i was reading an older discussion about somalia (http://nhunderground.com/forum/index.php?topic=3104.60) tonight, because a friend of mine asked me if i knew of any free staters who had the desire to go to a place where true anarchy exists, such as somalia. unfortunately, i did not know much about somalia, so i didn't make much of a response. so my question is this - why (in simple terms) is somalia a good/bad example of anarchy, and how do we avoid a situation where violence and chaos breaks out in the sudden absence of government?
I doubt that this can be avoided in the cities.
What caused the sudden absence of government in the first place? That was probably a violent act itself so avoiding violence would be impossible.
Here is an article about a possible bottom-up re-building in Somalia.
Anarchy-cursed nation looks to bottom-up rule (http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/08/18/africa/18somalia.php)
By Jeffrey Gettleman
Monday, August 18, 2008
Does the international community have it all wrong on Somalia?
After 17 years, 14 transitional governments and more than $8 billion in foreign aid, the country is as violent and lawless - and many say hopeless - as ever.
Early this month, a man who had been running an orphanage for 18 years was fatally shot in the head. A few days before that, 20 women sweeping the streets were blown up by a bomb buried in a pile of garbage. No one is safe, and perhaps no place on earth more closely resembles Thomas Hobbes's description of a state of nature in which life is "nasty, brutish and short."
Nothing seems to be able to lift Somalia's curse of anarchy. And part of the problem, a rising number of Western academics and Somali professionals argue, is that the bulk of outside efforts have concentrated on standing up a strong central government, which may be anathema in a country where authority tends to be diffuse and clan-based.
The United Nations and donor countries are plowing millions of dollars into the Transitional Federal Government, an entity essentially created by the United Nations, with the idea of bringing order to Somalia from the top down.
But the transitional government is essentially on life support. Its presence in Mogadishu, the capital, is limited to a few blocks that are constantly shelled. It is unpopular and, by extension, weak. Its leaders are consumed by yet another round of infighting.
President Abdullahi Yusuf Ahmed, a former warlord, is enraged that Prime Minister Nur Hassan Hussein, a former Red Crescent official, had the gall to try to fire Mogadishu's mayor, another ex-warlord - the "ex" being a term of art because the mayor is widely accused of running an extortion ring.
Ken Menkhaus, a professor at Davidson College in North Carolina who specializes in Somalia, likened the transitional government to an hourglass, with no professional class or civil service at its core. Instead, there are "a whole bunch of ministers at the top, a whole bunch of soldiers at the bottom and nothing in between."
But there may be another answer: going local.
Many Somali intellectuals and Western academics are pushing an alternative form of government that might be better suited to Somalia's fluid, fragmented and decentralized society. The new idea, which is actually an old idea that seems to be enjoying something of a renaissance because of the transitional government's shortcomings, is to rebuild Somalia from the bottom up.
It is called the building block approach. The first blocks would be small governments at the lowest levels, in villages and towns. These would be stacked to form district and regional governments. The last step would be uniting the regional governments in a loose national federation that controlled, say, currency issues and the pirate-infested shoreline, but did not sideline local leaders.
"It's the only way viable," said Ali Doy, a Somali analyst who works closely with the United Nations. "Local government is where the actual governance is. It's more realistic, it's more sustainable and it's more secure."
Technically, the current transitional government is a federal system that is supposed to share power with various regions, but it is unclear, even to the people in the government, what exactly that means.
Somalia has always been a tricky place to rule. On the surface, it seems like one of the most homogeneous countries on the planet: almost all of its estimated seven million to eight million people share the same language, religion, culture and ethnicity. But, in fact, it is one of the most fragmented. In Somalia, it is all about clan.
The Italians and the British colonized separate parts, but their efforts to impose Western laws never really worked. Disputes tended to be resolved by clan elders. Deterrence was key. "Kill me and you will suffer the wrath of my entire clan" - that, to many people, was social order.
