Why anarchy doesnt work

The idea is that political power, like all other forms of power, is amoral and neutral. Its morality depends upon the wielder, which is why, as Sargon of Akkad correctly points out , the absolutist argument that governments and states are always bad lacks nuance, because it is built upon a false dichotomy. Some people are good. Some people are bad. The key is in figuring out which is which and getting the good to control the bad.

Statists would carve out territory for their nations while the anarchists would carve out territory for Ancapistan. However, this would be a logical contradiction. For this situation to work, a public dividing line between the two groups must exist.

If you kill all the authoritarians, does that make you authoritarian? In demarcating the two territories, a unifying social organization to enforce the statelessness of that society so that the ideologies of both groups are forced to remain isolated would have to be present, which is yet another contradiction for anarchists, though it remains perfectly consistent with the statist worldview.

It even remains consistent with other non-anarchic forms of libertarianism, since minarchy and nationalism are not mutually exclusive concepts. Of course, this raises an interesting question.

Why are territorial borders necessarily a bad thing? However, at least in the abstract, there is nothing inherently nefarious about the concept of public borders. Again, this goes back to the bottom-up philosophy. If I, as an individual, can define and establish property rights, then part of that right necessarily includes the ability to delegate or otherwise alienate such a right to a collective.

For instance, a family, club, or business can own property jointly because the several individuals within it can, and their wills are in alignment. Why would this be any different for larger scale organizations like cities and States? This may actually be an argument you have heard before — the sort of Mongol Army style conquest wherein some powerful, organized force of evil intent rides through, conquering small patches of weak individuals here and there until eventually the whole continent is brought under heel and a tax farm is imposed.

Threats such as these are quite real and a perfectly valid concern. My response to this rebuttal is threefold. So, small comfort there. Are you? People would have stood up to the income tax and the Federal Reserve and gotten it thrown out in , instead of trying to justify and defend it.

The key is to get those who should rule to rule those that need to be ruled. Whether through cowardice or apathy, or inability, or simply the division of labor, there will always be those who prefer to outsource the defense of their liberties to others. That some need, or wish, to be ruled creates a need for rulers; and as with any other commodity or service, there is a nuance to the relationship created between the haves and have-nots.

In a way, you could say the State itself is just another child of the free market. Again, the main issue is in separating the one from the other and figuring out which is which. This brings me to the third part of my rebuttal, which is: if vigilance is the price of liberty, why is that true only of anarchy but not minarchy? Or for that matter, any other form of government? As Thomas Jefferson said:. They fix, too, for the people the principles of their political creed.

Some anarchists like to claim that minarchy can never work because the Constitution either permits authoritarianism or is otherwise powerless to stop it. Indeed, people are the key to everything.

The character of people is ultimately what creates good and evil and what defines whether a political system will work or not. The people are more important than the system. If we could reliably roll Marcus Aurelius and Solomon every turn, even dictatorship could be made to work. The only reason we shy away from that is because those are long odds, but even a completely voluntary society will still have evil men seeking power. Power is neutral and amoral; the only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun.

Minarchy has the best payout-to-odds ratio, and has the benefit of not falling into the same logical or pragmatic contradictions as anarchy. There need not be a Great Organizer or Great Provider for us to collaborate with each other so that we can create things that benefit us. WRT things that work, nature and evolution works. While one can favor things that work, one can also look for ways to improve things. Sure Yahoo! Sure taxis work but Uber, Lyft, etc work better. Sure hotels work but Airbnb, etc work better.

Sure GM, Ford, etc work but Tesla works better. Sure Blockbuster, etc worked but Netflix works better. Sure Borders, etc works but Amazon works better. And so on. Oh, while one can favor things that work, one can also look for ways to improve things.

By the way, states have existed only during a very short period of the history of mankind. For the most part we have lived in quite egalitarian hunter-gatherers groups. You are commenting using your WordPress. You are commenting using your Google account. You are commenting using your Twitter account. You are commenting using your Facebook account. Notify me of new comments via email.

