Monday, March 17, 2008 3:38 AM

Thanks for posting that Frem.

I'm still in a position of transition I suppose. But I've been heading toward a gradual acceptance of the basic tenets of anarchism for many years now.

Quote:
This situation is as puzzling as it is disturbing. It would seem that every man, seeing as he does that the state is, at best, an imperfect solution, would incline his ear to see what alternatives present themselves, hoping that the situation might improve. But this is not the case.

This particular point has been gnawing at me a great deal for the past couple of years. Probably the biggest source of this frustration is the occasional political discussions I've had with my girlfriend. In one of these I recall that, after a long discussion on the possibility of life without what we currently know as 'government', I presented to her the above quoted notion, almost verbatim. I wanted to know what made the ideas so utterly incomprehensible to her.

Her response was stunning, and numbing at the same time. With a real air of desperation in her voice, she said that to adopt the views I was presenting was to admit that all of her life she'd been a dupe. Further, she couldn't really avoid taking it personally. She felt that my promotion of such ideas was, in a sense, a condemnation of her and those who agreed with her as, at best, naive - at worst, vain and foolish.

I'm not sure what to do with that really. It does make me rather pessimistic about the possibility of persuading people that the 'dragons at the gate' aren't real. They've invested most of their lives in the justifications we're given for the state. Even when they can see how giving up those assumptions might lead to a better life, the thought of tearing themselves away from something so fundamental is too painful to bear.

SergeantX

"Dream a little dream or you can live a little dream. I'd rather live it, cause dreamers always chase but never get it." Aesop Rock

FREMDFIRMA

Monday, March 17, 2008 4:33 AM

You could always handle that the way I do.

"Why ? everyone grows up sometime - did you feel the same way when it became apparent that Santa Claus didn't really exist ?

Would you then hold out that belief in spite of all the evidence just because you felt guilty and a bit rooked for having believed in the first place ?

Did you never move out, move on, when you no longer needed your parents to run your life for you - did it blow up, or did you find that you could co-exist without them in charge of your life any more ?

So wheres the shame in outgrowing dependancy ?

And I just leave it at that, let em think about it.

That bein said, Fremgirl is a white collar, upper class, law & order conservative, who admits us radical types got a point, but doesn't want her life inconvenienced by the trauma of a changeover from the established order, no matter how corrupt.

I deal with it, but take some mild bit of satisfaction in that, despite the fact that she firmly and fully believes in the Police as the forces of law, order and justice, the four times her or her co-workers have engaged with them in any way, it's gone *exactly* as I called it, chapter and verse, one of which was a cop physically PUSHING* her car over the speed limit in Maryland and then ticketing her, something I warned her about, and she lambasted me for even thinking could ever *possibly* happen.

I said not a word as she ranted and raved about that ticket, cause I know how women are, especially her, and wanted to keep certain vital parts of my anatomy attached.

Some folks, they just won't make the jump, the leap of faith to believe in themselves instead of a Government or Religion is just too big for them to dare, and that's ok with me - long as they do not shove those things down on me.

But you know, that always seems to happen, doesn't it ?

-Frem

*This is a popular trick of MD police, especially in western MD, they'll get up on your tail on the highway and refuse to budge off, we're talkin within 12 inches...

Fail to signal a lane change trying to get away from em, bang, ticket.
Do anything possibly ticketable trying to shake em, bang, ticket.
Slow down, bang, ticket, impeding traffic.
Speed up, bang, ticket, speeding.
Stomp the brakes and let em hit you, bang, ticket for causing an accident, if not worse since they'll call it an attack on them and their patrol car.

Fremgirl doesn't rattle so easy, so yon cop in question, having one of those special bumpers for pushing disabled vehicles off the road, got closer and closer, and apparently made contact and began to accellerate - cause she took her foot OFF the gas and the car was still accellerating, and she feared what might happen if she tried to brake, then he hit the lights and popped his brakes... and ticketed her for speeding.

You've only got two recourses to a bumper-camping cop, either get off the highway asap, which isn't so easy as the exits in that region are pretty far apart and they know it - or call 911 and report em as a suspicious vehicle tailgating you, especially if it's dark and you can "fail" to identify it as a patrol cruiser.

SERGEANTX

Monday, March 17, 2008 2:19 PM

The key benefits of state government clearly lie in it's ability to organize efficient cooperative action. You really can't engage in wholesale slaughter, or maintain infrastructure for systemic slavery without it.

SergeantX

"Dream a little dream or you can live a little dream. I'd rather live it, cause dreamers always chase but never get it." Aesop Rock

HERO

Monday, March 17, 2008 3:37 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by Fremdfirma:
It is sad that all of mankind's “national governments” are states. What an anarchist objects to is being forced to adhere to an organization to which he has not given his consent, from which he may not withdraw if it violates his conscience, and which provides its “services” in a coercive rather than a voluntary way. At the heart of the anarchist argument is a desire to uphold peace and morality, freedom and brotherhood. An anarchist acknowledges a simple truth: that any relationship that is not consensual can only result in further violence; but that a relationship among a group of people that recognizes the value of each individual, that acknowledges his ultimate ability to choose whether to continue that relationship, is based on the greatest bonds of fraternity. This, and not bomb-throwing, is the legacy of anarchism.

Consensual relationships are fine. But who's going to pick up the garbage? Its not going to be me.

Sure, we can fend for ourselves for vigilante justice, food, and reality TV...but those garbage trucks don't drive themselves people. For that we need government.

And a road or two would be nice, schools, hospitals, traffic lights, uniform commercial codes to govern financial transactions, a court to peacefully resolve disputes, Star Wars commemorative Stamps, inspected meat, safe cars, safe drivers, a military to prevent occupation by powerful foriegn governments who laugh hysterically at your anarachist ideals before rounding you up for 're-education' or extermination, somebody to put out fires (and to provide big red put'er-outer trucks), National Public Radio (cause liberal talk radio would never make it in a free market), National Forrests, not to mention election day bake sales.

Good example of anarchy is childhood. Would you wash, clean your room, eat right, play nice, or go to school if your parents didn't make you?

H

SERGEANTX

Monday, March 17, 2008 5:21 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by Hero:
Good example of anarchy is childhood. Would you wash, clean your room, eat right, play nice, or go to school if your parents didn't make you?

But, when applied to adults, this translates to "Would you kill, rape and steal if it wasn't illegal?".

SergeantX

"Dream a little dream or you can live a little dream. I'd rather live it, cause dreamers always chase but never get it." Aesop Rock

GEEZER

Monday, March 17, 2008 5:36 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by Hero:
Consensual relationships are fine. But who's going to pick up the garbage?

The private trash removal and recycling firm - one of several available in the area - which I pay to pick it up.

"Keep the Shiny side up"

ANTIMASON

Monday, March 17, 2008 5:46 PM

you know Frem, i find it hard to disagree with the philosophy of Anarchy; at least in principle, its like libertarianism, sans 'the state'. my only reservations are regarding morality and (social)justice, and whether there is a legitimate purpose for a state. the transition would be scary certainly.. buts its a thought im sure everyone has considered at least once in their lifetime.

this discussion always reminds me of this passage from 1 Samual 8, which was a time when the Israelites practiced a form of 'government' akin to Anarchy, or perhaps the only authentic form of theocracy

Quote:
1 When Samuel grew old, he appointed his sons as judges for Israel. The name of his firstborn was Joel and the name of his second was Abijah, and they served at Beersheba. But his sons did not walk in his ways. They turned aside after dishonest gain and accepted bribes and perverted justice.

So all the elders of Israel gathered together and came to Samuel at Ramah. They said to him, "You are old, and your sons do not walk in your ways; now appoint a king to lead us, such as all the other nations have."

But when they said, "Give us a king to lead us," this displeased Samuel; so he prayed to the LORD. And the LORD told him: "Listen to all that the people are saying to you; it is not you they have rejected, but they have rejected me as their king. As they have done from the day I brought them up out of Egypt until this day, forsaking me and serving other gods, so they are doing to you. Now listen to them; but warn them solemnly and let them know what the king who will reign over them will do."

Samuel told all the words of the LORD to the people who were asking him for a king. He said, "This is what the king who will reign over you will do: He will take your sons and make them serve with his chariots and horses, and they will run in front of his chariots. Some he will assign to be commanders of thousands and commanders of fifties, and others to plow his ground and reap his harvest, and still others to make weapons of war and equipment for his chariots. He will take your daughters to be perfumers and cooks and bakers. He will take the best of your fields and vineyards and olive groves and give them to his attendants. He will take a tenth of your grain and of your vintage and give it to his officials and attendants. Your menservants and maidservants and the best of your cattle and donkeys he will take for his own use. He will take a tenth of your flocks, and you yourselves will become his slaves. When that day comes, you will cry out for relief from the king you have chosen, and the LORD will not answer you in that day."

But the people refused to listen to Samuel. "No!" they said. "We want a king over us. Then we will be like all the other nations, with a king to lead us and to go out before us and fight our battles."

When Samuel heard all that the people said, he repeated it before the LORD. The LORD answered, "Listen to them and give them a king."

KWICKO

Monday, March 17, 2008 5:56 PM

Quote:
Hero wrote:

Sure, we can fend for ourselves for vigilante justice, food, and reality TV...but those garbage trucks don't drive themselves people. For that we need government.

[shock]Did I just hear you argue FOR a socialized system? [/shock]

SERGEANTX

Monday, March 17, 2008 6:16 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by Kwicko:
Quote:
Hero wrote:

Sure, we can fend for ourselves for vigilante justice, food, and reality TV...but those garbage trucks don't drive themselves people. For that we need government.

[shock]Did I just hear you argue FOR a socialized system? [/shock]

Hmmm, not so shocking to me. But I tend to overlook petty details. All authoritarians look alike to me.

SergeantX

"Dream a little dream or you can live a little dream. I'd rather live it, cause dreamers always chase but never get it." Aesop Rock

CANTTAKESKY

Monday, March 17, 2008 6:38 PM

Thanks, Frem.

I remember when I first realized I'm an anarchist at heart. I was arguing with another anarchist about how it couldn't work.

He said, "It HAS to work. Individual sovereignty is TRUE, and the ultimate logical outcome of individual sovereignty is anarchy."

That worked for me. If you start from what you believe is true, then there are not many places it can go.

Anarchy will happen, as soon as people recognize their own sovereignty and refuse to accept being "ruled." I believe one day, people will grow up and outgrow their state "parents."

So there you have it. It is possible for someone on forums and chatrooms to change his/her mind from these endless shouting matches.

RIGHTEOUS9

Monday, March 17, 2008 6:39 PM

In the wild kingdom, animals steal, rape kill all the time. It's the natural order. Governments don't come into play. When people have to occupy themselves with securing the basest of needs, they will do the same, especially if that's what works.

The anarchist accepts a tenet that good and bad is inherant, apparently, because he sees a few bad apples that will always be drawn to crime. He doesn't recognize that we're adaptable creatures with adaptable morality that will follow the lead of successful models.

My going theory is that we all want to be good(a maslow thing), that we all want positive feedback...but when that positive feedback comes for negative activity, negative activity is what is going to result.

I sympathize with the anarchist, there are plenty of examples he can cite as to the convoluted nature and failure of this government.

I do not know how anybody could possibly believe however, that you can even sustain the very idea of anarchy on a nationwide level without there being some sort of standardized teaching, which i'm afraid flies in the face of anarchist doctrine. How many fundamentalist mini-societies are likely to spring up when people send their kids to whatever school suits the curriculum that they are seeking? What kind of a chasm are we goig to develop between americans who eventually form very different opinions about what America is.

Hell, even with our school system(or you might argue, because of it, though I see your option being an even worse one) most of us have apparently forgotten what our principles are supposed to be, what our most sacred ideals as Americans are.

....................

Let me just say that he's probably got most of us wrong. I dont' think many of us who actually believe in the principle of representative government and its role in shaping our society believe in an end-game or a Utopia, nor are we naive to the very dangerous double edge that governments represent. But I will say there's something jaded about the idea that we shouldn't try to do something to make society better for everybody,

and I will also say that the idea that we are handing our power over to the man so that he can do harm or good to us as he sees fit, is a convolution of how our government is supposed to work. We are supposed to be our government, and if there's one thing that a public school system should adress and belabour from the get-go, its civic responsibility, because involvement from informed citizens is the ideal ----- what we have instead...yeah, scary.

