Topic: Question for the "anarchists" in the crowd. (Read 5822 times)

I don't want to discount the validity of your question -- it's a legit question, after all.

But I do want to put forth the following observation: systems to organize society can't be dismissed on the basis of ultra-extraordinary situations.  There will always be a "what if" that no system whatsoever can address properly.  The system is not a recipe for 100% perfect harmony and cooperation, and one made-up hypothetical scenario that is very unlikely cannot be used to say "See?  Your system doesn't work".  Just like the statement "man is a biped" cannot be proven to be false by saying "Imagine men coming from war without legs.  See?  'Man is a biped' is a lie!".

This, I think, is a thought that quite often gets lost in the frenzy to "prove" that this or that system is "bad" or "unworkable".

On the other hand, systems to organize society can and should be judged on their usual performance.  And when you do that, you'll gain a new disrespect for political systems.  Look at the miserable failure that are the contemporary "justice", "legislation", and "law enforcement" systems. Look at how horrible these systems are at resolving human conflict; they are so shitty that people actively avoid or dread resorting to them.  Look at how many people were slaughtered by their own rulers in the 20th century: 270 million human beings.  Resist a man in a blue costume because he is being unjust?  Chances are he'll kill or maim you, and blame you for it.

When you see reality over thought experiments, it becomes pretty clear that pretty much any other system (save perhaps for mass and total suicide) can dramatically improve these criminal disasters that are ruining people's lives right now.

So, honestly, who cares if voluntaryism can't "solve" the "Mary Typhoid" problem?  At least I know voluntaryism won't cause the mass murder of 300 million people, and marginalize / gulagize more people than that.  That is strictly better, and I'm pretty happy with that solution to human conflict.

Your house is up in flames and you're asking me whether my firetruck can put out a lit match.  Maybe let's focus on your house before it crumbles in ashes to the ground?

That is my humble view on the subject.  Thanks for your question, it is appreciated.

Dude, you're interfering with the 'ignore' function.

"Society is able to function, despite the stupid rules made by stupid people in authority, only because smart people treat subSTRATA as damage and route around it."

Interesting thread by the way. Too bad one self-important kid who beliefs he knows something derails it on the last page or so.

hardly true

Completely off-topic for the thread, but entirely apropos to your post, I found a wonderful quote today from Kevin Carson:

"Society is able to function, despite the stupid rules made by stupid people in authority, only because smart people treat authority as damage and route around it."

i could do good

I think the role of government should be advisory, not forcefulness

Yeah, even I have to admit that the external security threat issue has long been hashed out, with historical examples to support it.  Even in the absence of defense companies, militias form readily when the society is under an external threat.  During and prior to the American Revolutionary War, militia companies formed by electing their captian from amongst their own membership, and had the right to withdraw from any militia company at any time before hostilities have already commenced.  They would agree in advance that once the shooting starts, anyone among the group who then turns 'yellow' under fire is endangering his peers due to lack of commitment.  This rarely happened during the Revolutionary War, but those that did this ever more rarely lived to see a trial of any sort.

Internal security is a different issue, but is also well hashed out.  There are numerous examples today of private security companies with varying degrees of competancy able to take over the work of public police forces at any time.  Most likely, the private security companies would also be the defense companies, but since collective defense is a much rarer risk it's possible that one defense company could be sub-contracted by a large number of smaller private security agencies.  This is similar to how "constables" function in my own city.  The Louisville Police Department draws it's legal authority from the county sherriff's office, but there are also two constables' offices in the county that also have similar legal authorities, but are not paid by the government in any meaningful way.  The constables' offices are technically elected positions, but are (in practice) simply held by some joint-owner of a pair of private security firms that hire the city cops for off duty gigs, such as for major event security at the convention center or bank branch security with full police powers.  If those two companies can't keep one of their own in the constable's seat, then they can't honor their contracts because city cops cannot be hired directly (with their full police powers intact) without the government title because the constables themselves are usually not cops themselves, but businessmen, and the police union would get sideways with the private companies if they didn't have some kind of "official" government title to cling to.

It should be obvious that, should the sherriff's office ever cease to exist, either one of these two companies woudl be both willing & able to step into the gap without skipping a beat.  There is already a smaller city (Jeffersontown) that "contracts out" their entire police force in a similar manner within the county itself, and there are numerous examples of smaller class cities doing similar things rather than directly hire a couple of their own for each of three shifts, seven days directly.

Well, this isn't really the thread for it (even if the stated purpose of the thread has pretty much been hashed out), but AnCap (aka market anarchy) allows for defense quite simply. Defense companies. Like private police/military agencies. They'd compete in the marketplace, not on the field of battle.

