Topic: How to actually start an anarchy? - page 2. (Read 4114 times)

You could gather a group of Bitcoin Talk members and release them into the wild. I'm sure that would work.

Well there is decentralized networks like the mesh network that work on small scale, but for big scale networks hierarchichal topology is a must.

We can certainly try it; I'll go ahead and refer to it as decentralized government from here on out and see if the reaction to there being no central government is any lighter.

Indeed.

In any event, I think it would be more difficult (or at least take a while) to build the same animosity/misunderstanding around the term "decentralized" as there is around "anarchy" today. For one, in software circles, decentralization is obviously considered good, and there are a lot of people in, or adjacent to, the software space who are aware of that. Instead of being turned insta-hostile by the term, hearing something like "decentralized governance" may actually spark a little interest.

Gotta start somewhere. I feel like the term "anarchy" is absolute poison at this point and requires revision to even hope to get the conversation going.

They call this libertarianism, but it's still anarchy   I agree with you though, there is a lot of confusion about what anarchy actually is; since the schools are biased, anarchy is the death of society, while government is the savior, and that's as much anarchy as anyone really learns.

Libertarianism is actually how I was introduced to anarchy.

There is a good anarchist website and radio show http://marcstevens.net/ It is fun to read and listen.

Marc is a self-educated lawyer who helps people defend against statist attacks in courts.

One little thing that might help: Stop calling it anarchy. How about "decentralized capitalism", or even, "decentralized governance".

People too closely associate the word "anarchy" with chaos/disorder. That right there makes people stop listening.

The land known as the United States of America, with its every border, is where government is present; to start a society without government, the USA would need to not be present in a specific area.  There is no land, within American borders, or out, where all the other nations are, where a society without government can take place.

Anarchism = without rulers.

And what I meant before; because you pay property tax on the land you own, you never actually own your land; you are only renting it from the government.

Take your pick.

Ha ha.

But seriously, no; not even land owners own their land, it's all owned by government.

I'm sure you can find land nobody cares about in the US.
That or you can buy some for cheap from an evil land owner that inherited it from the ancestors of native american rapists imperialist white cis male cowboy.
/sarcasm

Interesting title

Sweetheart, socialism is what you're sitting in right now.  Anarchism is the exact opposite of state socialism.  And, if you would read my very first post here, you'll understand what you're asking is impossible: there isn't even any land still in existence that isn't owned by government, and even if there was, the people who tried to develop an anarchistic society would be conquered quickly by the surrounding states.

yeah okay.
Maybe you guys out to practice what you preach, stop voting, go live in your little communes and stop shoving your socialism down our throats, m'kay?

"The secret of change is to focus all of your energy, not on fighting the old, but on building the new" - Socrates

Government is a hallucination in the minds of politicians.

I agree; many parents treat their children as property and otherwise abuse them, which teaches them the behavior to believe themselves lesser than some higher being, whether it's their parents, their God, their government, etc.  However, there will, no matter what society we speak of, be children who are cared for by someone, if not the ones who created them, and so the leader/follower relationship will always be there, even if this leadership is not actually voluntary; I believe Stefan has a lot of information about this, and he theorizes, for the shift to occur, it begins through children raised to believe in self-worth and freedom.  However, for this to happen, parents must first have this belief to pass on, so the change initially occurs through people who once believed in obedience through violence, and then changed to believe in the above, for them to pass those new beliefs to their children.  This does happen, but it happens very slowly, and it's surely not the primary source of people who believe in voluntarism; at least, I know this is not how it occurred with me, for I was the child who was beaten at least once a week, and yet I believe in just the opposite of one would expect.

As for now, our best bet is both to help adults understand, and to help our own children understand; if most of us agree that treating children as property is morally correct (as was treating women and "lesser" men from the biblical days to more recent times as slaves was once morally correct), then beating a person who is a child isn't accepted as wrong.  For the parenting to change, parents must first change, and it's these lengthy shifts in global ideology that affects why I believe it'll take such a long time for anarchism to come about.

Belief in the validity of government is nothing more or less than a consequence of bad parenting,

Virtually every person who has ever lived has experienced the use or threat of violence in order to compel obedience, typically from before their earliest memories. Because of those experiences they live the rest of their lives believing that it's good or necessary for some people to use extract obedience from other.

It's all just unexamined trauma from childhood, nothing more.

How do you start an anarchy?  You cannot start an anarchy; the anarchy is always there, just as you cannot create the cold, you can only remove the heat.  Without people, there is anarchy, for the only rulers left of the universe are the various laws we use to explain why things react in which ways to what, and if we can define a ruler as someone with the free will to rule, we cannot accurately call those things rulers.

Rather, to return to the natural anarchy that began at the dawn of time, there would have to be no rulers--or, more accurately, no rulers by coercion, for, it is in my belief, there will always be voluntarily followed people of our world; parents who lead their children; the head of businesses who lead the people they pay for their time; teachers who lead their students; and so forth.

It's not about finding a plot of land somewhere, hoping and praying an invading nation stays out, because lets get real, nations always want more land, and if you wish to seastead, you must only wait for any government to stretch its law to include oceans.  Space is more plausible, but trying to exist around other people who do believe in states will inevitably get difficult (for, even in anarchistic societies, there will always be some society somewhere which believes your anarchy needs to be conquered, especially if those people outnumber you); this is all assuming the people who generally believe government is vital and necessary to life outnumber the ones who don't.

Therefor, to return to anarchy, the people who do not believe in government must outnumber at least the largest government, if not all people who believe in the state.  The revolution occurs first in the mind; the point is to change the minds of people, so they understand why anarchism is preferable.  If you're under the belief that this is impossible, and people will always believe in government, and separatism is the only way; you may as well give up now, because, as all previous attempts at anarchistic societies have ended, it will only fail, and you will be assimilated into the greater group of people who do believe in the state.  (Refer to this video for an example of the most recent anarchism attempt I know of.)  Only until most people of this planet believe in voluntarism will we see a decline in government, and eventually, none; this, I believe, is the only way to achieve a life of anarchy.  The sad truth is, it likely won't happen in our lifetimes, but perhaps our children, or their children, will have something better.

Yes, that's why the history of humankind knows of only one type of anarchic organisation: it is the self-sufficient, non-patriarchal, matrilineal organised nuclear community beyond the state, the church and the market.