..............................

Liberty is a balancing act. Who regulates a company that is dumping in the bay? Is the kid that was born with severe asthma because the air where he lives was heavily polluted free to be anything he wants?

Does it really matter at that point if people decide they don't want to do business with the company that polluted that air? Private unregulated industry at work, dictated soully by the power of the consumer's dollar is just not going to work. Obviously, the fascist system we are nearing doesn't work either, but those of us looking to push the other way know that.
.....................................

Sounds good. Yeah, I'd like for everybody to voluntarily be a part of a working healthy government, as the writer ends his piece, but what does that mean? He recognizes the need for government at one point, and then he allows people to what, 'opt out.'?

Or what happens when one town is pumping out a massive ammount of pollution that is ending up in another town's drinking water? Do they go to war? Do they get arbitration(and where do we find truly neutral arbitration?) There's no legal recourse...lawsuit? who has to abide by those? "I opt out. I don't agree with the judicial arm of goverment."

I think we've been told enough that we just don't understand, or that we're applying our old models to this brave new world, but I dont' think anybody has clearly defined how such problems would be solved, and I"m interested. I am ope

HERO

Monday, March 17, 2008 8:42 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by Geezer:
The private trash removal and recycling firm - one of several available in the area - which I pay to pick it up.

What if there are no private companie sin your area, or they don't want to do it, or they take your money and don't do it, or half-ass it, and where did you get the money anyway...or are you trading bushels of apples cause if you've got apple trees and I want apples then I'm gonna have apples and you can probably stop me, but not me and all my apple loving buddies...and as long as your having your trash picked up, pay them to pick up mine too, cause I aint paying for it...when it gets too much I'll just chuck it over the fence into your apple orchard and what are you going to do, Mr. Anarchist, cause you may not believe in organization, but a lot of us do so we organize a neighborhood association and suddenly your orchard is our neighborhood trash dump, so maybe you fight and there's more of us and we take what you got split it up and there's apples for everybody and the trash just keeps piling up the way God intended.

Anarchy gives you exactly what you put into it...

H

HERO

Monday, March 17, 2008 8:46 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by Kwicko:
[shock]Did I just hear you argue FOR a socialized system? [/shock]

No, you heard me argue in favor of having a government rather then not having a government.

Its a long journey from garbage men and firetrucks to centalized economic planning and state controlled everything.

H

FREMDFIRMA

Monday, March 17, 2008 8:57 PM

Quote:
we're adaptable creatures with adaptable morality that will follow the lead of successful models.

Of course we are, and who are the successful models in our current society, heavily influenced by the sociopathic nature of the State ?

As for the rest, it's prettymuch been done to death, but when it comes to rapacious, exploitive and/or polluting corporations, it is by the protection of the State that they exist, historically those badly effected or misused have always stood up to them, quite effectively, until the intervention of State forces in the name of keeping order.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_strikes
(The revisionists have nuked most of the info, but the list itself is a good baseline for research)

I submit to you that history proves without the intervention of the State, these corporations would NOT be successful in violating other peoples turf or rights, because without the bulwark of the States military forces to defend and protect their abusive behavior - they wind up facing a three front attack from unhappy customers, those done ill by their practices and mistreated employees/laborers, and they will lose.

Does that oft-times involve violence ?

Well, sure, it's asinine to think that you can remove that element from anything alive, even a freakin mouse will bite you if you back it into a corner and threaten it enough.

But sans the intervention of the State, and excluding for the moment those rare few who would continue to act predatory without the State sanction of an unarmed and defenseless population trained not to resist predation encouraging it....

It takes a threat, and a right serious one, for most people to risk injury or death acting in defense of their rights, person or turf - corporations may be immoral, but in their own fashion are not as 'stupid' as a Government, if it's more cost effective to cooperate, than it is to finance an ever larger security force to protect their abuses, they'll cooperate, they do not have the limitless ability to print their own currency at whim that a State does, and without being able to call upon an entire States military forces at no cost to them, it's just not financially viable to act in such a fashion.

Not even if you exterminated them wholesale to end the threat, cause then who would buy your products ?

I also differ in that there's some things you might WANT an organisation of some type for, especially locally, we've had councils of village elders that the villagers put their trust in to get stuff done long before we had civilisation proper, and most folk got on pretty well with that, cause if they didn't like it, they just packed up their stuff and went somewhere else.

That's the beauty of it, at least from an Anarchist point of view, they don't want your Government forced down upon them - but conversely, they would not generally care for the idea of stripping it away from someone who DID want it.

We convince, we don't coerce, it's anethma to all we are.

-Frem
It cannot be said enough, those who do not learn from history, are doomed to endlessly repeat it

SERGEANTX

Monday, March 17, 2008 8:58 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by Righteous9:
In the wild kingdom, animals steal, rape kill all the time. It's the natural order. Governments don't come into play. When people have to occupy themselves with securing the basest of needs, they will do the same, especially if that's what works.

Thankfully, people have an advantage over the other animals in terms of controlling their behavior. It's pretty much our defining trait. I think a viable anarchistic society is far off and will require wholesale changes to the average person's conception of personal responsibility, as well as the creation of infrastructure to support a self-governing society. But I do think it's a practical, maybe even necessary development in the progress of civilization.

People usually seem to jump to the image of anarchy as the condition of society before government, but it's important to note we're not advocating a return to barbarism. We're looking at where society can be after we've moved beyond compulsory state governments as means of organizing ourselves.

Quote:
The anarchist accepts a tenet that good and bad is inherant, apparently, because he sees a few bad apples that will always be drawn to crime. He doesn't recognize that we're adaptable creatures with adaptable morality that will follow the lead of successful models...

This is certainly a valid concern, but I think it's less likely to occur without the state. If I'm not misunderstanding, you're suggesting that while we like to think of ourselves as moral and restrained, we'll be pushed into more and more barbaric behavior, even if we don't want to, to defend ourselves from those who will.

This is actually my biggest concern about the process of moving toward anarchy. While I think it's possible to have a large-scale society that shares enough common values to avoid the temptations of centralizing power, it's going to a long, and likely painful, process weaning ourselves from our current bad habits.

And these kinds of things can change. Remember it was only a few hundred years ago slavery was considered a natural fact of life by much of the world's population. But as a people, we've, more or less voluntarily, rejected the concept. That gives me hope.

Quote:
But I will say there's something jaded about the idea that we shouldn't try to do something to make society better for everybody

I totally agree. That's why I'm promoting a move toward anarchy.

Quote:
Liberty is a balancing act. Who regulates a company that is dumping in the bay? Is the ...

There are thousands of these kinds of questions waiting to be answered. I'm confident that they can be answered, but we'll do a better a job solving them if there's some consensus on where we want to go (don't ya love irony?). If we can agree that less government is better it will imply very different solutions than if we decide strong, compulsory, state action is the way to go. That's why I think these discussions are valuable. We're certainly not trying to imagine how public sewers or television broadcasting will work in a self-governing society. Not yet anyway.

Actually, there are some people exploring these questions, but there work is so speculative as to be nearly useless, in my opinion. As I said, without widescale acceptance of the goal, we're never going to get to that point anyway.

SergeantX

"Dream a little dream or you can live a little dream. I'd rather live it, cause dreamers always chase but never get it." Aesop Rock

GEEZER

Tuesday, March 18, 2008 2:04 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by Hero:
What if there are no private companie sin your area...

Generally this only occurs when government has claimed the monopoly on trash pickup. If there's a market for trash pickup, or most anything else, someone will fill it.

"Keep the Shiny side up"

HERO

Tuesday, March 18, 2008 3:22 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by Fremdfirma:
That's the beauty of it, at least from an Anarchist point of view, they don't want your Government forced down upon them - but conversely, they would not generally care for the idea of stripping it away from someone who DID want it.

That sounds good to a lot of folks.

But then most of them will be part of the folks who do want a government and who will be killing you and dividing up your stuff.

Me, I'll be in the govt saying 'don't do that' to their govt. Heck, we'd even be willing to come fight by your side to protect your lives, liberty, and property...but only if you organize a force for us to fight beside...but you can't organize a damned thing out there all on your own. And why the hell would we help a bunch of folks who can't even see to their own garbage collection?

Seems we tried this once in America. Didn't work out real well for the indians, doubt it'll work for you.

H

HERO

Tuesday, March 18, 2008 3:34 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by SergeantX:
I'm confident that they can be answered, but we'll do a better a job solving them if there's some consensus on where we want to go (don't ya love irony?).

I would suggest that your solutions are destined to fail if your consensus is less then uniform adherance to the will of the majority. Otherwise you are imposing your will on the minority which, in the absense of law and order, is a recipe for abuse.

Simply put, your system only works if everyone agrees and everyone cooperates. The fella who says 'the hell with you' and starts dumping in the bay will upset the balance of your entire society. At that point you will either accept the actions of those who do not conform (possibly to the detriment of all) or you will impose your will. In the absense of structure the only recourse would be violence.

Knowing that, there is no incentive to simply await your moral decision. The bay dumper has every right to kill you first and resolve the issue in his favor by default. Such struggles would devolve your society into a simple survival of the fitest. The strong would then impose their will on the weak, people would band together for larger resources and power and simple governments would begin to form as a result.

It is my conculsion that anarachy in all but the most primitive and small populations must and will inevitably result in organization and government in one form or another.

H

HERO

Tuesday, March 18, 2008 3:55 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by Geezer:
Generally this only occurs when government has claimed the monopoly on trash pickup. If there's a market for trash pickup, or most anything else, someone will fill it.

Really? Why do you think your City is in all those little services?

They build sewers and provide trash pickup cause when cities first got started people dumped their trash and their wastes anywhere they wanted...usually right outside their door. Oh, they didn't know any better you say...we'll I just prosecuted a fella for dumping his trash in the State Park, he's a fracking college educated man (defended himself and lost).

Suddenly there were problems like disease and the notion of public health became a consideration. Cities knew they needed to pick up trash and provide efficient means of waste disposal. Things can burn...buckets are fine for a while, but when there are lots of building fairly close together you need organized fire brigades (and even voluteers need equipment and that costs money). People steal, or get drunk, or get stupid, or just get violent, so we need police. Collections of folks need to trade, so we need roads to carry goods and commercial laws to govern transactions. People need to read and write...schools. People might want to build their new polluting factory next my brand new house...zoning laws. There's no power company, so the City builds a power plant so we can have power (or negotiates a City-wide gas rate that is less then what a single person could get). Everybody wants running water and nobody can afford to dig up the street to run it to every home, Cities can do that too. Boy thats a lot of snow and there's no commerce going on, folks can't get groceries or to the hospital...how about we plow the streets. You want to tell your Dad who lives 1000 miles away about his new grandson (not to mention conduct business with people or companies outside your community)...the mail. And so on.

Tell you what. Lets do an experiment. I'll give you a million people, you get them to build an anarchist city. My guess is you wont last a year before they starve, die of disease, or start preying upon themselves. You'll have no roads, sewers, nothing beyond basic health care, minimal education (among the masses anyway), widespread violence, and your society will organize itself into gangs, tribes, clans, or whatever in spite of your best efforts and because of your inability to deliver their basic needs. If you do succeed, good for you...I'll lead the army that takes over, cause hey...free city.

H

SERGEANTX

Tuesday, March 18, 2008 4:04 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by Hero:
Simply put, your system only works if everyone agrees and everyone cooperates.

Not everyone. Just a critical mass that prevents those who do want to throw their weight around from gaining any momentum. No one is saying there won't be violence, both as deviant action and in retaliation for such. What we're saying is we can avoid creating states that organize and focus that violence to such insane levels.

I'll go back to the slavery comparison. By and large, slavery was abolished because people got fed up with it. There was no worldwide law passed that compelled countries into outlawing it. What ended slavery was a moral transformation that convinced most of us that slavery was beneath humanity. I believe such a transformation can happen regarding state government.

It's not that there won't be deviance, but that deviance will be condemned by the bulk of civilized peoples. They will refuse to cooperate with people who insist on practicing the 'barbaric' practice of state power. Those that attempt to create a 'state' in such an environment would find themselves ostracized and missing out on the benefits of cooperative interaction.

Obviously, this wouldn't happen in the current environment, or even the future environment, without significant changes in public values. But I do think it's possible. I even suspect it will be a necessary development if modern civilization is to avoid tearing itself apart.