The places where the local ways were disturbed the least, like in British-ruled Somaliland, seem to have done better in the long run, with less fighting today than in areas where the Italian colonial administration supplanted the role of traditional elders.
Many Somalis have grown suspicious of a strong central government, especially after the dark years of Major General Mohammed Siad Barre, the dictator who ruled from 1969 to 1991. "The state has never had any legitimacy," said Tobias Hagmann, a Somalia scholar at the University of Zurich.
Clan-based warlords toppled General Siad Barre, then turned on one another. In some places, limited local governments sprouted to fill the authority vacuum. They called themselves "administrations" and provided some services, like resolving property disputes or trying theft suspects in courts based on Islamic and customary Somali law.
By the early 2000s, several of those local courts began to gain strength, and in 2006 they united under an Islamist banner to fight warlords being paid by the Central Intelligence Agency. The Islamic courts won and disarmed and pacified much of south-central Somalia, following their own version of the building block approach. But the United States and Ethiopia considered the Islamic courts a terrorist threat, so the United States helped Ethiopia invade Somalia.
The result today is an ascendant Islamist guerrilla force, a wounded and divided transitional government and an increasingly impatient Ethiopia. Stir in Somalia's war profiteers, including gunrunners and importers of expired baby formula, and the country seems to be a recipe for long-term disaster.
Aid officials say Somalia may be headed toward another famine, with nearly three million people dependent on emergency food aid, 1.5 million displaced, and aid workers being killed. Despite all this, local government has not been stamped out. In one area, a group of Somali-Americans has used its own money to set up a police force and a rudimentary court system based on clan ties.
"You can't start from the top down; that's a waste of energy," said Mohamed Aden, 36, a health care manager from Minnesota who risked his savings - and his life - to set up a local administration in central Somalia.
He explained: "You have to start from the grass roots. People don't trust each other. You start small, and when people see that it's working, they will want to join."
But the building block approach has its challenges. The United Nations tried to encourage representative district councils in the early 1990s, but the warlords in Mogadishu felt threatened and torpedoed the effort.
There are "always going to be spoilers from the center," said Hassan Sheik Mohamud, the dean of a small college in Mogadishu. "Ideally, bottom up is very good for Somalia. But the problem is the warlords. To make any government work, they have to be included, in some way."
There are also bureaucratic realities. Western diplomats, foreign donors and the United Nations prefer to deal with one government, not 26.
"I don't think the transitional government is so effective," said Ahmedou Ould-Abdallah, the top United Nations envoy for Somalia. "But it's what we have."
Maybe a better question to ask would be how to RETAIN government, without resulting in chaos. And the answer, of course, is that you can't. Once people realize that government always makes things worse, they'll be a lot more open to getting rid of it.
Anarchy is self-imposed so it contains both the positive and negative of the balance.
Voluntarism works on the governing principle of non-aggression, and was the foundation for the US.
I see the problem of how to re-educate the public to return to a voluntarism state... along with discovery of modern mechanism to stop the repeated entropy into authoritarism.
Quote from: Jared on October 05, 2008, 11:52 PM NHFT
i was reading an older discussion about somalia (http://nhunderground.com/forum/index.php?topic=3104.60) tonight, because a friend of mine asked me if i knew of any free staters who had the desire to go to a place where true anarchy exists, such as somalia. unfortunately, i did not know much about somalia, so i didn't make much of a response. so my question is this - why (in simple terms) is somalia a good/bad example of anarchy, and how do we avoid a situation where violence and chaos breaks out in the sudden absence of government?
How are we defining "chaos" here? Chaos in the classical sense, that everything has gone to the wolves? Or chaos in the sense that you have some random acts of violence within an over-arching framework that can be described as "orderly"? Because as far as I can tell, it's under a Statist system that we have chaos- routinely do we have murder, theft, and extortion engaged in.
That said I have no desire to go to Somalia- why? Well, for one it isn't a "true" anarchy. The presence of the United States, United Nations, and African Union are enough to convince me of this. Secondly, I don't desire to go to a barren nation with nothing for me to look at. That'd just be a shitty vacaction.
