Early high school: anarchist
Late high school: libertarian
early college: mega liberal
late college: moderate liberal
now: moderate. By which I mean socially liberal but kind of fiscally conservative. I’m glad I got all the bullshit out of my system at an early age.
Yep,same here!
Anarchy doesn’t work.
In the short run yes anarchy works but in the long run it falls apart eventually, I’m not saying it doesn’t amount to anything good but they all end in either war or conquest.
and you know this how?
Considering that the experiments that have been run on self-sustained anarchistic communities almost all failed miserably, I’d say it’s a pretty good bet it wouldn’t work on a large scale. If a bunch of hippies who WANT anarchy can’t even make it work, I doubt you’d have much success with the population at large.
source?
I saw a documentary on it several years ago on HBO. I’m not going to even bother tracking down something to prove a point that anyone with any common sense already knows.
so one documentary proves that anarchism, which is something some great minds have put a lot of thought in and has a lot of different versions, cannot possibly work? okay
Tell you what, if you really want to get into this, go in the anarchist forum and read what I wrote in there. If I’m going to debate something so stupid I might as well do it in the proper thread.
Oh and nice obvious straw man.
Yeah dude,all the documentaries are 100% true. 
It’s all SOLID FACTS! lol
I’ve always felt anarchism cannot work because there’s not one sole source of authority that applies to everyone… including the source of authority.
In anarchism, if there’s a dispute, you go to a mutual arbitrator to hash out what to do. But then, why does the arbitrator have any power? What if I were to simply ignore what happens in arbitration? Ostracism from the community? In a community of millions of people? That’s going to take some doing.
Also, why ostracize me? What right does anyone else have to go after me and my rights simply because I didn’t follow what the arbitrator said? Why does an arbitrator have authority over me? Or anyone?
Anarchism does not necessarily preclude some form of governing body or judiciary system.
Anarchism is not synonymous with a total lack of rules of coexistence. The idea behind the form of anarchism which I support, as far as I understand it, is that governance is applied from the bottom up, instead of from the top down as it is in the current system.
The ideal is a stateless society consisting of self-governing, co-organized cultural or economic units, which in turn cooperate as larger units, etcetera.
I admit my knowledge on the subject is limited, but I plan on reading up on it in the future.
I believe this is basically what libertarian socialism is about, though explained very simplisticly.
-archy A system of government/rule/leadership as in “monarchy” (rule by a single person) or “patriarchy” (rule by men).
an- or a- Prefix meaning “without” or “lacking” as in “asymmetry” (lacking symmetry) or “asexual reproduction” (reproduction without sex).
an-archy, therefore, is without a system of government/rule.
A system of government from the bottom-up would be something like a pantarchy…which is like what we have in the United States. Our government is not a separate entity from us… we ARE the government.
ethymology != definition of a set of concepts
regardless of how your government is (supposed to be) formed, it still exerts its power from the top down
Not really. We exert our power on government. We are, however, limited by the Constitution (which we can also change).
But, definitionally speaking (is that a word?), anarchy is a country without a government. Pantarchy (I like that word) is what many are looking for and what the United States has…but so many are unwilling to do their job so the representatives that WE PUT IN THERE TO REPRESENT US do not represent us.
And then, people complain about it. I wish the American people would take a hard look in the mirror. They’re the government. “The government” isn’t some external entity.
Yes, we exert our power on our governments, but those governments still exert their power on us from the top down. This is different from a government that works strictly from the bottom up by voluntary cooperation of qualified people.
Also, dictionary definitions aren’t sufficient when talking about broad philosophical concepts such as anarchy or democracy (which aren’t directly opposed by the way). An expansive article is more suitable.
And notice this: “from Greek: ἀναρχίᾱ anarchíā, ‘without ruler’.” Without ruler, not without government.
I believe that “voluntary” government doesn’t work. There will be people that will not abide to authority.
Again, straw man. And a pretty derpy one at that. I never said one documentary fully disproved anarchism.
The fact that anarchism has rarely if ever worked even in small communes for an extended period of time (this with people who voluntarily gave up their normal lives to join said commune) is just one of a million counter arguments against anarchism that any sensible person can come up with.
But showing that a simple microcosm of a larger, more complex system is failure-prone is actually pretty good evidence against it, yes.
Anarchists like Emma Goldman are pretty good at coming up with philosophical arguments for anarchism but when it comes to practical application they fail to even properly define what exactly it they want, let alone how to enact it.
I am not aware of any anarchistic societies other than the experiments you mentioned, and small-scale application of a system that relies on cooperation of a wide range of specialized institutions are hardly a reflection of its application on a large scale, in my opinion.
There are also many forms of anarchism, so I’m wondering exactly what kind of system was employed in those experiments.
I suggest you watch this interview with Chomsky. It’s interesting, if not pretty convincing.
I’m not going to pretend to be any sort of expert on the matter, but many people seem to be under the impression that anarchism is simply lawlessness and chaos and not much more, which is simply not the case.
By the way, I never used a straw man. You mentioned experiments on small communities, and when I asked for a source, all you came up with was some documentary you watched a few years ago.
I responded to what you said, not what you meant or knew but didn’t say. I may have worded my response rather poorly though.
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