SergeantX

"Dream a little dream or you can live a little dream. I'd rather live it, cause dreamers always chase but never get it." Aesop Rock

SERGEANTX

Tuesday, March 18, 2008 4:20 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by Hero:
Quote:
Originally posted by Geezer:
Generally this only occurs when government has claimed the monopoly on trash pickup. If there's a market for trash pickup, or most anything else, someone will fill it.

Really? Why do you think your City is in all those little services?

This line of argument actually undercuts your position, Hero, given that such services are already privately supplied in many communities.

SergeantX

"Dream a little dream or you can live a little dream. I'd rather live it, cause dreamers always chase but never get it." Aesop Rock

RIGHTEOUS9

Tuesday, March 18, 2008 5:37 PM

Frem, thanks for responding.

Historically, those same people who have banded together to fight forces doing them harm, have channeled their anger at the wrong targets, over and over....

you know, the ones that don't have the money to have a private security force...

and anybody with money can steer the perception of who's at fault for their difficult lives...so we're looking at a long run of indiscrimate vigilante justice under such a system, and woe to anybody caught on the wrong side of it.

......................

I don't htink its the sociopathic nature of our state or government htat is the problem...I think its our self identity, our reliance on wealth as a gauge of personal value...our overly developed sense of independance and lack of social responsibility that our culture as a whole has bread. OUr government problems are a symptom of that. That's what needs to change.

..............

it's illogical to me that people can opt out of your government. The notion doesn't work. If you decide to have a law...no littering by penalty of having your hand cut off, in your little community, and somebody passing through litters, he's not going to have the option of saying he's opting out of their government, and that he's just moving on. And the last place he was at had a rule about wearing hats in the street on sunday by penalty of a lashing...so he decided he'd get the hell out of there. There's going to be rules you don't like everywhere...and where's the freedom in having to move exactly?

Now granted, under the constitution those would probably be cruel and unusual punishments, but in this independant world, how are we going to come to a universal idea of what that means? Or is that part of the governemnt you still see functioning? And if there's no police force, how do you see it being enforced on strict communities? And if there is, you already assume only the worst outcome from state run enforcement, so you're already where you don't want to be.

....................................

Seargent X, thanks for your response as well.

I'm not yet willing to agree that less government is better. I'm willing to entertain it as a hypothetical, but boldly advancing on that course without working through these potential problems even theoretically doesn't sound like a good idea.

The anarchist seriuosly looking to move towards this sort of society should be looking at what it takes to aleviate those sorts of concerns in advance. I'm not on board because i don't see a reasonable solution to them, and until some are laid on the table, I can't weigh the two models against each other.

I'm glad that you agree there needs to be some sort of infrastructure promoting Anarchistic principles. I'd also be interested in knowing how that might be acheived.
.................................................

FREMDFIRMA

Tuesday, March 18, 2008 11:24 PM

Quote:
Historically, those same people who have banded together to fight forces doing them harm, have channeled their anger at the wrong targets, over and over....

Actually that's a fairly recent development, the folks on that list of strikes know where the blame lay and took it right to em, only to get mowed down and chopped up, over and over again, by the forces of the State in the name of "keeping order".

But last 20 years or so, folks get mad at all of society outside their monkeysphere and get stupid about it, yeah they do.

I mean, burning down the grocery store instead of city hall ?
Unless it's a Walmart that's run your local businesses off and then jacked prices once it's dominance is complete, where's the sense in that ?

What Augustus and I do, we call cat-herding for a reason, you can just imagine the difficulty of keeping some semblance of flow to an Anarchist demonstration, especially Anarchists with notoriously short attention spans... they mutually agree on what our goals are and Augustus and his bullhorn act as a kind of rudder, pointing the course - while my function is more like guardrails, keepin folk from wandering off alone (bad things tend to happen when a pack of cops set on us to watch catch someone alone, believe it) blocking traffic, or general stupidity having naught to do with our intent, which mostly involves a gentle nudge here and there by folks who mutually agreed to be nudged beforehand.

I also serve as a brick wall to keep agents provakatuer out and away, I can practically smell cop fifty yards away, and between knowing our people, and damned good sig-intel I will not relate here, we catch em out and run em off every time - which is somethin I suspect might have a lot to do with the "wrong target" problem above, as most groups don't take that threat serious enough.

I ain't usually an obvious part of things unless it's just sign standing, and the first inkling such folk have that they were spotted is me poppin up behind em inside their comfort zone and asking them to kindly move along - especially if we're 100% sure they are undercovers, being shadowdanced like that is a big slap in the face to them.

Quote:
our overly developed sense of independance and lack of social responsibility that our culture as a whole has bread.

Nah, our sense of independance is fine, not really developed enough, you ask me - but you're right, a sense of social responsibility, personal responsibility MUST go with it, if you wish to make your own decisions, you must also be willing to take responsibility for them, which no one seems to wanna do these days.

Quote:
I'm glad that you agree there needs to be some sort of infrastructure promoting Anarchistic principles. I'd also be interested in knowing how that might be acheived.

Well, my take on it, is that it's like an addiction, goin cold-turkey is a last resort with potentially disastrous results - remember, under the Constitution, the FedGov had only a few, VERY limited duties and all else was reserved unto the states as being closer to the people, smaller and more amenable to direct participation, you see.

I mean, you, personally, can make an impact, have your say, in a town council meeting - but your words are dust on the wind to some FedGov official six hundred miles away and drowned in a million voices all a-babble versus the big paydays of corporate lobbyists.

The means to it, is to start with paring off and dismantling redundant or counterproductive functions of Government, slicing foreign aid as we badly need those resources here, and cutting out waste, pork and stupidity.

Look at my pet peeve, the alphabet goons - we could chop them by 90% and the only real difference would be less hasslement, abuse and domestic spying used for political or exploitive purpose, scale it back to a single agency used in a passive observation mode reporting directly to military intel analysts who then report to congressional committee.

BATFE would go first, why have an agency who's sole purpose is to violate our Constitu

HERO

Tuesday, March 18, 2008 11:33 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by SergeantX:
This line of argument actually undercuts your position, Hero, given that such services are already privately supplied in many communities.

Thats only because of economic and social opportunities created by modern economic practices which are themselves an offshoot of the Democratic form of government.

For example, you want to run a private power company. You need capital to finance you plant and all the power lines. You go to a bank, they loan you other people's money at reasonble rates. Those rates are reasonable because that money they are loaning you is partly insured by the govt. If it was not the loan would be riskier and capital less available.

H

GEEZER

Tuesday, March 18, 2008 11:38 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by Hero:
Quote:
Originally posted by Geezer:
Generally this only occurs when government has claimed the monopoly on trash pickup. If there's a market for trash pickup, or most anything else, someone will fill it.

Really? Why do you think your City is in all those little services?

Don't live in a city, but an unincorporated part of the county. Fire and ambulance are either the volunteer fire station nearby or commercial ambulance service connected with private hospitals, who expect to get paid. Gas, electric, phone and internet are all private services.

"Keep the Shiny side up"

HERO

Tuesday, March 18, 2008 11:39 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by SergeantX:
I'll go back to the slavery comparison. By and large, slavery was abolished because people got fed up with it.

It was abolished because it was incompatible with modern technology making it economically untenable.

Economics also created the middle class and gave birth to the philosophical movements that justified the social changes that the economic and technological evolution was bringing.

Slavery existed in every culture and civilization in human history spanning thousands of years...people didn't get fed up, economics changed the rules.

H

GEEZER

Wednesday, March 19, 2008 2:55 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by Hero:
Tell you what. Lets do an experiment. I'll give you a million people, you get them to build an anarchist city.

Okay. Give me a million anarchists an libertarians who firmly believe in the Non-aggression Principle (look it up) and, say, Wyoming, but without any of the infrastructure. I don't "get" them to do anything, since that's aggression. I say "Here's free land. Do as you will".

"Keep the Shiny side up"

FREMDFIRMA

Wednesday, March 19, 2008 12:33 PM

Funny thing about that, I know my people, and I hold few if any illusions about em.

You'd lose almost a quarter of em right off the bat - and why ?

Cause most of em are great on the theory, horrible on the application, especially at a practical level - that's any crowd of folk with a strong belief, sure... but in the time it'd take the few of us who DO know something about how to build single-unit infrastructure for the rest of em got much of it done, you'd lose a hell of a lot of them to illness, starvation and violence even in the midst of "plenty".

Ponder how many of them back to nature types actually know anything about something as damned simple as crop rotation ?

Or why you plant Daisies at the borders of your fields ?

How many know what a Hardy is ?
Or a Swage and Fuller ?

Know what metal you should be banging a Pot Still out of ?

Can identify and use a medicinal plant other than Aloe Vera ?

That's one reason I favor a more gradual process, it ain't just mentality, although there is that, it's the outright and complete lack of some really basic skills, especially amongst the city dwelling crowd.

It might work, but the triaging process would be pretty horrific.

-Frem

It cannot be said enough, those who do not learn from history, are doomed to endlessly repeat it

HERO

Wednesday, March 19, 2008 12:52 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by Geezer:
Okay. Give me a million anarchists an libertarians who firmly believe in the Non-aggression Principle (look it up) and, say, Wyoming, but without any of the infrastructure. I don't "get" them to do anything, since that's aggression. I say "Here's free land. Do as you will".

I note for the record that my contention is that anarchy can't work except in small groups. A million people spread out over Oklahoma would likely not result in small enough groups, but its possible it would work for some of them. I note for the record that your proposing a population that is twice Wyoming's current population (2006 estimate).

But it would be lawless, much as the territory was to begin with. In any group of a million people some will be violent criminals and many will not be able to make their lives work and will turn to crime to survive. Since this is exactly what happened in real life, it is exactly what your experiment would produce. Many will be forced to either organize to protect their own or to request outside government in the form of Federal marshals. Criminals will also band together for much the same reason.

But its not a fair test. In order for your principals to work they need to work in our present society. That means you need to demonstrate that you can cram the million people into a space the size of...Cleveland...and make it work. That is simply not possible.

Unless you mean to drastically reduce the population, your new society will collapse under its own weight.

Make no mistake, I understand your real argument. You are not libertarian or even anarchist, they are merely convieniant lables for your selfish desire to divorce yourself of those rules society gives you that you don't want to follow. You gladly benefit from the protection and infrastructure provided, but simply don't want to pay for them or obey laws that inconvience you. For example, you are glad to drive on City roads, but oppose the State's desire to tax you to pay for those roads, or license your driving, or make you conform to traffic laws.

I deal with a Freeman or two every year, I know how they think. They want to impose their will on society, pick the rules they like, ignore the rules they don't, and make up crazy talk excuses for why they don't have to be good citizens, yet they expect society to provide them with the things they demand.

H

GEEZER

Wednesday, March 19, 2008 1:11 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by Fremdfirma:
Funny thing about that, I know my people, and I hold few if any illusions about em.

You'd lose almost a quarter of em right off the bat - and why ?

Cause most of em are great on the theory, horrible on the application, especially at a practical level - that's any crowd of folk with a strong belief, sure... but in the time it'd take the few of us who DO know something about how to build single-unit infrastructure for the rest of em got much of it done, you'd lose a hell of a lot of them to illness, starvation and violence even in the midst of "plenty".

Clarification time. Just because my anarcho-Wyoming has no infrastructure doesn't mean that no one has infrastructure or technology. I'm not dumping a million cityfolk down in the wilderness with a knife and a blanket, I'm providing free land to folks who can use all the elements of modern technology to exploit it. I'd expect that cell phone towers would be up pretty soon.

"Keep the Shiny side up"

HERO

Wednesday, March 19, 2008 1:34 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by Geezer:
I'd expect that cell phone towers would be up pretty soon.

That's optomistic considering you have no commercial structure in place. That means no incentive for outside investment. Your consumers have no money, no tangible property (unless they're giving up their land), no credit, no capital, no banking structure, nothing and no way to pay for anything. Just a vast wilderness with no means to exploit or develop aside from their own hands.

Now I'm sure that some nice corporations will make you great deals to provide you with what you need. For a fair price...and without government regulation to get in their way either.

Here's your national anthem:
You load sixteen tons, and what do you get?
Another day older and deeper in debt.
Saint Peter, don't you call me, 'cause I can't go;
I owe my soul to the company store...