Notify me of new posts via email. Welcome Travelers…. Welcome Travelers… The Road Upward. Search Search for: Go. Filed Under anarchism fails , government , happy Scandanavian countries , necessity of the state.

Anarchists protesting. Liberty is license or privilege over possessions. Freedom is a response of need. We need each other free if we wish to understand and be understood.

There is nothing unilateral freedom is. As such it is liberty equated with freedom, not government per se, that is its enemy. As for Reagan, he was an atrocity as a president. He invented and promoted the Jim Crow economics we live under today.

He negotiated with Iran to keep our people hostage until after the election, in return for a promise of illegal weapons sales. And he stalled the fall of the Soviet Union even as he pretended to seek its ruin. He could easily have come to terms with Gorbachev, but used the Star Wars program as a pretext to scuttle talks. The speech he gave in Berlin was given at a time when Gorbachev was already in separate negotiations with Western Europe to open the Eastern Bloc countries.

The "tear down this wall" remark was just another of Reagan's monumental hoaxes, he knew it was imminent anyway. Turning and turning in the widening gyre The falcon cannot hear the falconer; Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere The ceremony of innocence is drowned; The best lack all conviction, while the worst Are full of passionate intensity.

Free Birds I saw some birds fly by today and wondered why they are free to fly and live as they please and we, mankind, needs to be governed, ruled and controlled?

If birds can be free then why can't we? And if our manmade rules are there as we are led to believe for our own protection, why is it that we continue to self-destruct? If the innumerable rules we already have can't keep us from destroying ourselves and this planet, are more rules the solution? How many more do we need to survive? Or rather, is it the rules themselves that are the cause of our own demise? If you believe in bible stories, hmmm, wasn't it a single rule, not to eat a certain fruit that lost paradise?

Had there been no rules, might paradise still be here today? Today we have more rules than can be counted and the effect seems to be very much the same, Earth lost. If there were no rules would we live in harmony? Are rules the problem? Is freedom the ultimate solution we are searching for? It seems to be working for everything else but us. Wouldn't it be nice to try freedom and see. Imagine to be as free as a bird and live and fly as you please.

Thursday, February 5, -- PM. Some rules help us keep from bumping into each other. But even as we stop at the stop-sign we are free to critique whether it is needed at that intersection.

If that critique had no plausible hope of being heeded we would be less free. But the power of legislation, not the absence of law, is what freedom is. Birds, by the way, all live under a highly developed and strictly enforced ranking system. It's called pecking order. As for me, as attractive as flying without mechanical support may be, I would not trade arms and hands and opposable thumbs for wings and a barrel chest.

But one odd thing keeps coming out in your posts, you clearly have some implicit sense of what I've been getting at, even if you repudiate this explicitly. The first thing you wrote months ago was that the universe is immeasurable which it isn't. Yesterday you referred to a wall of countless bricks how many bricks make a wall, anyway. From a man who takes all one this seems strange. But more to the point, it expresses a sense that number gets lost in a more encompassing meaning.

Your mistake in this, I think, is that you regard this loss as a mode of induction rather than, as I would argue, reduction.

How extensive must the count be before we recognize that there is a more encompassing meaning? How extensive must the count be before the notion of number gets lost to the meaning of it?

The answer is not the most extensive term, but the least. The reduction that at first finds solidity evaporating before probabilistic flux between matter and energy, and ultimately a meaning even such probabilities cannot calculate.

The result is meaning. The least term of time is that differing that can only be described as the lost enumerator. The least term of time is all the differing it is. It is not until we have pressed through all the question that we can achieve satisfactory answers. It is the rigor of that count, and the loss of any sense in the notion of its enumeration, that we learn the meaning of words and come to know each other the person each is in that character of loss.

But like any loss, it is only the response recognized it not its own and yet of worth is that meaning articulated in the world, however real that loss is.

But we need each other free for this completion to the drama of loss and recognition that meaning, and person, is. There is no freedom alone or unilateral. It is not letting be or being at liberty, it is a need fulfilled in the freedom enabled through that need. Freedom is the product of not being alone in loss. And if I may ask again, how many rules are there in your measurable Universe?