What would be the 'over-arching framework' of anarchy?
Quote from: John Edward Mercier on October 06, 2008, 09:14 AM NHFT
Anarchy is self-imposed so it contains both the positive and negative of the balance.
Voluntarism works on the governing principle of non-aggression, and was the foundation for the US.
I see the problem of how to re-educate the public to return to a voluntarism state... along with discovery of modern mechanism to stop the repeated entropy into authoritarism.
Voluntaryist != Statist
Don't try and co-opt another one of our terms- first it was libertarian, and now it's going to be voluntary/voluntarist. That said, the United States wasn't founded on the principles of Voluntarism- it was founded on the premise of brute force at the hands of governments. Criminals in every sense of the word (enablers and controllers of force, slave-owners, you name it) were what wrought this hell on earth, and our modern times are only reflective of those moral degenerates.
Moreover,trying to "prevent" the entropy of the State sinking further into authoritarianism is begging the question of the existence of the State in the first place, and just plain naive. The State and it's apparatus are by virtue brutal and vicious, rendering specific rights obsolete by merely existing.
Quote from: John Edward Mercier on October 06, 2008, 09:37 AM NHFT
What would be the 'over-arching framework' of anarchy?
The framework of pluralism.
The Articles of Confederation where voluntary, and 100% consensual...
Quote from: John Edward Mercier on October 06, 2008, 09:42 AM NHFT
The Articles of Confederation where voluntary, and 100% consensual...
Don't be disingenuous- the individuals themselves had not choice but to participate.
The US is not individuals.
It might be a modern misconception... but it is not accurate.
The United States are a union of Republics... at the State level voluntarism never existed.
This is due I believe to two things:
First, that many individuals at the time associated themselves with State.
Second, that agent representation and custodial representation were misconstrued as equal within the NH Con.
It tries to make the argument that A equals B, A does not equal C, but B equals C.
Which is not possible.
Quote from: John Edward Mercier on October 06, 2008, 10:07 AM NHFT
The US is not individuals.
It might be a modern misconception... but it is not accurate.
The United States are a union of Republics... at the State level voluntarism never existed.
This is due I believe to two things:
First, that many individuals at the time associated themselves with State.
Second, that agent representation and custodial representation were misconstrued as equal within the NH Con.
It tries to make the argument that A equals B, A does not equal C, but B equals C.
Which is not possible.
Sorry, but I haven't the time to decipher what you're getting at. Expand or more clearly define what you're getting at, and I'll give you my time.
Somalia is a bad example, since most of the violence stems from attempts to reinstitute a formal government.
Quote from: AnarchoJesse on October 06, 2008, 10:32 AM NHFT
Quote from: John Edward Mercier on October 06, 2008, 10:07 AM NHFT
The US is not individuals.
It might be a modern misconception... but it is not accurate.
The United States are a union of Republics... at the State level voluntarism never existed.
This is due I believe to two things:
First, that many individuals at the time associated themselves with State.
Second, that agent representation and custodial representation were misconstrued as equal within the NH Con.
It tries to make the argument that A equals B, A does not equal C, but B equals C.
Which is not possible.
Sorry, but I haven't the time to decipher what you're getting at. Expand or more clearly define what you're getting at, and I'll give you my time.
An agent is someone that you have chosen to represent you... a custodian is someone that is chosen to represent you. The NH CON equated this as one and the same. Its not.
It grants the State a parental privilege over the citizenry... and most likely was the reason for Article Ten.
A few of those writing it may have understood that authority annexed was a very dangerous concept.
Quote from: error on October 06, 2008, 10:34 AM NHFT
Somalia is a bad example, since most of the violence stems from attempts to reinstitute a formal government.
That actually makes it a very good example. :)
Quotea friend of mine asked me if i knew of any free staters who had the desire to go to a place where true anarchy exists, such as somalia.
