Anarchy

[Amebix]

Well, we have reached the central point here.

The problem with this type of thinking is that it doesn't hold up in the real world. Sure, you could point out inherent "inconsistencies" in capitalist orthodoxy, such as suffering, but to me that doesn't really represent a problem. Just a short time ago, we were all suffering. Whether by a King, an Emperor, or just plain old natural forces, we have for a long time been slaves.

With the rise of a capitalist class, the old power elite have finally been put in their place. There are no more legions of wealthy princes....landowning aristocrats who contribute nothing to society. Sure you still have some vestigial families...but money rules.

If you want to make money, you have to PRODUCE something! For the first time in history, a single individual can become rich without having to bow down before some feudal lord. Instead of tax rates being nearly 90%....they are closer to 30%. Instead of enriching royal families, we are enriching business owners, who then lend money to new operations - and from that we get growth, both in population and standard of living.

As for anarchism, nothing is stopping anarchists from setting up their own communal living system. There is no law that says a farmer must sell their product on the market. Nothing stops traditional christian groups from living how they want to.

If anarchists are so committed to "organization" then why haven't they gotten themselves organized yet?

I think the reason is that for the anarchist, it is all about the ideas. It is an idea game to them. They don't particularly care whether it "would work" or whether it is "compatible with human nature."

Here is the thought process. Pick two virtues, utilitarianism and altruism. Then derive from those the idea that coercion is inherently incompatible with them. Then voila, you have your ready made society, perfect as a snowflake. Totally logical and internally consistent. They strive for a perfect congruence between the ideals and the "reality."

It seems to me that this kind of logical order only exists internally. Nature is an unpredictable mass of events, and human society is no different. This is what we learned from science. We found that the orbits of the planets were not perfect spheres, and that we in fact were orbiting the sun in an ellipse. This was horrifying because most people believed perfect circles represented divine movement.

Anarchists want to believe in perfect spheres, even though reality says something different. The extreme order and logic of anarchism is derived from a few basic axioms, and that is why it is a weak system. The axioms are too "perfect" to be true or useful.

So what your saying is the suffering is justified, simply because its been going on for a long time? Are you sure thats not just an excuse to turn a blind eye? And have not the old monarchs, the wealthy princes, the land owning aristocrats simply been given new titles, presidents, ceos, land owners, bosses? I think you side stepped the question "Does this not entail that suffering induced systemically by the world-capitalist system indicates a failure on the system's OWN TERMS? ". And of course anarchists have organized before, they do all the time. Take squats for example. They TAKE land that is not occupied, completlely abandoned, and make a living space out of it. They had one here in montreal years back, and it was operated with a participatory democratic principle, quite nicely i might add. There downfall? Internal squabbling? Power struggles? No, it was Government. They didnt pay for the the land, they had no "title" to it, therefor they could not live on it, irregardless of the fact that the land was abandoned and that it provided free housing for the homeless. So please dont say that anarchists are all talk please, because you know not of what you speak. That was 1 example i might add. And i believe it has been demonstrated time after time that it is control, rather then freedom, that is not compatible with human nature.

 

[ebola?]

>>
With the rise of a capitalist class, the old power elite have finally been put in their place. There are no more legions of wealthy princes....landowning aristocrats who contribute nothing to society. Sure you still have some vestigial families...but money rules.>>

Money indeed rules, and it transfered intergenerationally. Thus, we have a new aristocracy, cloaked by the ideology of meritocracy. Yes, there are exceptions to this rule, people who rise from the bottom ranks of wealth to the top, but your starting conditions in life DO matter.

>>If you want to make money, you have to PRODUCE something! >>

In some cases. In others, where you begin with a large amount of wealth, it is easier to invest, or better yet, hire others to invest for you.

>>
As for anarchism, nothing is stopping anarchists from setting up their own communal living system. There is no law that says a farmer must sell their product on the market. Nothing stops traditional christian groups from living how they want to.>>

There are isolated experiments. There is one here in Northern California, near where I live. On the other hand, creating a widespread, industrialized anarchist economy would would require factory occupations, given the current concentration of capital. This would face more vehement opposition by the state.

>>I think the reason is that for the anarchist, it is all about the ideas. It is an idea game to them. They don't particularly care whether it "would work" or whether it is "compatible with human nature.">>

You infer too far from my personal idiosyncrasies. As far as I can tell, anarchists aren't majority INTPs. I've conducted polls on other message boards.

>>The axioms are too "perfect" to be true or useful.>>

We both argue from ignorance, as there has not yet been an empirical test. Of course reality is messy, and of course humans are complicated. There would still be conflict in anarchist societies. The question is whether this conflict would be so volatile as to threaten the basis of anarchism as a system.

ebola

 

[mugen]

>>
I would point to literature in political science and sociology, but you appeared to at least dismiss the former out of hand with no explicit justification.

lol, I do.