Friday, February 6, -- PM. Monday, February 9, -- PM. Hawking wrote: "philosophy is dead" and that was the end of that. Philosophy is truth and truth will set us FREE! Tuesday, February 10, -- PM. Leafology Socates whilst walking through the park came across his friend Enstein standing in the shade under a tree.

After some greetings Socates asked,? Enstein replied,? I am here doing some very important scientific work scientifically measuring the number of leaves that have fallen from this tree.? For what reason? Socates asked, Einstein answered,? Is Nature measurable? Socates asked? Then asked further,?

Enstein replied? Are you absolutely certain of you measurement? Enstein responded,? As he counted a light breeze came up and flipped a leaf over exposing yet another leaf. Well well well? Enstein smiled and counted again and said,? Would you wager everything you know Enstein that scientifically your measurement is absolutely correct?? Enstein showing some discomfort now said,? I am certain there are 6.

And to prove it to you I will right here and now count them again.? As he began to count a bit of a wind came by and blew all of the leaves away, much to Enstein?

Now it was Socates time to smile and ask,? Eistein turned to Socates and said, " hmmm, smart question, is it measure that is in need of measure?? Socates replied,? Michael, You have both Einstein and Socrates quite wrong. Socrates was a Pythagorean. Einstein had a very highly developed sense of humor. Have you ever heard of Michaelson-Morley? Or the Lorentz transformation? By the way, the universe is something like fifteen billion years old, as I recall, and that sets an outer limit of that many light years in radius.

A good deal less, I expect, since it is has almost certainly not expanded that fast for that long. But physics and I parted company, for the most part, many years ago, it was not where my fascination lay. Not sufficiently, at least, to justify the work of getting as good at it as I felt I could have been. If you take offence athiestic assertions, you'll love section of Nietzsche's The Gay Science.

Wednesday, February 11, -- PM. Tuesday, February 24, -- PM. Contrary to what James Martell posits, "anarchy" seems foolish both in theory and in practice. Throughout the discussion, he and Ken and John were selective in the situations they considered, elided over how collective decisions are made in an anarchic society, and did not acknowledge the value of coordination by leaders and the import of the protection of intellectual property.

I agree that anarchy is not chaos. I just had the pleasure of spending a week in Bali, and a relatively undeveloped part of Bali.

No traffic signals, limited road space. The "rules" of the road needed no enforcement mechanism -- it was understood that any car or truck could stop in a lane to deliver goods and the cars and scooters behind would pile up until the way became clear.

Scooters weaved, safely, in and around. In the week, not only did I not see an accident, or evidence of an accident, but I did not see any dented cars.

Of course, speeds were approximately 20 mph so it took an hour to make a trip that in a modern society with ample roads would take half that or less. How well then does anarchy scale? Worse, neither James nor Ken nor John acknowledge, at least not explicitly, the value of leadership and coordination -- which is the essence of an entrepreneur. There are many goods and services that require considerable knowledge and coordination ability, which requires some authority and hierarchy.

In the same vein, it is naive to believe that most innovation occurs by individuals who have an intrinsic desire to innovate. Sure, artists and inventors love to create and tinker, but without education -- which necessarily builds upon knowledge and skills developed across generations and would be unlikely to be generated let alone protected and disseminated, without an authority to protect.

There is little doubt that the most innovative societies -- in engineering, medicine, the arts and music, Which itself is to say that anarchic societies will produce fewer public goods, and basic economic theory and experience show that the private market does not produce enough public goods.

Such a dearth of public goods would prevent each individual from realizing his potential. As to the police, James referred to disputes that exist within the society, stating that anarchic societies policing themselves. This analysis is incomplete; omitted are assignments of duties to protect the society from outside attacks.

How does an anarchic society determine who risks their "property" or, even if there is no private property, their lives, to defend when an external threat besets the society? Whether that threat be another group of individuals, or something from Nature, such as a snowstorm or hurricane or drought.

