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Idea of a stateless society.

soylentgreen said:
No, it is just a dictionary meaning that should be only a starting point not the only definition your capable of giving. You have no clue about anarchism because you hour not interested in it. this thread is nothing more than a lie. You are using anarchism to promote the absudity of laissez-faire capitalism. but knowing it is a joke you need to hide it behind anarchism.
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Claiming anarchism is about believing in less government instead of no government makes as much sense as claiming atheism is about believing in less gods instead of no gods.
You cant go against the fundamental principal of an idea and claim it is still the same idea
 
Quag said:
Claiming anarchism is about believing in less government instead of no government makes as much sense as claiming atheism is about believing in less gods instead of no gods.
You cant go against the fundamental principal of an idea and claim it is still the same idea
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No one but you is claiming that anarchism is about no government. It is about the redistribution of governance from one centralised authority to a more dispersed local authority.

Your utopian nonesense is fit only for people like you who act religiously and thoughtlessly accept what they read instead of of thinking the idea through as should be done in philosophy.

When the best you can do is nothing more than quote dictionaries then it becomes obvious that you have not bothered to think about what was said in those dictionaries or botheed to seek more detail on what they may mean. I am not surprised as it became quite clear from the begining that yours was a dishonest attempt to bring about the subject of Laissez-faire capitalism by hiding it behind something you have no knowledge of, anarchism.
 
Quag said:
Claiming anarchism is about believing in less government instead of no government makes as much sense as claiming atheism is about believing in less gods instead of no gods.
You cant go against the fundamental principal of an idea and claim it is still the same idea
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Even anarchists don't agree on what anarchism is. :)

I spent quite some time reading up on the subject some years ago, and there are rabbit-holes aplenty. A gazillion different flavors... anarcho-capitalist, anarcho-socialist, anarcho-syndicalist, etc. Some refer to themselves as minarchist (minimal gov't) and still consider themselves anarchist, while other anarchists call them libertarians... or worse names. :)

Some people think it is anarchism if everybody lives in a sort of commune, and each commune has its own internal rules of whatever most are cool with, as long as you can vote with your feet and leave. I'd call that tribalism myself.

So if THEY have a gazillion flavors and no single consistent definition, it's hard for the rest of us to know how to take them.


I've had a number of discussions with anarchists about how do you avoid all the various negatives.... they usually come back to reinventing the wheel by a different name, in one way or another.

I have trouble seeing how you eliminate coercion altogether without inviting chaos. If police/security/courts are a private service you subscribe to and pay for, and they can't try you if you're not a subscriber, what do you do with someone who subscribes to NO police/security/court service? And does you wrong? Forcing him into court anyway is coercion.


You could always shoot him I suppose, but that's a smidge coercive too iddnit. :)
 
soylentgreen said:
No one but you is claiming that anarchism is about no government. It is about the redistribution of governance from one centralised authority to a more dispersed local authority.

Your utopian nonesense is fit only for people like you who act religiously and thoughtlessly accept what they read instead of of thinking the idea through as should be done in philosophy.

When the best you can do is nothing more than quote dictionaries then it becomes obvious that you have not bothered to think about what was said in those dictionaries or botheed to seek more detail on what they may mean. I am not surprised as it became quite clear from the begining that yours was a dishonest attempt to bring about the subject of Laissez-faire capitalism by hiding it behind something you have no knowledge of, anarchism.
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Live the pipe dream my friend live the pipe dream
 
Goshin said:
Even anarchists don't agree on what anarchism is. :)

I spent quite some time reading up on the subject some years ago, and there are rabbit-holes aplenty. A gazillion different flavors... anarcho-capitalist, anarcho-socialist, anarcho-syndicalist, etc. Some refer to themselves as minarchist (minimal gov't) and still consider themselves anarchist, while other anarchists call them libertarians... or worse names. :)

Some people think it is anarchism if everybody lives in a sort of commune, and each commune has its own internal rules of whatever most are cool with, as long as you can vote with your feet and leave. I'd call that tribalism myself.

So if THEY have a gazillion flavors and no single consistent definition, it's hard for the rest of us to know how to take them.


I've had a number of discussions with anarchists about how do you avoid all the various negatives.... they usually come back to reinventing the wheel by a different name, in one way or another.

I have trouble seeing how you eliminate coercion altogether without inviting chaos. If police/security/courts are a private service you subscribe to and pay for, and they can't try you if you're not a subscriber, what do you do with someone who subscribes to NO police/security/court service? And does you wrong? Forcing him into court anyway is coercion.


