Topic: How long would it take for Anarchy to start working? - page 2. (Read 16391 times)

Studies suggest that paleolithic, and even the societies of the first part of the neolithic, before the first accumulation of wealth, were egalitarian societies, probably without power structures. Even the existence of a leader isn't clear. We can't find on their homes or burials any signs of power or difference of status.

So, the question isn't if we have a hierarchic nature, in the sense that we can only live in power structured societies.

The question is if a complex, urban society, where people trade daily with other people they don't know, could functioned without power. It would be great, but I don't think so.

Yes, the fact that only hierarchical societies exist still remains a fact, but as I said I don't try to clinch to it but rather look for the reasons behind in an effort to explain why this is so. And, to tell the truth, you didn't address this issue (at least, not in the way how I would like to see it addressed). What you said later can be reduced to just saying that in due course something might happen that will change the current situation (or might not, lol)...

In short, you didn't provide the logic that would make the change you hope for inevitable (or at least feasible) and the facts are on my side even if you don't see the fatal logic behind them!

to start anarchy, you need a major factor that makes people emotional, fear is what works best nowadays, and guiding people to revolutions and anarchies is the new favorite game of some, as for total anarchy that would require cutting fundamentals and fundamentals needs to a vast majority, but sadly order will come back sooner or later as it is related to the "animal" part of us we humans by nature socialize and by this same nature we tend to have hierarchy in our groups

But don't take my words too superficial, people often confuse real natural inequality with what they are (or were) taught or lived with. Here I can use your own examples (slavery, constituent rights and so on), but I talk here about what really exists (and works its way despite our knowledge about this - or lack thereof) and is predetermined by nature...

So, in a sense, it does necessarily follow that hierarchical societies have a natural advantage over non-hierarchical ones!  

I wonder how that differs from what I said in practice, given that you explicitly stated that without external coercion or constraints, an anarchical society would give rise to a hierarchical one; but fine, I won't pursue that. Instead, let me try and address the rationale behind your conclusions and maybe we can get somewhere with this.

So, your point is, hierarchical societies have advantages over anarchical ones, so that even if we started with an unconstrained non-hierarchical society, it would eventually turn to a hierarchical one; now, to account for this, you only mentioned the fact that hierarchical societies exist and that there are no large scale, technologically advanced anarchical societies to speak off at this point in time - an advantage in itself, of course. I'll try and address this point then, but feel free to detail other advantages you feel they might have.

You are of course right in that they don't exist at present; but it doesn't necessarily follow that hierarchical societies must have a natural advantage over non-hierarchical ones because of this. I'm sure this argument must have been used before the first parliament was ever created, before republics were established, or before people were able to vote either for their representatives, or directly in referendums to decide what measures they would like to see implemented in society. Established power has always resisted change, but changes are always taking place.

It's as I said in previous posts: this line of thinking tends to ignore a great deal of reality. Even relatively small successes like Catalonia and Aragon, during the civil war, took decades of education and experiments before breaking through; these things don't happen in a day. And everything considered, even what we call democracy (a far cry from what it should be, as we know, but still) hasn't been applied for that long (a couple of centuries), compared to millennia of totalitarian forms of government. And of course the basic idea behind democracy has been known for a long time, but it took this long for conditions (education, opportunity, etc.) to allow it to be implemented. Still, would you go back to the 15th century and say such a thing would never work on account of nothing like that existing for any known large scale society?

Another example I mentioned earlier was slaves. Look back and you'll see arguments that are not all that different: "our society can't exist without slaves; if they don't work the fields for us, we'll all starve", or some equally self-serving argument. Yet society wasn't worse off without slaves (you can argue why that is, but that won't really change the point). For women, one of the arguments against giving them the vote was that it would just give a second vote to the husband (so, being unfair to unmarried men), because women obviously couldn't deal with stuff like that. Turns out they could, and society is better for it (and more equal).

People are increasingly more involved with the societies they are part of, and as I'd said, for me the tendency seems to be positive and moving towards greater equality. In this sense, the reason you don't see large scale non-hierarchical societies is not because hierarchy naturally confers some advantage, but simply because we're not there yet; a lot more education, experience and opportunities are needed before they can exist.

Actually, I didn't say that human nature under no circumstances will change or can be mitigated in a way... I said quite the contrary. What I did say is that we need external coercion or constraints that would make us live in an anarchical way. The reason for this (as I see it) boils down to a competitive edge that hierarchical societies have before theoretical non-hierarchical (since there are none as much as social beings are concerned) in the struggle for existence...

What do you mean? I'm not asking you to give examples of anarchic societies like the ones I suggested.

If I understood your position correctly, you're saying that human nature is fundamentally hierarchical, and no matter the circumstances, that won't chance or even be mitigated in a way that would allow us to live in a non-hierarchical (anarchical) way. But this isn't obvious to me, so I'm asking you to either give examples of situations that illustrate your point, or to at least explain the rationale that led you to this belief.