I think a system of anarchy would be overthrown by any type of organization, a king, a militia, anything.

I can't really argue with anything, here. Personal responsibility goes both ways. Of course, the cultural assumptions in Typhoid Mary's case were quite different from today's.

To be frank, this really does depend on the norms of the society, and that also applies in the case of Mary. That's because the norms of society are what people are going to apply when the information about the case comes out.

If we are using a model like presented in Molyneux's Practical Anarchy, then the social norm could be that people would be expected to carry some kind of certification of health from a trusted authority. When Marv gets tested for HIV and it comes back positive, that authority would take away his certification, or at least update it to be HIV+ (after all, HIV+ people do date, but they may not jump in bed with someone else who also has hepititus, etc). A person might say that it would be up to the woman to inquire about this certification and it would be up to Marv to be truthful about that inquiry. Thus a person could have the view that if a man or woman is too interested in sex to inquire about the health certification.

One thing that is important, though, is that in a voluntary society, the people around you define the response. So if the people in Marv's town agree that the women should have been more cautious, then they would continue to trade with him. If, however, they do feel he should have been more forthcoming with the information, they may just decide to not trade with him, making it so that he would have to self sustain or move to an area that does accept what he did. Almost certainly, people who know and are friends with this woman would be unlikely to trade with Marv and may also decide to not trade with people known to associate with Marv, which could be limiting to his life.

I bring this up because it seems like people have this impression of creating a black and white test for NAP violation, and then applying that to determine a person's status in the society, but because everything is voluntary, there is no exact answer to these questions.

Please stop equating legality with morality. Even if we accept the US/[insert your fav country] is a democracy/republic and actually uses what an informed majority thinks is right or wrong as a heuristic in making good laws, it is still based on argument from consensus fallacy. So at best it is a practical solution to a hard problem, in other words it is not necessarily ideal.

Telling people to not work towards an ideal society is what?

Sigh... Does nobody understand English anymore?

I'd like to point out this line from the Declaration of Independence:
Withdraw consent, and you withdraw their "just powers."

It isn't a society. It has no historical culture to make it one. It's a (imo cute) contrivance that utterly fails at it's goals by one simply fact. You cannot annex land in the USA and simply declare sovereignty. It doesn't matter if you own that land or not. This is illegal, immoral in the extreme and while well intentioned it just doesn't work.

Now maybe if you stayed strictly in your shire... you might legitimize the idea that law enforcement and government agents coming into the shire were violating your (illegal) sovereignty, but the simple fact that the participants are traveling in and out constantly makes the entire thing seem stupid. Every sovereign nation on the planet has paperwork, laws and enforcement - can't remove yourself from them by simply stating that you're not participating. You can only remove yourself by... actually removing yourself from that nation, not by annexing and occupying it illegally.

The Shire Society is not a place, it is a society. However, over 1100 people have moved to "the Shire," though it's not clear how many have officially joined the Shire Society, all of them (plus almost another 12000) have joined The Free State Project, another society which is not a government.

You should probably stop digging while your head is above ground.

BTW, what's a "socity"?

Yes, thank you for demonstrating that. You can go now.

O RLY?

That sure looks like a society sans government. Maybe we've evolved past the way remote tribes in the Amazon do things. Certainly we've stopped eating other people or painting our faces with mud.

I'd also point out that society ≠ government. You can most certainly have society without government, and often a government barely qualifies as "society."

I understand freedom very well, young man.  And insulting me does not constitute an argument.  Normally I'd just delete your bs for violating civility, but instead I'm going to leave it here so everyone can see your stupidity.

You make an excellent point. And in a voluntary society that had those options available, and the knowledge we have now, you'd be absolutely right. But the assumption at the time was that if you weren't sick, you were healthy and fine. She was not, even though she was outwardly healthy.

The reason I don't trust you when you tell me I have a horribly infectious disease is not (necessarily) that you're not a doctor. It's because you haven't done a single test to establish that I am infectious. They performed a test, and combined with the fact that she had been leaving a trail of sick and dead employers, is sufficient evidence that she actually was infectious.

Let's update the case. We have a man, let's call him "Typhoid Marv." Here's the thing: He doesn't have typhoid. He has HIV. He doesn't know it, though, so he has a string of girlfriends who all come down with HIV or AIDS. They tell him to get tested, and he does. It (not surprisingly) comes back positive. Of course, he doesn't believe it, (he read on the internet that sometimes these tests give false positives) so he keeps having unprotected sex.

Is it the women's fault for not asking, or his for not telling?