@churdtzu posted this in a thread started by @larkenrose, where I was asking what would prevent warlords from taking over. We were already at the dumb comment limit, and I've been drinking for the last 12 hours... so I figured new post. Here's the video response to my question of why dictators wouldn't take over (which the famous @larkenrose didn't even have an answer for!)
The basic premise is that people vote and wait patiently for the next election cycle, so they would not try to become dictators to promote their beliefs.
This is flat out wishful thinking, for several reasons.
People vote and wait, because they might get their way the next election cycle. For congress that's two years, for President it's four. So people who want to, if we use an example from the video, make abortion illegal, they only need to wait a couple years. Meanwhile, if a pro-abortion dictator took over they would never have their say.
In order to force their views on the country outside of elections, they would need to take on the US military. You know, the entity that's better funded than the next 7 militaries in the world. Yeah, that. So no one is going apeshit and forcing their views on other people literally because of government.
In short, the argument presented is that people wouldn't try to force their own government on an anarchist population because the current US Government prevents them from doing so while also providing better options.
Hardly a compelling argument.
We already have warlords dumbass. What do you think politicians are? It's really hard to control people who have been raised to believe in self-ownership. Good luck running an army to forcefully control people when you have zero tax dollars to pay them. No black market means no drug lords either. The only thing they're going to get paid in is bullets flying at them.
As usual, this statist author is completely blind to the current reality, eh? What is the functional difference between a "warlord" and a "state"? NOTHING, except PERCEPTION. This is just one more stupid thing statists say...like these:
https://steemit.com/anarchism/@kingkrawdad/stupid-shit-statists-say-a-collaborative-effort
Heheh. The governments we get are always warlords. They ultimately decide who we fight. Doesn't matter what form of government, historically this has always happened.
So if this is out of context let me know as I didn't see the other thread.
Also @larkenrose is just a man. All of us are human. None of us should ever fall for an appeal to authority, so whether Larken Rose had the answer or not truly does not matter. All of us together are capable of answers beyond what any of us individually know.
The real problem here comes from whether you view this as a short term issue or a long term issue.
If governments just suddenly instantly go away it will not work. The majority of people do not know anarchy and the NAP and other things. That is not taught. So it would not work, and what you are describing and the video is describing would happen. There is zero doubt of that.
So the long term goal is that for this to work it'd likely take generations and education and easing away from the need for a government. When the population understands how it works then these problems would not likely exist.
Yet if you try to do it short term, then yeah there would possibly be a short period where it worked, and then there would likely be problems as the majority of the masses would still believe in statism and that someone can have authority over others.
You say that, but we've been teaching that murder is wrong for thousands of years and yet we still have serial killers.
Yes we do. I didn't say everyone would magically behave. If I did let me know where. (smile)
We also have NOT been teaching people to question authority. We have been instead pushing for conformity. In fact when the Prussian Education System where the term School comes from was implemented it was lauded at its ability to help inspire conformity. This is the system virtually every education on the system on the planet now follows and uses.
So what we've been doing before is really irrelevant. That is an apples and oranges type of comparison. When using logic that is actually a fallacy. I could turn around and say "well they also insisted the world was flat for years too" and I'd be making the same type of logical fallacy.
Pointing at something else to try to use as an example of why a completely different idea will not work is very ineffective in terms of refuting something. People do try to use it a lot. Most of the time it is effective because people are distracted into thinking that is actually relevant. It is not.
Will we still have people with psychosis, deformities, abnormalities, etc in ANY society? Yes.
The difference between a system based on Anarchy where the population truly understands it and knows about NAP and such is this.
They will also know that someone else does not have the right to authority over them. They will be immune to appeals to authority.
So could that psychotic person kill people? Yes. Yet once they are identified we can kill them too. NAP does not mean we will not defend ourselves.
Also since we don't believe in authority there really would be no authority figures. So unlike with the state this person would not be rising through the ranks and gaining more power.
