Reading what you wrote as an answer to this question, it sounds like you’re just an advocate for true direct democracy. I mean that’s fine, but the point is that what you’re advocating for isn’t true anarchy. You’re still in favor of a central authority, just one that’s structured differently. Now direct democracy does have it’s strengths and drawbacks, and we can discuss the merits of that later, but for now I want to focus on a particular concept, and that’s the idea of entirely voluntary governance.
The idea of an entirely voluntary government sounds very appealing, however, I think it’s one of those ideas that sounds better than it actually is. Let’s think about it from a fundamental level, in order for something to be voluntary, there needs to be a person with free will making consensual decisions. However, consent is an inherently subjective concept and thus the standard for who can consent will always be arbitrary… and if that’s the case who gets to decide the standard? This is something that has to be established at the very start.
Well who can consent? Can children consent? Where is the cutoff, and who decides it? If a community is split on whether or not 16 year olds can consent, do the 16 year olds get a vote in this discussion or are they sidelined? What if they don’t like the decision, can children disassociate and join other groups that say they can consent or not? How about disabled people, can they consent or do they not get a vote? Do they perhaps have someone else be their representative and make decisions on their behalf? But if that’s the case, and decision making can be outsourced for kids and the disabled, can consenting adults also outsource this power? Let’s suppose people want to have a representative, is that allowed or is individual participation mandatory? If it’s mandatory then who is enforcing this rule?
I hope you catch what I’m trying to demonstrate here. This is a concept that’s vague, and its implementation is rather complicated.
How would the economy function?
Economics is definitely not your forte lol
You’re trying to combine standard market capitalism with the Marixst resource distribution… but these two ideas contradict each other. Marxist socialism requires a strong, central, and authoritarian government in order to seize and collectivize all the means of production, property, wealth, and resources and then to centrally plan every single aspect of the economy to properly distribute the resources from ability to need. However, market capitalism is literally the opposite. It requires government to allow the markets to have some autonomy so they can function independently. Capitalist economies are decentralized and unplanned, and resource distribution is done through the markets on the basis of supply and demand. You can’t combine the two.
It seem your idea of economics is not based in reality. This isn’t the 1500s, our modern economies aren’t based on a bunch of framers and craftsmen who open up little shops to sell their labor and crafts. A carpenter building a house? Lol. Do you understand just how much labor goes into building a modern house? Not to mention that there are things that require way more labor, way more resources, and insane global supply chains to produce like cars, planes, and smartphones. These are not things that you can build without strong multinational corporate structures, and you can’t get them trade them through bartering.
Also, you think things like administration, banks, and mines aren’t necessary? Lmao, you can’t be serious. I’ll just say this, capitalism is a system that favors efficiency above all else for better or for worse, and it’s really good at it. Everything that industry that exists and every product you see on sale exists because there are people out there who buy them. The demand exists, and so the companies provide. Things like banks provide value to the economy as they fill a niche, and that’s the reason why they exist.
How would justice be enforced?
Bring society to a point where everybody ideally agrees to prevent injustice? What does that even mean? The point you’re talking about is an ideal, it’s literally a fantasy by definition. How can you possibly govern a society when your concept of justice hinges on the realization of something imaginary? Is an anarchist society just going to remain lawless until this ideal point?
The enforcement part is equally ridiculous. You can only enforce laws once everybody has agreed to the punishments? Why would any criminal or wannabe criminal ever agree to implementing any punishments against themselves? Good faith? Lmao, if criminals were operating in good faith then they wouldn’t be criminals. I think you understand the absurdity of this notion, which is why you acknowledged that prisons and authority might make a come back in an anarchist society… but if that’s the case then doesn’t that defeat the whole point of the anarchy experiment?
How would you deal with people who reject this idea and want to reestablish a central authority?
