Originally posted by inimalist
the same way all parties need to agree in non-governmental conflict mediation?
So if the council says that Bob now owns your land you'll immediately stop trying to control it? What about when you're convicted of murder, will you go to prison or the firing squad of your own free will? And even if you would do you honestly believe everyone will?
Nonbinding resolutions are fine for minor disputes or trivial sums but only the craziest in society have ever needed government to help them with those problems anyway. Small claims court has always been something of a joke. It's major problems that end up need coercion to eventually settle.
Dadudemon brought up wikipedia. And he kind of had a point. 90% of the time the articles are settled just fine by the contributors. But he neglects to mention that when it comes to extremely contentious articles or ones that are especially prone to vandalism can be locked (and they are) and vandals can be banned (and they are). These are not voluntary decisions. They are coercion, the equivalent of (if we have wikipedia stand in for society) strict censorship and the death penalty.
Originally posted by Symmetric Chaos
So if the council says that Bob now owns your land you'll immediately stop trying to control it? What about when you're convicted of murder, will you go to prison or the firing squad of your own free will? And even if you would do you honestly believe everyone will?Nonbinding resolutions are fine for minor disputes or trivial sums but only the craziest in society have ever needed government to help them with those problems anyway. Small claims court has always been something of a joke. It's major problems that end up need coercion to eventually settle.
Dadudemon brought up wikipedia. And he kind of had a point. 90% of the time the articles are settled just fine by the contributors. But he neglects to mention that when it comes to extremely contentious articles or ones that are especially prone to vandalism can be locked (and they are) and vandals can be banned (and they are). These are not voluntary decisions. They are coercion, the equivalent of (if we have wikipedia stand in for society) strict censorship and the death penalty.
I don't actiually disagree with you, other than to say, I do think there are other possible mechanisms, where citizens themselves can enforce these types of things, that can enforce compliance with some sort of regulation. Referring to the Chomsky video I posted, it is not that, as an anarchist, I feel there should be no coercion, but that the coercion must be justified by some sort of mechanism that includes all the stakeholders in the equation. No, I don't know exactly how that would work, reason being, we are no where near that point in our socity yet...
I feel the biggest obstacle this leaves me open to is more things like racism in comminities where it is totally acceptable, or the like, but I hear you, I guess I don't actually know, with any certainty, what keeps corporations in line in a anarchist state.
However, to appeal to something I've already said, and even to the video Bardock psoted, any even remotely sane anarchist doesn't feel that destroying the state immediatly is the best solution to any problem. I can give you my stance on a variety of issues (anarchist education, the decomodification of different necessities of life with technology, etc) and if you want, we can debate them, but ok, sure, I don't absolutly know, in all circumstances, what makes people obey society. The fact is, if a state actually gave anarchist policy a chance, I'd be willing to admit when it fails, but they dont. Where do we ever see a state that wants to dismantle its own power.
Thus the paradox of my beliefs. I dont feel any imposition of my will over others is justified, thus any effective revolutionary action based on my belieefs is impossible, yet, given what I know about human psychology, I know those in power will never give citizens the rights or responsibilities necessicary to live autonoimous lives.
again, I try to stick to small scale stuff. Like, why do people in southern ontario (literally, I'm not kidding, some of the best farm land in the world) not grow their own crops? Or why dont we have automated skyscraper farms (seriously, we have the technology). In so many instances, the state has the ability to set up institutions that can be run by local citizens, that would eliminate scarcity in the necessities of life, why aren't we investing in this type of infrastructure?
One reason, at the very least, is the fact that it takes the authority away from the state. But I've tied a couple off this evening, and am probably rambling nonsense 😉
Originally posted by inimalist
ha, so this will seem like some huge cop out, but I am going to sort of just sum up a lot that was said into one reply.volunteerism isn't really a critical part of my ideas. I suppose you could call it such, but social responsibility plays a major role in how I think society should work. well, ya, you could voluntarily "opt out" of those responsibilities, but then you would essentially be opting out of society. like, social rules wouldn't be any more voluntary than they are now, you couldn't choose to assault someone without repercussion, the same way I could voluntarily violate the law. my thinking is that a system where the community comes together to determine your fate, rather than a central system that is empowered through heavy handed sentencing, is much more justified in taking away your rights for the protection of society.
Humans are too immature for that: enter majoritarianism.
Inalienable rights would have to be universally understood and unviolate-able: similar to Asimovs Three Laws of Robotics. They would have to be universally interpreted and applied (meaning, everyone single person would interpret them in every applicable situation, imaginable, exactly the same.)
IMO, this is the fundemental failure of most anarachist systems.
