It is no coincidence that in the mainstream media, the concept of “anarchy” and “anarchism” is continually misrepresented, either as whiny childish punks breaking stuff, or as entitlement-mentality communists pretending that their centralized collectivist master plan isn’t just another flavor of authoritarian statism. A recent article in Teen Vogue, trying to pass off “revolutionary socialism” and “direct democracy” as anarchism, is no exception.
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It's because socialists coopted the term 'anarchy' that I don't self-identify as an 'anarchist'. I just want to be UNCIVILIZED, and I do mean that in the purest sense of the word...UN-CITY-FIED for folks who've lost access to or refuse to consult dictionaries. How our ancestors lived, when they were roaming nomads, before clustering around the city-god's alter, tithing a portion of wealth to the priest-king, in return for divine favor...that's what I want humanity to get back to. But, I also want humanity to take with it the awareness of manipulative parasitic psychopaths, the same human subspecies that defined and maintain the socioeconomic system we're now in.
No society or economy would exist without a foundation of cooperation. Cooperation has enabled socioeconomic expansion, organization and production specialization, while competition curtails expansion, and left unchecked, can lead to social and economic collapse. Organic competition, i.e. poor quality, over-priced goods don't sell - is useful as a mechanism to encourage innovation and efficient use of resources. However, inorganic competition, i.e. economic cannibalism and the use of wealth, power and politics to destroy the livelihood of competitors - has no place in a free and fair market. Yet, that's primarily what we have now - economic cannibalism, reliant on the productivity of the many to generate wealth and power for the few, rigidly resisting cooperation in the marketplace to support consumer choice and employment opportunities for all.
In my way of thinking, any and all social, political and economic systems will fail, unless the predatory and parasitic PEOPLE are recognized as anti-social and curtailed from manipulating these systems to serve their own interests instead of the interests of humanity, from families on up to global.
Even an anarchic system is susceptible to the destructive influences of socioeconomic predators and parasites. It's important to think now about how to identify the behavior and isolate the actors.
Thank you for taking the time to address this topic. You dealt with a lot of the FUD surrounding Anarchism. I know the word leftist has become a negative word these days, but the reality is that Anarchism is part of the left wing.
"Left" and "right" have become meaningless terms though as politicians and pundits have twisted language over the past 250 years to justify authoritarianism.
Pop culture's version of anarchy is about as good as pop culture's version of music, literature, comedy, and anything else. It's a perverse counterfeit.
So cool !
The Ancaps need to address any relationship between those who own their business and those who work for any said business. An Ancap can run a very successful business loaded with child labor. It would be a fact that that Ancap would become extraordinarily wealthy via an unjust relation yet it would still classify as anarcho-capitalism.
For anarcho-capitalism to work in alignment with the principles of non-necessary exploitation and coercion(voluntaryism) there would need to be a baseline minimum income. The only way to do that as far as I can tell is in a new distribution of how currency is created. Right now currency is created by debt via force and given first to the Central Banks who then have first dibs on all kinds of resources. Of course, new neo-homesteading would solve this issue, too, but that solution doesn't address scale--how is NYC's population to become farmers again?
What I'm saying is that there have to be mechanisms within Ancap philosophy which prevent this economic system from turning into neo-feudalism. If this issue isn't addressed then Ancap. would be deluding itself and dismissing the foundational (and spiritual) concern of voluntaryism. I can see Ancap working if all those involved are at the 'buddha and christ stage of development' but problematic with those still at 'mafia stages of development'...
Here are a few links that distill the issues.
http://andrewmarkmusic.com/?p=1714
http://andrewmarkmusic.com/?p=1732
Why should children be forbidden to work? If child labor were not a black market, why do you think child labor would not find a market price equilibrium? The more prosperous a society due to free markets and advanced mechanized productivity, the less need there is for the Dickensian hardscrabble life.
Why do you assert a need for a baseline minimum income? This is merely a statement, not a rational argument. Without government parasitism, the wealth productivity realized by the worker is far higher and his cost of living far lower. You are correct in observing that the government monopoly money system is broken, but that is hardly a fault of free market anarcho-capitalist principles in action.
