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Post by khyron1144 on Feb 21, 2004 0:26:53 GMT -5
I have at one time or another professed a certain belief in anarchism. Here's my thread to explain it and Galadon and Challenger's thread to call me a bloody idiot.
Let's take a look at the government's track record in the U. S. (I happen to live there and thus my history classes put most of the focus there. Ditto for law and government classes):
Slavery until the 1850s. Segregation until the 1960s. Women weren't allowed to vote until 1920. Prohibtion The Vietnam War The House Unamerican Activities Committee Internment camps for the Japanese during WW II The Sacco and Vanzetti trial The Depression Union busting and strike breaking since the inception of organized labor Attempted genocide of the Native Americans Taking until the 20th century (later than the 1940s) to give Native American's citizenship Taking a similar time period to recognize the Native American's spiritual beliefs as a religion that can't be interfered with Senate hearings that led to self-censorship in the music and comic book industry Current anti-drug laws having an effect much like prohibiton of alcohol did in the 20s Taxes
Sterling track record, right?
Okay, so I've shown they've got a less than stellar track record. What makes us better?
Nothing and everything. Part of it you have to be an idealistic fool who thinks he values freedom more than life itself to understand. Is there any law you don't agree with? If so, then why not chuck the whole legal system and follow the morality your heart tells you is right?
Okay what about violent people? They commit violent acts the same as before, and eventually other violent people will take them out. We have laws against violence, but they hold no real protective power; they punish after the fact.
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Post by Merkuri on Feb 21, 2004 11:05:02 GMT -5
Is there any law you don't agree with? If so, then why not chuck the whole legal system and follow the morality your heart tells you is right? The whole legal system is an attempt to codify morality. It tries to ensure that a group of people living together follow the same morality. Why? Basically so that everyone will get along. If we just chuck the whole legal system then people will evolve different systems of morality. There is no absolute right and absolute wrong. There is no golden set of morals that everyone will follow if left to their own devices. A government is an agreement between a group of people to follow a given set of morals, called "laws." Violent people will always exist, I'll give you that. But today there are consequences for their actions. If you walk out of a store without paying for your merchandise then there is the consequence that you will be tracked down by the government and punished. Now, not everybody who shoplifts is caught, but a lot of them are, and sometimes that thought of possibly being caught is enough to stop somebody from shoplifting. The same is true for larger crimes, like assault and murder. If you eliminate the government then you eliminate those consequences. Now there isn't even the posibility that you will be caught if you shoplift, so what's to deter you from doing it? If you eliminate the government you can kiss your police force goodbye. Now the only thing stopping somebody from entering your home is the lock on the door. Better get a gun or hire a bodyguard, because if somebody wants to get into your house they will. There is no question about it. Locks can be picked, windows can be broken, doors can be kicked in. In a few years of the elimination of government half the houses on your street will either be deserted, be the bases of gangs or tribes, or will be covered top-to-bottom with fenses and steel. You will not be able to live alone unless you are in one of these fortresses. Strength in numbers will be the only way you will survive. Also be prepared to lose things like the fire department and road upkeep. Even if people somehow manage to get along and life goes on as normal without the benefit of an armed law-enforcement body you will have no one to call should your house catch fire. You will have to rely on the good will of your neighbors, which probably won't count for much. Go back about 500 years and you will find a similar situation. Burning houses were just as likely to be looted as to be put out, and you won't have the benefits of a fire engine and a public water supply for hoses. The entire block will probably burn down, leaving nowhere for these newly homeless to go except to rely once again on the goodwill of neighbors (most of whom are now homeless as well). And your currency will soon become worthless as well. With no goverment to overlook its creation, bills will be printed by anyone with the technology and soon inflation will make them worth less than the paper they're printed on. The barter system will return, and in a world where people are more likely to have jobs where they provide a specialized service (like cashier or machinist) instead of jobs that produce goods (like farmer or tailor), many people will be left with nothing to barter. The collapse of all business will be iminent because the owners will have nothing to pay their workers with. You can forget about public education. We will go back to the dark ages where the majority of people couldn't read their own names, nevermind think about working on more thechnological breakthroughs. No more cancer research or improved computer processor speeds. The progress of technology will halt, and may even reverse. You won't have the luxury to think about how to make a better mousetrap when you have to worry about how you are going to barter for your food today or protect your house from the gang down the street. Within 50 years of the abolishment of government you will see people beginning to band together in tribes because there is safety in numbers. They will have to find ways to provide for themselves and their tribal members, and that will probably be farming, hunting, or stealing from other tribes. And as the tribes get bigger (which they probably will do as individual tribes unite to have advantages over enemy tribes), they will start to implement rules like "thou shalt not kill a member of the tribe" or "anything thou doth create or produce shall become property of the tribe." And you know what? This is how government was created in the first place. The abolition of goverment will cause mass chaos and death and will send civilization back into its infancy, but eventually it will come full circle. A group of human beings cannot live together without some sort of agreement as to how they will behave, and this is the most primal form of government. We can't live without it.