H

GEEZER

Wednesday, March 19, 2008 1:37 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by Hero:
But its not a fair test. In order for your principals to work they need to work in our present society. That means you need to demonstrate that you can cram the million people into a space the size of...Cleveland...and make it work. That is simply not possible.

And Cleveland works so well now?

150 years ago there were signs posted on many worksites - "No Irish need apply". You don't see those any more. Times and ideas change. Maybe the time for folks who understand and apply their rights and responsabilities as individuals will come. Maybe the time for folks who want to subordinate themselves to the 'common good' will come. I'd rather root for the individuals.

Quote:
Make no mistake, I understand your real argument. You are not libertarian or even anarchist, they are merely convieniant lables for your selfish desire to divorce yourself of those rules society gives you that you don't want to follow. You gladly benefit from the protection and infrastructure provided, but simply don't want to pay for them or obey laws that inconvience you. For example, you are glad to drive on City roads, but oppose the State's desire to tax you to pay for those roads, or license your driving, or make you conform to traffic laws.

I spent 37 years collecting taxes. Under the current system it is the only way to pay for services, since the state holds a monopoly on providing them. I got no problem with paying for services, I just think most of them would be more efficient if there were a bit of accountability based on being able to opt for the competition. The fastest way to get from where I live to Leesburg, Va. is the Dulles Greenway, a private tollway which is much better designed, maintained, and landscaped than the state highways. I don't mind paying the toll for better service.

"Keep the Shiny side up"

FREMDFIRMA

Wednesday, March 19, 2008 4:03 PM

Infrastructure is one of those things that's worth a buck, and worth payin for - but competition would do wonders in freakin improvin it, that's for certain.

Keep yer fuckin protection, how bout you and yours get off my back and let ME handle that end, without you and your goons "protecting" me right to death, spyin on me, cookin up so many damn laws no human being could possibly obey them all even if they tried.

Fuck this protection shit, make the police like the Fire Dept, out of your way, and out of your damn business till you call em to clean up the mess.

That's what they are anyway, glorified social janitors with delusions of grandeur on a power trip cause of folks like you backing their insanity.

Unless you're gonna issue an armed bodygaurd for every person in the USA, how bout this novel fuckin concept for you - LEGALISE SELF DEFENSE, and quit prosecuting it, and maybe, just maybe, you won't have half the problems we do now with crime due to a disarmed and compliant populace trained to roll over and comply at the mildest possible threat.

Of *course* you hate those who wish to sever their dependancy on the state, because it is by that very dependancy that you have money, authority and a win-win game played every day with a stacked deck.

Q -"Why do you carry a piece ?"

A -"Cause I couldn't fit the whole cop in the holster, so I just took the only useful bit."

Rules and laws are made to protect people, but when those rules and laws somehow become distorted, twisted so that they wind up more important THAN the people they are supposed to protect, then you're lookin down the barrel of a tyranny, no matter how you slice it, no matter what you wanna CALL it - it is what it is.

-Frem

It cannot be said enough, those who do not learn from history, are doomed to endlessly repeat it

FINN MAC CUMHAL

Wednesday, March 19, 2008 4:21 PM

The problem that I have with anarchy is what do you do about the warlords? Anarchy in practice always devolves down into dueling warlords. When pressed for an answer, anarchists use the dishonest argument of attacking the question - they dismiss such criticism on the grounds that any person who would ask such a question has a low regard of human nature, while at the same type claiming that such warlords are dealt with by an armed society. But it’s not a low regard of human nature, it’s simply a reality, and expecting that the break-up of society will be prevented by an armed society is to place the stability of a society on a precarious balance. The end result is that anarchy, as it is described to me by people like Frem, is simply not a stable condition.

Nihil est incertius vulgo, nihil obscurius voluntate hominum, nihil fallacius ratione tota comitiorum.

Nothing is more unpredictable than the mob, nothing more obscure than public opinion, nothing more deceptive than the whole political system.

-- Cicero

JONGSSTRAW

Wednesday, March 19, 2008 5:12 PM

Here's a little piece of something that is "wrong" in America....I had to serve on jury duty Monday. I was selected during the day to interview on 3 different cases with prospective jury panels....All 3 cases were for crimial prosecution of possession of cocaine....not selling mind you, just possession. I was not selected for any of the juries (they only take 6 out of each 25 interviewed) but chances are I would have found them all not guilty. This is a big business, a huge business...not the drug trafficking..but the prosecution and defense of these defendents. The courts and all their employees, the attorneys, the police & witnesses that testify, the cost in terms of lost business and time for 300 people to show up as jurors, only to have just 48 selected. The other thing that annoyed me was they way the judges and attorneys "instructed" the prospective jurors...very heavily slanted in favor of the accused. We were told to give the same consideration of testimony regardless of the source, ie, a veteran policeman's testimony is the same as a drug dealer's. I don't buy that. They also could not really come up with a clear definition of "beyond a reasonable doubt." They dance around it a lot, but it seems highly subjective. Considering that guilty verdicts need to be unanimous (don't like that either) I'm amazed that anyone gets convicted of anything.

RUE

Wednesday, March 19, 2008 6:53 PM

One of many problems I have with anarchy is the self-contradictory arguments in favor of it.

Here is one:

Who needs government and regulation ? Not the anarchists, b/c the people who own companies will be different, somehow, and not profit-focused or running their business the same way society runs itself. Then who needs guns ? Apparently everyone, b/c anarchists will be rapacious untrustworthy bastards who only understand the business end of a gun.

***************************************************************
"Global warming - it's not just a fact, it's a choice."

HERO

Wednesday, March 19, 2008 8:56 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by Fremdfirma:
Of *course* you hate those who wish to sever their dependancy on the state, because it is by that very dependancy that you have money, authority and a win-win game played every day with a stacked deck.

Hey, I'm perfectly happy to let you go your seperate way. Problem is you can't seperate yourself from the State, community, or the folk next door.

Problem is when some gang sees that and decides the Fremdfirma Democratic Republic (aka your house) would make a nice safe place for them to set up their drug lab and sell meth to the folks still choosing to live in my country (aka the surrounding community). Keeping you in and providing you protection is a lot cheaper then dealing with the fallout from your inability to take care of yourself.

Even assuming you could take care of yourself, imagine the cost of the wall we'd have to build around your house to control your movement from your free territory to our state. We'd have a booth, charge you a fee to enter and leave, require a passport, etc. After all, we can't have you coming here to use our infrastructure without contributing. Its a whole lot easier to wall off your house the it is Mexico.

And if the gang wants to go to your house to kill you...thats your business, we're not allowed to stop them (pesky Constitution). I suppose you could build your own wall...Be careful where you shoot though when fighting them off. Shooting into our state is an act of war and our military is bigger then yours.

Frankly the whole idea costs money and without govt the risk of investment skyrockets meaning they charge interest rates so high there would be no affordable capital for major investments. Probably none at all as banks would have no legal recourse to pursue deadbeats or fraud or anything like that.

H

SERGEANTX

Wednesday, March 19, 2008 8:59 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by rue:
One of many problems I have with anarchy is the self-contradictory arguments in favor of it.

Here is one:

Who needs government and regulation ? Not the anarchists, b/c the people who own companies will be different, somehow, and not profit-focused or running their business the same way society runs itself. Then who needs guns ? Apparently everyone, b/c anarchists will be rapacious untrustworthy bastards who only understand the business end of a gun.

I hear ya, rue. That's a pretty foolish argument. Doesn't even make much sense as a collection of sentences. Hell, anarchist or not, anyone who'd formulate something so stupid and grammatically confusing would lose my respect right away.

SergeantX

"Dream a little dream or you can live a little dream. I'd rather live it, cause dreamers always chase but never get it." Aesop Rock

HERO

Wednesday, March 19, 2008 9:08 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by Jongsstraw:
...but chances are I would have found them all not guilty.

If you say that then you get bounced for bias (I'd not even have to use a challenge). If you don't then a good prosecutor will pick up on it anyway and use a challenge.

Jury selection is difficult. I'm almost undefeated (except that one recent case), but I still have not mastered Jury Selection. Its all first impressions and stereotypes and I tend to give folk the benefit of the doubt (I keep people all the time and leave the Judge shaking his head). I always figure that unless they are angry about something or dead set on doing their own thing, then I'll change their mind if my case is good. I always bounce young unemployed males, regardless of case, thats my only black letter rule.

H

RUE

Wednesday, March 19, 2008 10:18 PM

SergeantX

Well that's the argument that's been made.

Geezer says business (like, say, the medical industry) wouldn't just let anyone die for oden's sake, and no one would pollute, or rip off the customers or employees. NNNOOOooooo - because you see they've evolved. HKC says pretty much the same thing, that in an anarchy people would just be different. And the rest of you go along with the argument, so I guess you all agree.

OTOH the wonderfully evolved business people don't seem to translate into wonderfully evolved everyday people, b/c those folk apparently only behave on instant threat of a gun.

Somehow you think people need to be kept in violent line every day, but businesses will just peaceably mind their manners nice as you please with no oversight or consequence at all.

So, do you have anything SUBSTANTIVE to add to the discussion ?

Like how the collective you can hold such two opposite ideas in your heads and not realize they don't logically go together ? Not even in a fantasy ?

***************************************************************
"Global warming - it's not just a fact, it's a choice."

GEEZER

Wednesday, March 19, 2008 11:00 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by rue:
Geezer says business (like, say, the medical industry) wouldn't just let anyone die for oden's sake, and no one would pollute, or rip off the customers or employees.

Well, not exactly. but I doubt that it would go on any more than it does now. Probably less. The folk who were infected with HIV and other assorted nastiness by that clinic in Vegas trusted the state to verify good procedure for them. I suspect they probably don't think that the state did a very good job.

"Keep the Shiny side up"

SERGEANTX

Wednesday, March 19, 2008 11:20 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by rue:
Well that's the argument that's been made.

Nah, that's just the big ol' strawman you're working on. But by all means keep at it. Maybe later we can have a burning man celebration.

SergeantX

"Dream a little dream or you can live a little dream. I'd rather live it, cause dreamers always chase but never get it." Aesop Rock

RUE

Wednesday, March 19, 2008 11:25 PM

Geezer

"The folk who were infected with HIV ..."

How wonderfully misleading.

First of all NO ON contracted HIV. Second, these were FOR PROFIT PRIVATE centers cutting costs. Third, FOR PROFIT PRIVATE outpatient centers are regulated by a very business-friendly set of recommendations - lobbied for by business I might add (and even then they can't seem to hew to them). Fourth, it was the Nevada health department - that nasty government - who ran surveys, discovered the problem and alerted the CDC and other agencies.

Once again, BUSINESS is the problem, and government has to come in and bring it to heel.

***************************************************************
"Global warming - it's not just a fact, it's a choice."

RUE

Wednesday, March 19, 2008 11:27 PM

SergeantX

Shall I get the quotes ? Because you really aren't arguing from an honest position.

Quote:
Originally posted by SergeantX:
Quote:
Originally posted by rue:
Well that's the argument that's been made.
Nah, that's just the big ol' strawman you're working on. But by all means keep at it. Maybe later we can have a burning man celebration.

SergeantX

***************************************************************
But if you HAVE to run and hide from a discussion - please - don't let me stop you.

HKCAVALIER

Thursday, March 20, 2008 1:20 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by rue:
Geezer says business (like, say, the medical industry) wouldn't just let anyone die for oden's sake, and no one would pollute, or rip off the customers or employees. NNNOOOooooo - because you see they've evolved. HKC says pretty much the same thing, that in an anarchy people would just be different.

WTF, Rue? I'm really getting tired of the RWED. Tired of everyone talking at and past each other. If that's all you got from my posts over the 4 thread long discussion of anarchism a few weeks ago then I don't know what to say to you.

How monumentally rude to pull me into this thread just to slam me for saying something absurd which I never said! What is the point? I have always respected you and always done my best to disagree specifically with your posts--when I have had disagreements--which has not been often. I'm sad to see that you do not return me that courtesy.

HKCavalier

Hey, hey, hey, don't be mean. We don't have to be mean, because, remember, no matter where you go, there you are.

RUE

Thursday, March 20, 2008 1:31 AM

HKC

That's not ALL I got out of your posts - but it was one thing I definitely got.

You seemed to emphasize pretty heavily the idea that anyone who was for some type of government regulation or law was probably chock full of the notion of the essential evil of human nature.