You could always shoot him I suppose, but that's a smidge coercive too iddnit. :)
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Those are all various forms of libertarianism but they like the term anarchism because they think it is cool.
Doesnt change the fact that BY DEFINION anarchism is society without government.
 
soylentgreen said:
No one but you is claiming that anarchism is about no government. It is about the redistribution of governance from one centralised authority to a more dispersed local authority.
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Never seen nor heard of this definition of anarchy. What do you mean by "more dispersed"? The devil is in the details. Seems yours is a very grey and subjective definition, capable of all sorts of interpretations based on personal preferences and current personal moods on all sorts of different issues.

Regardless, in practice, the US under the Articles of Confederation was about as loose a centralized authority as you could get. They kept it around for a few years, but it eventually proved to be highly dysfunctional and was not working out so well. So that's when they scrapped the Articles and wrote the Constitution instead, with much stronger central authority. it worked much better.

So why are you trying to reinvent the wheel as if it's some brand new idea? We tried it. It didn't work. We move on. It's like someone now saying Soviet Communism was a great idea and we need to try it yet once again.
 
ataraxia said:
Never seen nor heard of this definition of anarchy. What do you mean by "more dispersed"? The devil is in the details. Seems yours is a very grey and subjective definition, capable of all sorts of interpretations based on personal preferences and current personal moods on all sorts of different issues.

Regardless, in practice, the US under the Articles of Confederation was about as loose a centralized authority as you could get. They kept it around for a few years, but it eventually proved to be highly dysfunctional and was not working out so well. So that's when they scrapped the Articles and wrote the Constitution instead, with much stronger central authority. it worked much better.

So why are you trying to reinvent the wheel as if it's some brand new idea? We tried it. It didn't work. We move on. It's like someone now saying Soviet Communism was a great idea and we need to try it yet once again.
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You woud not have seen any such definition of anarchy. As that word simply means nothing more than a state of lawlessness. The word you are looking for is anarchism. That is the philosophy of a minimalist style government. I will keep pointing out this difference because it is the difference between the fake arguement that anarchism is about no government.

Anarchism is an extreme philosophy. Not one i would argue that society should strive for. It's far to optimistic of the conditions necessary to bring it about. Nor is it one i would bother to argue on a site like this because it will devolve down to the ignorant simply copying and pasting a dictionary definition. Which is nothing more than thinking up a stupid way of doing anarchism and then insisting it has to be that way. Which is basically all that quag has done. Think up a stupid way of thinking about anarchism, pointing out it is stupid and then congratulating himself for proving it is stupid.

There is no historical evidence for successful anarchism. As you point out the few times it has been tried it failed. The spanish gave it a good shot but were defested by other nations who gave their support to the dictator franco in order to stop the anachists from succeeding and spreading the revolution to other countries.
It was not a case of no government but that of the authority of a centralised government ruling being removed and replaced by groups peracticing equality.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_Revolution_of_1936

George Orwell meticulously documented his first-hand observations of the civil war, and expressed admiration for the social revolution in his book Homage to Catalonia.[4]

I had dropped more or less by chance into the only community of any size in Western Europe where political consciousness and disbelief in capitalism were more normal than their opposites. Up here in Aragon one was among tens of thousands of people, mainly though not entirely of working-class origin, all living at the same level and mingling on terms of equality. In theory it was perfect equality, and even in practice it was not far from it. There is a sense in which it would be true to say that one was experiencing a foretaste of Socialism, by which I mean that the prevailing mental atmosphere was that of Socialism. Many of the normal motives of civilized life—snobbishness, money-grubbing, fear of the boss, etc.—had simply ceased to exist. The ordinary class-division of society had disappeared to an extent that is almost unthinkable in the money-tainted air of England; there was no one there except the peasants and ourselves, and no one owned anyone else as his master.
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soylentgreen said:
You woud not have seen any such definition of anarchy. As that word simply means nothing more than a state of lawlessness. The word you are looking for is anarchism. That is the philosophy of a minimalist style government. I will keep pointing out this difference because it is the difference between the fake arguement that anarchism is about no government.

Anarchism is an extreme philosophy. Not one i would argue that society should strive for. It's far to optimistic of the conditions necessary to bring it about. Nor is it one i would bother to argue on a site like this because it will devolve down to the ignorant simply copying and pasting a dictionary definition. Which is nothing more than thinking up a stupid way of doing anarchism and then insisting it has to be that way. Which is basically all that quag has done. Think up a stupid way of thinking about anarchism, pointing out it is stupid and then congratulating himself for proving it is stupid.

