Life of a Commoner in an anarchist society

[Sibirsky]

A regular person would do regular person things. They would go to work, send their kids to school, come home and relax watching some TV. The kids would play video games and do homework. It would not be much different from the real world.

[Margno]

Hard to expel. Extermination would really be your only option.
The tricky bit is, once you've killed every last one of them, there's still nobody to pay you taxes.

On the other hand, what if you just go by the Mongol method? As in, you walk up to a town and demand they surrender and obey. If they refuse you rape, murder and torture every one of them and burn the place down. Repeat that a couple of times. Human nature dictates that once word gets around the Nth town won't resist you. And on the other hand human nature dictates that there will be plenty of people all too willing to kill, torture and rape and use your command as an excuse to get away with it.

The short answer is that the very first thing I do is invert "human nature" in my followers by existential faith. It's not how people usually act, but it is possible to act that way under certain circumstances.

[Sanctissima]

You'd probably die from a disease or some loony criminal who's out raping and killing people because there's no laws or anything to stop them I'd suppose

I like my "evil statist society"

Obviously it is the laws that prevent murder and disease. That's why in nations like the United States, there are no murders or sick people.

Anarchism has the tendency to call for the abolition of the judicial system, as well as all police forces.

So, basically, nobody to enforce laws.

[Conserative Morality]

A regular person would do regular person things. They would go to work, send their kids to school, come home and relax watching some TV. The kids would play video games and do homework. It would not be much different from the real world.

Except for the whole part where none of that shit actually works.

[Ripoll]

You'd probably die from a disease or some loony criminal who's out raping and killing people because there's no laws or anything to stop them I'd suppose

I like my "evil statist society"

Obviously it is the laws that prevent murder and disease. That's why in nations like the United States, there are no murders or sick people.

No, doctors do though. And police officers respond to the law, and the judge rules on it. While I agree our laws of today are complex when the shouldn't be and many do not make sense and we restrict creativity and innovation too often these days....the absence of the law is much worse. If doctors have to worry day to day about food, safety, and security and no one works together anymore and no one has the incentive to, we get chaos and no one can make real progress. We have to make these decisions based on the common good of the people, not the lowest common denominator of society.

[Arkolon]

To Margno: how would an anarchist society control inflation and combat recession?

Well inflation doesn't happen in the absense of currency, which amarchism doesn't use. The cycles of recession and rapid growth (boom and bust) are an artifact of the investment market. The whole reason industries grow above what's sustainable in the first place is that they're motivated by the reward system, rather than the actual success or failure of the endeavor. In anarchism, the only reason you work is because you want the thing done.

Barter economies can, and do, experience monetary inflation, and the economy (and aggregate demand) would still very much exist. They wouldn't be a relic of the "investment market"-- which would still exist, strictly speaking, in a barter economy.

[Conserative Morality]

Obviously it is the laws that prevent murder and disease. That's why in nations like the United States, there are no murders or sick people.

Anarchism has the tendency to call for the abolition of the judicial system, as well as all police forces.

So, basically, nobody to enforce laws.

No, people refrain from committing crimes out of the goodness of their hearts. That's why the EVIL, OVERBEARING LAW must be destroyed! It turns men's hearts black!

[Sibirsky]

Obviously it is the laws that prevent murder and disease. That's why in nations like the United States, there are no murders or sick people.

There's an organized way to deal with murderers, at least.

And there would be an organized way to deal with murderers in anarchy.

[Norstal]

A regular person would do regular person things. They would go to work, send their kids to school, come home and relax watching some TV. The kids would play video games and do homework. It would not be much different from the real world.

Except for the whole part where none of that shit actually works.

More like, that's the same shit we have right now so why the hell should we change?

[Arkolon]

Obviously it is the laws that prevent murder and disease. That's why in nations like the United States, there are no murders or sick people.

Anarchism has the tendency to call for the abolition of the judicial system, as well as all police forces.

So, basically, nobody to enforce laws.

Anarcho-capitalism espouses polycentric law, which is "de facto anarchism", but there would still be bodies that enforce law.

[Conserative Morality]

And there would be an organized way to deal with murderers in anarchy.

Using force and coercion in an organized body to enforce its will upon those that disagree.

I think we call that a State.

[Margno]

They wouldn't have centralized banks or even a currency so how's that relevant?

Now if you're talking about how they're going to solve scarcity without currency, that's a better question.

Uh, how would scarcity of resources be dealt with then?

EDIT: Actually, let's ask it thorugh a basic Economics question: there is a plague going round the country, killing thousands in their anarchist fortresses, but no fear, for a cure has been discovered! The problem is that demand outstrips supply substantially. There simply aren't enough to go around to all the people affected. How would distribution be handled in this case?

Equality of access. In this case, the correct implementation of that is clearly lottery. It's fair, and it keeps expansion of the cure in everybody's best interests.

[Ziegenhain]

You'd probably die from a disease or some loony criminal who's out raping and killing people because there's no laws or anything to stop them I'd suppose

I like my "evil statist society"

Obviously it is the laws that prevent murder and disease. That's why in nations like the United States, there are no murders or sick people.

I never said they'd be dealt with, just that they're going to be more open and prevalent in a society that has no organization or laws.

[Conserative Morality]

More like, that's the same shit we have right now so why the hell should we change?