Ah ha! Finally stumbled you good, didn’t I? I think this is the core issue with anarchy and I think it’s an inherently flawed ideology. Everything you said here relies on good faith whether it’s governance, economics, law, justice, or self defense. However, we don’t live in an ideal world, we live in a flawed world, and in our flawed world good faith is a rather scarce resource. There are a lot of people in our society who are greedy, egotistical, selfish, jealous, hateful, evil, violent, and contrarian. We’ll always have murders, pedos, rapists, bigots, thieves, morons, frauds, and zealots. These are people who exploit the good faith of others for their personal benefit at the expense of others.
In a normal society, these bad faith actors are either deterred by the entity that has monopoly on violence or they’re squashed by it. However, in an anarchist society, there is no monopoly on violence and so bad faith actors have no filters and are set loose. These people have no issue with violence or forcing others to do what they want, and so they will use violence to enforce their standards on to normal people and onto each other. Because each group or individual will have their own values, morals, and ideals there will be a competition of violence on who gets to enforce their standard. This type of chaos, disorder, instability, and violence is the reason why anarchy mostly exists as a fun thought exercise rather than a practical, viable ideology.
Thanks again for this final question which, i’m happy to admit, resets the debate and will, i hope, show that every flaw i listed were only relative to our previous discussion.
it sounds like you’re just an advocate for true direct democracy.
I equate true direct democracy with anarchism. If there is a central authority, as in someone making decisions about me without me being able to either oppose their mandate either switch to another federation, then it’s not direct democracy.
You’re still in favor of a central authority, just one that’s structured differently.
As far as i’m aware, there is no central authority in what i described.
Consent
This is a very good question, and has multiple answers, as multiple groups can have multiple standards. Handling kids is an especially tricky part, but you could suppose having different schools with different systems, allowing kids to vote or not, and kids could choose where to go.
Economics
Your first paragraph is just you not understanding i guess ? You just seem to be unable to think outside of capitalism or marxism. Ultimately, you don’t give any reason as to why decentralized distribution of ressources is impossible, other that it is not either capitalism, either marxism ?
We also clearly miss eachother on a point, as i deduce from the cars, planes, and smartphones.. My view of anarchism is coupled with an anyway necessary degrowth. Complicated objects like cars, planes and smartphones can obviously not be obtained on the same scale as current capitalist system. They could be obtain in a much much little number though, and then be distributed to people needing it most, and the repair/reuse system would fill in the rest (which would be the majority i guess). We’d also need less cars since you would be more free to choose where you live and work.
On the how much labor goes into building a modern house i clearly think it could be done in a communal way. I mean, the trickiest part are the spread of knowledge meaning many people have to intervene, and the machines used to accelerate the process, which could ultimately be transformed in either time or workforce. Sure, it’s a long thing to do, not saying the opposite. But in the end, it’s all made by workers, not by money or organization.
Your talk about capitalism shows that capitalism favors profit, not efficiency. Those two aspects may intersect, but not all the time. For example, having multiple intermediaries in the process of selling food is good for profit, but is clearly not efficient.
Justice
You still think of laws as general object, the whole point that i made was to have no general laws, and rather local rules and decisions specific to each case, to adapt at best to every situation. This is precisely the more down-to-earth approach, rather than thinking that applying the same rule to thousands is going to have the same positive effect, we try to get the best result according to each situation.
Yes, there are criminals that acknowledge they did bad things, and are cooperative with people, even outside of people doing bad things out of emotions or other situation where they do not control themselves. They have an interest in doing so, since it would appease everything and enable them to live a normal life again. Ultimately, their main interest can be that if they are not cooperative, then the whole process gets stuck and they could be de facto kept in prison by their own choice, which is more ridiculous that what you describe.
People who […] want to reestablish a central authority ?
You take a huge step in a wrong direction here. Anarchist societies do not need everyone to be of good faith, they need everyone to partipate. There is room for greedy, egoistical, selfish, healous, contrarian people, even hateful, evil and violent in some contained ways. We don’t need everyone to be nice, we need everyone to participate to groups where they feel confident, which i think you’ll agree is a way more common trait than just good faith. There is of course still room for a lot of problems, but it’s not based on good faith.