Let's say that schools really are creating conformity. Look at our actual culture. Movies, TV, books... a huge portion of our media is actually anti-authority. The government is almost always the villain, even when they are the good guys there's often a conspiracy from within or something.
Our culture is far more anti-authoritarian than you give it credit for!
There are plenty of ranks to rise through. Corporate ranks and social ranks, in particular, can give a person a lot of influence. Understanding the NAP doesn't mean that a person who seeks power will stop seeking power, any more than reading the Bible makes a religious man a good person. In fact, a man who wants power would use anarchist principles to justify his rise to power.
You'll want to call me a nutjob at this point, but this is actually pretty f undamental. You see the same thing in religion. As Reza Aslan noted on a The Daily Show Interview:
Educating people on a principle does not make them follow it. If it did, we wouldn't have so many Christians clamoring for war. The Bible is pretty explicit on that whole Thou Shalt Not Kill part, but it's been used to justify war more times than I can count.
There have always been stories and media that are anti-authoritarian. That does not mean the public acts on and believes in those things in their day to day life.
And? Without a state to force me to deal with those corporation and social ranks, why does that matter? It is not a problem that these things happen. It is a problem when someone rises through the ranks of something that takes choice away and makes it no longer voluntary. People can group up. They cannot force me to be part of that group.It'd be pretty difficult for a psychopath (unless they concealed it in some long con) to rise through the ranks in a NAP society. Their behavior would be unappealing and they would not find support.
So far that is true, yet society has been 100% statist (whether religious or non-religious) in history up until this point. It has been based around the idea that someone has authority over you whether it be a Ruler or a Preacher.That is the reason this would have to be slow. Until people realize that no one has authority over them it would not work.
You are trying to fit the concept into HISTORY. It hasn't been tried in history. Whether it will work or not is indeed speculation. WORK or NOT. It has not been done, so it would be a grand experiment.
One thing is for certain states of all sizes and combinations of ideologies have been tried. Some of them function well for awhile, but ultimately they are all corrupted and abused. Some of them kill a lot of people in their formation, and then don't work so well.
Religion is the same for the most part.
People believing other people have the authority to direct them in how they live.
So your argument here is based largely on history. That is also why Anarchism is appealing, because we look at history and see the same mistake repeated over and over.
I'm sure the 10,000 hours you were forced to spend in a govt. school being obedience-trained, er, I mean 'educated' by teachers who each were also forced to spend 10,000 hours in a govt. school (and whom rely on a govt. paycheck for their livelihood--absolutely no conflict-of-interest there!) in no way has biased your views towards govt...I'm sure your school also put significant effort into teaching you critical-thinking/reasoning skills and also encouraged you to be extremely skeptical of their authority over you...
So are you implying ignorance is better? That everything I say is invalid because I was taught by the government? This is ridiculous and not even an actual argument. It's essentially an ad hominim combined with an appeal to non-conformity.
Whether my school taught me critical thinking skills or not, I have them and most of my beliefs and arguments are based on my experience of life outside of school. Although I doubt I'd do quite as well if I could barely read because I was never taught how by one of the teachers you like to malign.
STUPID SHIT STATISTS SAY:
"W/O govt. there would be no education"
"The 10,000 hours I spent in govt. schools being schooled by govt. agents has no bearing on my view of govt."
https://steemit.com/comic/@augur/cartoon-series-what-is-the-real-cracks
이곳에 보팅해주셔서 감사합니다.
Hats off to you telos. It's nice to see someone thinking on his own instead of accusing people of not thinking on their own.
Voluntaryism is interesting and Robert Murphy is brilliant, but this argument of his does not stand. He claims any people noble enough to resolve differences through democracy would be equally capable of resolving issues without government.
This claim is not true because a democratic government forces people into non-aggression solutions (even though this seems contradictory). This use of force by the majority that institutes the government may well prevent the minority to use even greater force to impose their ways. Put plainly, a democracy doesn't need to have a population as resonable as voluntaryist society.