Ask an Anarchist!

OK then amadeus, how about denying someone food unless they have sex with you? you going to try and pretend you can intellectualise that to be the same thing as selling food from a shop?
Ask the reverse question: how are you going to prohibit such behavior? Are you going to force the grocery store to start giving food away? You're asking a question that wouldn't occur anyway since the grocery store needs to recoup the money it loses buying inventory and paying a staff.
 
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.

But Frito Lay is competing with other snack food businesses.

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.

Yeah, that never happens...

How is he going to get enough money to hire you and the many other employees required to create such a profitable business?

By selling a product consumers want more than your collective's product.

No, please try to stay focused on the point. You still have to work, just not under authoritarian conditions.

But when people "have" to work to pay for stuff under capitalism, you call it exploitation even when people prefer it - voluntarily - to your ideology. That is the point... your ideology is based on a double standard. And all businesses are "authoritarian", I dont get to walk into your anarchist business and do what I want...
 
But Frito Lay is competing with other snack food businesses.
So what? It's still possible to have multiple products in the same organization without that organization competing with itself.

Yeah, that never happens...
Not without a huge workforce, no.

By selling a product consumers want more than your collective's product.
Why do you think a collective would only make one product? :confused:

And they still have to get that initial money. Someone who's trying to reestablish a capitalist enterprise isn't going to get any loans...

But when people "have" to work to pay for stuff under capitalism, you call it exploitation even when people prefer it - voluntarily - to your ideology. That is the point... your ideology is based on a double standard. And all businesses are "authoritarian", I dont get to walk into your anarchist business and do what I want...
It's exploitative because the capitalists are stealing the surplus-value of a worker's labor(the product the worker made was worth more than they got paid). There's other factors, such as alienation from the means of production and such as well. Volunteering to let someone steal from you is still you being exploited.
 
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.
Well, my point is hypothetically if I could live on government dole, I would likely still work to buy stuff.

All that stuff you just mentioned.
All the stuff I mentioned is because the company pays me money to work for them, something you seem opposed to and equate with slavery.
 
I take it you don't know much about anarchist theory.

You do not explain your reasons and it is my fault for not knowing?

No you simply haven't been paying attention. Direct democracy of close to 7 billion people is impractical.

As is Anarchy. Have you ever wondered why there is no Anarchic "state" in the world?

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.

I have. An Anarchist would not even recognize an authority such as the UN, let alone send someone else to represent him. Anarchy refutes State, Representation, Laws and even the principle of majority's will (Direct Democracy). All things you have talked about and apparently supported till now. So I wonder what concepts of Anarchy have you absorbed by the anarchists you have quoted.
The more people involved the less Anarchy can work because the needs and opinions will vary too much and there will be so many splits that it will be impossible to define such political entity unitary, or even a single political entity. Another big problem with Anarchy you didn't even mention is that it requires that all people support it, but at the same time it refutes imposals. So someone should be free to set up a party but they actually can't; someone could try a "coup", what Constitution will prevent this from happening when in the past it has happened even with a Constitution in place? Did you study the Spanish Civil War and how well did the social-anarchic syndicates end?
With this, I'm not saying Anarchy can't ever work, but not as a state-wide entity and not in a world where it is for the largest part missknown, missunderstood and generally frowned upon.

TBH you don't understand anarchism and you seem obsessed with attacking me no matter what I say.

Just wanted to point out that it actually seems the other way around to me, and please consider that there isn't a Universal Bible of Anarchy and Anarchism, there are varying opinions and interpretations and ideas of implementation (anarchism), but let's say they all agree on the concepts I listed above and that quite frankly, you seem to disregard, at least this is my impression.
 
You do not explain your reasons and it is my fault for not knowing?
My reasons for what? I have explained what anarchism is in this thread and when you come in here saying that I'm not a real anarchist and that I'm just some kid who doesn't know what it really is isn't going to make me want to explain it again.

As is Anarchy. Have you ever wondered why there is no Anarchic "state" in the world?
18th century: "As is Democracy. Have you ever wondered why there is no democratic state in the world?"

I have. An Anarchist would not even recognize an authority such as the UN, let alone send someone else to represent him. Anarchy refutes State, Representation, Laws and even the principle of majority's will (Direct Democracy). All things you have talked about and apparently supported till now. So I wonder what concepts of Anarchy have you absorbed by the anarchists you have quoted.
When did I support the state OR representation? And no, anarchists do not refute direct democracy it has been a principle part of the theory for centuries now. That's just how it is. You don't have to do what the majority say, but you also lose a lot of benefits for doing so.