It’s also wrong to say that in anarchy bad faith actors have no filters andareset loose.. They also face consequences as people will try to stop them : the difference is that they know they won’t have to face an arbitrary punishment, but a kind of repayment that they’ll accept. You can’t say that there won’t be consequences, you can say though that there won’t be forced consequences.
And in the end, states do not prevent such violence either : once again, wars, genocides, arbitrary violences and murders, organized crime, mafia, pedos etc. also exist, and worse than that, they may be amplified by state itself. So, while it will probably exist in anarchy, it exists in states too, in a different way, sometimes better, sometimes worse. Amusingly, These people have no issue with violence or forcing others todo what they want, and so they will use violence to enforce their standards onto normal people and onto each other. is like the exact definition of monopoly of violence.
Let me ask you a question, let’s suppose you committed a crime and your community wants you to face consequences for it, but you disagree with their terms… do you just disassociate and go to another federation to escape the consequences? This sounds like a very flawed system.
kids consenting
Is this not highly exploitable? If a bunch of pedos create a federation where they promote the idea of kids consenting, could they just not draw kids to associate with them? That sounds like an easy way for kids to get groomed and abused. Giving kids the ability to consent sounds like deeply flawed idea unless you have some mechanism that resolves this issue.
economics
There are 4 main points that I want to address:
Decentralized distribution - Capitalism and Marxism are not everything in economics, but the two ideas you drew upon are free markets and Marxist style resource redistribution, and these two contradict each other on a fundamental level. Decentralized distribution CAN work but not on a grand scale like a society. People can choose to pool their resources together, others can choose to donate some of their wealth to charity, however, to manage an entire economy in this way, you need to be able to control everything otherwise you’re going to face a lot of dysfunction due to lack of participation. For example, let’s suppose a bunch of farmers unite and refuse to partake in the redistribution efforts because selling their crops to the highest bidder is in their best interest. In your system, these people can voluntarily disassociate, but if that’s the case then your system is left with a huge shortage of food unless you buy from them the way they want or you find some magical way to replace their farms. If the former is allowed, then why would anybody with any sort of wealth participate? The only people who would are the needy, and so you will always be operating in a deficit of resources. Compulsion via taxes or property seizure have to be necessary at some point to make this idea work properly.
Degrowth - That’s going to be a very hard sell for most people. If you’re critical of the infinite growth model we have under capitalism, that’s perfectly fair. However, economic growth does correlate with higher standards of living. Things like cars, planes, and smartphones might not be necessary, but they are luxuries that we want to have because they make our lives easier. Washing machines, for example, aren’t a necessity either, but nobody wants to spend all day washing clothes by hand anymore. Washing machines are one of the biggest reasons why the suffragette movements took off, it’s because a lot of women had more free time to focus on other things, like their rights. The point is that technology enables progress, and technology is a byproduct of economic growth. Asking people to forgo modern conveniences to live under harsher economic conditions is a recipe for violent revolution.
Money and labor - Of course money and organization don’t build things, that’s just silly. They serve different roles in the economy than labor. Money is just a tool that helps facility trade so we don’t have to barter like in the stone ages. There is this common misunderstanding in far left ideologies that labor is the source of ALL value in an economy and that money is inherently bad, but money is just a tool like no other and it has no morals or intentions. As for workers, they’re just one component of the economy, an essential component, but component nonetheless. Things like capital, entrepreneurship, technology, consumption, government, trade, and markets are also essential parts to an economy. An economy can’t run purely on the labor of workers. You need to have all these things for an economy to run. You need to at least have organization for better coordination, hierarchies for accountability, and specialization for expertise.