There is no historical evidence for successful anarchism. As you point out the few times it has been tried it failed. The spanish gave it a good shot but were defested by other nations who gave their support to the dictator franco in order to stop the anachists from succeeding and spreading the revolution to other countries.
It was not a case of no government but that of the authority of a centralised government ruling being removed and replaced by groups peracticing equality.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_Revolution_of_1936
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You have already been proven wrong about your definition of anarchism
political theory holding all forms of governmental authority to be unnecessary and undesirable and advocating a society based on voluntary cooperation and free association of individuals and groups
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Which is not minimalist govt is is society with no govt
You are actually trying to peddle a form opf libertarianism which is not the same thing.
 
soylentgreen said:
You woud not have seen any such definition of anarchy. As that word simply means nothing more than a state of lawlessness. The word you are looking for is anarchism. That is the philosophy of a minimalist style government. I will keep pointing out this difference because it is the difference between the fake arguement that anarchism is about no government.

Anarchism is an extreme philosophy. Not one i would argue that society should strive for. It's far to optimistic of the conditions necessary to bring it about. Nor is it one i would bother to argue on a site like this because it will devolve down to the ignorant simply copying and pasting a dictionary definition. Which is nothing more than thinking up a stupid way of doing anarchism and then insisting it has to be that way. Which is basically all that quag has done. Think up a stupid way of thinking about anarchism, pointing out it is stupid and then congratulating himself for proving it is stupid.

There is no historical evidence for successful anarchism. As you point out the few times it has been tried it failed. The spanish gave it a good shot but were defested by other nations who gave their support to the dictator franco in order to stop the anachists from succeeding and spreading the revolution to other countries.
It was not a case of no government but that of the authority of a centralised government ruling being removed and replaced by groups peracticing equality.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_Revolution_of_1936
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I see. So what are your thoughts of the US under The Articles of Confederation? Why do you think these were scrapped for stronger central government under the Constitution?
 
Quag said:
You have already been proven wrong about your definition of anarchism

Which is not minimalist govt is is society with no govt
You are actually trying to peddle a form opf libertarianism which is not the same thing.
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And what would be another word for associations but that of governing bodies. As i have stated anarchism is the rejection of a centralsed one government authority to a dispersed body of cooperation between differing groups. Rather than an elite ruling class of politiocians instead an equality of authority by all. They do not rid themselves of governance they change the structure which gives govrnmnent its power.

All you are trying to do is create an idiotic and completely impossible way of doing anarchism and then congratulating yourself on pointing out it cannot be done.

Of course it is some form of libertarianism i have already pointed out that the other title for anarchism is socialist/communist libertarianism.
 
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ataraxia said:
I see. So what are your thoughts of the US under The Articles of Confederation? Why do you think these were scrapped for stronger central government under the Constitution?
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I have never associated anarchism with the americans whatsoever. What happened in your country has nothing to do with anarchism. Voting rights were given only to white male landholders. The rest could go **** themselves as far as your elitiest, religious slave owning rulers were concerned. Hardly a principle of anarchism.
 
soylentgreen said:
And what would be another word for associations but that of governing bodies. As i have stated anarchism is the rejection of a centralsed one government authority to a dispersed body of cooperation between differing groups. Rather than an elite ruling class of politiocians instead an equality of authority by all. They do not rid themselves of governance they change the structure which gives govrnmnent its power.

All you are trying to do is create an idiotic and completely impossible way of doing anarchism and then congratulating yourself on pointing out it cannot be done.

Of course it is some form of libertarianism i have already pointed out that the other title for anarchism is socialist/communist libertarianism.
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I have already pointed out that socialist/communist libertarianism is not anarchism.
If you want to promote something it would help using the proper terminology.
 
Quag said:
I have already pointed out that socialist/communist libertarianism is not anarchism.
If you want to promote something it would help using the proper terminology.
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No you did not. All you did was deny the evidence i gave. Instead favouring the ridiculous idiot version given by a dictionary.
 
soylentgreen said:
No you did not. All you did was deny the evidence i gave. Instead favouring the ridiculous idiot version given by a dictionary.
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Actually you provided 0 evidence. I however provided the actual definition (multiple ones in fact) and you ignored it because you didn't like what it said.
So if you want to have a discussion about social libertarianism that's fine but stop pretending you are discussing anarchism.
 