Ken and John took this bait and claimed, without evidence, that the police often exacerbate situations. Almost certainly, without getting into a semantic discussion, the police in democratic socities that protect civil liberties, are almost always responding to disputes that already exist -- intra-family squabbles, robberies, rapes, What form of justice is meted out to parents who do not vaccinate their children and thus your child, who is too young to be vaccinated, becomes infected?

Which leads me to my last point: James never stated the criteria or procedure to arrive at a collective decision. Meting out punishment, resources and time from each individual to be contributed to the production of public goods, Majority rule is only one possible solution method, which still begs the question of who gets to vote; moreover, it is a well-known in economics and political science that majority-rules criterion is not transitive.

Which means that when there are three options, the option that the majority selects, a majority may prefer an option that was not selected! By way of example, even a small group of friends may have difficulty deciding where to go for dinner or what movie to see. Oftentimes, majority rules or some form of reciprocity -- majority rules however may run into the problem stated above, and reciprocity requires that there be a future interaction. Now, consider a larger group of individuals who are anonymous in that they may not encounter each other in the future.

Such reciprocal behaviors are unlikely to arise, and what are the incentives of individuals to form bonds with other individuals when those bonds are so easily dissolved, if the formation of such bonds does not entail obligations? In short, anarchic societies are greatly limited in size, which means that they are incapable of making significant advancements and of protecting the society from many external threats, which together inhibit if not prevent individuals from realizing their potential, which Rawls stated as one of the primary goals of justice.

Even the most basic unit of a society, the family, is almost always hierarchical. Saturday, November 3, -- AM. In an ideal society where all people have a highly ethical and educational background, anarchy would be the obvious way to go. However, societies consist of all kinds of people, most or too many of which do not have these basic personalty requirements enabling them to live in a society of anarchy.

Soonner or later such people will want to depart from agreed principles of co-existence without laws and this is what will cause major disturbances. We have enough people breaking laws as societis are; can we imagine what it would be like if we remove the laws that discourage many people from causing harm to others? Skip to main content. Search form Search.

Laura Maguire. Anarchy: Utopian Dream or Dystopian Nightmare? Jan 25, Democracy in Crisis Mar 22, Democratic systems of government are supposed to reflect the interests of ordinary citizens, and not some shadowy political elite. The Radical Democracy Movement Jul 03, Liberal democracy has its problems, including the fact that in trying to build consensus, it often ends up oppressing minorities or those who dissent.

Jan 15, Americans value democracy, and expect others to value it. The Allure of Authoritarianism Oct 06, Authority and Resistance Apr 21, Authority can refer to people or institutions that have the political power to make decisions, give orders, and enforce rules.

Tags anarchism anarchy Democracy political theory. Blog Archive October Persons, Community, and the Akan. Why Is Math So Useful? On Awesomeness. Is Facebook Morally Responsible? Microaggressions and Intention. The Slow Miracles of Thought. Literary Minds.

Summer Dylan Reading. Unnecessary Necessities. The Philosophy of the Vienna Circle. Cracking Down on Disinformation. What Montaigne Knew. Is Meritocracy Possible? A Solution. What Makes A Man? Replacing Freud. What Tech Says. The Mathematics of Democracy. When Do False Beliefs Exculpate? Gaining Knowledge without Learning. December The Year in Poetry. Finding Minds in a Material World. Should the Arts Be for All? Whose Fault Is It Anyway? Why We Argue About Fiction. Why Games Matter.

Reasons to Hate. Abortion and Humanity. Skepticism and Trust in Science. Philosophy for the Apocalypse. Who Gets to be a Citizen? Does Meritocracy Have Merit? Discriminating Streets. Abortion and Dehumanization.

On Jerks and Ethicists. A Cat's Life. The Value of Metaphor in a Pandemic. Benjamin and Modern Enchantment. The Ethics of Pet Keeping. Celebrating Our th Episode. Covid and the Veil of Ignorance. Your Racist Mental Habits. Demonizing Black Men. Listener Covidundrums. Puzzle 3: Kant on Lying to Robots. Can Philosophy Help in a Crisis? Narrative Burnout. A Pandemic of Dreams. More Money Matters.