Work - In any economy, there are jobs that are necessary but not pleasant like garbage collectors, janitors, and sewer workers. In Fascist or Marxist societies, these jobs are filled by force. The government assigns people to work them whether they like or not. In capitalist societies, these jobs are filled with incentives like a handsome salary or good benefits package. In anarchist society, how would these jobs be filled? You’re opposed to both compulsion and financial incentives like profit. Do you have another idea to get people to do these jobs? Because I can tell you nobody wants to voluntarily go into a sewer to clear blockages.
justice
The reason why laws exist in the first place is because they set an objective standard for society. Sure, all laws are arbitrary in nature, however, they still provide a point of reference, and that’s vital for both prosecution and self defense. You’re right that every case is different, however, that’s what courts are for. Courts exist to provide the nuanced judgement needed for each individual case. That being said, the courts still have to work within the confines of the law, otherwise judgement is left entirely to the personal whims of certain individuals. If there are no general laws, then there’s no standard. If a criminal killed somebody but is friends with the people who are casting judgement on him, then there’s nothing stopping them for ruling in his favor even if he objectively did something wrong since they get decide the standard on a whim.
Criminals
I’m not gonna lie to you, that sounds like a really bad idea. Think about it from the point of view of the criminal. Let’s say suppose some guy is a religious nut who beheaded a person for criticizing his religion. He’s clearly guilty, and he has zero remorse for what he did. In your system of justice, this person has the choice to avoid consequences or stay in a prison unless he decides to be cooperative. Unless the criminal is brain dead, they’ll always choose to say they’ll be cooperative every time whether they mean it or not. Now let’s suppose this criminal is now back out on the streets facing zero consequences, and he comes across the family members of the person he murdered. The family members try to hold him accountable by telling everybody he’s a murderer, and this criminal gets annoyed and kills them as well. Again, no remorse. He’s now back in prison facing the same choice of staying in prison or being cooperative… what’s stopping the cycle from repeating again? Is there a 3 strikes and you’re out rule? Do you just keep repeating the cycle in hopes this criminal will eventually change? Do individuals have to kill him or imprison him themselves to get justice and a peace of mind?
good faith vs participation
I’m having a really hard time understanding your logic. You want a system that’s entirely based on voluntary decision making at every step… however, there’s no mechanism to enforce laws or contracts AND you’re also not operating under assumption that people are going to participate in good faith, that’s just an inherently flawed system. Having participation to feel “confident” as the foundation of a society is completely ridiculous. Since you acknowledge that bad people exist and will exist in an anarchist society, then you must also understand that these people feeling confident is NOT a good thing. There’s nothing worse than bad people feeling enabled to do whatever they want. Having federations of islamists or nazis or marxists or white supremacists running around doing whatever they feel like with no recourse, as there are no laws or a greater authority, is as dystopian as it gets. These are people who follow ideologies that fundamentally disagree, hate, and actively seek to undermine your system and the freedoms it enables. It’s a prime example of the paradox of tolerance.
bad faith actors
You seem to have a weird view of what is arbitrary and what is not. How can you possibly call laws arbitrary but the lack of them not? Similar to what I said in the justice paragraphs, calling laws as a concept arbitrary is undeniably true, however, they also exist to provide an objective standard. Their objectiveness, and thus their legitimacy, derive their establishment by the state, which is usually seen as the collective will of the people. This doesn’t mean every is perfect, but the idea of laws providing a common standard removes arbitrary prosecution and punishment. Laws allow everybody in a society to understand what is deemed wrong, why it’s considered wrong, and what the consequences for it are. Without laws, there is no standard. People can be persecuted for any time and for any reason, and they can be punished in any way. All these decisions fall to the whims of select individuals who have the ability to change the standards as feel like. How is that not arbitrary? If anything that’s as arbitrary as it gets.
anarchy vs states
Not all states are equal, and it’s wrong to assume states are a monolith. Norway and Afghanistan are both states, but they’re clearly VERY different from each other. Norway is one of the safest, most peaceful, most prosperous, most free, and most educated societies in the history. Afghanistan is the opposite. There’s clearly good models and bad models for states. Yes, there are broken, tyrannical, and violent states. I’m against those too. However, there are functional, free, and peaceful states. I’m in favor of those. Just because some states are bad that doesn’t mean the entire concept of a state is as well. Your logic seems faulty to me, it’s like saying because malpractice happens, we should get rid of medicine and rely on self healing.