Quag said:
Actually you provided 0 evidence. I however provided the actual definition (multiple ones in fact) and you ignored it because you didn't like what it said.
So if you want to have a discussion about social libertarianism that's fine but stop pretending you are discussing anarchism.
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That is the problem. All you have done is look up a dictionary and believe the first thing you read.; No thought or research just a religious belief in the first thing you see. You produced an idiot version and nothing else.
 
soylentgreen said:
That is the problem. All you have done is look up a dictionary and believe the first thing you read.; No thought or research just a religious belief in the first thing you see. You produced an idiot version and nothing else.
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No the problem is you dont actually understand the meaning of the term anarchism.
You are talking about a form of libertarianism NOT anarchism
As soon as you accept that then we can move on and actually discuss the form of libertarianism you are proposing.
 
soylentgreen said:
I have never associated anarchism with the americans whatsoever. What happened in your country has nothing to do with anarchism. Voting rights were given only to white male landholders. The rest could go **** themselves as far as your elitiest, religious slave owning rulers were concerned. Hardly a principle of anarchism.
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These laws were all at the local level under the Articles of Confederation. The states were the only entity capable of having tax laws. The federal government only got money from whatever the states chose to voluntarily give it. There was no means of federal tax collection.

So if voting rights were extended only to white male landowners, it was only because that's what the people in that particular state wanted it that way. What did you want to have them do, have the federal government FORCE these states to extend those rights to all American citizens, like the federal government did with Alabama in the 1960s?

If you are not familiar with this part of American history, I would recommend you get yourself familiar with it, especially as someone who seems to taken with this idea of anarchism. It may be that what you have in mind has been tried before, and studying it might save you from reinventing the wheel.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Articles_of_Confederation
 
Quag said:
No the problem is you dont actually understand the meaning of the term anarchism.
You are talking about a form of libertarianism NOT anarchism
As soon as you accept that then we can move on and actually discuss the form of libertarianism you are proposing.
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What a joke, you talking about not understanding. You open this thread by advertising the fact that you do not understand the difference between the word anarchy and anarchism. You then go on to claim your not a utopian but contradict yourself by giving a definition that is nothing else but utopian. You dishonestly or incompetently cherry pick two words out of a document. It is not difficult to find the words "no government" in any essay on anarchism. But you disregard the essay entirely to misrepresent the two words as meaning no government whatsoever. When in fact what they really mean is no form of centralised authoritarian government run only to empower an elite group.

If you wish to move the goal post now i could not care less. But do not try and tell me that you understand what anarchism is.
 
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ataraxia said:
These laws were all at the local level under the Articles of Confederation. The states were the only entity capable of having tax laws. The federal government only got money from whatever the states chose to voluntarily give it. There was no means of federal tax collection.

So if voting rights were extended only to white male landowners, it was only because that's what the people in that particular state wanted it that way. What did you want to have them do, have the federal government FORCE these states to extend those rights to all American citizens, like the federal government did with Alabama in the 1960s?

If you are not familiar with this part of American history, I would recommend you get yourself familiar with it, especially as someone who seems to taken with this idea of anarchism. It may be that what you have in mind has been tried before, and studying it might save you from reinventing the wheel.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Articles_of_Confederation
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This has nothing to do with anarchism. Your founding fathers were federalists. They had absolutely no intention or even any real understanding of the word equality. When a bunch of white men get together and say we are all equal the we is a very narrow defenition.

Granted your ancestors tried to form a new type of governing body. Not only was it not anarchism in any real sense but after two hundred plus years it has turned out to be a failure.
I am not reinventing the wheel, i am dealing with people who cherry pick and only read headlines and then make foolish assumptions.
 
soylentgreen said:
What a joke, you talking about not understanding. You open this thread by advertising the fact that you do not understand the difference between the word anarchy and anarchism.
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I did no such thing
You then go on to claim your not a utopian but contradict yourself by giving a definition that is nothing else but utopian.
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Again wrong
You dishonestly or incompetently cherry pick two words out of a document.
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Again wrong
It is not difficult to find the words "no government" in any essay on anarchism. But you disregard the essay entirely to misrepresent the two words as meaning no government whatsoever. When in fact what they really mean is no form of centralised authoritarian government run only to empower an elite group.
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Sorry your definition of anarchism is not only wrong I have proved it to be wrong all you have done is wave your hands and pretend that it is actual a form of socialist libertarianism


If you wish to move the goal post now i could not care less. But do not try and tell me that you understand what anarchism is.
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I understand anarchism a heck of a lot better than you do
 
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