In the case of 1, I will present a theoretical counter-example.
Take the prisoner's dilemma. Should the two prisoners act in complete self-interest and rat on each other, or should they each assume that the other will not rat and accept the minor sentence? The second case maximizes the sum utility for the two actors involved even though it requires behavior from the two that is not rational in a strict sense. THIS is the utility of social norms, as "banal" as they can be.

Ergo, game theory. Cooperation is completely compatible with self-interest.

The question is, if capitalism should maximize utility for those involved, how can it also increase suffering for those actors, as suffering is negative utility. You may say that increases in utility induced by capitalist trade off-set these harms, but this rests on the questions of what the alternative systems are. Also, given that money spent on consumption-goods for a particular individual likely has diminishing returns (how much pleasure can 1 individual feel?), the strong empirical tendency of capitalism toward wealth inequality is likely harmful in terms of the sum-utility for the individuals involved.

Capitalism that maximises X-condition ultimately attempts to maximise aggregate utility, to be pareto efficient, etc, with a certain initial allocation of resources. It is not concerned with the welfare of individual actors, although it should in perfect conditions lead to a fairly even distribution. It is the welfare economics twats who think it right to intervene and spread the love around. They are, of course, total twats, and should fuck off and play in some other discipline, instead of bringing their interventionist moralising gibberish into economics.

This sounds like a mere question of preference.

Rational amoral self-interest versus 'everyone is going to completely disregard their own interests and cooperate in a giant altruistic love in, and society is going to work without any regulation or hierarchy at all!'? Yeah, ok.

 

[StagnantReaction]

With the rise of a capitalist class, the old power elite have finally been put in their place. There are no more legions of wealthy princes....landowning aristocrats who contribute nothing to society. Sure you still have some vestigial families...but money rules.

Ummm.. no. Capitalism has enhanced the power elite, and now the richest 2% of the world own 50% of the wealth. This is only obtainable through worldwide capitalist globalization, where the reach of capital can enslave indigenous forced into the system as well.

It is not concerned with the welfare of individual actors, although it should in perfect conditions lead to a fairly even distribution.

Hey now, none of this hippy-dippy idealist shit.

 

[protovack]

Money indeed rules, and it transfered intergenerationally. Thus, we have a new aristocracy, cloaked by the ideology of meritocracy.

Look around you, at all the physical things we use in day-to-day life. Every single one of those things was produced by a company that was brought together by someone willing to risk their resources in hope of a later reward. It might have been a week ago, or 100 years, it doesn't matter.

By the sound of this thread, you'd think that around 200 years ago, a huge pile of money materialilzed from outer space and was deposited in the bank accounts of a group of randomly selected individuals making up 1% of the population. Then I suppose these people simply lived off their free money forever, passing it on to their children in some grand scheme to maintain a small group of elite parasites that do nothing.

This is complete bull....nothing but shallow pandering to the lower-class idea that you get something for nothing. It is comforting for some people to think that the rich are rich because their "daddy" gave them everything. That way, you can blame them for your own circumstances. The existence of the "lottery" panders to this same misconception - that you somehow get something for nothing.

Sure, there are fortunes that go back for years, to powerful families that acquired their wealth through slavery and military force. That money is still around, I'll admit that. However within the climate of capitalism, it is no longer really possible to acquire fortunes in this manner.

Look at billionaire Warren Buffett. He just gave like 30 billion dollars to the Gates foundation. That is more money than I can even fathom, yet it is all being given to charity by a philanthropist who is against intergenerational transfer of wealth. That money will do more than you or I ever will. If you read what he says about his wealth, he sees society as a major contributor to his ability to make money, and thus he owes a debt to the world in exchange for his wealth.

There are huge foundations worth billions all over the world that service society - making documentaries, funding artists and writers and scientific research....

You see, there is nothing wrong with the actual hierarchical system we have constructed...it's the people acting inside of it, just like anything. You can either be a problem or a solution to a problem, and this choice has nothing to do with who has the "most moral" system worked out in their head...

 

[protovack]

I'll give you an example:

My uncle owns a painting company.

He does no work what so ever.

Yea, but he has worked before?

Every month he mails in a check to Verizon for an add in the paper.

If someone calls him and says they want their house painted, he tells them how much it will cost, and has workers do it for $10/hour.

He averages about $10,000-$20,000 depending on the size of the house, sometimes even more for commercial jobs.

He pays the workers maybe $250 a piece tops, $2000 for all of them at most.

They have to do all the hard work, real work, because they can't afford to put an ad out in the paper.

