Topic: If Anarchy can work, how come there are no historical records of it working? - page 18. (Read 17176 times)

Working on Starting a Bitcoin town here:
https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/bitcoin-town-lets-make-the-future-come-to-us-216139

And there IS record of Anarchy working. Look up "Town of Anarchy" and either Hong Kong or Japan. It was a building that survived in complete anarchy.

And ancient Ireland, no one even knew how to read or write, everything was passed on by word.

I am sure that the anarchist society in iceland had no roads. Everyone had to live on the sea and take boats to get anywhere.

Because everyone knows that there would be no roads without government.

Heh!

The publicly accessible roads in my home state have never been built by governments until very recently, and even now only at the county & city levels.  There are plenty of roads, mostly in the countryside, that are still privately owned.  I was recently looking at buying a 10 acre wooded lot that used to be part of a larger farm.  The road frontage, which is gravel, is shown to be 1/2 owned by the owner of that plot and 1/2 owned by the owner of the opposite side.  In other words, four or five feet of gravel is owned by one person and the other four or five feet is owned by the other person.  The only deed restriction is that the owners of those properties cannot deny the owners of properties further up the road "innocent passage" (English Common Law legal term, just look it up).  Likewise, as an owner of undeveloped land in the state of Kentucky (technically a commonwealth) I can't deny anyone innocent passage across my land as long as they are on foot, don't intend to cause harm and are not intending to hunt on my property (not harvesting my wildlife against my wishes, which would be a 'harm') and are not walking after dark.

Not that most rednecks would know that I have an old right of 'innocent passage' across their fields, nor would they consider such hiking to be 'innocent', but still.

"what about the roads?!?" in 5...4...3...2...

No problem. Some further reading:
The Market for Liberty, by Linda & Morris Tannehill. (also available as an audiobook)
The Machinery of Freedom, by David J. Friedman.

Once you've read those, you should have a pretty good idea of how a modern market anarchy would work.

There was also the germanic culture prior to the formation of a German state.  For hundreds of years a loosely cooperative culture existed that spread across nearly all of the northern half of the European landmass, that never formed anything remotely like a government or a state.  However, it's hard to use that one as an example of success, since they were also largely illiterate, so we don't really have any documation concerning their culture other than the records of encounters with other cultures; primarily the Roman Empire.  The Romans considered them to be barbarians, but the opinions of third parties (particularly those in a state of low level warfare) are not trustworthy.  We know that their economy was largely resource based, and mining was a major part of their trade and livelyhood.  What little trade that they did was usually in mined salt (as noted in the history book about the topic, simply called Salt) and they were also noted to have very colorful clothing.  The old germanic tales about dwarves were likely based upon their culture.

And then there was the long history of the Swiss culture, which was stable without a central government authority or structure for a thousand years.  But, of course, that's just one little example of a bunch of mountain hillbillies, right?

Thank you

None of the above.

You might enjoy that short story, as well. (Enjoy might be too strong a word. Learn from, perhaps.)

Which is exactly what anarchy allows and encourages and makes necessary.

The anarchists I know cite many precedents for anarchist governance systems, but the ones that spring to mind first is Spain, and I think there is some kind of tribal consensus based collectivist anarchism in Madagascar.  Of course, David Graeber is probably the best place to look for more examples like this.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarcho-capitalism
See also: http://mises.org/document/2716

Excellent find on that article.

"This was because free farmers could change allegiance between godi without moving to a new geographical location. "The legal godi-thingman bond was created by a voluntary public contract."

That fixes an issue I was having with decentralization, that in our day and age if they wanted to change state/allegiance they would have to move. But ye, allow that they don't have to move to change allegiance.

Interesting... I guess if you switch allegiance, you switch to their taxes, and wages (maybe need to work at a 'same allegiance' work place?), but what about if the state you lived in did not allow guns, but your new allegiance did? Or drugs?

If it's legal to defend yourself with a gun vs a burgler in your allegiance state and someone breaks into your house, though you live in a no gun state... then what? Because he's broken into your property it counts as your allegiance state?

I think it's the key idea for this to work in our day and age, just trying to wrap it around my head.

Or she'll shoot you first.

OK, maybe she won't, but then you'll get hunted down by her relatives, and private police. Anarchy doesn't mean people cannot defend themselves.

I'll take the slave girl.

Exactly. We're not unarmed peasants, anymore. When you get some spare time, do read that short story I linked.

Assuming your neighbors are completely unarmed, it's possible.  But you'd have to eventually cower and hide away somewhere, giving orders to your men from an undisclosed location, as bullets have a way of leveling the playing field, so to speak

Temujin is my template. I would start by killing my closest neighbors with a few friends. Temujin led about 3-5 warriors when he started. By the end of his career he had taken most of the ungoverned land he knew of. You would know him better by the name Genghis Khan. 

Where would you get the money to organize an army?

You wouldn't be able to print your own money. You wouldn't be able to borrow enough money either. Taxation is only working currently because billions of people believe it is morally right. Once that changes, you would be spending more money on bouncers than you would gain from pillaging. Especially with Bitcoin, where you can't even know how much you can pillage from a particular household.

Ahh, so you assume that simply because there are no rulers, therefore there is no organization, no effective resistance?

Well, you know what they say about assuming....

EDIT: They changed the site name on me. Link updated.

Yes. I think my state will dominate any unorganized place. Join me myrkul, with your warrior skillz we will rule like Gods! Think it over, and please accept this slave girl as a token of friendship.