Well, the motivations behind me working is not simply survival but the obtaining of status, luxury items, and the like. I'm not a victim of the need to eat.
Well I guess you could technically live off of food stamps since we have some degree of welfare, but it's hardly a life to look forward to and people don't take kindly to that sort of thing.
What's your proposed alternative to incentivizing working?
All that stuff you just mentioned.
But only in a certain are of the country (i.e. the north). The south was majorly against it, and we had to use the national guard to enforce those laws. So, still, how will minorities be protected in a society that doesn't have overarching authority to back them up?
Social pressure from other communities, economic pressure from other communities direct action by the minorities themselves.
That's the entire point. The ones who survived were the ones who formed tribes, and after a couple hundred thousand years of doing so, it's rather ingrained in us. So we still form "tribes", even if we don't realize it. We stick with the people who are similar to us (i.e. the tribe) and tend to dislike people who aren't apart of our "tribe". i.e. see how partisan politics can be.
Also, racism isn't the right word. It's something else entirely.
We didn't tend to dislike people who aren't apart of our tribe, I've never heard that.
The people who lived in tribes were just as intelligent as you and me. It's not like they were controlled by some sort of primal instinct that was making them hate other people. They were individuals and probably had just as many disagreements with people of their own tribe than in other tribes(except in the case of things like war, of course).
First thing, they're a minority, which automatically means they don't have the votes to overturn something that the majority of people want. How are these people going to be protected?
Voting is not the be all end all of an anarchist society. It's simply the way most people propose the people make decisions about the economy. Social issues are not intended to be dealt with votes.
But if it is abused as such, the methods I highlighted above could have some effect.
Second thing, with most countries around the world, we are the state. We're the ones pushing for social progression, because we've been empowered with the ability to due so. And we've set up a system that can enforce and protect those social progressions we've made.
'We are the state'? Are you talking about military interventionism?
With your system though, although social progression can be made, they can just as easily be reversed. There's no authority in place to make sure laws passed in the past that protect certain things stay in place. One day a community could like a certain minority group, the next, they could be a the most hated thing in town.
Why on earth would that happen?
Yeah, in a socially progressive manner.
And although people right now value the idea that everyone has certain unalienable rights, that might not be the popular position in the future.
Why not?
But with the system we have in place right now, we protect against that by making it so certain things can't be infringed upon, and we have the authority to back it up.
Well if the majority of the people become bigots all of a sudden it kind of follows that the government officials they elect will espouse those views(both as a matter of probability, and as a means to get elected) and then in fact they use their authority to make it
harder for minorities to gain rights, as has happened so many times in the past.
Say for example right now, there seems to be a large fear of Muslims in this country, and even though that is present, and there are people out there who fear them so much they would deprive them of their rights (not being able to build a mosque, etc.), we have a system in place where we can make sure that they do get those rights, even if it is unpopular.
Well for one, the majority of the country don't seem to be racist against Muslims. That's why the judges for these sorts of things rule in favor of equal rights.
Take the supreme court case against anti-sodomy laws a few years ago. 3 judges ruled against it. Where was the state protecting minority rights in the case of those three judges? Or, as a better example, the 1986 decision which ruled in favor of anti-sodomy legislation. It has nothing to do with what the constitution says(we've only had secular schools for instance since the 60's, despite the very first sentence of the bill of rights contradicting that policy), it has to do with how the majority feels. And the system we have in place only makes it harder for minorities to gain the rights they deserve.
onedreamer said:
says who? A Civver? I thought in this thread you were supposed to explain anarchy, not just make statements and turn opinions into facts.
I take it you don't know much about anarchist theory.
Proudhon, Bakunin, Kropotkin, Goldman, Berkman, Malatesta, Chomsky, etc.. None of them advocate anything these "anarchists" you've met seem to be doing.
The problem I described is not what anarchists can or can not do, in fact the very essence of Anarchy is that you can do what you want... the problem is how foreign nations would react, you are going around the issue avoiding to speak about it.
Besides your ideas are a host of contradictions. First you were talking about direct democracy, now you're shifting to Representation. An organization such as the UN is based on the Representative governements that rule Earth nowadays. Anarchy has no place in such organization nor does direct democracy. If you were a real anarchist as you claim you are, you could not accept someone to represent you in the UN. Anarchists would consider the UN the most useless organization in the world, as in fact it has proven many times to be, already since when it was called League of Nations.
No you simply haven't been paying attention. Direct democracy of close to 7 billion people is impractical. I've said more than once that for assemblies of larger groups different communities would appoint delegates. They don't get to espouse their own views, they're just there to relate the will of a certain syndicate or commune or whatever. They're just a voluntary servant of the people. The same could be done for something like the UN to gain legitimacy and avoid attacks from aggressive authoritarians, you've not provided one good reason why not.
TBH your answers are typical of the teenagers that draw the anarchic sign on their school backpacks, or in their CFC avatar image. That won't make of anyone a real anarchist.
TBH you don't understand anarchism and you seem obsessed with attacking me no matter what I say.
confederation of what? So you say the people in this "state" vote for a law, but then not everyone is bound to respect the vote/decision. So why voting?
They're not really supposed to vote for laws. They vote to make economic decisions between syndicates. If one syndicate didn't want to associate itself with others then they wouldn't be forced to, but the pros would probably outweigh the cons.
Berzerker said:
Do consumers get to vote with their $$$? If yes, then there's gonna be competition
Uhm, no... Take FritoLay for example, they own several different snackfoods, and people use their money to "vote" on which is best. That doesn't mean they are competing against themselves.
As long as people are free to try, are they? Or will the anarchists just steal inventions for their collective?
You can try whatever you want, it's just a bad idea.
This notion of some guy inventing something awesome and then automatically being a millionaire is really laughable though.
I already explained why I would - I'm working for an inventor and we're making big $$$... And you think I'd be better off working for you, or your collective. Aint yer decision, you sound more bossy than my boss.
How is he going to get enough money to hire you and the many other employees required to create such a profitable business?
Anarchists will give me money so I dont need it?
No, please try to stay focused on the point. You still have to work, just not under authoritarian conditions.