Originally posted by inimalist
secondly, to the point about GE vs the American gvt. ok, so all of this is entirely speculative, but I really don't see the state as having an advantage in enforcement over them. sure, they could file anti-trust, but what do they do when GE doesn't even come to court? GE is more than just a company, it is buildings, thousands of employees, infrastructure, it owns a major news outlet on cable, satellite and the internet, etc. if they just up and decided not to cooperate, I think the gvt would have an extraordinarily difficult time making them. their shareholders, however, might be in a better position to do this, and they would want to, because such a battle would be disastrous to their bottom line. they comply because it makes things better for everyone that they do.
I wasn't going to say anything about that example becaue I understood what you were saying, but...
GE IS subject to the government and compliance is not voluntary. The government smacks on a fine, GE must pay. If they do not, additional fines will be leveraged. There is a maximum allowable tolerance for defiance. The organization could be dismantled, by force, if they refused cooperation OR the execs in charge of issuing those statements could be charged, criminally, and new heads put in place. There is also the ability of the government to freeze all assets, making business operations come to a hault.
There is also the hostile take-over possibility: the government can purchase all shares, forcefully, in a quiet take over, in perparation for liquidation or ousting. This can preclude the freezing of assets. This is on top of the many many bugs implanted, electronic traffic monitored, etc. bla bla bla.
We actually saw that last one occur, somewhat, for smaller banks when the FDIC took over and liquidated banks.
Originally posted by inimalist
and so, finally, I want to give some perspective here. imagine it were 1750, and instead of anarchy, I was promoting democracy. many of these "how will x work?" questions could easily be leveled against me, much as they are now, and they would likely be as valid. the thing is, for democracy, we only came to understand practical answers to these questions after hundreds of years of implementation. there is no democratic state that exists as an exact reflection of enlightenment ideals, in the same way it would be foolish for me to claim, "oh, of course, this is how anarchy would work". we just don't know, but where it has been tried to limited degrees, there is some evidence that these types of social organization can work, namely from Barcelona during the Spanish civil war. so, no, I probably can't explain how a group of stakeholders could enforce regulation, but I can point to citizen activism as it exists today, and say, well, if this were the method of conflict resolution, it could be effective, because sit ins, boycotts, and even just consumer education works today. if a company doesn't comply, the citizens (other stakeholders) would physically prevent that company from doing business. because the police no longer are a strong arm for corporations, they cant be relied upon to protect businesses, and in fact, ideally, would protect those demonstrating against the company
I agree, to a point. In 1750 or beyond, we already had very advanced understanding of democracy. So much so that have have had very little change in our understanding since the 18th Century. Very few "new" concepts have emerged. Almost all "new" stuff is simply converged, not emerged.
With Anarachy, however, these questions are very important. People didn't ask: "Well, what do we do if group A wants X law but group B doesn't like X law because it surpresses their ability to survive?" Answer: Magna Carta. Some rights cannot be violated by the state or the majority. Additionally, the idea of equal rights and not owning slaves was definitely not new to 1750.
In other words, I agree with the point you're trying ot illustrate, but I partially disagree with the example you've used.
Originally posted by inimalist
well, if you accept that the only way to truth, or the only way people should come to know things, is through "reason" (which, I'm sure this individual thinks includes the scientific method, but actually does not [the scientific method is opposed to the Aristitalian method]), then you have created a norm which all people must adhere to.We are saying, a priori, that knowledge from "reason" is inherently better than all other types, and that anything learned from these other types cannot inform reason. He is basically saying, "to be allied with me, you must think like me, otherwise we are not the same and I don't support you", which, at least in my interpretation, is the exact opposite of anarchy
His reasons mesh very well with Chomsky's definition. "reasonible justification" and "burden of proof" are exactly what The "X are stupid" guy is talkig about.
Originally posted by Symmetric Chaos
Dadudemon brought up wikipedia. And he kind of had a point. 90% of the time the articles are settled just fine by the contributors. But he neglects to mention that when it comes to extremely contentious articles or ones that are especially prone to vandalism can be locked (and they are) and vandals can be banned (and they are). These are not voluntary decisions. They are coercion, the equivalent of (if we have wikipedia stand in for society) strict censorship and the death penalty.
Yes, that was the implied "other half" of my point. 99% may work just fine without "superivision" but that doesn't speak on the other 1% that need someone to bring down the hammer.
Originally posted by dadudemon
Humans are too immature for that: enter majoritarianism.Inalienable rights would have to be universally understood and unviolate-able: similar to Asimovs Three Laws of Robotics. They would have to be universally interpreted and applied (meaning, everyone single person would interpret them in every applicable situation, imaginable, exactly the same.)
IMO, this is the fundemental failure of most anarachist systems.
... so? I imagine communities, or at least blocs within communities, would come to understand such definitions of rights when making decisions through practice or philosophy...