The more people involved the less Anarchy can work because the needs and opinions will vary too much and there will be so many splits that it will be impossible to define such political entity unitary, or even a single political entity. Another big problem with Anarchy you didn't even mention is that it requires that all people support it, but at the same time it refutes imposals. So someone should be free to set up a party but they actually can't; someone could try a "coup", what Constitution will prevent this from happening when in the past it has happened even with a Constitution in place? Did you study the Spanish Civil War and how well did the social-anarchic syndicates end?
With this, I'm not saying Anarchy can't ever work, but not as a state-wide entity and not in a world where it is for the largest part missknown, missunderstood and generally frowned upon.
If you think I'm advocating the whole word turn anarchistic today, then again I have already said otherwise. Everyone needs to be involved in the process.

The point is, once the society is created, there's no reason that it would revert back. How many people do you know that advocate the return to monarchy? Society is always pushing forward.

And there would be different kinds of anarchism that could co-exist, the greatest being whether or not a free market would exist, and to what degree(which is what seperates individualist anarchism and mutualism from forms of social anarchism like anarcho-communism and anarcho-collectivism).

And anyone could argue their points in this kind of society. We aren't afraid of ideas. In Catalonia there were all sorts of organizations for Trotskyists, liberals, etc. All expect fascists, but I'm not really going to cry over that little imperfection.

Well, my point is hypothetically if I could live on government dole, I would likely still work to buy stuff.
Same for my kind of society. I don't have any objection to "wages", just someone using the need for those wages to gain authority over somebody and in turn stealing from them. As well as a whole host of other negative effects that you would be better off asking about in the Ask a Red thread imo.

All the stuff I mentioned is because the company pays me money to work for them, something you seem opposed to and equate with slavery.
No, people would still get "labor credits" as a symbol of their contribution to the society, "from each according to his ability, to each according to his contribution." Anarcho-communists argue that there would be no wages or any money, everything produced would be free and people would take as they needed/wanted. They argue that people would continue to work a) because they enjoyed it and b) because they would see that their way of life could not continue unless it was done. While that's the end goal for me, I think it's a bit too idealistic to start out with.
 
Perhaps he could get the thread back to "Ask An Anarchist", rather than the "Onedreamer Clumsily Tries To Refute Anarchist Theory (Even Though He Doesn't Really Understand It)", which is what we seem to be stuck on right now?
 
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).

In-groups and othering are documented social phenomena. While people in tribes, clubs, countries, cities, etc., don't necessarily dislike those not in their group, they do, on average, tend to react less favorably towards them than they do towards their groupmates.
 
Ask the reverse question: how are you going to prohibit such behavior? Are you going to force the grocery store to start giving food away? You're asking a question that wouldn't occur anyway since the grocery store needs to recoup the money it loses buying inventory and paying a staff.

Picture this Amadeus: You come to my house and tell me you can give me a cure for my fatal cancer but I have to have sex with you first, but I turn to you and tell you that unless you give me the cure now, I'm going to beat you to a pulp. How is one different from the other?
 
Picture this Amadeus: You come to my house and tell me you can give me a cure for my fatal cancer but I have to have sex with you first, but I turn to you and tell you that unless you give me the cure now, I'm going to beat you to a pulp. How is one different from the other?

Because the latter is stealing, the former is making a legitimate (Though exploitative) trade.
 
Because the latter is stealing, the former is making a legitimate (Though exploitative) trade.

And why is exploiting a dying person for sexual gratification any worse than giving someone a hiding to save your life?

Anyway, I'd be making him a trade: not getting a beating for the cure.
 
How are vulnerable members of society: OAPS, orphans protected?
 
But with no state how is welfare distributed?

Or do you mean rely solely on private charity?
 
But with no state how is welfare distributed?
They would be a part of a commune or confederation of syndicates(the differences between collectivism/communism and syndicalism are really minimal that I'm not going to bother going into it) that would take care of them by giving them a certain amount to exchange for stuff produced by the community.
 
How sure are you that anarchy wouldn't lead to competition between individuals but to co-operation?
 
But with no state how is welfare distributed?
The state is not the only possible form of collective organisation. In fact, state-organised welfare is a novelty; until the late 19th century, almost all social services where conducted on a parochial level, often with little reference to any higher organisation.

How sure are you that anarchy wouldn't lead to competition between individuals but to co-operation?
Because Anarchy, of the type advocated here, emerges through cooperation. It's not a case of "Smash the state? Check! ...Now what?"
 
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