Why Anarchy Doesn't Work

1. Without government money will become worthless. Who will regulate the amount printed? Who will stop people making counterfeit money? A modern capitalist society cannot work on barter alone, there needs to be some kind of currency to determine the value of goods and services.

Can you imagine what it would be like to walk into McDonalds, ask for a Big Mac and have to haggle with the staff over what you’re going to swap him for it? What if the employees make a bad swap and the employer has to check what they swapped every time to see if they got a good deal or not?

2. Public services will only be available to the rich. Without the government, things like the police, the fire department and health care will all become completely privatized which poor people will not be able to afford. Doesn’t everyone deserve protection from crime? Why should the survival of a sick or injured patient be determined by how much wealth they have?

3. Without the government, there is nobody to protect the rights of the invidividual. How will we stop terrorist groups like Al-Qaeda getting their hands on nuclear or biological weapons? How can we stop businesses enslaving their workers? Who will tell the scientist his ethical boundaries in performing experiments? What will stop organized criminal mobs taking over society by force?

4. How will we stop global warming? Call me insane, but I think if you gave businesses the choice they would care more about money than the environment. It’s not just greenhouse gasses either, these guys could totally rape the environment without consequence. All the forests cut down, all the rivers poisoned, the land stuffed with toxic waste and the sky filled with pollutive gas.

5. The Government is good for the economy. The government provides corporations with infrastructure for trade, an educated workforce and a secure environment to do business in.

OMG? ANARCHY IS BAD?!?!?!

Cool story,bro.

If I can kill people and things with out reason I’ll be fine.

meh, anarchy doesn’t work as it is counter to our evolved impulses.

PS, true anarchy would have the police stealing from the rich, acting as just another gang.

Actually, does not sound to bad an idea now. Lets kill some bankers!

All those things can be solved with a resource based economy. We don’t need a government of people or money. IMO money is the most dehumanizing thing that has ever happened to us.

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I don’t think anarchy is the answer either.

On that note, I knew a couple people that were going to the north american anarcist meeting(or something like that)...which I thought was a bit of an oxymoron.

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was that in response to me? I never said anything about anarchy. All I said was that people should not be the ones governing. Get some computers that make actions based on logic and don’t have an agenda or biased political views to govern us.

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Can’t we all just get along? NO.

ramunematt wrote: was that in response to me? I never said anything about anarchy. All I said was that people should not be the ones governing. Get some computers that make actions based on logic and don’t have an agenda or biased political views to govern us.

sup there skynet.

I... don’t know what you’re talking about *runs*

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ramunematt wrote: was that in response to me? I never said anything about anarchy. All I said was that people should not be the ones governing. Get some computers that make actions based on logic and don’t have an agenda or biased political views to govern us.

That’s a bad idea.

First of all, computers REQUIRE people to run them. We program it. It’s actually counter-productive to your goal because humans will have made it make the choices. And we can’t do true sentient AI yet, since we also decide how a computer learns.

Second of all, logic is subjective, while also not necessarily the best in our interests. Since humans will have programmed it’s logistics, it will be a bit skewed, unless you had a board representing people of ALL backgrounds. It may also use logic that takes away certain human rights, and on that note, not everyone will agree with it’s decisions, and it’s decisions may be more dangerous if not all of the facts are in front of it. Humans that run the government are supposed to be logical anyway, so there is no point. You need a logical society to elect logical leaders, although I’ve found that the US Supreme Court isn’t too bad on the logic front; of course that opinion does vary.

But anarchy doesn’t work because it doesn’t support a large scale population. It’s good for small groups that are closer-knit, but for a whole country? No. It wouldn’t do much but fail under the weight of requiring a form of control that it can’t have. People’s disagreements would cause too much conflict and there wouldn’t be any social control to allow for a unanimous decision. Differing social groups will form that will be unable to agree on things because they live in different environments.

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RageOverdose wrote:

ramunematt wrote: was that in response to me? I never said anything about anarchy. All I said was that people should not be the ones governing. Get some computers that make actions based on logic and don’t have an agenda or biased political views to govern us.

That’s a bad idea.

First of all, computers REQUIRE people to run them. We program it. It’s actually counter-productive to your goal because humans will have made it make the choices. And we can’t do true sentient AI yet, since we also decide how a computer learns.