Originally posted by dadudemon
I wasn't going to say anything about that example becaue I understood what you were saying, but...GE IS subject to the government and compliance is not voluntary. The government smacks on a fine, GE must pay. If they do not, additional fines will be leveraged. There is a maximum allowable tolerance for defiance. The organization could be dismantled, by force, if they refused cooperation OR the execs in charge of issuing those statements could be charged, criminally, and new heads put in place. There is also the ability of the government to freeze all assets, making business operations come to a hault.
There is also the hostile take-over possibility: the government can purchase all shares, forcefully, in a quiet take over, in perparation for liquidation or ousting. This can preclude the freezing of assets. This is on top of the many many bugs implanted, electronic traffic monitored, etc. bla bla bla.
We actually saw that last one occur, somewhat, for smaller banks when the FDIC took over and liquidated banks.
yes, but those banks aren't nearly as powerful as GE. Think about the power GE has to strike back against any government that goes at it? Imagine the hit to the American economy such action would cause.
Or think of a company like AT&T, they own and control so much communications infrastructure. If they took an antagonistic stance against the American government, it is certainly arguable that they might win that fight, or at least go down swinging.
Originally posted by inimalist
... so? I imagine communities, or at least blocs within communities, would come to understand such definitions of rights when making decisions through practice or philosophy...
So? That's the most fundamental flaw of the system. Anything beyond a small setup would always fail.
Originally posted by inimalist
yes, but those banks aren't nearly as powerful as GE. Think about the power GE has to strike back against any government that goes at it? Imagine the hit to the American economy such action would cause.
Actually, the American economy would hardly be affected. GE, while the second largest private organization in the world, has limited "retaliation" against the government. They can cut off power to lots of people, sure, but short of dismantling every last bit of energy infrastructure they have, the government can quickly restore power and operations to most facilities. (Taking out their power offerings would be the best way they could strike back at the government due to how shitty the energy system is built: little to no redundancy and each power company has a regional monopoly on their system: a finding and criticism by the Department of Homeland Security.)
There's also the problem of a quiet take over. Then there's the problem of the GE's board of executives being taken out of the equation and/or others put in place with supervision (like happened with the bailed-out banks back in 2009-2010.) No organization comes close to matching the size, resources, and power of the government unless you believe in some far-fetched conspiracy theories, which I already know you don't believe.)
Originally posted by inimalist
Or think of a company like AT&T, they own and control so much communications infrastructure. If they took an antagonistic stance against the American government, it is certainly arguable that they might win that fight, or at least go down swinging.
I do not see how they could win that fight for very similar reasons that GE would not. The case is much less "make-able" for AT&T than it is GE. Additionally, Verizon would be a better choice due to how much communication infrastructure they have in place. (Infrastructure and how much information or resources traverse those infrastructure is the measure of how large of an impact an organization would have on the US during a terror event.) On top of that, Google would be a far better choice as more than 12% of all internet traffic passes over Google's very own communication infrastructure.
AT&T would have to preempt the US government's take over by blowing up all of their MTSO's and cell towers in an extremely coordinated fashion (while sabotaging endpoint communication systems for "copperwire" communications (which would include fiber)). This would be on top of trying to pull that off without the US government noticing. Additionally, the destruction would not do much good due to the redundancy in place for communication systems: both radio based and land based. Thanks to AT&T being broken up by the anti-trust ruling in the United States v. AT&T in 1984, we have much more redundancy in our cell and land based communication systems than we do our energy systems. AT&T could certainly impact communications but it would mostly be a loss of bandwidth rather than a complete outage (Assuming they can even pull off a complete shutdown of all communications which is directly counter-intuitive to what AT&T would actually do: shutting down their business operations is the absolute worst AT&T could do for themselves.) This is on top of AT&T using GSM for their "rural" markets which pale in comparison to the other 2G technology, CDMA, which has a far better reach than GSM with the rural markets (US Cellular and Verizon could handle the bandwidth load for the rural market,s easily, on their CDMA networks.)
Originally posted by inimalist
Or think of a company like AT&T, they own and control so much communications infrastructure. If they took an antagonistic stance against the American government, it is certainly arguable that they might win that fight, or at least go down swinging.
Originally posted by King Kandy
Within the judicial system... I would argue that abiding by the courts ruling indicates they knew they wouldn't ignore it and profit.
or that, within any system, people will cooperate with that conflict resolution mechanisms so that they avoid the financial catastrophy of fighting against such mechanism
Originally posted by King Kandy
Exactly... hence, it is coercive. Resisting would cause financial catastrophe.
yes, I've never said any form of coercion is bad, just that those decided by bottom-up social organization between stakeholders is better and more justified than that imposed by top-down systems, which have all of their faults.
If society comes together and determines how businesses must be run, then sure, I'm not against business being forced, through social action, into compliance.