Actually, while there was no govenment in Somalia I was quite intrigued by the idea of visiting there. Perhaps more as a symbolic token than anything. I would do it in a heartbeat if I decided I wanted to run a business since regulations and such would be dramatically easier to handle without regulations and because it would be a little "proof" that anarchy works.
Quoteso my question is this - why (in simple terms) is somalia a good/bad example of anarchy
Well, the biggest distinction between "anarchy" and "my vision of anarchy" is that ideally, the free market's "takeover" would be rooted out of choice. This isn't to say that my vision relies on the entire population of the planet suddently becoming "enlightened". I hold no belief that people will one day wake up and say "Okay, no more government". In my eyes, the key to a sustainable market anarchy will happen in a step down. Political activists will work on eliminating the monopolies government currently have and non-cooperative agorists will build and establish competing services, legal or not.
Over time, people will begin to have choices and for the various market reasons, people will (without being anti-state) choose to not do business with the government.
The key there though, is that the transition happen in a way that people see benefit in it. This didn't happen in Somalia, the previous government in Somalia was thrown off by a violent force and was rather sudden. It's not sustainable long term (in my eyes) because there will be a contingent who thinks that a government is the solution. Many of those people aren't blood thirsty power mongers (some may be) but people who haven't seen other solutions. Those solutions need to be in place before a sustainable, viable market anarchy can happen.
Quoteand how do we avoid a situation where violence and chaos breaks out in the sudden absence of government?
My honest opinion - you can't. Today, people are used to the idea of institutionalized violence. Even those of us who reject the idea have never actually seen a functional world without it. To many people, government really is as "unshakable" as gravity. You can't avoid chaos if gravity suddenly "turned off". If government collapses, but the only solution people can fathom is government, you will have chaos and bloodshed as people compete to establish a new government. This is why I call myself a voluntaryist AND agorist.
In Keene, trash collection is private. In most other places, it's a goverment run service. A lot of people object to the idea of "privatizing" trash collection because it's a change, not because they actually object to private trash services. If the ability to not think is removed, by government allowing competition or agorist business doing it anyway, those same people WILL choose the best trash collection service, however, once it's IN the market. I believe this aspect of competition is much more vitally important than education campaigns in the long run. People don't need to embrace liberty to simply make buying decisions that benefit them and if those choices are non-government options, the aggregate of them will still end in decreased power of the state.
Somalia is a perfect example of what could happen !! Take a look at crime in say Detroit, Baltimore even parts of Los Angeles . What would happen there if the government didn't exist. Might makes right armed gangs would completely take over, It probably wouldn't happen in NH but it certainly would in some places !!!
way to much focus on the all but unachievable end, not enough on the achievable means
"It finally amounts to this, which also I believe–`That government is best which governs not at all'; and
when men are prepared for it, that will be the kind of government which they will have." - Thoreau
Anarchy is something that is cultivated inside yourself. It isn't a political platform that you work for. When mankind has evolved socially to the point where the majority of men have cultivated interior freedom, that is when the state will cease to exist. Here's a quote from my blog page on anarchy:
Quote
Anarchy isn't about throwing bombs. And it really isn't even about destroying or undermining established governments. That's because anarchy isn't a political philosophy that one can hold with the aim of implementing it. Unlike a political party or movement, anarchy has no political platform. The platform of anarchy is fraternity and brotherhood. Anarchy starts with self-realization: realization that one is free, and because he is free he is also able to make things happen (either for good or for bad.) This process of self-realization leads to empowerment and the understanding that there is (and must be) personal responsibility for our actions; this realization enables the anarchist to interact with other people as other people, seeing through the pretentious titles and labels that people assume, and dealing with the other as a living, breathing, human being-a human being with intrinsic worth, but also a human being capable of making a difference in the world.