FrancisOnFilm: Crip Camp. Money Matters. Proust and Social Distance. Puzzle 2: What is an Identity? Philosophy and the Superhero. Trying to Let Go of the Past. Thinking and Mental Action. Puzzle 1: Are Beliefs Voluntary?

Viral Xenophobia. Sorry, Critics: Parasite is a Good Movie. Anti-Sacred Spaces. Is the Self Real? FrancisOnFilm: Dionysus for Docs. Rough Humor. Comedy on the Edges. What the Future Holds. How Much Thought Is Inactive? A Tribute to Ken Taylor. Nonhuman Persons, Nonhuman Rights. Francis-on-Film: Parasite. Sanctuary Cities. Part II. Hobbes and the Absolute State. Real Horror.

Machine Consciousness. FrancisOnFilm: Downton Abbey. Should We Trust Polls? The Appeal of Authoritarianism. Music as a Way of Knowing. Explanation at Its Best. What's In a Picture? Changing Minds on Climate Change. Against Introspection. Self Knowledge on Trial. The Doomsday Doctrine. A Simple Test for Fake News.

Postmodernism: The Decline of Truth. How to Think Two Thoughts at Once. JS Mill and the Good Life. Letting Go of Human Nature. Tolerance and Radical Disagreement.

A Licentious Lannister? Working for Faith. What Is Reading? Anti-Semitism is Racism. FrancisOnFilm: Shazam!

Philanthropy vs. Authority and Resistance. Wanting to Want for Its Own Sake. Hacking Our Sense Perceptions. Sexy Beasts. Ken's Big Announcement. FrancisOnFilm: Green Book. Your Question: Integrate or Assimilate? Controversy About Climate Denial. Immigration and Multiculturalism. Mind the Gaps! FrancisOnFilm: Minding the Gap. Five Types of Climate Change Deniers. Finding Yourself in a Virtual Fiction.

FrancisOnFilm: Aquaman. The Puzzle of the Unconscious. Is Envy Always a Vice? FrancisOnFilm: Brexit. Getting Clear on the Replication Crisis. How Not to Fall Asleep. Freud's Philosophical Challenges. December The Examined Year: — Uncut. On Morally Condemning the Past. Philosophical Freud. Foucault on Power. The Creative Life. Does Reputation Matter?

Anti-Semitism The Wrong Abortion Question. How MeToo Helps Men. Can Reason Save Us? The Philosophy of Westworld. Do They Believe in God? The Psychology of Cruelty. Lessons from Lobsters. Athletics and the Philosophical Life. Should Algorithms Decide? Failing Successfully. FrancisOnFilm: Mission Impossible.

Does Science Over-reach? The Truly Beautiful Game. Radical Ideas about Markets. Enlightenment Peddlers. The Ethics of Homeschooling. One Person, One Vote? Puppet Philosophers. Why America is not a Nation. Distortion in Philosophy. Philosophers and the Meaning of Life. The Ethics of Care. Should Robots Be Caregivers?

How a Glitch Caused a Crisis. An Antidote to Bullshit. Repugnant Markets. Is Kanye a Philosopher? The Twilight Zone and the Human Condition. What is it Like to Lose Your Identity? Against Marriage. The Morality of Big Business. On Deepities and Bullshit. Consciousness Deniers?

Faith and Humility. Happy th, Karl Marx! May the Fourth Be With You. Is There Life on Mars? Toppling the Dehumanization Thesis. Are We Really All Equals? Stop Silencing Sex Workers. The Not-So-Goodness of Liberalism? Trolling, Bullying, and Flame Wars. A Case for Conservative Universities. Self Help, Nietzsche, and the Patriarchy. Can Technologies Be Monstrous?

The End of Privacy. Technology Ethics. The Irreverent Peter Sloterdijk. Is Every Idea Worth Engaging? Adorno and the Culture Industry. From Pessimism to Nihilism. Is Alexa a Setback for Feminism? Racist Algorithms and Fair Sentencing. Humble Disagreement.

Philosophy for Prisoners. Moral Philosophy and The Good Place. Stories To Think With. Is Killmonger to Blame?