I’ve made this analogy before, but I’d like to expound on it because I find it to be quite apt.
I see anarchists as people who have inherited a huge house that was not kept up well by the previous owner. Upon seeing the leaky roof, the cracked stairs, the rug stained with blood from who knows what horrible occurrence… the anarchist makes a funny statement.
“This house is horrible and housing in general is just too much work. No matter how nice a house is, it will start to fall apart. I’ll solve this by living outside.”
I guess if you come from a disposable culture that just throws everything away once it’s broken, rather than fix it, perhaps this makes some sort of sense.
I suppose there almost appears to be evidence. Nearly every house that was built in the past has fallen apart, and we all know those that are built now are only here for a finite time. And it’s true, homes need maintenance: they don’t upkeep themselves.
That does indeed mean getting off your lazy ass to fix things from time to time, and sometimes it’s expensive and difficult. A home probably seems like a money pit that is more trouble than it’s worth. That is, until you actually live outside.
Government is not something that plagues mankind, it is a development that has enabled things we never dreamed imaginable when in small tribes - which are perhaps the base unit of an anarchy, which are still hierarchical, mind you, just not large and centralized.
That’s really what anarchists want: no centralized power. They can’t even be bothered to come up with a plan for how ordinary, real people will live day to day without any form of hierarchy at a personal level, they just hate “the state.”
Oh, “the state,” how I “adore” thee… let me count the statist reasons I pour my heart out for you…
Thank you for enabling me to not be my own security force, both from local and foreign threats.
Thank you for paving the roads and providing a system for minimizing traffic accidents (although would it kill you to fill in the potholes faster?).
Thank you for delivering pieces of paper vast distances from their source to my front door, even though most of it is advertisements.
Thank you for captivating the imagination of the world by going to the moon, even if cynics say you only did it to win a dick measuring contest with the Russians (though to be fair, they had the first satellite in space, the first animal in space, the first man in space, the first probe to orbit and impact the moon, the first to land a probe that on Mars and Venus, first woman to walk in space…).
[Boy, that last parenthetical is killing me on paragraph length uniformity… way to fail, NASA.]
They say, “You have to love someone for who they are. You can’t expect them to change.” And that’s true, of people you love. Except, I don’t actually “love” the state, I simply rely upon it, like all of you. Yes, you, person who is reading this and is kidding himself by pretending you don’t.
The state can change, even if right now it seems hopeless. You can fix the roof, redo the stairs, get new carpeting (which will get stained in the future, but what are you going to do?). If the frame and foundation aren’t solid, you can always rebuild it from scratch… but you’re looking at a lot more work. In fact, about the only thing that doesn’t make any sense is deciding it would be better for everyone to sleep on the ground.
But why not? Homelessness is an option. I don’t care if you’re homeless, you’re free to be homeless, but the reality is a lot less glamorous than the idea. If you want to abandon your house and be homeless, no one is stopping you. However, consider this: there are people who are homeless not by choice, and nearly all of them are not happy about it. I would know: I dated a homeless girl. The best part was, when I was taking her home, I could drop her off anywhere.
Anyway… in all seriousness, I honestly believe homeless people achieve about as much compared to people with homes as anarchies do compared to governed nations. Sure, some people are torturing people in homes (sometimes they’re torturing the homeless, oddly enough…), but is that really what homes are about? Is that your normal, every day interaction with your home?
I ask you honestly, especially anarchists: what has the government done to you personally? I can cherry pick thousands of exceptional scenarios where one of the 300 million Americans had a bad experience, but in my normal, day-to-day life… I don’t have a lot of problems.
That isn’t why I’m “a statist,” it’s just an observation. I have plenty of freedoms, and I exercise my freedom to voice grievances against the government when it is abusive. What cracks me up is that people I know who have been abused by the system are still not as hostile as the people here, who seem to be a bunch of middle-class whites who never had a real problem in their life. I can relate to that through my personal experience, but what you guys complain about boggles my mind.
