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by pdonis 3660 days ago
> It's impossible to have a society without laws

If by "laws" you simply mean that people's behavior in a society is constrained by what other people in the society will accept, yes, it's impossible to have a society without "laws". But that in no way implies that it is impossible to have a society without laws in the sense that term is usually used--i.e., laws that come out of some kind of formal process, either legislative enactments (statute) or judicial decisions (common law) that are accepted as binding on everyone in the society, not just the parties to a particular case.

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For those who want to see such a mental experiment to be visualized for convenience, read these two books:

"The Dispossessed" by Ursula K. Le Guin

"The Moon is a Harsh Mistress" by Robert A. Heinlein

These two give two radically different, perspectives of what such a society, with implicit rules and norms basically enforced by on-the-spot consensus, might look like.

(Note, I'm not saying that societies depicted in these books are likely, or even possible. It's fiction, after all, and arguably utopian fiction at that. But it does help in putting a more concrete image to the abstract concept of anarchism.)