Hmm... at first you bring forward an idea of how to reach such an anarchic type of society and add there should be several things necessary (i.e. worker owned and managed means of production, redistribution of wealth, etc). And now you ask me to give you an example...

How come?

I see no reason to believe that would be the case; care to give an example, or expand upon it further? Because I'd think it was the exact opposite by looking at the, no doubt painfully slow, progress that has been made in society through time. I mean, there aren't only positive developments; it's a constant struggle, and we definitely slide back at times, but fortunately the tendency seems positive to me.

So for example, we no longer have slaves (well, yes, we still have them but pushed them out of sight, which is meaningful in itself); women can vote, which depending on where you are from, might have only happened about half a century ago; homosexuality is no longer the taboo it once was; etc.. One important aspect of this, which I mentioned just today in another thread, is that the public awareness and engagement in social life has increased through time. So for example, it took years before there was a considerable movement to oppose the Vietnam War in the US, despite most information of what was going on being freely available in the news. I probably don't have to go into detail about the loss of life on all sides of the conflict and the devastation caused by the war. Less than half a century later, there was considerable opposition to the Iraq War before it was even officially declared.

What you're basically saying in your post is that human nature is basically hierarchical; even in the "best" conditions, humans will be humans and we'll revert to the same old ways, and there is nothing we can do about it. To be honest, I find that to be quite a defeatist attitude, and one that tends to ignore reality.

My opinion is that even if we somehow could create the initial conditions you talk about (worker owned and managed means of production, redistribution of wealth, etc) and would then leave such a system to go on by itself (i.e. without constraining or checking from the outside), it will ultimately turn into a hierarchical society (with means of production going into a few hands, new redistribution of wealth and so on)...

The vast majority of people are simply unable to conceive of a world without borders, armies, governments, police forces, taxes etc. The people who can are what Albert Jay Nock referred to as "The Remnant", and these are the people one would expect to cope best if/when society collapses.

This was one of the most frustrating things watching the Arab spring, all that effort, all that blood spilled to oust authoritarian regimes - only to install another one - people crave domination.

The vast majority would not adapt to anarchy, they would seek to set up structures, hierarchies, police forces, governments.

Children are our best hope. I teach my kids about coercion, about the illegitimacy of political authority, about resistance etc. At least they be equipped to defend themselves (intellectually) from state dogma.

The civil war was more of an opportunity, rather than a cause; there had previously been decades (indeed several generations) that engaged in anarchic experiments, most ending in failure and repression at the hands of the ruling class, before it was finally able to break through during the war.

Now, it is true that in order to reach such a type of society (say, from the point we are in today) there are several things that would need to happen first: for example, worker owned and managed means of production; up to a point, redistribution of wealth, and so on. Of course, realistically speaking, it's very hard to achieve this without some form of coercion; whether or not this is justifiable, you decide.

But to avoid hierarchies between people, you will have to use external coercion you are preaching against. I don't know much about Catalonia and Aragon during the Spanish Civil War, but organizing what they had still required external coercion like war, I guess...

Don't confuse disorder and warlords fighting for dominance with anarchy. Anarchy is a form of social organization that strives to avoid hierarchies between people, and so seeks to avoid coercion and use of force by authority figures. Also, you have examples where this has worked, at least internally, like for example the regions of Catalonia and Aragon in Spain during the Spanish Civil War.

You don't start anarchy, it is a state acted through events such as revolutions and such. I do not think anarchy will degrade humans as a whole. Also we do have a somewhat of an anarchy. It is the Internet. Look at Somalia, they live in anarchy and look at how they turned out.
-T

Why are you so sure that anarchy is coming? Do you think that currently existing governments have all the power there is, and if you find a way around their regulations and attain real freedom through technological means, like Bitcoin allows you, they will fade away in obscurity stripped of any leverage on citizens?

What if there are people who secretly control the very technological tools you hope to use against those in control? Why do you assume that after the printing press or the Internet, the invention of which could usher an era of ultimate freedom for each individual, but proved unsuccessful in the end, Bitcoin will finally succeed where those have failed?

The most rational guess, however, would be that until there's a single person on the planet, there will be someone ruling over someone else.

https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/ben-bernanke-the-grandmaster-of-a-mason-lodge-562804

Yeah, and those people come here to blame Russian authorities for being cruel, lawless or whatever...

not necessarily

the death of bin laden had already been reported multiple times a few years earlier
no evidence of a corpse has been pulished
those that executed the bin laden mission died in helicopter crashes

but i agree that the united statan government openly stated to have killed bin laden without trial
and it is disturbing that there are people considering that acceptable

Yeah, USA openly killed Bin Laden without trial and everyone says they rendered him true justice, lol

What deaths caused by such accidents (poisons or radiation) do you know of for sure? If they were doing this routinely as follows from your post (instead of sentencing and punishing), why didn't none ever get caught red-handed with irrefutable evidence? I heard about a hacker, Jack Barnaby, 35, suddenly found dead in San Francisco last summer. Was he killed by evil Russians too?