I see a lot of “oh the poor oppressed business owner” bullshit. Fuck the business owner. Fuck him over a barrel with a 17 inch cast-iron strap on with razor barbs. Who gives a flying fuck about the rich? During times like these, when the middle-class worker is making less and the lower class worker can’t even find employment, these rich assfucks are pulling in record salaries and bonuses to boot.
The rich take care of themselves, they don’t need help. They’re getting sympathy from the government because of deregulation pussies whining about the poor oppressed business man. People have it in their heads that giving more money to the rich will create jobs, so the government did that to appease right-wingers and libertarians, then those same assclowns complained when Obama did the same thing as Bush.
How is it that people who are so obsessed to the point of having a conniption fit while trying to refute the government over the day of the week are also the same people who kiss the boots of the private nobility? Hierarchy is apparently acceptable to the anarchist when the power structure is based on money, but heaven forbid the people have a say.
I came here to SE contribute because governmental abuses should be publicized. There needs to be accountability. I’m all for that. But boy oh boy… is it mind bending the conclusions some people draw from witnessing the same things I do.
Let’s put it this way: assume I can snap my fingers and government disappears. There’s already going to be instant injustice, because who is going to prosecute and bring to justice all the criminals we had running our country before I snapped my fingers? The mechanics of anarchy are just so idealistically naïve, I can’t take it seriously, especially coming from people who put so much stock in the kings of capitalism.
But boy oh boy… is it mind bending the conclusions some people draw from witnessing the same things I do.
ReplyDeleteIt's only "mind bending" because you don't look at things from a morally objective perspective. If you did, you'd see that to be consistent, you can't grant to the State the power to do things that would be considered immoral, wrong and evil if done by anyone else.
Hierarchy is apparently acceptable to the anarchist when the power structure is based on money
I don't know where this idea of yours comes from. Anarchism is opposed to hierarchy, period.
especially coming from people who put so much stock in the kings of capitalism.
Most anarchists are just as much against capitalism as they are the state (except for the misnamed "anarcho-capitalists", and even they are really opposed to the kind of state-granted privileged the modern corporation has, when you look into their actual views).
Besides, capitalism is really a statist system, not a free market one.
So, anarchists don't "put stock" in the "kings of capitalism", but they also don't want to use coercion to force everyone into "correct" behavior. However, without the state, the capitalists we know would find it difficult if not impossible to operate as they do now.
You can't conflate economic systems with governmental ones. You can claim you don't like capitalism until you're blue in the face, but as long as you have no stated system for combatting the rise of a nobility, you are implicitly supporting it.
ReplyDeleteExplain to me the mechanics of your systems instead of harboring it secretly and criticizing me for not understanding your vague and idealistic promises. You say there won't be any hierarchies, how? You say "anarcho-capitalists" aren't real anarchists, yet I know more of them than any other kind of anarchist. I don't find any real weight behind anarchist ideas, just an ever-nebulous dreamscape of wishful thinking.
And I assure you, capitalists don't rely on the state, they simply use the state because it's there. If you cut out the middle man, they won't care one bit.
And I assure you, capitalists don't rely on the state, they simply use the state because it's there. If you cut out the middle man, they won't care one bit.
ReplyDeleteSimply not true. You don't know what the fuck you're talking about. Corporations, the main components of the system, are a creation of the state; they are fictitious legal "persons" and would not exist as such without the laws of the state. Same with IP and patents; without the state, who would enforce such "property rights". Bye bye Monsanto! (and the MPAA and RIAA.)
Police forces to enforce their property rights and control of the means of production; endless subsidies paid for by taxation that enable their operations to run without bearing the full expense of their exploitative methods.; barriers to competition that big business actively lobbies for.
Who are you kidding? You're either deliberately trying to provoke anarchists with what you know is complete nonsense, or you're genuinely ignorant of basic facts of how capitalism sustains itself.
If you wave good bye to IP and patents, wave good bye to industry and innovation. Could you perhaps name for me the marvelous inventions of the 20th century which were not patentend? I would be thrilled to see wuch a list.