From this path of self-realization, the anarchist begins to realize that states are nothing more than agencies which threaten violence as a means of securing desired social aims. The anarchist realizes that social aims are best achieved by empowering the individual, not threatening him. He realizes that there are some people, (thankfully, a very few people,) who will not use their responsibility wisely; he accepts this rather than attempting to preemptively stop these people by adopting a form of society which ultimately removes the sense of responsibility and reflection of the people by prescribing a long list of "do's and don'ts"; he recognizes this system as ultimately reinforcing the very behavior that it would seek to proscribe. The ultimate aim of the anarchist, then, is not to undermine the civil government. Rather, the aim of the anarchist is to help others to realize that they are free human beings, whose dignity cannot be affronted through numerous appeals to law and order. The anarchist wishes all men to see that a law cannot be obeyed because it is a law - but that all laws must submit to the judgment of human decency and the code of human ethics, and that the source of that judgment (the human conscience) is a facet of each individual's perception of his own empowerment.
Thus, the anarchist does not seek disorder by destroying civil government, rather, he seeks to promote a society where individuals seek their own order cooperatively, and the state thus becomes superfluous.
QuoteTake a look at crime in say Detroit
When I lived in Detroit, the vast majority of crime was over drugs. When was the last time you say someone shot over distribution rights to Gatorade? Never, and if so, certainly not a newsworthy epidemic. Without govenment, this wouldn't be happening because "illegal" drugs like cocaine and cannabis would be handled in the exact same way the "legal" ones would - as business ventures run by consent and voluntary exchange. Advertising would replace gun shots in "who can sell here".
There's also the fact that Detroit's government is quite literally, one of the biggest criminal organizations. I'm not talking libertarian rhetoric here either. Detroit is the city where police frequently shoot deaf men for brandishing rakes and several examples of police brutality for saying things like "Fuck the police". More often than not, the police are directly involved with the underground - drugs and prostitution mainly. Not only do they have legitimized authority to use violence, but they perpetuate the illegitimate violence quite actively.
QuoteBaltimore
Somewhat of the same thing, except I think that Baltimore cops in general are just a bit more sadistic, though a bit less violent.
Quoteeven parts of Los Angeles
Michigan, Maryland and California are your examples of why MORE goverment is good? Think about that for a minute. I'm assuming you've never lived in any of those states? Michigan has so much government that they're driving their economy into the core of the earth. They've got enough "Democrat" government opposing the "republican" government to give the impression that it's not so bad, but they're got assloads of government regulation nonetheless. Michigan in the mid 90's also began a "Tough on crime" campaign which increased the pentalties of drug crimes (see above comment about the majority of violence in Detroit being drug related) which increased costs to fund the police. More people with less money, a blackmarket that pays better than most legitimate business ventures due to the extreme regulation (when you can force Google out of Ann Arbor because the cost of recruiting U of M students it so high, you KNOW you've got issues) and you've got a LOT of people dealing in black market activities that get perpetuated by violence.
Michigan, and Detroit in specific, is the perfect example of a downward spiral caused by government's inability to respond to market signals and the govenrment reliance on force.
Maryland isn't as "lucky" as Michigan. In Maryland, the big government is almost entirely the nanny state liberal variety. The US Constitution says "the people's right to bear arms ... shall not be infringed" but take a look at what hoops Maryland required to get a handgun. Just two days ago there was a report on how the City of Baltimore wants to "step up" their gun seizure programs. http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/local/baltimore_city/bal-md.ci.guns04oct04,0,7081652.story
One thing they noted... They're getting less guns off the street, and crime is dropping. Go figure.
The City Of Baltimore has a Gun Offender Registry, similar to the Sex Offender Registry.
I don't even need to go into my California has big government.
QuoteWhat would happen there if the government didn't exist.
A lot less people would die.
QuoteMight makes right armed gangs would completely take over
Why do you pay taxes? What happens if you don't? Stop when a car with flashing blue lights pulls behind you? Pay some people money for a little card that lets you drive on roads you pay for? Sell a medical service without asking permission? Deliver mail to a mailbox if you're not a member of a special club?
Seems that "might versus right" arguement cuts both ways.
