[JumpCrisscross]

> Anarchists believe in unmediated relations between free individuals, the absence of any coercive or alienating forces in societies, and an unquestionable, universal right to self-determination

If you and I can interface “unmediated” and freely, and I decide to use that freedom to take your shit, you need a “coercive or alienating force” to correct the wrong. Controlling this force is the history of civilisation.

[jessaustin]

Does this model suggest that anarchy might be more tenable in situations of relative plenty? After all if everyone had enough shit there wouldn't be as much cause to take the shits of others?

Of course we'd still have to come up with activities to occupy all the "guard dog" will-to-power types when they no longer had good excuse to brutalize unfortunates. My suggestion would be a new violent sport! Since physical fitness is on the wane, probably something incorporating motorized scooters?

[mattmaroon]

People don't take things because they need them. They take things because it's a biological imperative. Lack of scarcity won't change the nature of an animal whose psyche is the product of millions of years of scarcity.

[jessaustin]

Evo-psych arguments are always weak, but this one would work slightly better if it were focused on violence rather than property. It isn't as if Homo sapiens evolved in an environment of flatscreen televisions and automobiles. A Neolithic tribe "owned" a couple of arrowheads and a big flat rock for cracking nuts. If they lost those they'd presumably just get some more.

More to the point, we didn't evolve in an environment that included police. Police were invented in the 19th century (for largely questionable purposes such as racism and anti-unionism). For hundreds of millennia before that, we survived without them. It's true that there existed various forces of "authority" over that period, but these were concerned about people taking the authority's shit. A cursory familiarity with history and archaeology convinces one that "coercive and alienating forces" rarely prioritize the interests of the general public.

[the_cyber_pass]

Just to comment on this. A common google search would have pointed out that your ideas about local police forces are largely incorrect. Police have been a thing for much longer. The big thing that happened in more recent history (Meaning 1700s) is separating them from the private market, the military or unregulated local mobs. You can trace the enforcers of civil law through force all the way back to ancient Babylon because civil unrest is bad for raising taxes. You could argue this were not police but rather various forms of 'authority,' but it's dishonest to say that they were not acting like police.

Easy example of this would be Cohortes Urbanae in ancient Rome which was specifically formed because the Praetorian Guard was too corrupt even by Roman standards at the time and mobs, gangs and 'random' violence were common.

[jessaustin]

The Romans had slaves. What are the chances that "Cohortes Urbanae" prioritized their interests? Do you argue here that police now are not different in significant ways from whatever those forces were? BLM might agree with you (me too!), but that isn't an argument against anarchism...

This is how fearful people fool themselves. They paint over the authoritarian excess of the past with anachronistic illusions of the present. Instead, they should realize that the unmistakable evils of authoritarians past indict those of the present, even if we tell ourselves that it's different this time.

[the_cyber_pass]

My argument was that you said police were invented largely as a force in the 19th century for "largely questionable purposes such as racism and anti-unionism." I brought up a pretty clear example of a police force existing in the time of Augustus which had no ties at all to the modern climate. I'm not arguing for or against anarchism. I am arguing for historical accuracy. You can define it as taking the authorities shit as much as you want, but I'm sure I could hear plenty of reasonable counter arguments from state loving people as well about how enforcement of the rule of law provides a stable framework for settling legal disputes and references to Hobbes.

[taneq]

"We are adaptation-executors, not fitness-optimisers."

[mattmaroon]

That is so incredibly true that you only have to explain it to people like anarchists who wish it weren't. By their logic men everywhere would have lost their sex drive the minute women got the pill.

There are just so many examples of predictable human irrationality attributable to this that it's hard to believe anyone doesn't understand it.

We keep executing our adaptations thousands of years after they cease to be useful.

[evanlivingston]

where did yo get that idea?

[aaron-lebo]

It's not crazy to think. Why do extremely wealthy people continue to strive for 100 billion instead of settling with 10? They had plenty at 1 million.

That's probably socialized, but maybe theres some animal hunger underneath it.

[lumberjack]

You are not wrong. Traditional anarchism, does not even attempt to talk about "coercion". In general, "anarchism" is about the dismantling of social hierarchies. It is a central tenant in anarchist ideology that hierarchies are bad. That is why there are various "flavours" of anarchism. Each emphasises some kind of hierarchy.

The piece in the OP has nothing to do with the century long tradition of anarchist thought.

[wavefunction]

That's true of Libertarianism as well.

[sigil]

On the contrary, libertarianism regards the law as force organized for the common defense and nothing more. [1] The protection of our negative rights is the one essential function of government in the libertarian view.

I've always been curious: how does anarchism reconcile your right not to be harmed with the supposed right of other individuals to do anything they please, including harm you? Do we even have a right not to be harmed? If we do, how is justice served -- can we serve it ourselves, or should it be delegated somehow? Or are these questions "out of scope" and justice is handled on a case-by-case basis that's not prescribed by anarchism?

[1] http://bastiat.org/en/the_law.html

[wybiral]

> Do we even have a right not to be harmed? If we do, how is justice served -- can we serve it ourselves, or delegate it to others if we wish?

...And then the young anarchists assemble a small group for mutual protection and justice. And then these small groups begin to share resources and find the need for policies and infrastructure...

...And then they rebel against their new society because it imposes policies on their "freedom"...

[krapp]

Libertarians tend to accept that coercive force is sometimes necessary, particularly when it comes to property ownership and enforcing contracts, although they also sometimes disagree that a state and monopoly on force are necessary for the coercion.

To this end, Libertarianism sometimes seems to me like a weak or pragmatic form of anarchy.

[gbacon]

Libertarians reject the initiation of coercion or violence but accept forceful response — at the gentlest intensity necessary — to repel such invasions. For example, a libertarian would be fine with a homeowner shooting dead an armed robber who had broken in.

Ludwig von Mises was a minarchist, i.e., he advocated for the smallest state necessary. His student Murray Rothbard referred to himself as an anarchist or an anarchocapitalist.

Of course, Rothbardians and Marxists mean entirely different concepts when they use the term anarchist.