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Post by Challenger on Feb 21, 2004 11:10:44 GMT -5
I seem to be playing devils advocate alot recently. First the French, now the government. I'd best go fit anti flying pig guards to my windows The governments track record is hardly spotless. Heck both the British and American governments have done things (And continue to do things) that piss me off left right and center. However their track record is slightly better than anarchy. Last time the human race as a whole had anarchy the most advanced thing anyone did was pick up a rock and hit the next guy with it. Face it without order alot of the human race is no better than animals. (In fact I rate alot lower atleast animals kill to eat) I've seen what happens when violent people are allowed to do as they wish. They beat the living daylights out of the non violent people. The law may only be a deterent most of the time but that deterent is a big improvement over nothing. Personal if the law was removed from me I'd not do much different from what I do now. And that goes for alot of people. However if its removed from everyone I know for a fact it would be time to buy and learn how to use a gun. Either that or run. Challenger
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Post by khyron1144 on Feb 21, 2004 14:52:10 GMT -5
Last time the human race as a whole had anarchy the most advanced thing anyone did was pick up a rock and hit the next guy with it. Personal if the law was removed from me I'd not do much different from what I do now. And that goes for alot of people. However if its removed from everyone I know for a fact it would be time to buy and learn how to use a gun. Either that or run. Challenger That's why it deserves a trial run. We have no real knowledge of what things were like before government. In fact, there may have been no time before government. Chimpanzees have government and so too probably did the earliest hominids. You said it rather nicely. If there was no law tommorrow, your behavior would change very little. I have enough trust to think that most people would be like that too. If there was no law against murder would you become a serial killer? Probably not. No law against rape will make you a rapist? Probably not.
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Post by Challenger on Feb 21, 2004 15:40:55 GMT -5
That's why it deserves a trial run. We have no real knowledge of what things were like before government. In fact, there may have been no time before government. Chimpanzees have government and so too probably did the earliest hominids. You said it rather nicely. If there was no law tommorrow, your behavior would change very little. I ahve enough trust to think that most people would be like that too. If there was no law against murder would you become a serial killer? Probably not. No law against rape will make you a rapist? Probably not. Unfortunatly its not the majority you have to worry about. It the morrons who only understand force and who are only held in check because the of the retribution the force of government would bring down on them if they step majorly out of line. Anarchy by its very definition allows people to do what they like. And a large number of peoples favorite passtime is beating other people up. Challenger
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Post by Merkuri on Feb 21, 2004 15:51:52 GMT -5
Challenger said it. The majority of people will behave, but enough of them won't. Have you ever seen RoboCop? It may not be the best movie I've seen, but what happens when the cops go on strike is pretty much what will happen if you abolish government (and the police force). Gangs will run amok. They are in the minority, but they can sure do a lot of damage. There are people today who would go around smashing things and raping women if they knew the police would do nothing about it. To think otherwise is, frankly, very naive.