Quote from: AnarchoJesse on October 06, 2008, 09:34 AM NHFT
Quote from: Jared on October 05, 2008, 11:52 PM NHFT
i was reading an older discussion about somalia (http://nhunderground.com/forum/index.php?topic=3104.60) tonight, because a friend of mine asked me if i knew of any free staters who had the desire to go to a place where true anarchy exists, such as somalia. unfortunately, i did not know much about somalia, so i didn't make much of a response. so my question is this - why (in simple terms) is somalia a good/bad example of anarchy, and how do we avoid a situation where violence and chaos breaks out in the sudden absence of government?
How are we defining "chaos" here? Chaos in the classical sense, that everything has gone to the wolves? Or chaos in the sense that you have some random acts of violence within an over-arching framework that can be described as "orderly"? Because as far as I can tell, it's under a Statist system that we have chaos- routinely do we have murder, theft, and extortion engaged in.
That said I have no desire to go to Somalia- why? Well, for one it isn't a "true" anarchy. The presence of the United States, United Nations, and African Union are enough to convince me of this. Secondly, I don't desire to go to a barren nation with nothing for me to look at. That'd just be a shitty vacaction.
i'm referring to all hell breaking lose, violence in the streets, looting, that sort of thing.
those are some good responses, guys. i particularly liked what caleb and kevin dean had to say..you both seemed to be going down the same track of education and enlightenment as a path to anarchy. the talk about violence in the big cities interested me. the fact is, one of the biggest reasons for the more violent/primitive behavior in these places is that these are sanctuaries for big nanny governments. welfare, horrible schools, gun laws, and high taxes all create a more violent and primitive atmosphere....so maybe there would be widespread violence, looting, etc in these types of areas if the government suddenly disappeared. people would become frightened at the loss of their nanny state, and the fear would naturally lead to violence. maybe anarchy really cannot happen overnight and be successful, at least not in the current nanny state. the problem is, i feel that man, if anything, is devolving as government grows larger and more powerful. i think it could take a long time of reversing the current situation before people will be ready. ultimately, however, a lack of government is the only morally justifiable system (or lack of a system). at least that's how i feel.
i would really like to hear russell's opinion on this. i noticed in the older post that he had seemed to say that it would be a good thing if government disappeared tomorrow, rather then faced a more step by step decline. i'm still pretty open and undecided about this, so i'd like to hear justification for that thought process as well.
A cultural shift is required if we are going to succeed in eliminating government. The beginnings of that shift are underway now, here, and accelerating that shift is one of the things we need people doing. I'll write more on this later.
Somalia isn't appealing to us because it's just not very developed or advanced. That has nothing to do with it being with practically no central government now. It was undeveloped when it did have that government. You can't compare it to some governed country that happens to be more advanced and say Somalia sucks because there's no central government. You're not isolating government's influence in such a case. Somalia has become more prosperous since the central government collapse.
The notion of "sudden violence" cracks me up because it's implies that we're not having LOTS of violence right now. It's just that government monopolizes and legitimizes that violence so that people don't really pay much attention to it. You're worried about someone breaking into your house and taking your stuph? 7/8 of your stuph is being stolen continually right now! The U.S. is locking up a higher percentage of the people than any country in history. The drug war is perpetuating the vast majority of the crime we're having right now. And let's not forget the brown people we're killing by the thousands (millions really) who are worth just as much as white people. Let's not overlook all of this when we get our panties in a wad over potential "sudden violence". ::)
I'm not saying that the government is working in those cities in the US. And no I have not lived in those cities but I have spent weeks in those cities in most of the poorer areas. What I am saying is those areas have serious problems and taking all government out of those cities will cause worse problems than there are now. As far as the crime being over drugs I agree but legalizing will not change that unless the government taxes and regulates and then it might as well go back to being illegal and what will the poor do without government checks every month. What I'm saying is the current situation would worsen if government was gone at present we need to solve the social problems in ways thatdon't invole making the government any bigger.
QuoteWhat I am saying is those areas have serious problems and taking all government out of those cities will cause worse problems than there are now.