Also in case, we’re not on the same page. I think monopoly of violence is inevitable. I disagree with your notion that it’s a choice. I think it’s a apart of nature and humanity. Since it’s a part of our reality regardless, the discussion should about how we can best control and regulate violence to minimize it’s negative affects.
Reading what you wrote as an answer to this question, it sounds like you’re just an advocate for true direct democracy. I mean that’s fine, but the point is that what you’re advocating for isn’t true anarchy. You’re still in favor of a central authority, just one that’s structured differently. Now direct democracy does have it’s strengths and drawbacks, and we can discuss the merits of that later, but for now I want to focus on a particular concept, and that’s the idea of entirely voluntary governance.
The idea of an entirely voluntary government sounds very appealing, however, I think it’s one of those ideas that sounds better than it actually is. Let’s think about it from a fundamental level, in order for something to be voluntary, there needs to be a person with free will making consensual decisions. However, consent is an inherently subjective concept and thus the standard for who can consent will always be arbitrary… and if that’s the case who gets to decide the standard? This is something that has to be established at the very start.
Well who can consent? Can children consent? Where is the cutoff, and who decides it? If a community is split on whether or not 16 year olds can consent, do the 16 year olds get a vote in this discussion or are they sidelined? What if they don’t like the decision, can children disassociate and join other groups that say they can consent or not? How about disabled people, can they consent or do they not get a vote? Do they perhaps have someone else be their representative and make decisions on their behalf? But if that’s the case, and decision making can be outsourced for kids and the disabled, can consenting adults also outsource this power? Let’s suppose people want to have a representative, is that allowed or is individual participation mandatory? If it’s mandatory then who is enforcing this rule?
I hope you catch what I’m trying to demonstrate here. This is a concept that’s vague, and its implementation is rather complicated.
Economics is definitely not your forte lol
You’re trying to combine standard market capitalism with the Marixst resource distribution… but these two ideas contradict each other. Marxist socialism requires a strong, central, and authoritarian government in order to seize and collectivize all the means of production, property, wealth, and resources and then to centrally plan every single aspect of the economy to properly distribute the resources from ability to need. However, market capitalism is literally the opposite. It requires government to allow the markets to have some autonomy so they can function independently. Capitalist economies are decentralized and unplanned, and resource distribution is done through the markets on the basis of supply and demand. You can’t combine the two.
It seem your idea of economics is not based in reality. This isn’t the 1500s, our modern economies aren’t based on a bunch of framers and craftsmen who open up little shops to sell their labor and crafts. A carpenter building a house? Lol. Do you understand just how much labor goes into building a modern house? Not to mention that there are things that require way more labor, way more resources, and insane global supply chains to produce like cars, planes, and smartphones. These are not things that you can build without strong multinational corporate structures, and you can’t get them trade them through bartering.
Also, you think things like administration, banks, and mines aren’t necessary? Lmao, you can’t be serious. I’ll just say this, capitalism is a system that favors efficiency above all else for better or for worse, and it’s really good at it. Everything that industry that exists and every product you see on sale exists because there are people out there who buy them. The demand exists, and so the companies provide. Things like banks provide value to the economy as they fill a niche, and that’s the reason why they exist.
Bring society to a point where everybody ideally agrees to prevent injustice? What does that even mean? The point you’re talking about is an ideal, it’s literally a fantasy by definition. How can you possibly govern a society when your concept of justice hinges on the realization of something imaginary? Is an anarchist society just going to remain lawless until this ideal point?
The enforcement part is equally ridiculous. You can only enforce laws once everybody has agreed to the punishments? Why would any criminal or wannabe criminal ever agree to implementing any punishments against themselves? Good faith? Lmao, if criminals were operating in good faith then they wouldn’t be criminals. I think you understand the absurdity of this notion, which is why you acknowledged that prisons and authority might make a come back in an anarchist society… but if that’s the case then doesn’t that defeat the whole point of the anarchy experiment?