Your experiment, Khyron, will never happen, I can pretty much guarantee that. If it ever did, though, there would be a huge amount of vandalism, theft, injury, and deaths. There is no question about it.
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Post by Galadon on Feb 21, 2004 16:01:41 GMT -5
I believe humans are born evil and condition to be good. If there was no laws to govern people, there would be alot less of them around. You would like to try anarchy, take a look at you list, that is with governments.
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Post by Merkuri on Feb 21, 2004 16:09:44 GMT -5
I believe humans are born evil and condition[ed] to be good. I won't go that far to say that people are pre-disposed to be evil (then why is anybody good at all?) but I will say that there are enough people who are "evil" (whether because they were born that way or were taught) to ruin it for everyone. This is why we have governments in the first place.
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Post by Shura on Feb 21, 2004 16:44:58 GMT -5
Depends of what you own definition of good and evil is. They are in my opinion words that are used too freely and inappropiately. i do agree though that anarchy would be a hell unless the world's population was a good deal smaller,no to mention the fact that we could possibly descend into a dark age of darwinian barbarism
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Post by EK - Shadow of Death on Feb 21, 2004 18:24:41 GMT -5
I just read "Cloak of Anarchy": a short story that concerns exactly this. A bastion of lawlessness and freedom in a highly regimented and strict society.
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Post by Hussar on Feb 22, 2004 3:23:50 GMT -5
That's a good point. You want to experiment with anarchy, take a look at the real world examples of it. Somalia is a textbook example. Afghanistan is possibly headed that way. The Congo is also heading in that general direction.
Or, to bring it home a little closer, the LA Riots not that long ago.
That, boys and girls, is anarchy. With anarchy, only the strong have any power. The purpose of government is not to enforce morality, despite what some might think. The purpose of government is to act as a limit to the power gained by individuals.
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Post by Galadon on Feb 22, 2004 15:13:53 GMT -5
And don't blame me if my fingers forget how to spell.
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Post by khyron1144 on Feb 22, 2004 22:02:51 GMT -5
I believe humans are born evil and condition to be good. If there was no laws to govern people, there would be alot less of them around. You would like to try anarchy, take a look at you list, that is with governments. I think people are born people. They are conditioned to think of certain things as good and certain things as evil. I don't think that people can avoid having some sort of morality, even if it ends up being: If I enjoy it, it is good. If I don't, then it is bad. My list is examples of misuse of power. Without power there is no misuse. To address one of Merkuri's points: I have nothing against tribalism, as long as tribes are based on trust and love and equality rather than power and opression. I think it can be done.
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Post by Hussar on Feb 23, 2004 3:55:06 GMT -5
But, Kyron, you can never remove power from relationships. It simply isn't possible. If you do something for me, then I have power and you don't. If you continue to do that thing for me and then convince someone else to help you, then I have power over those two people. Whether the power comes from family relationships (parent vs child), social structures (teacher vs student) or in a wider society (politician vs people), it is still power. You cannot remove the element of power from relationships.
All relationships are based in the struggle for power. We have 50 000 years of primate politics hardwired into our brains. There is just no escaping from it.
And, btw. Yes, there have been abuses of power. But, those abuses are usually redressed (eventually). Slavery was abolished and we've spent the last 100 years or so trying to sort that mess out. Women can vote now. The treatment of natives is still deplorable, but it is improving. Sure, it takes time to fix the problems. But, the problem is not with the system itself. The system will correct itself. The problem is that people want everything to change, tomorrow.
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Post by Merkuri on Feb 23, 2004 9:15:34 GMT -5
I have nothing against tribalism, as long as tribes are based on trust and love and equality rahter than power and opression. I think it can be done. Tribalism is a form of government. In fact, it could be argued that tribalism is the root of all government. In a tribe, you have a leader and you have followers. The creation of a tribe is usually for the purpose of protection, as such it is made up of stronger members pretecting weaker ones. That's a difference of power if there ever was one. By deffinition, you're not a true anarchist if you're in favor of tribalism, because it is a government.
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