No, it wouldn't. Right now, people who don't harm people are being locked in cages by men with guns. Faster than any other nation in the world, in fact. China, with 1/6 of the world's population, has less people in prison than America, and Christianity is illegal there. So is speaking against the government or looking at porn. That speaks volumes and volumes to the violence initiated and perpetuated by the state.
QuoteAs far as the crime being over drugs I agree but legalizing will not change that unless the government taxes and regulates
Do you really believe that or are you merely trying to be a troll? If you're trolling, so be it, I won't waste my time. If you truly believe that, you probably need to learn a bit about the nature of taxes (namely that pointing guns at people and demanding money is a really unethical thing to do). Additionally, if you really believe that, I'd like to know what you think makes a cannabis plant or a crack rock so "special" that the government has to tax it. Corn, which is a plant just like cannabis, grows even when the government doesn't tax it. It can be harvested, transported and sold without being taxed. Just because something "has always" been that way doesn't mean it's inherent to it's nature. Until people decided "We do not need Kings" everybody knew that kings were merely a way of life. Today, everybody "knows" that government is unavoidable and necessary, but like that whole "Sun circles Earth" thing, what everyone knew was wrong.
Quotewhat will the poor do without government checks every month.
I'm guessing you're a (former?) Democrat? It seems, like myself, you've bought into the idea that govenment is merely the services that it provides people. In your eyes, the government vanishing is essentially roads going "poof" and welfare checks stopping! Think of the chaos that would cause.
Like most liberals (again, including myself at one point) you totally ignore the "government behind the curtain", so-to-speak. You ignore that minimum wage laws, which prevent poor unskilled workers from making themselves attractive to would-be first jobs. You ignore zoning restrictions that prevent people from starting home based businesses. You ignore the stipends that landowners would receive when the government is no longer forcing them to rent to the electric companies for free (do you think homeowners get PAID for having those electric poles up?). You ignore the people today (like nurses) who can't practice important trades become the govenrment licensing boards require five more years of study. Even if those poor people had less money, do you think that having nurses (instead of doctors) able to give vaccinations would help a poor family stretch their healthcare dollar? What about a vetrenarian giving stitches to minor wounds at $75 instead of the ER doing it for $200? Both professionals are equally trained and skilled, the procedure is the same regardless of the patient.
What you see is the "good" (ignoring for a moment, the violence the government requires to do ANYTHING) that would be gone, but you fail almost entirely to account for the potential that is limited at the point of a gun from good people all around the world.
Might I suggest some great reading for you? Dr. Mary Ruwart's book "Healing Our World In An Age Of Aggression" does a lot to break down the myths that govenrment manages to do anything positive. Of course, it breaks is down into several areas, from labor laws to medical care to education and all of that good stuff. You can read the first edition online for free at http://ruwart.com/Healing/rutoc.html
Do those cities have gun laws preventing people in those poorer areas from arming themselves? I guarantee a drop in crime if that changes. Now, if the government were suddenly not present like... instantly, while people remain unarmed due to oppression that was still in place right up to that point, then yes, there will be a period of chaos. If they're dependent on checks and the checks suddenly go away, then yes, the dependence that government has fostered along with the economic depression it creates will mean things will get worse for a bit. Eventually they would reap the massive economic benefits of a free market and the truly poor would be a very rare thing.
It's all academic, of course. It's really little more than a silly game to try and predict what WOULD happen because that's not the way a government goes away- overnight, unless it's kind of inevitable and unavoidable and is the fault of the government itself being so god awful bad that it rapidly collapses, except perhaps in these temporary situations where there is a sudden vacuum of government for a short while due to some disaster; again unavoidable and not really relevant to a discussion about permanent government alternatives.