Ah ha! Finally stumbled you good, didn’t I? I think this is the core issue with anarchy and I think it’s an inherently flawed ideology. Everything you said here relies on good faith whether it’s governance, economics, law, justice, or self defense. However, we don’t live in an ideal world, we live in a flawed world, and in our flawed world good faith is a rather scarce resource. There are a lot of people in our society who are greedy, egotistical, selfish, jealous, hateful, evil, violent, and contrarian. We’ll always have murders, pedos, rapists, bigots, thieves, morons, frauds, and zealots. These are people who exploit the good faith of others for their personal benefit at the expense of others.
In a normal society, these bad faith actors are either deterred by the entity that has monopoly on violence or they’re squashed by it. However, in an anarchist society, there is no monopoly on violence and so bad faith actors have no filters and are set loose. These people have no issue with violence or forcing others to do what they want, and so they will use violence to enforce their standards on to normal people and onto each other. Because each group or individual will have their own values, morals, and ideals there will be a competition of violence on who gets to enforce their standard. This type of chaos, disorder, instability, and violence is the reason why anarchy mostly exists as a fun thought exercise rather than a practical, viable ideology.
It’s all good.
I equate true direct democracy with anarchism. If there is a central authority, as in someone making decisions about me without me being able to either oppose their mandate either switch to another federation, then it’s not direct democracy.
As far as i’m aware, there is no central authority in what i described.
This is a very good question, and has multiple answers, as multiple groups can have multiple standards. Handling kids is an especially tricky part, but you could suppose having different schools with different systems, allowing kids to vote or not, and kids could choose where to go.
Your first paragraph is just you not understanding i guess ? You just seem to be unable to think outside of capitalism or marxism. Ultimately, you don’t give any reason as to why decentralized distribution of ressources is impossible, other that it is not either capitalism, either marxism ?
We also clearly miss eachother on a point, as i deduce from the
cars, planes, and smartphones.. My view of anarchism is coupled with an anyway necessary degrowth. Complicated objects like cars, planes and smartphones can obviously not be obtained on the same scale as current capitalist system. They could be obtain in a much much little number though, and then be distributed to people needing it most, and the repair/reuse system would fill in the rest (which would be the majority i guess). We’d also need less cars since you would be more free to choose where you live and work.On the
how much labor goes into building a modern housei clearly think it could be done in a communal way. I mean, the trickiest part are the spread of knowledge meaning many people have to intervene, and the machines used to accelerate the process, which could ultimately be transformed in either time or workforce. Sure, it’s a long thing to do, not saying the opposite. But in the end, it’s all made by workers, not by money or organization.Your talk about capitalism shows that capitalism favors profit, not efficiency. Those two aspects may intersect, but not all the time. For example, having multiple intermediaries in the process of selling food is good for profit, but is clearly not efficient.
You still think of laws as general object, the whole point that i made was to have no general laws, and rather local rules and decisions specific to each case, to adapt at best to every situation. This is precisely the more down-to-earth approach, rather than thinking that applying the same rule to thousands is going to have the same positive effect, we try to get the best result according to each situation.
Yes, there are criminals that acknowledge they did bad things, and are cooperative with people, even outside of people doing bad things out of emotions or other situation where they do not control themselves. They have an interest in doing so, since it would appease everything and enable them to live a normal life again. Ultimately, their main interest can be that if they are not cooperative, then the whole process gets stuck and they could be de facto kept in prison by their own choice, which is more ridiculous that what you describe.
You take a huge step in a wrong direction here. Anarchist societies do not need everyone to be of good faith, they need everyone to partipate. There is room for greedy, egoistical, selfish, healous, contrarian people, even hateful, evil and violent in some contained ways. We don’t need everyone to be nice, we need everyone to participate to groups where they feel confident, which i think you’ll agree is a way more common trait than just good faith. There is of course still room for a lot of problems, but it’s not based on good faith.