No matter how many times I tried to say that the occasional person would be sociopathic and test your society, and economic systems, it seemed you couldn't or wouldn't understand that it's inborn as an extreme part of the range of human characteristics.

I understand this to be a truth and haven't been shown otherwise. And therefore, my proposal is that either you remove ALL power structures - including business - or you create power structures to deal with the sociopaths who WILL be attracted to and ruthlessly work their way up through whatever existing power structures you have. In other words, you create laws and regulations.

BTW, while I think that some people are born sociopaths, I also think that some day we might be able to raise them in such a way as to evoke latent humanity. But that day is not now, and it would be foolish to adapt our laws prematurely to a condition which doesn't yet exist.

***************************************************************
But then, if I got it wrong, I expectantly await your discussion.

HKCAVALIER

Thursday, March 20, 2008 2:14 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by rue:
HKC

That's not ALL I got out of your posts - but it was one thing I definitely got.

Well, it's not what I ever said. But that doesn't seem to matter to you at this point.

Quote:
You seemed to come done pretty heavily on the idea that anyone who was for some type of government regulation or law was probably chock full of the notion of the essential evil of human nature.

Y'know Rue, I was about to disagree with your assessment of my position here, until I realized I don't understand what you're talking about.

I don't believe high-functioning sociopathy is inborn--I have never seen any evidence for it. And I've seen a boat-load of evidence to the contrary.

And I NEVER said that sociopathy could or would be totally eradicated. NEVER. Go look. What did happen was I got accused of saying that anarchism would solve all the worlds problems OVER AND OVER AND OVER AGAIN based on nothing. I got tired of it.

Quote:
No matter how many times I tried to say that the occasional person would be sociopathic and test your society, and economic systems, it seemed you couldn't or wouldn't understand that it's inborn as an extreme part of the range of human characteristics.

No, never. We NEVER had that exchange. It's effing mind-boggling to me what happened in the anarchism threads. Our disagreement about genetic "evil" and my opinions about how an anarchist system would function are TWO different arguments.

Are you saying that laws and police exist to deal with genetic anomalies?

Quote:
I understand this to be a truth and haven't been shown otherwise.

And all your talk about Bill Gates sure didn't show me anything either.

Quote:
And therefore, my proposal is that either you remove ALL power structures - including business, or you create power structures to deal with the sociopaths who WILL be attracted to and ruthlessly work their way up through whatever existing power structures you have. In other words, you create laws and regulations.

And here is the granddaddy of all your misunderstandings of my position. NEVER have I once argued on the side of capitalism or "business" in the 6 years I have been visiting this board. Rue, who do you think I am?

And I would appreciate at least an acknowledgement that I felt your comments about me were rude. You may enjoy this kind of heartless antagonism, but I sure don't.

HKCavalier

Hey, hey, hey, don't be mean. We don't have to be mean, because, remember, no matter where you go, there you are.

RUE

Thursday, March 20, 2008 2:29 AM

HKC

First, let me sincerely and humbly apologize. I intended no rudeness to anyone, least of all you. I was expressing my understanding as I knew it.

BTW - I had to drop the discussion of Bill Gates b/c I had to go out of town for a very long and busy 'vacation' taking care of some family things that couldn't be done otherwise. And it appeared to drop off the radar by the time I got back. But I will gladly take that discussion up again as time permits and interest demands.

This is my understanding. Last we talked, I proposed either socially-restricted capitalism or some version of UK Le Guin's anarchy. Frem, CTS, SergX and Geezer seemed to support 'anarcho-capitalism', with the exception that Frem occasionally expressed a desire to get rid of money. And to me you seemed less critical of that (as being at least a form of anarchism) than of the idea of laws and regulations.

So, how am I doing so far ? Bass-ackwards ?

***************************************************************
added - oh yeah, and at that time you were working a killer schedule of double shifts. I hope that has stopped by now.

FREMDFIRMA

Thursday, March 20, 2008 6:03 AM

A problem I have noticed with your arguments there is the bad habit of not distinguishing in any kind of meaningful way between the different folk disagreeing with you - all too often you wind up ripping someone for something they did not say and do not believe, cause you keep seeing us as a category instead of individual people.

I really wish you'd not do that, impolite would be the kindest word with which to describe it.

And I do think the salient point is the simple overriding FACT that we would HAVE to evolve mentally, socially and emotionally to a point where the idea of doing harm or exploitation is considered repugnant, instead of amusing and celebratory the way it is in our current society.

Without that key, critical, important piece, the rest of it doesn't hook up - it won't and it can't, which is why again and again I have pointed out that this needs to be a gradual weaning process rather than an outright cut and run, because that *will not work* on any meaningful scale.

Also, Anarchies historically have never really existed in a scale or length of time, without the intervention of a State to make the argument that they fall down into petty warlordism.

That is a direct and expected result of a failed State, which happens when it runs out of room or resources to expand, begins to consume more than it produces and eventually implodes - don't blame the end product of a State on Anarchism, it is the nature of a State to do this, in fact it's the end result and true face of the State once all the tissues of lies that sustain the illusion come off, pure naked force.

Cause that is what Governments ARE.

-Frem

It cannot be said enough, those who do not learn from history, are doomed to endlessly repeat it

RIGHTEOUS9

Thursday, March 20, 2008 8:54 AM

Getting back in this...

what is the slow weaining process? While I might grant, with plenty of trepidation, the possibility that Anarchism is the next eveolution of the free society, I'm having a hard time buying that the way to wean into it is to regress in the area of governmental supervision.

Any such step in that direction has to be seen as how it will impact us based upon how things work now, not on some alternate plane where all perfect conditions were met from the get-go and lo, there was relative peace and proseperity in a completely unregulated world.

It's one of those things that everybody(significant majority) has to adopt at once or not at all, and everybody who does adopt it has to have a very honest and equitable vision of how that world is supposed to function. People have to be willing to follow the same guidelines, and there being an absence of enforcement of said guidelines, it comes down to both the interpretation of and the honor of most of these people.

Scaling back regulation now, rolling back government's role in enforcing laws, regulating(or deragulating) companies, etc. might change the players slightly, but it certainly won't change the game.

Expecting vigilante justice to cow the right people and elevate the right people in our current world, with the current status of the American mentality is also something I doubt anybody can seriously entertain.

I remember reading from Frem that one of the problems is that we are not allowed to defend ourselves to the degree we should be allowed to...but applying changes like this to our current society will be subject to problems of perspective and perception. The pilgrims "defended" themselves against the native americans. The pilgrims "won" or "claimed" their land from the natives who simply inhabited it. The pilgrims won, so that must be the way it went.

The city up the way dammed up the river that powered our waterwheel, or cooled our coils...etc. So we defended ourselves and our livelihoods by going up there and razing the town to the ground...(or hell, just by busting up the dam) but then the people of the town came out, yelling about how they were defending themselves, and shots were fired because everybody has a handgun strapped to their rifle strapped to their rocket launcher in case of villainy...

SO......the less we regulate, the less we standardize(and I agree that the sound of the word is distasteful), from this point on into the near future, the less likely that the Anarchist vision of society would be acheivable...right? How you going to get everybody to agree on something like that when they can't even agree whether America is a Christian country, or whether it is a county with Christians in it...

and that's with laws.

...............

it seems to me like there's only two paths to the Anarchist's ideal...

1, the universal improvement of our infrastructure specificaly for the sake of an effective education for this country's citizenry...predicated on government involvemnt, which presumablly would be pressured by the people to adopt this new curriculum of philosophy. Any such step would have to also adress road-blocks that get in the way of the populace being exposed to said ideas in an meaningful and impacting way. Namely, social programs...

Or 2, a millenarian experience that is driven by the utter and total collapse of our current system and many of the powers that be, economic , military, etc. And the Anarchist movement would have to be there to pick up the pieces and sheppherd things forward, by either getitng a solid grip on the defacto central government, or by creating a small but succesful model that is able to ward off competing ineterests and expand its influence to its neighbors, etc. I can assume they would be armed to the teeth and ready for the opportunity.

Or is there a third way I haven't considred? This is one of those posts I started when I wasn't so tired, but i've been nodding off for like the last 2 or 3 paragraphs, so forgive any nonsense.

JONGSSTRAW

Thursday, March 20, 2008 11:29 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by Hero:
Quote:
Originally posted by Jongsstraw:
...but chances are I would have found them all not guilty.

If you say that then you get bounced for bias (I'd not even have to use a challenge). If you don't then a good prosecutor will pick up on it anyway and use a challenge.

Jury selection is difficult. I'm almost undefeated (except that one recent case), but I still have not mastered Jury Selection. Its all first impressions and stereotypes and I tend to give folk the benefit of the doubt (I keep people all the time and leave the Judge shaking his head). I always figure that unless they are angry about something or dead set on doing their own thing, then I'll change their mind if my case is good. I always bounce young unemployed males, regardless of case, thats my only black letter rule.

H

I answered all the questions posed to me by both attorneys and the judge. I never said anything to indicate any bias of any kind, and I did not hear anyone else say anything that was objectionable either. The reality is that they chose mostly young women to be on the juries...in fact, out of 50 jury panelists interviwed for two trials, they picked 10 young women & 2 young men to be jurors. I did not see one "business man" or "professional man", or senior citizen selected. It looks like the defense attorneys representing drug dealers and users had the advantage in jury selection over the prosecutor.

HERO

Thursday, March 20, 2008 12:58 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by rue:
BTW, while I think that some people are born sociopaths

I delt with a shaken baby case today. Dad and Mom fight, Mom leaves. Baby cries. Dad shakes baby until baby stops. Baby dies. Evidence of prior injuries. Murder.

It was a City ambulance that carried the baby to a City hospital, where doctors called County Children's Services who then called the City police, who called me and now the fella is probably going to State prison.

In the anarchist world the Dad buries the dead baby and tells the neighbors its none of their damn business.

That aint right.

H

HERO

Thursday, March 20, 2008 1:26 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by Jongsstraw:
I answered all the questions posed to me by both attorneys and the judge. I never said anything to indicate any bias of any kind, and I did not hear anyone else say anything that was objectionable either.

Yes, but I would guess that neither were you as candid as with us when you said you could not find them guilty. Now they may not get to specifically ask you those questions, but a lot comes across from observation of how you answer and how you react to other questions. Also, I always ask if anybody would have trouble fairly judging the case based on the evidence or if they can't apply the law as instructed by the Judge. Its a general question for the whole panel, raise your hand. If you raise your hand then I follow up specifically.

Quote:

The reality is that they chose mostly young women to be on the juries...in fact, out of 50 jury panelists interviwed for two trials, they picked 10 young women & 2 young men to be jurors. I did not see one "business man" or "professional man", or senior citizen selected. It looks like the defense attorneys representing drug dealers and users had the advantage in jury selection over the prosecutor.

A lot of time its luck of the draw. The case I lost had five of the first ten jurors with prior DUIs from my City. I could only get rid of three of them so I got stuck with two persons on my jury who had been convicted by my City for the same charge the Defendant was charged with. The case before that 4 of the first 10 had been victims of DUI drivers (either themselves or immediate family)...two of them even started crying during Voir Dire (best damn Jury I ever had).

Now I generally prefer middle aged to young. Professional to blue collar. Employed to unemployed (unless a housewife, which I love). Retired and married, but not too old. No prior record to criminal past. Prior jury experiance (even if they found not guilty). And no unemployed young males (inlcuding students). The young ladies I can dazzle, but the men are just wastes of space.

The rest depends on the case and the defendent. For example, an assault or Domestic Violence case is pretty straight foreward, an OVI or drug case can have scientific testimony, so education and professionalism are key (so they can listen and understand what is being told to them).

Lets say a 25 year-old black male, unemplyed, DUI case (with 2 priors), who refused his breath test, and arrested by two white cops. Don't want young black males of either color, don't want blacks with records, and avoid blue collar white males. Ideal juror for me is middle aged, married, black female, mother, and with a job (prefer professional, but any job will do).

Edited to add: All of that theory is well and good, but also some folks you connect with immediately (happened in all of my cases that I got a great feeling from at least one person, almost right away). The opposite is true too...some people turn you off or are turned off by you almost immediately. When this happens theory goes out the window and its all gut instinct.