Second of all, logic is subjective, while also not necessarily the best in our interests. Since humans will have programmed it’s logistics, it will be a bit skewed, unless you had a board representing people of ALL backgrounds. It may also use logic that takes away certain human rights, and on that note, not everyone will agree with it’s decisions, and it’s decisions may be more dangerous if not all of the facts are in front of it. Humans that run the government are supposed to be logical anyway, so there is no point. You need a logical society to elect logical leaders, although I’ve found that the US Supreme Court isn’t too bad on the logic front; of course that opinion does vary.

But anarchy doesn’t work because it doesn’t support a large scale population. It’s good for small groups that are closer-knit, but for a whole country? No. It wouldn’t do much but fail under the weight of requiring a form of control that it can’t have. People’s disagreements would cause too much conflict and there wouldn’t be any social control to allow for a unanimous decision. Differing social groups will form that will be unable to agree on things because they live in different environments.

The US already almost ended up in anarchy when we were governed by the articles of confederation, which essentially had every state with its own way of doing things. Nothing was pleasant about that.

raep wrote:

The US already almost ended up in anarchy when we were governed by the articles of confederation, which essentially had every state with its own way of doing things. Nothing was pleasant about that.

That wouldn’t be anarchy anyway. Anarchy is removal/lack of a state, and since the States are, well, states, then they wouldn’t fall under anarchy. It would be more like the city-state setup of ancient Greece.

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ramunematt wrote: All I said was that people should not be the ones governing. Get some computers that make actions based on logic and don’t have an agenda or biased political views to govern us.

It will take hundrers of years before we have a computer advanced enough to run the entire world, not to mention come up with practical solutions to new social, environmental and economic problems that would arise over time.

ramunematt wrote: All those things can be solved with a resource based economy. We don’t need a government of people or money. IMO money is the most dehumanizing thing that has ever happened to us.

You really think people will be willing to work for no pay so long as they have enough basic resources to keep them alive?
Humans are GREEDY, that’s why Capitalism works. Why shouldn’t people who are innovative or work hard be more successful than those who don’t? Is a doctor not entitled to more wages than a bag boy at a local grocery store?
Capitalism also encourages our technology to improve quickly. More competition = more motivation to come up with new things.

Shaun of the Living wrote:
You really think people will be willing to work for no pay so long as they have enough basic resources to keep them alive?
Humans are GREEDY, that’s why Capitalism works. Why shouldn’t people who are innovative or work hard be more successful than those who don’t? Is a doctor not entitled to more wages than a bag boy at a local grocery store?
Capitalism also encourages our technology to improve quickly. More competition = more motivation to come up with new things.

I don’t know if humans are inherently greedy, although it seems like it. But capitalism only supports that, although capitalism, in my opinion, best functions when it works to better society, not itself.

Resource-based economies run basically by saying, “We use what resources we have and it’s their availability that decides the use." There are some problems with this.

1) What if we run out or lose access to resources? What are we going to do? Just stop? We do not have infinite resource income, it is impossible according to the laws of physics. We can recycle, but I doubt we even have the current technology to recycle at near-100% efficiency. I also do not know if we are close to it, or if it’s even feasible.

2) There will be no incentive to control one’s overuse of resources. Government could control it, but I see that as immoral. If the resources are ours to inherit, no one can tell us how much we should use.

3) We have to be able to access resources at maximum efficiency per individual. Supply and demand would apply to a resource-based economy just like it does in a capitalist one.

4) Merit would become the new “money." Social stratospheres would be created via people’s abilities, and thus allow for new conflict. The most capable would probably be at the top, with the least capable at the bottom. Unless resources are regulated by the government in a socialistic manner, the most capable would have the most access to resources, which would in turn allow for them to lead better lives.

The only true benefit is that there is a concrete standard in a resource-based economy, the resources, whereas our current system of money is based mostly upon the government’s control of it and the society’s belief of how valuable it is.

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If computers ran the world, then they would be easily destroyed and maybe even hacked and bad stuff wud happen.

Shaun of the Living wrote: Why shouldn’t people who are innovative or work hard be more successful than those who don’t? Is a doctor not entitled to more wages than a bag boy at a local grocery store?

And fire fighters should make more money than hollywood actors, but OH WELL.