It’s also wrong to say that in anarchy
bad faith actors have no filters and are set loose.. They also face consequences as people will try to stop them : the difference is that they know they won’t have to face an arbitrary punishment, but a kind of repayment that they’ll accept. You can’t say that there won’t be consequences, you can say though that there won’t be forced consequences.And in the end, states do not prevent such violence either : once again, wars, genocides, arbitrary violences and murders, organized crime, mafia, pedos etc. also exist, and worse than that, they may be amplified by state itself. So, while it will probably exist in anarchy, it exists in states too, in a different way, sometimes better, sometimes worse. Amusingly,
These people have no issue with violence or forcing others to do what they want, and so they will use violence to enforce their standards on to normal people and onto each other.is like the exact definition of monopoly of violence.Let me ask you a question, let’s suppose you committed a crime and your community wants you to face consequences for it, but you disagree with their terms… do you just disassociate and go to another federation to escape the consequences? This sounds like a very flawed system.
Is this not highly exploitable? If a bunch of pedos create a federation where they promote the idea of kids consenting, could they just not draw kids to associate with them? That sounds like an easy way for kids to get groomed and abused. Giving kids the ability to consent sounds like deeply flawed idea unless you have some mechanism that resolves this issue.
There are 4 main points that I want to address:
Decentralized distribution - Capitalism and Marxism are not everything in economics, but the two ideas you drew upon are free markets and Marxist style resource redistribution, and these two contradict each other on a fundamental level. Decentralized distribution CAN work but not on a grand scale like a society. People can choose to pool their resources together, others can choose to donate some of their wealth to charity, however, to manage an entire economy in this way, you need to be able to control everything otherwise you’re going to face a lot of dysfunction due to lack of participation. For example, let’s suppose a bunch of farmers unite and refuse to partake in the redistribution efforts because selling their crops to the highest bidder is in their best interest. In your system, these people can voluntarily disassociate, but if that’s the case then your system is left with a huge shortage of food unless you buy from them the way they want or you find some magical way to replace their farms. If the former is allowed, then why would anybody with any sort of wealth participate? The only people who would are the needy, and so you will always be operating in a deficit of resources. Compulsion via taxes or property seizure have to be necessary at some point to make this idea work properly.
Degrowth - That’s going to be a very hard sell for most people. If you’re critical of the infinite growth model we have under capitalism, that’s perfectly fair. However, economic growth does correlate with higher standards of living. Things like cars, planes, and smartphones might not be necessary, but they are luxuries that we want to have because they make our lives easier. Washing machines, for example, aren’t a necessity either, but nobody wants to spend all day washing clothes by hand anymore. Washing machines are one of the biggest reasons why the suffragette movements took off, it’s because a lot of women had more free time to focus on other things, like their rights. The point is that technology enables progress, and technology is a byproduct of economic growth. Asking people to forgo modern conveniences to live under harsher economic conditions is a recipe for violent revolution.
Money and labor - Of course money and organization don’t build things, that’s just silly. They serve different roles in the economy than labor. Money is just a tool that helps facility trade so we don’t have to barter like in the stone ages. There is this common misunderstanding in far left ideologies that labor is the source of ALL value in an economy and that money is inherently bad, but money is just a tool like no other and it has no morals or intentions. As for workers, they’re just one component of the economy, an essential component, but component nonetheless. Things like capital, entrepreneurship, technology, consumption, government, trade, and markets are also essential parts to an economy. An economy can’t run purely on the labor of workers. You need to have all these things for an economy to run. You need to at least have organization for better coordination, hierarchies for accountability, and specialization for expertise.
Work - In any economy, there are jobs that are necessary but not pleasant like garbage collectors, janitors, and sewer workers. In Fascist or Marxist societies, these jobs are filled by force. The government assigns people to work them whether they like or not. In capitalist societies, these jobs are filled with incentives like a handsome salary or good benefits package. In anarchist society, how would these jobs be filled? You’re opposed to both compulsion and financial incentives like profit. Do you have another idea to get people to do these jobs? Because I can tell you nobody wants to voluntarily go into a sewer to clear blockages.
