Anarchy

[steveo]

I do wish the government would bugger off and let us get on with it

[numbers]

whoever you vote for, government wins. whoever said that was spot on.

if there was ever a subject I wish I'd studied, its politics.

[Jah Lush]

No matter who you vote for the government always gets in.

 

[????]

Well said Steveo, couldn't agree more.

[Seabag]

Yeah me too Steveo

I'm dying to not have my bin emptied and to park on the 'wrong' side of our street

Maybe we could have an anarchy day, much like a bank holiday. Anarchy-lite as it were

[LadyDeliah]

I'm all in favour of a bit of anarchy. I'd like to redistribute myself some land with the help of my old Rockingham Estate posse.

[El Pibe]

Doesn't the idea of distribution (re or otherwise) still have to be underpinned by the concept of ownership?

So redistribution can't be anarchy.

Anarchy is marvellous in theory but in practice it just means that the shoutiest and oudest get their way.

And as seabag points out, in a society entirely dependent upon long supply chains and huge public infrastructure to allow the basics of life to function, how that stuff is paid for and maintained becomes somewhat crucial if you don't want the nastier sort of anarchy (along with it's bedfellows, famine, and plague)to emerge.

If we didn't have government we'd be forced to invent it.

It's be nice if it wasn't entirely led by arsehole public shcool boys of course.

[steveo]

Don't come in here with your carefully thought out analysis

[El Pibe]

sorry

[????]

Even us pragmatists are allowed a bit of romance sometimes.

A society operating under a collective moral framework (nothing to do with Seabags 'no rules') with minimum need for rules* is a beautiful, though largely impratical thing.

*read other people be they public schoolboys or Hampstead lefties (mainly public schoolgirls) telling us plebs what to do

[KalamityKel]

my head hurts!

[El Pibe]

does it have to be a moral framework?

one of the things i liked about Banks' culture novels was there was no moral framework* in that utopia.

absolutely anything went as long as someone's life wasn't ended (but even there it was no great shakes).

Post scarcity there is no concept of property, ownership or moeny so pretty much everything we call a crime ceases to be relevant.

Now, if we can just sort out cold fusion, AIs and nanotechnology, we're all set.....

*of course not strictly true otherwise it gets hard to identify with a novel, and he did like to satirise muscular liberalism, oh yes!!

[miga]

.

[El Pibe]

But it has been attempted a huge number of times, usually intentionally, but admittedly rarely on any great scale (probably the biggest being some of the anarchist collectives in the north east during the spanish civil war), most often during the counterculture experiments (for want of a better word) of the seventies and beyond.

Generally the most charismatic/psycopathic/bloody minded became dictatorial or sat atop informal hierarchical means of control, or rarely a sort of functional inertia took hold

of course anarchism is a pretty loose term as these things go i'll grant you.

But there is archaeological evidence of proto urban societies who managed to function pretty well for hundreds of years without any [remaining visible] means of contorl, a la government or religion, so perhaps it's not intrinsic to human nature just the general models of society we keep taking....

[El Pibe]

And as for the scale thing, you simply can't have lots of people and equitable decision making can you?

Just contraints on time and organisation alone.

Look how long something as simple as a general election takes in India!

Once you get into numbers surely delegation and hierachy is the only practicable means.

And if the idea is that no unit gets big enough for this to kick in aren't you setting yourself up for lots of tragedy of the commons type issues?

[El Pibe]

...but then I'm no political philosopher, and i reckon there's tons of room in this society of ours for the state to allow for certain things to happen oraganically at a much more local level.

If, for instance, micro generation and storage of energy is the most likley route (eveeentualllyyyy) to cutting carbon emissions, then why can't other problems be solved in a micro fashion?

[miga]

.

[Jeremy]

I'd be inclined to think that if humans were sufficiently evolved to behave in a cooperative manner, we'd already be there.

[uncleglen]

The problem is Jeremy that the kinds of people you are talking about would not want to have power over others because they would be off doing useful, cooperative humane things of real benefit to humankind, and not on the endless quest for votes.

[Jeremy]

It would be good if we could have an area or island where people who wanted to live in this kind of community could go and just get on with it.

Maybe they could televise it? Perhaps we could set challenges whereby they could earn food or other luxuries?

[Otta]

Haha!

[Loz]

I've always thought that about people who hanker for a full-on socialist system. See how many of them stick it out.

[Brendan]

From years of looking at western political history in order to try to come to some sort of informed view I can only say two things for sure. Anarchist have the best music but socialists have the best hats.

[Jah Lush]

http://i1369.photobucket.com/albums/ag237/jahlushhead/AnarchyInTheUK_zps9a1eedde.jpg