Well that is just crazy. Who would pay $20000 to have their house painted when it could be done for $3000-$5000 or less. Why wouldn't I just hire the workers myself?

It sounds like your uncle has carved out a niche for himself as professional middle-man in a business that doesn't really REQUIRE any organization. I guess he has a right to do it (I'd never give him money though).

They could save up their $250 from the job & try to start a business with advertising, but that is not possible, because they are only paid enough to survive week to week.

People start businesses with loans, for which you must have an in-depth business plan. You literally go into the bank and present your idea and ask them if they'll lend you money. That's how people start a lot of businesses. Nobody has $500,000 in the bank to start a business, is that how you thought it worked?

 

[lurkerguy]

Good luck with that.

Go walk into a bank, and ask for a loan to start a business, when your getting paid $250 a week painting houses.

They will laugh at you, I don't care if you have the business mind of Donald Trump.

It takes money to make money.

As far as the home owners hiring their own workers, that is very, very rare.

These are people with salaries & million dollar homes.

They don't want to supervise a bunch of people painting their house, they just want to call up someone in the phone book, pay the money, and have it done with a guarantee from a reputable contractor they can sue if anything goes wrong.

You don't pay a bunch of workers you find at random to paint your house unless you don't value your house, or your sanity.

My uncle is small time, some people get $500,000 painting contracts for sky scrapers & just sub it out for $250,000.

I won't even get into government funded no bid contracts, and the pathetic leaches who never lift a finger and make obscene amounts of money doing that (cough Halliburton cough).

They never even chew the same piece of food twice.

 

[ebola?]

>>Cooperation is completely compatible with self-interest.>>

Okay. All anarchists (or socialists of any stripe, really) advocate is an economy built of cooperation, not that people be magically altruistic or anything of the sort.

>>with a certain initial allocation of resources. >>

aha...okay...so it seems where we break is the question of whether the initial allocation of resources should be questioned.

>>
Sure, there are fortunes that go back for years, to powerful families that acquired their wealth through slavery and military force. That money is still around, I'll admit that. However within the climate of capitalism, it is no longer really possible to acquire fortunes in this manner.>>

However, and this is key, imperialism set up the initial conditions by which actors in the economy come to trade in markets (both labor and goods markets) under unequal conditions. The system, once set in motion, tends not towards a just redistribution of wealth. Rather, concretely, zones with histories of colonial occupation now face initial conditions where they have little choice but to work for pittances. The case is similar when we look at the geographical distribution of poverty within the United States. Prospects on the labor market are very poor for racial minorities concentrated in inner cities.

>>
There are huge foundations worth billions all over the world that service society - making documentaries, funding artists and writers and scientific research....
>>

These philanthropists are quite admirable. Conditions of unequal exchange are not.

>>You can either be a problem or a solution to a problem, and this choice has nothing to do with who has the "most moral" system worked out in their head...>>

You know damned well that all I do is generate conceptual structures. If my inaction is immoral for you, then I guess it is my personal failing.

ebola

 

[protovack]

As far as the home owners hiring their own workers, that is very, very rare.

These are people with salaries & million dollar homes.

They don't want to supervise a bunch of people painting their house, they just want to call up someone in the phone book, pay the money, and have it done.

Ahhhhhhhhh, I see. So in situations where organization is required, the person doing the organizing deserves some compensation?

 

[lurkerguy]

Most definitely my friend.

Not 80% of the profits though.

I would rather organize than preform manual labor any day of the week.

Most of the people he uses are illegal immigrants he finds outside of home depot.

It is really easy to do, but that doesn't mean a home owner wants to go to home depot and pick up workers.

If they did they would be a contractor and not a lawyer, or whatever.

 

[protovack]

^^^
Precisely.

 

[lurkerguy]

I just think it could get better that is all.

I mean shit like I said the workers could get some extra jobs, save up for years, become a slave driver themselves.

Everybody has to fight to be free.

I just don't see how you can look at many situations involved in capitalism & not recognize it as pure exploitation.

One day the workers might organize themselves and actually split that $20,000 between themselves based on how much shitty work each person did, or maybe not.

I could care less.

I just make observations.

Me personally though, I do my own work, and if I want someone to help me out, I pay them for the actual amount of work they did.

If they do half the work, they get half the profits.

I would feel like a total leech if I did what my uncle did, I couldn't sleep at night & I don't know how these capitalists do.

 

[Amebix]

Look around you, at all the physical things we use in day-to-day life. Every single one of those things was produced by a company that was brought together by someone willing to risk their resources in hope of a later reward. It might have been a week ago, or 100 years, it doesn't matter.

By the sound of this thread, you'd think that around 200 years ago, a huge pile of money materialilzed from outer space and was deposited in the bank accounts of a group of randomly selected individuals making up 1% of the population. Then I suppose these people simply lived off their free money forever, passing it on to their children in some grand scheme to maintain a small group of elite parasites that do nothing.