Feudalism is antithetical to markets. There is no relation between them except the most superficial and fraudulent application of terms like "property."
I'm a crusty ole curmudgeon so I don't really give a fuck who I offend here.
It isn't cool to move the goalposts in the 4th quarter and rewrite the rules of the game. Do a complete reset like a Jubilee if you want to change the system. The fact of the matter is that there are about 1-billion seniors in first world nations who've paid into pensions their whole life. Are Ancaps suggesting throwing these billion seniors under the bus of free-market capitalism? Why the hell should 90-year-olds have to compete with 25-year olds under a neo- free market Ancap system? Why should our pensions which we've paid into our whole lives be arbitrarily taken away because Ancaps don't like social welfare systems?
What about children, the mentally ill, and all those who don't fall neatly into the box of productive capitalist norms? Fuck 'em, Eh? We'll see...I'm not against Ancap per se but it needs to address a whole shit-load of issues before I subscribe to it.
BTW: all these issues I mentioned can be solved by capitalists agreeing to abandon FOUR areas of exploitation: housing, food, healthcare, and education. Exploiting me and profiting off my basic needs is simply fucking lazy and uncreative. Capitalists should be able to do better...Changing the way currency is created and distributed would also address my area of concerns.
I chose to fund my own retirement by buying income producing real estate in my 30s and letting the tenants pay off the principal with their rent payments. I don't wish Ill on anyone but why is it that you feel more entitled to a pension and my efforts and risk taking are irrelevant? I had no trust fund or windfall. All done with simple loans and delayed gratification.
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To buy and sell the earth is spiritual anathema to anyone who understands the nature of reality.
But do what thou whilst...In the end, the universe will have the final say.
And BTW: even with those incredibly strong intuitions about existence, I'm still not an anti-propertarian like many left-leaning anarchists. It's a fact that no human needs more than one house to live in. Make that the agreement for any rational sustainable spiritual civilization.
Who are you to dictate what others shoukd be allowed, based in your percepion if need? That is the height of arrogance.
The question is not what someone has, but how it was acquired. is it through the productive means of voluntary exchanges, ir the coercive means of political plunder? Politicians and megacorp CEOs fall under the latter, but people who invest in rental property or own a vacation cabin on a lake or maintain a residence in multiple cities due to work needs are hardly depriving anyone of anything.
You condemn "ownership of the earth," but when someone transforms land outnof its state of nature to fulfill a need or want, why has a superior claim to the result of that action if not the acting human? Tending a field, planting and orchard, building a home, or otherwuse mixing labor with the soil to use unowned land for productive means creates a right of use. Who has the right to violate that claim? Why shoudl it not be transferrable if someone else perceives the past human action to have added value, and thus allow an economic exchange?
Do you have the right to rob me? No. If your social security check relies on robbing me, that is, taking money from me without my consent, how can you claim a right to it? You may be the victim of massive governmental fraud, but that does not justify you committing new crimes against me.
Says the believer is Casper economics! You, worshipers of the God KA$H, crack me up!
Money is property. Property is the result of human action. Theft of money, like any other theft, is a usurpation of authority over another individual.
Printing up usurious property is the crime of the century and theft beyond measure as is quantitative easing and all the other ways the earth has been turned into a casino.
Please go troll someone else manchild!
Please don't build a strawman and then accuse me of being the troll. I do not support the modern incarnation of government monopoly money. I am talking about the principle of a medium of exchange, and only citing government funny money incidentally since it is the status quo. My argument is the same whether we are discussing FRNs, gold, silver, crypto, a voluntary scrip system, or wampum beads.
You are not entitled to stolen loot, even if you are accustomed to receiving it. And no, you didn't "pay into" anything, other than a forced Ponzi scheme. You are not entitled to have other people continually robbed so you can keep benefiting from it.
It's curious as to which robbery you seem concerned about. Hopefully, you're also concerned with the robbery of the commons by the central banksterr fiat currency system. They've rewarded themselves by the trillions since 2008 via Q.E. and such for committing some of the most egregious economic crimes in human history.
Okay, fair enough, that is not a priority.