H

SERGEANTX

Thursday, March 20, 2008 1:59 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by Hero:
In the anarchist world the Dad buries the dead baby and tells the neighbors its none of their damn business.

That aint right.

H

No, it isn't.

But the baby is dead in either case. The difference is, in the anarchist world, the neighbors aren't living under the delusion that an omnipresent state will prevent such atrocities.

And though it makes it easier to argue against the concept of anarchy to ignore the details, please pay attention. The article made it quite clear - we're not against government, not against punishing the wicked, not against protecting the innocent. We're against a compulsory state that tells us we are its property.

SergeantX

"Dream a little dream or you can live a little dream. I'd rather live it, cause dreamers always chase but never get it." Aesop Rock

CANTTAKESKY

Thursday, March 20, 2008 2:18 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by HKCavalier:
You may enjoy this kind of heartless antagonism, but I sure don't.

Gross misinterpretation is Rue's modus operandus. But hey, at least you got an apology. That's pretty impressive.

I hope you don't leave RWED. Your posts are one of the few voices of sanity here.

RIGHTEOUS9

Thursday, March 20, 2008 2:50 PM

Sergeantx,

that is problematic. In your society don't the wicked get to opt out? If they don't want to play by the rules they say so, right? Or do people who don't like the rules have to move, and if they have to move, isn't that government essentially as compulsory as ours is, just with smaller borders?

In the end aren't you just talking about a smaller entity that tells you you're its property? If i'm missing the boat here, tell me.

FREMDFIRMA

Thursday, March 20, 2008 3:05 PM

Speakin of such details, Sarge.

I will note in his example trying to mock the concept, he doesn't seem to quite explain the fact of where said meth gang would have come from.

Unless they were beamed in from the enterprise, or somethin, the only place they coulda come from is your precious little country there, Hero.

Which'd make it an armed attack on a sovereign nation and act of war, wouldn't it just ?

And me shootin em dead wouldn't be something you could bitch about under those circumstances now would it ?

What rooks me is that they just make shit up in these examples that is contrary to, impossible in, or against the very nature of the society being discussed and act like it's commonplace, and don't even SEE that they're doing it, or at least pretend not to.

That would be like me prefacing an example in modern, contemporary Detroit with "So there you are, walking your slave coffle to health inspector..." and expecting the assumption that this event COULD and WOULD occur in that society.

It's bullshit, is what it is.

All I got time for, at the moment, I gotta set of back to back runs all up north today, and there just ain't too many unsecured wifi nodes up there.

-Frem

It cannot be said enough, those who do not learn from history, are doomed to endlessly repeat it

SERGEANTX

Thursday, March 20, 2008 3:10 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by Righteous9:
what is the slow weaining process? While I might grant, with plenty of trepidation, the possibility that Anarchism is the next eveolution of the free society, I'm having a hard time buying that the way to wean into it is to regress in the area of governmental supervision.

Any such step in that direction has to be seen as how it will impact us based upon how things work now, not on some alternate plane where all perfect conditions were met from the get-go and lo, there was relative peace and proseperity in a completely unregulated world.

You're presenting by far the most sensible objections to the anarchist line. This one gives me pause as well.

Nearly all of the anarchist brochures are disappointingly lacking in detail. But part of the reason for that is that so little serious consideration of the ideas takes place. And the reasons for that are deeply embedded in centuries of statist PR.

The biggest step in "our" direction has been the initiation of the American experiment. And it didn't take long at all for that vector to reverse. Many of Robert Heinlein's books work in and around these ideas. But he has the luxury of science fiction and mostly posits such developments on the wide-open expanse of an interstellar frontier (mirroring in many ways the beginning of the US).

It may be that there can't be a gradual transition. It may be that some radical change in the political landscape would be required.

Quote:
Scaling back regulation now, rolling back government's role in enforcing laws, regulating(or deragulating) companies, etc. might change the players slightly, but it certainly won't change the game.

One note here. The most egregious abuses of the public trust come, not from privately held business, but from publicly owned corporations - which exist solely at the discretion and decree of the state. That doesn't invalidate your concern entirely, but it's worth noting that the corporate excesses held up as justification for a strong regulatory state government happen on the state's watch, and with its implicit approval.

Quote:
Expecting vigilante justice to cow the right people and elevate the right people in our current world, with the current status of the American mentality is also something I doubt anybody can seriously entertain.

Hmmm... "with the current status of American mentality" - yeah, I'll grant you that. But with a different attitude toward community and family it's possible. I'm not sure 'vigilante justice' accurately captures it, but self-government is viable. It happens.

Several years ago, I read a story about a crime committed on and Aboriginal reservation in Australia. Government agents happened upon a fight outside a bar. Some men were attacking a man from another tribe. The agents put a stop to it, and, after some investigation, gleaned that the 'victim' was a man from another tribe that the men had overheard bragging about raping one of their sisters.

After being treated at a hospital for minor injuries, the police decided to release the man to the custody of his own tribe, pending an official investigation and hearing. The man became agitated when told this and, oddly enough, insisted that he be held in jail until the hearing. The police assured him that they'd keep the men from the other tribe in check and that he'd be safe.

Well, they released him, and sure enough, the next day he turned up in the hospital, this time beaten nearly to death. Serious surgery was required just to save his live, and he suffered permanent injury regardless. When they investigated how this had happened it turned out that his own tribe, even members of his own family, had administered the beating.

The point of this is that, even in a pre-civilized, barbaric kind of anarchy, there exist powerful incentives for families and communities, and individuals, to practice self-government. Over the centuries the aboriginal tribes had developed customs that acknowledged this need. It was pragma

HERO

Thursday, March 20, 2008 11:54 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by SergeantX:
\we're not against government, not against punishing the wicked, not against protecting the innocent. We're against a compulsory state that tells us we are its property.

So we agree. There must be laws, taxes, services, etc.

I note for the record that if the "wicked" often see any form of "punishing" as evidence of a "compulsory" State. Simply put, in your world you would seek to exercise State power when its convenient of benefits you and ignore the laws you don't agree with. Drug dealers and murders see the world the same way.

H

HERO

Friday, March 21, 2008 12:10 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by Fremdfirma:
Unless they were beamed in from the enterprise, or somethin, the only place they coulda come from is your precious little country there, Hero.

Which'd make it an armed attack on a sovereign nation and act of war, wouldn't it just ?

No. In my example he is his own sorviegn acting on behalf of his nation. The gang is an illegal criminal element fleeing my territory for yours. Unless we negotiated some sort of agreement I could not legally pursue them into your territory. If a gun battle erupted on our 'border' then my police and govt would be liable for injury or damage to his country. In attacking him they are acting on their own behalf, in fighting back he is acting on behalf of his nation and a higher responsibility then simple self-defense is imposed. A fine example are drug gangs on the Mexican border.

Likewise, while self-defense is legal in all fifty states, every state would prosecute you if you accidently killed an innocent bystander while defending yourself (and even if found not guilty, civil liability would likely bankrupt you).

Now in my example you could declare them terrorists and invade my country to root them out and exterminate them. While such actions are within the rights of soveriegn nations, invading a large and powerful nation might have consequences unrelated to your simple act of self-defense.

Quote:

What rooks me is that they just make shit up in these examples that is contrary to, impossible in, or against the very nature of the society being discussed and act like it's commonplace, and don't even SEE that they're doing it, or at least pretend not to.

What, you think this kind of thing does not happen. Go hang out with the Border Patrol sometime...

That reminds me of a fun true State soveriengty case from the late 1800s involving a man in Georgia who shot a man in Tennessee when they were on either side of the border. He could not be extradited because of a Constitutional loophole...he never FLED across state lines, cause he was never in Tennessee. That aint right, so the Tennessee Sheriff gets a posse and goes to Georgia and gets him. The man is tried and executed for murder in Tennesee. The Sheriff and posse are charged with assault and kidnapping, extradited to Georgia and are sent to prison.

I loved that case...filled half a blue book on in for the Constitutional Law I final.

H

SIGNYM

Friday, March 21, 2008 1:14 AM

Quote:
An ancient Jewish scripture makes what I deem to be an accurate observation, that "one man rules over another to his hurt.”

This is about ONE MAN. not a state. So it's not a good intro. Nonetheless, I take his point: People intimidate each other with violence, or they buy eachother, or claim a kinship to God, or gain power over others in a myriad of ways, and indeed, it is most often to the detriment of others.

Quote:
At every time and at every place throughout history is found the same story: man's states achieve the subjugation of the masses under the control of the rich and powerful.

And the anarchist immediately focuses on "states" as the source of the problem ignoring actors like religion, money, or even technology. That is anarchy's big flaw.

Quote:
War is routine. Tyranny runs rampant. Minorities are oppressed. Men are conscripted and enslaved. The belongings of the poor are plundered to pay for greater and greater extravagancies by those who enjoy the reins of power. The masses starve while a few live in shameful luxury. Justice is perverted, and people live under constant threat that their security will be undermined. We tolerate this depravity for one reason, and one reason only: We are convinced that, for as bad as the State

Or religion. Or economic system. Or custom. Or technology

Quote:
may be, it is better than the chaos of anarchy.

But it seems to me that a great lie has been perpetrated on mankind. Every war that has ever been fought was created and nurtured by states.

Well, I've seen tribes go to war, and they had nothing like the modern state. Religions have been a huge driving factor is wars as well. Some of the largest migrations/ invasions were precipitated by climate change. I think CJ is a monomaniac. I guess when all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. But it would be helpful if he at least defined "state", because wars have been going on for a long, long time.

Quote:
This situation is as puzzling as it is disturbing. It would seem that every man, seeing as he does that the state is, at best, an imperfect solution, would incline his ear to see what alternatives present themselves, hoping that the situation might improve.

If anarchists had details, substance, a more fleshed-out altermnative to offer, people might listen. But anarchists seem to be defined more by what they DON'T want. All people have offered here so far is not anarchism but anarchy, and that's flat-out unattractive to most people.

Quote:
For all of mankind's experience speaks to the fact that by far the single most common aggressor against the rights of mankind is, and always will be, states.

I think religion historically is more damaging. And I think corporations are more evil at present.

---------------------------------
Let's party like it's 1929.

SIGNYM

Friday, March 21, 2008 1:26 AM

BTW, I HAVE offered alternatives that are designed to reduce power structures altogther (not just "the state"). Power structures evolve on many nexuses: control of a vital resource, critical technology, information, weapons, land, religion, money, the desire to cooperate ...

And while I greatly agree with the broadly stated goal of anarchism (eliminate power structures) I think the anarchist viewpoint if far too narrow; it can't possibly work because it doesn't encompass enough of reality.

---------------------------------
Let's party like it's 1929.

HKCAVALIER

Friday, March 21, 2008 1:30 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by rue:
HKC

First, let me sincerely and humbly apologize. I intended no rudeness to anyone, least of all you. I was expressing my understanding as I knew it.

Hey Rue,

Thanks for the apology. It means a lot to me in this cybernetic wilderness.

Quote:
This is my understanding. Last we talked, I proposed either socially-restricted capitalism or some version of UK Le Guin's anarchy. Frem, CTS, SergX and Geezer seemed to support 'anarcho-capitalism', with the exception that Frem occasionally expressed a desire to get rid of money. And to me you seemed less critical of that (as being at least a form of anarchism) than of the idea of laws and regulations.

So, how am I doing so far ? Bass-ackwards ?

The main thing I discovered in that thread was that Geezer and I have some common ground when it comes to defining "the problem." That was a really big deal to me. I've had difficulty understanding Geezer's premises over the years here. He has tended, in my view, to be be rather long on attitude and short on context. I've not wanted to dismiss his point of view but his posts have tended often to be so dismissive in themselves that I struggle to understand what he's about a lot of the time. I think you share this struggle, but I think you blame him for it and label him dishonest where I might be more inclined to say he was guarded. So, when he started talking seriously about anarchism, in terms I could immediately understand, I felt I had a real clue about where the man stood at last.

All of which is to say, yes, I was being more generous toward the "anarcho-capitalist" line in that thread than I might otherwise have been. I felt Geezer was being present in that thread in a way I hadn't seen and I wanted to return the courtesy.

Furthermore, I've come to perceive the authoritarian/libertarian conflict to be in some ways far more meaningful in this country than the vaunted left/right dance. Again, both "anarcho-capitalists" and "anarcho-communists" recognize "the problem," it's just that they have different notions of what form the solution would take.