If it's the result of a culture shift away from supporting the government, which is likely the only thing that will actually get us more freedom, it would tend to be a gradual replacement of government power with voluntary replacements. More and more people would gradually lose faith and begin to withdraw their support, quit playing the political games and running on the democracy hamster wheels designed to feed the legitimacy illusions, avoiding taxes and fees whenever possible, starving the beast, having no irrational guilt about participating in the gray and black markets which would avoid yet more taxes and feed a healthier free market economy. They'd stop turning people in for victimless crimes or providing false witness against their neighbors, etc. The government would weaken simultaneously with the growth of healthier, moral institutions. I don't know that authoritarian models of government, or violent attempts at such models would ever go away completely, but they'd certainly lose more and more of a stranglehold on us because individuals would have changed in the crucial ways necessary to perpetuate freedom and prosperity.
It's a fallacy to think of it as a binary thing, as in we have government and then BOOM, we have anarchy. In actuality, there is only moral action and immoral action and a continual spectrum in the collective sense. We want to move toward the moral end of that spectrum toward more voluntary activity and less crime, authoritarian government merely being a subclass of crime, which also happens to be a very effective type of crime.
AnarchoMartyr Wrote:
"Don't try and co-opt another one of our terms- first it was libertarian, and now it's going to be voluntary/voluntarist."
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sure glad the co-opting of terms by "libertarians", "anarcho"-capitalists has been brought up...
tho i try not to hyphenate the anarchism reflected here, the co-opting of historic anarchist terms and theory to somehow rationalize its use by "libertarians" can be, at times, disconcerting...
to point this out further, and if i may, i suggest the following piece from Anarchist Writers entitled "A reply to "Capitalist Praise For Anarcho-Syndicalism"
http://anarchism.pageabode.com/anarcho/reply-to-capitalist-praise-for-anarcho-syndicalism
enjoy, and as always
Be Well
ps: sorry for not getting a good handle on the quote function... i'll keep practicing ;)
Proudhon never fully developed a position. Even the position on labor changed relative to an understanding of specialization (skill) and productivity. The position relative to real estate was formed based on feudalism. And is even being reassessed under modern capitalism, where the relative nature of productive value leads to the most efficient means to be renting rather than owning real estate.
Quote from: Jared on October 06, 2008, 03:58 PM NHFT
i'm referring to all hell breaking lose, violence in the streets, looting, that sort of thing.
that happens in SouthCentral LA ... maybe we should get rid of the ruling system
Quote from: error on October 06, 2008, 10:34 AM NHFT
Somalia is a bad example, since most of the violence stems from attempts to reinstitute a formal government.
A strong THIS. Simple and to the point. Thank you. +1
Quote from: KBCraig on October 06, 2008, 12:24 PM NHFT
Quote from: error on October 06, 2008, 10:34 AM NHFT
Somalia is a bad example, since most of the violence stems from attempts to reinstitute a formal government.
That actually makes it a very good example. :)
No, he means it's a bad example of a true anarchy. It IS a good example of how governments are just gangs wanting to have power over everyone though.
Chaos will ensue when the government is forcibly removed, without the consent of all those being governed. If you and I somehow "ended government" today, then all those dependent on it will choose what, to them, is the default option: chaos.
However, there won't be any kind of "chaos" if the government is removed voluntarily thanks to the opting-out of individuals on a case-by-case, consensual basis - or the understanding that said individuals never, really "opted-in" to begin with.
Now, that is not to say there won't be violence, murder, theft, etc. But these are human problems, innate to the human condition and inseparable from human existence. Such problems will exist no matter what "system" - or "lack thereof" - we are living with. But my understanding of the word "chaos", as used by most people when questioning anarchist philosophy, is a state of affairs in which arbitrary violence occurs without any real reason or motive by the perpetrators. This sort of "chaos" will definitely occur if government is ended abruptly and without consent, but it will not occur under a voluntary anarchist society.
I suppose people are so used to organized, systematic coercion that they fear arbitrary violence, expressed by arbitrary people, more than they fear violence brought upon by a familiar and known enemy. Again though, if we end the government consensually there will be no such "chaos" or "arbitrary violence" - at least, not any more than there would otherwise be.