But defining things accurately should be. A Ponzi scheme is a short-lived economic investment scheme usually enacted by corrupt financial entrepreneurs who swindle investors via using initial investment income leveraged against new income (marks) with no substantial 'product' backing the venture. Comparing our Social Security to this is ignorance at worst and disinformation at best. It's fine that you disagree with this kind of welfare system but it isn't a Ponzi Scheme...Nor is the Central Banking Fiat Currency system--that is a pyramid scheme and any anarchist worth their salt should be against it.
Other than you making up the part about "short-lived," that is a description of Social Security. No one "pays into" anything. What recipients receive is being stolen from other, productive people. (Of course I oppose the fiat "fractional reserve" fraud, too.)
I'm happy to find points of agreement Larkin. It was a relatively short period of time that Bernie Madoff got to implement his fraud (one exp.) I try my damnest not to make shit up...
Most countries have people pay for their own pension. This was supposed to be the tack that Roosevelt took in '35. I don't know how it works in America but I've paid into my pension every year I've worked and most people I know do, too. So if you're advocating all these millions upon millions of people (perhaps a billion in the coming 30-years) to not get the money they paid into then you've got a fight on your hands. Never forget also that this is happening while the banksters rape the reward pool...
I'm still wondering why you see neo-feudalism and as the best possible way forward and I don't feel I'm Strawmaning you in asking.
Please address my concerns in the links I posted rather than coughing up terse and pithy scripted replies. I'm not a paid actor...Real thoughtful responses would be more appreciated even if we couldn't agree on every point of contention.
Of course you should get back from the thief's what they have stolen from you and the other people!
I'm not advocating the opposite ( I speak for myself here because that's the only person I can speak for or from) I'm also not responsible for the ponzi scheme others have put in place and am not guilty of the theft of those billions. But that I say I can't do anything about it or have a solution to get the money back is not the same as advocating the thiefs to get away with their billions.
It's saying. I take my lost and I'm gonna be free from now on and let others be free.
I don't (or even can't) find a solution for the problem that I did not create. And I believe noone can. Except, if you don't advocate for governments or masterplans or mechanism which force everybody to do something under the threats or violence in the future.
Maybe this analogy helps, Imagine the "cotton slaves" that want to be free but other slaves telling them you first have to take care that we get our cotton back (or the equivalent), before you can be free, or else you are for neo-slavery. Then the slave that want to be free is made responsible for what the masters have done and stolen.
The other slaves want him to solve the problems of the slavery and theft in the past before they"can let him be free" which means they keep him as a slave and they are the master that can decide to let him be free as he has done as they dictated
In this analogy the slaves surrounding the "slave" (free man or woman) are his or her master, they may not see it but they are keeping him or her enslaved.
Pienso que el anarquismo es habitualmente acusado de utópico, por pretender alcanzar algo imposible, pero sabemos que la utopía sirve para caminar y lo imposible a veces se vuelve posible. Es preciso reconocer que en una sociedad dominada por los medios de comunicación y en la que impera la cultura del consumo, la competitividad y el conformismo, los ideales parecen extraños e insignificantes a su lado.
Agree with the video, only one thought.
A murderer (rapist, thief) is an "archator" or rules you by force. So by doing their deed they have proven to not be an anarchist.
Assuming human desire is infinite and resources are finite. If there is an apple orchard within a communist community, how does one determine how many apples people can take when there is no value placed on it? Or if the value is arbitrary from central planners?
In a capitalist economic model, what people can take is determined by scarcity. The neat thing about private ownership is that if someone owns the orchard, they can plant more trees and produce more apples. The more apples, the cheaper it becomes to acquire, and even give away, apples.
In a communist system, the orchard is stripped clean of apples and everyone starves because of a lack of built in scarcity control (value). Then rationing is used to control scarcity. This requires violence to enforce.
This is why "real communism has never been tried", because it ends up being an authoritarian nightmare that no communism proponent wants to own up to. They will deny that USSR was communist or Mao's mass starvation of China was communist. The results were not communist, so therefore it was not communism.
All of them attempted to artificially control scarcity, and failed, to the detriment of 100s of millions of people. But capitalism is the world's most dangerous economic theory.
Theories aren't dangerous.
The individuals (in collectives) that use violence on others are dangerous.