Because It Is Not For The Moochers We Exist But For Ourselves

[Sibirsky]

Obviously it is the laws that prevent murder and disease. That's why in nations like the United States, there are no murders or sick people.

Anarchism has the tendency to call for the abolition of the judicial system, as well as all police forces.

So, basically, nobody to enforce laws.

Private police forces can enforce laws.

[Sanctissima]

Anarchism has the tendency to call for the abolition of the judicial system, as well as all police forces.

So, basically, nobody to enforce laws.

No, people refrain from committing crimes out of the goodness of their hearts. That's why the EVIL, OVERBEARING LAW must be destroyed! It turns men's hearts black!

Yield your tinfoil hats my brethren! The Reptilian politician overlords are infecting your very minds!

[Conserative Morality]

Anarchism has the tendency to call for the abolition of the judicial system, as well as all police forces.

So, basically, nobody to enforce laws.

Private police forces can enforce laws.

Private police forces being basically PMCs enforcing a set of laws across an area. I fucking love martial law.

[Geilinor]

Anarchism has the tendency to call for the abolition of the judicial system, as well as all police forces.

So, basically, nobody to enforce laws.

Private police forces can enforce laws.

Who will pay them? Neighborhoods?

[The Liberated Territories]

I'm not sure, we can definitely speculate about it. It depends on the anarchist society. An anarcho-primitivist or national anarchist society would probably have people living in tribes again, while an anarcho-capitalist or anarcho-mutualist nation would be a modern society based on private law, markets, etc.

[Sanctissima]

Anarchism has the tendency to call for the abolition of the judicial system, as well as all police forces.

So, basically, nobody to enforce laws.

Private police forces can enforce laws.

And who would own these private police forces?

[Wolfmanne]

Hard to expel? I dunno if you've noticed, but tying people up and driving them a few hundred miles west is actually really easy.

There are still plenty of people left. Only loyalists to the regime and people cowed by fear would be left. Even if we assume everyone opposed to the regime opposed it, loyalists in tyrannical regimes are quite often quite numerous.

The thing is, even halfway through an anarchist movement it's not in the rulers' interests to just kill all the anarchists, because they're working for free and giving the results of the work as much to your own people through aid projects as to themselves. You still have some access to half the production, you're just related to it on different terms. If you kill them all, all that production is completely lost.

The problem with everything being 'free' is that goods and services will always have some inherent value. Let's take this cure to the Wolfmanne plague (scroll up). A family has a daughter infected with the plague. She is dying pretty fast. They want the cure, except their community only has 10 shots of it and there are about 1000 people infected with it right now. A Doctor sent from the nearby town has the cures and is befuddled on how to distribute ir. Like it or not, that cure is pretty valuable to those 1000 people. All of a sudden, a person says that he will give 6 months worth of food (he's the local farmer) so that he can cure his sister. Then a water distributor promises to supply him with 10 years of free clean water. Then the local gas plant, which is co-operatively run and just happens to have 10 people infected with the plague, promises to supply him with free power for the rest of his life. The point I'm trying to make is that for everything to be free, supply and demand has to not exist. Our wants and needs are infinite, our resources are limited. That's the basic economic problem.

Of course, the NHS in the UK circumnavigates problems like this by funding health care research and procuring supplies of the medicines they require to provide them for free. But to provide it all for free, they need taxes to do this. In an anarchist society, there is no government to tell you 'we need your money for health and DRUGZ', small anarchist communities will be self-interested and will be focused on what they need and not what a large area needs because human nature is selfish. We can do good deeds, but ultimately we commit more selfish acts rather than selfless ones.

[Sibirsky]

Obviously it is the laws that prevent murder and disease. That's why in nations like the United States, there are no murders or sick people.

No, doctors do though. And police officers respond to the law, and the judge rules on it. While I agree our laws of today are complex when the shouldn't be and many do not make sense and we restrict creativity and innovation too often these days....the absence of the law is much worse. If doctors have to worry day to day about food, safety, and security and no one works together anymore and no one has the incentive to, we get chaos and no one can make real progress. We have to make these decisions based on the common good of the people, not the lowest common denominator of society.

Anarchy = no rulers.

There would be laws.

[Washington Resistance Army]

Anarchism has the tendency to call for the abolition of the judicial system, as well as all police forces.

So, basically, nobody to enforce laws.

Private police forces can enforce laws.

Can I make my own PMC and enforce my own set of laws?

[Geilinor]

No, doctors do though. And police officers respond to the law, and the judge rules on it. While I agree our laws of today are complex when the shouldn't be and many do not make sense and we restrict creativity and innovation too often these days....the absence of the law is much worse. If doctors have to worry day to day about food, safety, and security and no one works together anymore and no one has the incentive to, we get chaos and no one can make real progress. We have to make these decisions based on the common good of the people, not the lowest common denominator of society.

Anarchy = no rulers.

There would be laws.

There would be different laws for every set of 500 or so people.

[Arkolon]

And there would be an organized way to deal with murderers in anarchy.

Using force and coercion in an organized body to enforce its will upon those that disagree.

I think we call that a State.

There is such a thing as "just force", which we call legitimate use of force. When there is no single body that can legitimately use force, there is no state. So no, we don't call anarcho-capitalism, or even polycentric law, statism.