The reason why laws exist in the first place is because they set an objective standard for society. Sure, all laws are arbitrary in nature, however, they still provide a point of reference, and that’s vital for both prosecution and self defense. You’re right that every case is different, however, that’s what courts are for. Courts exist to provide the nuanced judgement needed for each individual case. That being said, the courts still have to work within the confines of the law, otherwise judgement is left entirely to the personal whims of certain individuals. If there are no general laws, then there’s no standard. If a criminal killed somebody but is friends with the people who are casting judgement on him, then there’s nothing stopping them for ruling in his favor even if he objectively did something wrong since they get decide the standard on a whim.
I’m not gonna lie to you, that sounds like a really bad idea. Think about it from the point of view of the criminal. Let’s say suppose some guy is a religious nut who beheaded a person for criticizing his religion. He’s clearly guilty, and he has zero remorse for what he did. In your system of justice, this person has the choice to avoid consequences or stay in a prison unless he decides to be cooperative. Unless the criminal is brain dead, they’ll always choose to say they’ll be cooperative every time whether they mean it or not. Now let’s suppose this criminal is now back out on the streets facing zero consequences, and he comes across the family members of the person he murdered. The family members try to hold him accountable by telling everybody he’s a murderer, and this criminal gets annoyed and kills them as well. Again, no remorse. He’s now back in prison facing the same choice of staying in prison or being cooperative… what’s stopping the cycle from repeating again? Is there a 3 strikes and you’re out rule? Do you just keep repeating the cycle in hopes this criminal will eventually change? Do individuals have to kill him or imprison him themselves to get justice and a peace of mind?
I’m having a really hard time understanding your logic. You want a system that’s entirely based on voluntary decision making at every step… however, there’s no mechanism to enforce laws or contracts AND you’re also not operating under assumption that people are going to participate in good faith, that’s just an inherently flawed system. Having participation to feel “confident” as the foundation of a society is completely ridiculous. Since you acknowledge that bad people exist and will exist in an anarchist society, then you must also understand that these people feeling confident is NOT a good thing. There’s nothing worse than bad people feeling enabled to do whatever they want. Having federations of islamists or nazis or marxists or white supremacists running around doing whatever they feel like with no recourse, as there are no laws or a greater authority, is as dystopian as it gets. These are people who follow ideologies that fundamentally disagree, hate, and actively seek to undermine your system and the freedoms it enables. It’s a prime example of the paradox of tolerance.
You seem to have a weird view of what is arbitrary and what is not. How can you possibly call laws arbitrary but the lack of them not? Similar to what I said in the justice paragraphs, calling laws as a concept arbitrary is undeniably true, however, they also exist to provide an objective standard. Their objectiveness, and thus their legitimacy, derive their establishment by the state, which is usually seen as the collective will of the people. This doesn’t mean every is perfect, but the idea of laws providing a common standard removes arbitrary prosecution and punishment. Laws allow everybody in a society to understand what is deemed wrong, why it’s considered wrong, and what the consequences for it are. Without laws, there is no standard. People can be persecuted for any time and for any reason, and they can be punished in any way. All these decisions fall to the whims of select individuals who have the ability to change the standards as feel like. How is that not arbitrary? If anything that’s as arbitrary as it gets.
Not all states are equal, and it’s wrong to assume states are a monolith. Norway and Afghanistan are both states, but they’re clearly VERY different from each other. Norway is one of the safest, most peaceful, most prosperous, most free, and most educated societies in the history. Afghanistan is the opposite. There’s clearly good models and bad models for states. Yes, there are broken, tyrannical, and violent states. I’m against those too. However, there are functional, free, and peaceful states. I’m in favor of those. Just because some states are bad that doesn’t mean the entire concept of a state is as well. Your logic seems faulty to me, it’s like saying because malpractice happens, we should get rid of medicine and rely on self healing.
Also in case, we’re not on the same page. I think monopoly of violence is inevitable. I disagree with your notion that it’s a choice. I think it’s a apart of nature and humanity. Since it’s a part of our reality regardless, the discussion should about how we can best control and regulate violence to minimize it’s negative affects.