This is complete bull....nothing but shallow pandering to the lower-class idea that you get something for nothing. It is comforting for some people to think that the rich are rich because their "daddy" gave them everything. That way, you can blame them for your own circumstances. The existence of the "lottery" panders to this same misconception - that you somehow get something for nothing.

Sure, there are fortunes that go back for years, to powerful families that acquired their wealth through slavery and military force. That money is still around, I'll admit that. However within the climate of capitalism, it is no longer really possible to acquire fortunes in this manner.

Look at billionaire Warren Buffett. He just gave like 30 billion dollars to the Gates foundation. That is more money than I can even fathom, yet it is all being given to charity by a philanthropist who is against intergenerational transfer of wealth. That money will do more than you or I ever will. If you read what he says about his wealth, he sees society as a major contributor to his ability to make money, and thus he owes a debt to the world in exchange for his wealth.

There are huge foundations worth billions all over the world that service society - making documentaries, funding artists and writers and scientific research....

You see, there is nothing wrong with the actual hierarchical system we have constructed...it's the people acting inside of it, just like anything. You can either be a problem or a solution to a problem, and this choice has nothing to do with who has the "most moral" system worked out in their head...

Okay how about this: Capitalism (or industrial society) is unsustainable.

 

[ControlDenied]

There's two types of people I think of nowadays. People who spirutually and adamantly sure that technological society is a mistake, that the way we Westerners go about even our thought patterns is mechanistic and wrong. Then there's people who are terrified of this reality, and will do all they can do supress the voices that reveal to them the damage they do to their environment.

 

[protovack]

^^^
I would agree with that. It seems like the desire for short-term reward is unsustainable yet celebrated in capitalist society.

However you can't really say that capitalism is *based* on desire for short term rewards. Do we celebrate instant gratification? Yes. But is capitalism somehow reliant on this sort of thinking? I don't think so. I think capitalism will survive long into the future when we *will* be sustainable.

 

[lurkerguy]

People thought feudalism would survive long into the future.

 

[ebola?]

I hope you're right.
Unfortunately, up until now, capitalism has been based on economic expansion, which is problematic in a system with a constant state of energy added (light from our sun). Unless we really DO switch to some sort of informational economy, or we find some sort of steady-state balance, capitalism will necessarily extend beyond the bounds of the planet.

ebola

 

[lurkerguy]

The way it is going, we won't even have to worry about economic systems, the population itself will extend beyond the bounds of the planet.

We are predicted to have 8 billion residents of earth by 2025, and the number will continue to grow exponentially.

Think about how many people will be on the earth by the year 2999.

Many people will have to die, regardless of the economic system we adopt.

 

[protovack]

You know damned well that all I do is generate conceptual structures. If my inaction is immoral for you, then I guess it is my personal failing.

If you are going to generate a conceptual structure that directly relates to the real world and how it operates, then you automatically open yourself to this kind of argument.

If you say, "We should redesign society like this" I have every right to ask you about the details of how it would work or whether it would even work.

I'm not saying you need to be an active participant in redesigning society if you are going to hold those views. However if the plan is to be implemented, somebody somewhere is going to be doing it, and they may not share your morality.

According to anarchism, the solution to the problem of suffering is to abolish coercive hierarchy. This is an explicit endorsement of a certain type of action. It says, "Here is a problem. And here is what we need to do to solve it."

As I said previously, one can either exacerbate the problem, or participate in solving the problem. I suppose you could also just do nothing. I then said that this choice has nothing to do with the "water-tightness" of the moral system.

The reason I say this is that I seem to evaluate the quality of ideas according to how well they could be implemented, whereas you evaluate according to the logical coherentness of the idea itself.

Well, 2+2=5 doesn't it? Why not evaluate the idea according to both? It seems to me that these two ways of evaluation might influence each other. For example, maybe the more logically coherent an idea is, the easier it is to implement. Or maybe an idea that fails in reality cannot be logically coherent. I would agree with both of these statements.

 

[Amebix]

^^^
I would agree with that. It seems like the desire for short-term reward is unsustainable yet celebrated in capitalist society.

However you can't really say that capitalism is *based* on desire for short term rewards. Do we celebrate instant gratification? Yes. But is capitalism somehow reliant on this sort of thinking? I don't think so. I think capitalism will survive long into the future when we *will* be sustainable.

You may think capitalism will in the future somehow be sustainable, but that doesnt take away from the fact that were running into some serious problems here, global warming, peak oil, mass extinction, sociopathic world leaders... What are you going to do about that? Its happening right now and wishfull thinking isnt going to make it go away.