ReplyDeleteCorporations don't need personhood unless theyr;e trying to donate to a campaign. There's literally no reason why the power held by corporations would dissipate in the absence of government. If anything, the nobility would be strengthened by the lack of restraint, and you could witness real slavery again, not the emotionally charged drivel you blather about as being slavery, even though it is anything but.
So without a police force to enforce their property rights... are you saying people will just take anything? I don't understand what you're trying to argue here: that anarchy is a violent free-for-all where business cannot occur? That the police are what's keeping people poor, because they can't raid the homes of the rich? I am baffled by the implications of that statement.
The most abusive company is an unregulated one. I see zero evidence for your claims that companies rely on the government for subsidies. And I would argue that a cursory glance at black markets would show you what competition would look like in an anarchy, and it wouldn't be barriers of entry that stop people, it would be bloodshed.
You don't have to get rid of government to end corporate welfare and favoritism. Period.
In one ear and out the other, Bret? You really are hopeless. It's pointless trying to reason with you. I don't mind that you don't agree, but logic and actual arguments roll off you like water off a duck's back!
ReplyDeleteIf you wave good bye to IP and patents, wave good bye to industry and innovation.
Thanks for proving how much statist and corporate propaganda you've absorbed. I've gone over and posted on that before, so I won't waste my time again (for now). At least you admit that corporate privilege and monopoly in the form of "intellectual property" wouldn't exist without the state, so thanks for making my point.
So without a police force to enforce their property rights... are you saying people will just take anything?
No, but nice try. Police protection of large corporations is currently subsidized by the taxpayers,. It might very well be prohibitively expensive to operate if they had to pay the full cost of such protection directly.
But, further, there is a reality that needs to be addressed. The workers of any large enterprise are the real wealth producers, and they would be hard to exploit and control if not for the full force of the State backing up the corporations claims of ownership.
I don't believe in "property rights", except as they exist naturally based on use and actual occupancy. As for businesses, those who contribute to the creation of wealth and production through their labor are the natural owners of such businesses. Exploitation on the massive scale we witness every day under capitalism could not continue without the state's support and protection.
I've read the half-hearted attempts to rationalize the elimination of IP, but you fail to acknowledge that restrictions can be put on IP to make it less abusive. In fact, I am positive I remember commenting as such, that a patent need not last very long, that IP can become public after a time that is merely determined by we, the people. We don't have to stand idly by during abuse, but you can't deny the rise of industrializism is directly linked to inventions protected by patents. I mean, you can deny it, but you'd be historically disproven.
ReplyDeleteI also roundly reject your notion that police are the reason workers are not empowered. Could you be any more arbitrary in your choice of scapegoats? Alcohol and it's dumbing effects on the populace has infinitely more impact upon the oppression of the worker than any police department, but the true heart of the problem is the deificiation of the entrepreneur in American society as a titan of industry and an unquestioned member of the socially accepted nobility. I don't think anarchism even has the tools at its disposal necessary for overturning this paradigm; if anything, the only imagined entity which can stand up to this is a government properly wielded by the people.
I know you say you hate capitalism and hierarchy, but I don't see how anarchy is anything but rule by the nobility that cannot be altered by the people. I would love for you to sit down and actually think about how this could happen, not just tell me I'm an idiot for not believing it will magically occur. Bill Gates is the richest man in the world and he didn't get it from government subsidies, I don't understand how you can account for him or the dozens of nobles who aren't shitty food conglomerates or oil tycoons.
I'm not saying no businesses would fail without government welfare, what I'm saying is they won't all crumble magically into a syndicalist system.
You do realize that if there is no form of limited life patent or exclusive intellectual property rights, there will be companies whose sole business will be ripping off people's ideas, right? I don't think that will encourage anyone to be creative if every single individual has to compete with someone who will reverse engineer your products or simply plagiraize you for profit because they do bigger volume.
ReplyDelete