To further complicate my response to your question I perceive that the primary transition anyone has to make into an anarchist society is internal. So seeing the problem clearly (authoritarianism: the fantasy that violence/force can legitimately solve one's problems) is, to my way of thinking, the real heavy lifting here--the shape one's life takes after that point is of far less importance.

So if my fellow anarchist thinkers recognize and commit wholly to this premise, what they decide to do with their time is really up to them. If Geezer is sufficiently committed to the fundamental precept that force is inherently illegitimate, then the problems many ascribe to capitalism would not become problems through his actions.

I tend to see capitalism as an amoral engine, dangerous primarily when it is mistaken for an ideology/social system. It's like calling alcohol a social system. Alcohol has many uses in society (some good, a lot not so good, many dispicable), but when a community identifies the drug AS their society, well, you're talking about a dive bar at that point. Our country has become a capitalist dive bar with expensive federal drying out programs which never really cure the problem, just keep us drunk and in denial of how truly horrible things have gotten.

In internet terms this is already a long post and I've barely scratched the surface of my thoughts on this subject.

Quote:
added - oh yeah, and at that time you were working a killer schedule of double shifts. I hope that has stopped by now.

Actually, two things have altered the situation for the moment: one, I've found ways to make more efficient use of my time and: two, my contact lenses gave out about a week and a half ago and I've been unable to work at my second job (I'm painting a mural) for about a week and a half.

HKCavalier

Hey, hey, hey, don't be mean. We don't have to be mean, because, rem

SIGNYM

Friday, March 21, 2008 4:57 PM

Gonna add to my post, which sounded pejorative but wasn't meant to be.

The problem I have with anarchism- or at least the versions most often posted here- is that I think there is a lot more going on than "the evils of The State". That so many succumb so often to the injustice of a few speaks to factors which are both more fundamental and harder to grasp, and which will not be eliminated even if "the State" is destroyed. I think "the State" is just one of the latest examples of the tendency for power concentration in human societies, just as capitalism and religion are other examples.

All I can do is point to two things that "indicate" the scope of the problem because, hell... if I could fully elucidate the cause of human injustice and it's widespread acceptance I'd be a multi-Nobel prize winner by now. Bear with me because this is going to be a long story.

I saw a very interesting show on what separates us from the other apes. Clearly, not only do apes communicate, they make and use tools, have feelings for each other, have a "theory of mind", understand justice, learn by example, have "cultures" that vary from place to place. And of course they have hands, which allow them to manipulate objects in a complex fashion. All of the elements seem to be there for chimps, bonobos, and gorillas to emerge as we did.

BUT. There is one difference. If you train a bonobo and a child to open a wooden box to get a treat by using a complex series of actions (three taps on the top, poke in the hole, two taps on the side, dig in another hole) they both use those actions. However, if you substitute an acrylic box for wood, where it becomes clear that the taps are irrelevant, bonobos will immediately eliminate the useless taps. Children will not.

There seems to be an innate HUMAN preference to accept what is taught over direct observation, even when the two contradict each other. On the one hand, that allows us to learn and build on ideas about electrons and other invisibilities. On the other hand, that allows us to pass on silly ideas too, like the idea of a rain god or "your parents love you" even if they're abusing you.

Another example of anarchism's failure to encompass certain aspects of reality is the simple obervation that the larger organizations will roll over little ones. There just seems to be something intrinsic in larger organizations... I don't know if it's productivity or diversity or what... that seem to give them an inherent advantage. Attempting to reverse it doesn't derail what appears to be a universal, powerful process - which BTW doesn't appear to have any relationship at all to humans and "human nature" (and wouldn't benefit from any sort of internal journey) but is simply a "systems" process (which might benefit from studying energy flow through ecologies.)

I hope I've given you some insight as to why I think anarchism, although it does a good job of describing the problem, doesn't seem to get at the nub of WHY these problems keep recurring. And IMHO unless you can figure out WHY the same stupid sh*t happens over and over and over, and either fundamentally derail these processes or harness them to create a system with the right internal feedbacks, the same stupid sh*t will continue to hapen over and over, irrespective of of whether "the State" exists or not.

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Let's party like it's 1929.

FREMDFIRMA

Friday, March 21, 2008 5:55 PM

Quote:
However, if you substitute an acrylic box for wood, where it becomes clear that the taps are irrelevant, bonobos will immediately eliminate the useless taps. Children will not.

Age of children ?
Sample size ?

Not everyone is cursed with or trained to that type of thought process, and you know, this is a right unpleasant world for those people, I should know.

Quote:
I hope I've given you some insight as to why I think anarchism, although it does a good job of describing the problem, doesn't seem to get at the nub of WHY these problems keep recurring. And IMHO unless you can figure out WHY the same stupid sh*t happens over and over and over, and either fundamentally derail these processes or harness them to create a system with the right internal feedbacks, the same stupid sh*t will continue to hapen over and over.

But how could you miss it ?

It's the end result of what we do to children under the guise of raising them to survive in the society we have created.

Sit down, shut up, obey, do as your told, ignore your humanity.

Trained obediance to things that make no SENSE, like the experiment above.

It never occured to you that my two pet peeves are to intimately related to each other ?

Our society and it's childrearing and educational practices actively function, and mostly succeed, at suppressing, diverting or eliminating the innate humanity of our young - and as I have said repeatedly, the more divergent that becomes from natural instinct, the more aberrant the response behavior becomes, as the harder it is suppressed, the more warped the form in which it finally expresses.

Although, I am beginning to suspect that it's not JUST that the message of natural instinct and what we try to force on them are so much further apart, I think nature might be playing a hand in this as well, cause if you overuse an antibiotic, that strain eventually becomes resistant, right ?

I suspect nature may be pushing back against our doctrine, and this might be why we seem to be facing more and more children resistant to it, and as we have turned to Big Pharma and medication to enforce it, I suspect within two generations we'll start seeing drug-resistant kids too.

What we have, is a social model designed to protect and support the status quo at the cost of spiking our own natural instincts, an entirely artificial stunting of mental, social and emotional evolution in order to ensure the current balance of power.

Derail THAT process, all at once, and you're looking down the barrel of all manner of unintended consequences that can and will bite you on the ass, hard.

Look at most folk these days, they're far more compliant than nature ever intended - you offer threat to them, they kneel, you give an order, they obey.

This is an absolute necessity for our current society to function as it does, but you start messing with that, you'd better know what you're doing if you wanna avoid a wholesale disaster - do the job halfway, and you're talking about the equivalent of releasing pirahna in the goldfish tank, folks who are neither obedient nor compliant, but nor are they emotionally evolved enough to see harm and exploitation as repugnant...

That is the result I fear most of all, mother nature beating us to the punch by producing a "resistant strain" and a darwinian process that will lead us right back to square one cause once they take power, they'll damn well secure it, and more than likely in exactly the same kind of social engineering processes that have lead us here in the first place.

It's like a boat in heavy swells headed for a reef, yeah, you can see the reef, sure, but if you pull too hard in trying to turn, you'll broach and roll over, which is every bit as bad.

That bein said, we DO need to start changin course, gradually, and the sooner the better - but I don't see it happening, there's just not *enough* folks who understand, and even less who care.

So me, imma take cover and hope not to get scored as a collateral.

-Frem

It cannot be said enough, those who

SIGNYM

Friday, March 21, 2008 6:21 PM

Frem, I think we will have to agree to disagree.

Not everything is derived from how we're raised. In fact, not everything relates to "humans". Whether you look at ecologies, PC-based "evolution"; the development of memes; relationships within human societies; or how cells cooperate in a body the same themes keep coming up over and over and over: the relationships of primary producers to the concentration of power (energy); the development of cooperation and the division of labor; the necessity of diversity for robustness; and (perhaps the most instructive) the dissolution of systems.

I don't think that changing "people" will change those processes at all. As long as humans are capable of forming large-scale organizations we will continue to do so. And as long as large-scale organization exists then we will continue to see toxic processes... not human-driven, for the most part... evolve within the environment that our cooperation has created. That is not to say that "nothing can be done". But getting rid of "the state" is like killing off one germ, which allows a superinfection with something else. I just think more insight is needed than anarchism currently offers.

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Let's party like it's 1929.

HKCAVALIER

Friday, March 21, 2008 6:57 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by SignyM:
And IMHO unless you can figure out WHY the same stupid sh*t happens over and over and over, and either fundamentally derail these processes or harness them to create a system with the right internal feedbacks, the same stupid sh*t will continue to hapen over and over, irrespective of of whether "the State" exists or not.

Signy, I couldn't agree with this statement more. The "state" is really "absolute authoritarianism" in secular form ("God" is absolute authoritarianism in spiritual form and capitalISM is absolute authoritarianism in the form of desire/greed/consumerism--amusingly, these three parallel the Freudian concept of mind: ego=state, superego=god, id=capitalism/consumerism).

Furthermore, what you've done here is describe the process of psychotherapy to a "T!" A process which absolutely can, on an individual basis (and therefore, I believe, in the long run, culturally), derail the process of compulsive repetition and give you the tools to harness your freed up energy and emotion to create exactly the right internal feedback in the form of self-esteem and self-trust (intuition and discernment). Yay!

HKCavalier

Hey, hey, hey, don't be mean. We don't have to be mean, because, remember, no matter where you go, there you are.

SIGNYM

Friday, March 21, 2008 7:16 PM

Well, if psychotherapy and philosophy would allow someone to fully parse why we seem to be so universally effed up that's a good thing.

But I still think that you can't change society by ONLY changing individuals. Yes, there has to be some sort of large-scale This isn't working moment before change will even be considered, but by itself it isn't going to effect economies of scale any more than knowing diabetes is bad isn't going to affect how your pancreas works. In addition to psychotherapy I think we have to bring in a whole 'nother realm of investigation.

So I think I agree with you, but I'm also inclined to look at non-human, non-psychologic, non-individual factors as well.

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Let's party like it's 1929.

SIGNYM

Friday, March 21, 2008 7:24 PM

Quote:
derail the process of compulsive repetition and give you the tools to harness your freed up energy and emotion to create exactly the right internal feedback in the form of self-esteem and self-trust (intuition and discernment)

You've given me food for thought here. Compulsive repetition not only exists within individuals, it also exists within societies. Our technology, our customs, our economy, and our language reintroduce and reinforce and re-reintroduce old behaviors even if we've been individually freed. The simple existance of money, the car... even trash collection... pattern our behavior and thought.

So... can there be something like "cultural psychotherapy"? Hmmm...

Quote:
The "state" is really "absolute authoritarianism" in secular form ("God" is absolute authoritarianism in spiritual form and capitalISM is absolute authoritarianism in the form of desire/greed/consumerism--amusingly, these three parallel the Freudian concept of mind: ego=state, superego=god, id=capitalism/consumerism).

THANK YOU JEHESUS!

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Let's party like it's 1929.

SIGNYM

Saturday, March 22, 2008 3:16 AM

Quote:
You've given me food for thought here. Compulsive repetition not only exists within individuals, it also exists within societies. Our technology, our customs, our economy, and our language reintroduce and reinforce and re-reintroduce old behaviors even if we've been individually freed. The simple existance of money, the car... even trash collection... pattern our behavior and thought.

Oh, and the clock. Don't forget the clock as a promoter of compulsive cultural repetition.

You see what I mean Frem? Anarchism misses this. It's too focused on "the state" to see this other stuff.

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Let's party like it's 1929.

FREMDFIRMA

Saturday, March 22, 2008 9:10 AM

Mayhaps you just ain't gettin what I am sayin then, cause HKC and me are saying much the same things but he seems to get it across way better.

One reason I have started using State instead of Government is for the exact reasons you've already gone over - not all the power structures having such a negative impact are Governments, although with some corporations and their level of influence you could make a case here and there.

As for behavioral conditioning, I've done said it dozens of ways, gone over it in the most explicit and microscopic detail, chapter and verse, again and again but no one seems to make the hookup on how the two things are intricately related to each other.

Everywhere around you the conditioning process that is socially engineered to preserve and protect this balance of power, this status quo, is right there for the looking, you only have to be willing to SEE it.

Then you must somehow develop and practice the ability to ignore and defy it - something a bit harder to do than it sounds on the face of it, but once you have, it's very presence becomes an irritant if not a downright annoyance.

Look to me and Sarge and how we feel about television as an example - someone turns one on, and shortly, I will leave the room, the pressure and conditioning is so bloody obvious in every respect of it that it's downright nauseating, almost subconsciously insulting.

I've gone over this, through this, day after day, and and I find it pretty hard to conceive that anyone could have possibly missed it...

Either I am utterly terrible at getting it across, or you were too busy dismissing my arguments to really read them, go back and look, you'll see that this root cause, a lot of which *is* based in how we are raised - and I focus there cause that is what we have the most control over individually - is a very large part of the problem in my eyes.

Cause it is a wholly artificial roadblock, deliberately stunting and preventing the social, mental and emotional evolution of us as a people.

Seriously though, go back and read some old threads and look for this stuff, it's all there, laid out piece by piece, just that no one seemed to mentally "get it" at the time I was sayin it, I guess.

-Frem

It cannot be said enough, those who do not learn from history, are doomed to endlessly repeat it

SIGNYM

Saturday, March 22, 2008 3:56 PM

I understand your point Frem, but you don't understand mine.

Some things happen not from individual conditioning, and even if you could change individual behavior on a mass scale they would continue to happen. Why do I know this? Because it happens with cells, with animals and plants, with computer bytes, with particles.

Quantitative chnage leads to qualitative change.

The behavior of a million individual is not the average behavior of a million individuals.

Get your mind OUT of the psyche, not all of the answers are there.

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Let's party like it's 1929.

FREMDFIRMA

Saturday, March 22, 2008 5:46 PM

Yes they are.

And all the passionate "DON'T TOUCH THAT!" "DANGER" "DO NOT ENTER" "WHAT ARE YOU DOING!" "STAY AWAY FROM THERE!" that I catch from established systems and their protectors when I delve into that turf just ever more firmly convinces me I am looking in the right place.

What you are essentially saying to me, is...

"All people are bad, we have an evil nature and must be controlled for our own good."

What I am saying to you is...

"That is a myth handed down through the ages by those who wish us to believe it so we hand them the reigns of power over us, people are not evil natured or they would never fall for this in the first place."

Or at least that is how I am seeing the disagreement, and sure, I could be wrong in that respect - our thought processes are so radically different it's a wonder that we comprehend each other at all...

But in the end I think we're just gonna have to agree to disagree, but you know, that doesn't necessarily mean that I don't care to hear possible solutions from you neither - there's more aspects than just the one we're disagreein on here to the problem, and that's a fact.

And maybe a lot of it is just plain not understanding the other, their concepts, or expression - cause seems to me that HKC can take these things and get them across when I cannot even in spite of months of trying.

As for your expressed theory, I counter that humans are self-aware and sentient as none of those other things are, and that will affect the results, unless you remove that which makes them human in the first place - empathy.

Which is what we have done, and are doing.
But those who have it are not so easily quantified, predicted, or pigeonholed.

Which is why we and systems do not get along.

-Frem

It cannot be said enough, those who do not learn from history, are doomed to endlessly repeat it

SIGNYM

Saturday, March 22, 2008 7:57 PM

Quote:
"All people are bad, we have an evil nature and must be controlled for our own good."

OH PUHLEEZ, FREM!!!!!

Are electrons "bad"? Are bytes "bad"? Are plants and animals "bad"?

PLEASE!!!!! STOP, for god's sake, trying to fit my argument into your human-centric categories! Think Hari Seldon. Think "The Cookbook" (Lady in the Water). Think physics! Think ANYTHING but what you keep coming back to over and over!

Humans are not be be-all and end-all of everything, not even in human society. Forces are at work that are larger and smaller than us, longer-lived and shorter. We stand as much chance of understanding these forces as a mouse kidney does of understanding the body. But to deny that forces are at work that are beyond us, above us, beneath and through us but are NOT US is the epitome of arrogance.

It's been said that animals are just the gene's way of preserving itself. Flip your thinking around.
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Let's party like it's 1929.

RUE

Saturday, March 22, 2008 8:06 PM

I don't have time to delve into posting, but I'd like to note that not ALL rules are just b/c some mean SOB wanted to have some power.

Some rules are found in every culture like -
don't touch - hot
don't eat - poison (btw nature makes a lot of poisons that'll kill you in days - most mushrooms for example)
don't jump in the icy water - it's deadly cold
don't jump off the tall cliff - you'll die
look both ways before crossing the street
don't poop upstream of the village, poop downstream (also don't poop in the bed, tent, yurt, hut, foodbowl or water jug)

Peeing and pooping (urinating and defecating for the more medically minded) rules are so deep in our biologies that we are the only primates that can control when and where. For the others it just all falls down to the forest floor somewhere and so evolution pays no mind. So control over excretion is a biologiocal universality among humans - and one of the means used across cultures to determine when someone is too scrambled (schizophrenic) to follow such innate rules.

Many rules are harmless superstitious behavior - that are carried generation to generation especially in more primitive economies b/c they are very conservative - they think: we've survived for millennia this way and it may be fatal to do things some other way. But I've read an interesting study that was an odd combination of game-theory/anthropology/psychology and one of the things the researchers noticed (though it wasn't what they were studying) was that the same environment gave rise to many, many different forms of economy, family and society. For example a low resource density forest economy could give rise to many small scattered but close-knit families competitive with and hostile to other families OR cooperative and communal village living. So, many of these approaches are 'good enough' for survival across a wide variety of environments. But each society has claimed that they do things a certain way because 'it's human nature' and 'that’s what people do'. (Sounds like a lot of pro-capitalism voodoo on the board - rattle them rattles y'all !) In sum, they've taken often fairly harmless superstitious behavior and codified it into general rules of human nature.

As discussed above, some rules are implicit in our language and tools.

SOME rules come from concentrations of power - ie a powerful elite - and are simply there to reinforce the power structures of the elite.

***************************************************************
"Global warming - it's not just a fact, it's a choice."

FREMDFIRMA

Sunday, March 23, 2008 8:02 AM

Don't like it much, do you, when someone does it to you ?

How do you think I feel every time I try to discuss anything with you ?

That being said, I have absolutely zero idea of what you are trying to express -
What forces ?

Why don't we understand them ?

What the heck are you talking about ?

Is it, or is it not a religious or faith aspect ?

Are we talkin scientific X-factor here ?

You come down on others with both boots over and over for saying much the same thing in the other direction, that means you don't get a pass.

And I am still waiting for the sample size and age of children involved in yon experiment above.

It's starting to look like that you only see the systems, and disregard the people, whilst I see only the people, and disregard the systems.

It's possible somewhere in there lies the problem, if not the understanding of it, but it would help if you communicated something other than hostility simply because our viewpoints on the world around us are so different.

I think that very lack of tolerence is why you just never seem to "get" what I am trying to express, and that's fine, but your all fired pressing need to attack the entire concept at every opportunity makes me wonder why you feel the need to.

I go after the current status quo and that which preserves it because I feel it's a danger to us both individually and as a species, and presents an active risk of rendering large sections of our only little planet here unusable for very long periods of time - my reasons are up front, fully admitted and explained in detail upon request.

Now quid pro quo - why do you feel the need to attack any concept of altering or removing elements hostile to the human psyche from our society ?

-Frem
EDIT: Yes Rue, that's obvious, but those are social and cultural "rules", even Anarchists have those!

SIGNYM

Sunday, March 23, 2008 3:35 PM

Like I said Frem, if I could show you from point A to point Z where where problems are coming from I'd be a multi-Nobel prize winner.

Let me try to give you an example 'cause that's all I can do.

A hundred people are operating well within the "monkey sphere". Deviants can be observed and punished directly, and the possibility of extremes of wealth and injustice is fairly low. You could in theory eliminate violence and intimidation by eliminating the most violent and intimidating members (like the chimp tribe where all the bullies died out) and create a different, lasting culture.

But a million people? Well, that's a different story! More wealth can be accumulated, there is a greater division of labor, and interactions among people are mostly indirect. Also, interactions among people are more coordinated (eg. time keeping) and regulated (eg. traffic regulations). But this million-person aggregate has a dark side: With all of that accumulated wealth and enhanced technology there is the possibility of great injustice. It seems to be a fact of human history that the greater the number of people, the taller and narrower the pyramid at the top. Why? Because power concentrates. Because it can

Now, if people have a chance to choose one over the other- and they do- why do they continue to choose urban life, with all of it's ills and injustice? Why do people flock from the country to the city, and stay there?

Because it's an easier life. It's an economic decision. There is more productivity, more "free energy", more technology in the city. People will give up their "freedom" for a chance at an easier life. Aggregation isn't forced by "the State", but "the State" does have an opportunity to grow under those conditions, just like a bacteria in the correct medium in a petri dish.

Looking towards our biology, how does "human nature" fit into this? Well, human nature is extremely adaptable, but the one thing we can say for sure is that humans are, for the most part, social creatures. If we were solitary, like the tiger, you'd never get more than 100 people into one space let alone a million.

The other is that enough people are capable of abstract thought to learn and carry forward advanced technology. They'll sit still long enough to hear about things they can't see or feel or hear and then they'll use those concepts to create even more useful tools. That makes the development of advanced technology possible. Without it, there would be no reason to gather together beyond a "monkeysphere": People would accumulate to a certain point and then break apart as the group became too unweildy.

The third is that most humans are relatively short-sighted. Most people pay attention to their monkey-sphere, but tend to accept the larger social and economic milieu as natural and inevitable, just as most people operate on a fairly short time-frame- a year, at most. That prevents recognition of the fact that organizations, governments, businesses, memes, languages, and technology have a life of their own... their life-span is often far beyond ours, and they eat, reproduce, and have motivations that are only partially visible to us. Altogether I find that "human nature" is necessary, but not sufficient explanation of the whys and wherefores of our social condition.

"The State" is just ONE of those memes. We've created dozens, if not hundreds, of these things accidentally (the alphabet, super-germs, corporations) and we haven't the faintest clue (for the most part) that they exist, and their function in our systems. Because of that, we've given up control of the most important elements of our environment.

I think it's possible to understand and control these 'things' but first we have to see them and know them. What is their function? How long do they live? What is their energy source? How do they reproduce and change? How do they die?

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Let's party like it's 1929.

SIGNYM

Sunday, March 23, 2008 3:42 PM

BTW- If I was hostile you to, I apologize.

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Let's party like it's 1929.

FREMDFIRMA

Monday, March 24, 2008 7:05 AM

S'awright - mostly I was asking about your hostility to the concept, not to me.

I can see a scientific need to poke holes in something not fully explored, but since it hasn't ever really been on any kind of scale, it's mostly theory to begin with, which always has holes in it.

As for the explaination, ok, yeah, NOW we're getting somewhere, it kinda makes sense to me and imma have to chew on it a bit here for a while, just pulled a cursed long shift without anything like a break and i'm fried and frazzled, damn gas prices anyways...

This is the details I wanted for a while, and finally in a form I can process, imma just need time, and sleep and food to do it.

Get back with ya, once after.

-F

SIGNYM

Tuesday, March 25, 2008 5:09 PM

Frem, I'm gonna duck outta this conversation. I have some ideas to pursue but they need quiet time to grow.

Sorry about that.

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Let's party like it's 1929.

FREMDFIRMA

Wednesday, March 26, 2008 8:14 AM

No worries, got some... stuff, going on that I might touch on in another thread, but imma chew on those ideas a bit more myself when I have the time.

We'll get back to this, cause we've got some detail points here on both ends really worth a look, just... later.

-F

RUE

Wednesday, March 26, 2008 4:50 PM

Frem

I don't think you understand the depth and breadth of the 'social rules' I was talking about - which are in sum the entire social / economic structure.

Now, these groups of people grew their societies based on initial social conditions, chance events, conserved ideas and (perhaps) the effects of unusually influential individuals. But available resources and available technologies did (and do) not determine how society choose to arrange itself.

Notice also that though these rules are often benign they aren't always so (for example the tribal-based brutalization of women in Afghanistan overlaid with religious rationale). Despite the fact that most of these rules are arbitrary, and despite the sometimes severe downsides, societies do choose and maintain their rules - and insist on them and their immutable nature - and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future, because it puts everyone on the same page.

My point is that since we - with broad access to current cultures and their histories - can understnd how ultimately arbitrary many of these 'rules' are, we can choose better than what we have now.

***************************************************************
"Global warming - it's not just a fact, it's a choice."