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[Frumple]

The advantage of Today's system is that you only need to get more than 50% of the population to support one descision, rather than all of them*, which you would need to do in anarchaica.

Far less than 50% and far less than the population, actually. At least in the states, and presumably elsewhere. Generally you only need a winning population of voters to get something done. Not a majority, just more than the rest. And that number often isn't a population majority by any stretch of the imagination. It's particularly bad in the states where something like 1 in every 100 people, or thereabouts, have had their right to vote stripped from them. Nevermind the voter turnout that's often less than a 2/3rds majority (and sometimes not even a 50% majority) and often highly polarized. You've got plenty of cases where less than a quarter of the population is making decisions for the other 75+%.

Which may or may not be a boon for shoving environmental protection down people's throats. It's generally a pretty damn bad thing overall, though. A system where half or less than half of the people involved can more or less unilaterally decide things for the other half is a sword that cuts both ways, and very deeply.

That's just the USA though. Rest of the world's a far nicer place.

Well, no. Unless you're defining "rest of the world" as "post-industrial nations" (hint: This is still not a majority). Parts of Europe may be. And I guess the rare bastion in other places. I won't say most, but there's at least something approaching a plurality that's frankly worse. This isn't a thumbs up for the states, mind. Better doesn't mean good.

[Descan]

Canada was pretty good before we got Harper...

[Truean]

http://thinkprogress.org/education/2013/03/22/1762921/senate-republicans-unanimously-support-repeal-of-student-loan-reform-law/




.... I'm not gonna even say anything.

[alexandertnt]

The same as today ? Nothing ??

Wait what? Nothing? To Google you go. However the point is that there is nothing to stop people polluting in an anarchist society, and that a structured government at the least allows for the ability to regulate this by placing restrictions on peoples freedom.

Its another one of those scenario's where in either case, some group of people are going to lose their freedom. How do you decide which and enforce the decision (most likely against the will of the restricted group)?


Sometimes passing/enforcing some rule is necessary, even against the will of the people (which would require power). Sometimes it does require an individual or minority to exert power over the majority. After all, the people are not always right...

http://thinkprogress.org/education/2013/03/22/1762921/senate-republicans-unanimously-support-repeal-of-student-loan-reform-law/

Wait, US Federal loans have interest? Silly strange America.

[lorb]

The same as today ? Nothing ??

However the point is that there is nothing to stop people polluting in an anarchist society, and that a structured government at the least allows for the ability to regulate this by placing restrictions on peoples freedom.

Its another one of those scenario's where in either case, some group of people are going to lose their freedom. How do you decide which and enforce the decision (most likely against the will of the restricted group)?
[...]

I present to you the Twin Oaks Community which is very close to anarchy. There are rules but there isn't a government and no law enforcement. The ecological footprint of an average twin-oak member is about a quarter of that of an average US citizen. Not much burning coal. Not much of an argument, but a counter example that shows it's at least possible.

[Putnam]

Wait, US Federal loans have interest? Silly strange America.

Why do you think we're in so much debt?

[SalmonGod]

The thing about pollution is it's primarily driven by commercial interests.  Business priority is profit, above all other considerations.  People are manipulated to buy large quantities of stuff they often find out afterwards they didn't even really want to drive consumerism, wasting resources and draining the environment.  Stuff is designed to have a limited lifespan so it has to be bought repeatedly, wasting resources and draining the environment.  The costs of environmental damage are offloaded to employees by reduced wages, consumers by increased prices, taxpayers by a large variety of means, or nobody by simply avoiding blame and responsibility and ignoring the problem.  Governments are bribed into leaving loopholes in regulations, or making penalties miniscule.  Money is spent on making the populace ignorant of environmental issues so there is no pressure for regulation.  Environmental activists are regularly murdered and no one is held responsible.  Maybe not in the U.S., but U.S. based corporations employ deadly terror operations to force through their environmental destruction in other countries with regularity.

Remove the profit motive, as required by the majority of anarchist schools of thought, and the driving factors behind all of the above disappear along with it.

[alexandertnt]

How do you remove the profit motive? It seems pretty deeply embedded in people. Hell, I want to make profit when exchanging goods or services, and petroleum based products are often the cheapest option, leading to me outselling my non-polluting competitor. (I am assuming that in an anarchic society, people will be allowed to pursue profits and wealth, and thus commercial interests would still exist).

It would seem that anarchy would require a large shift in the way people think, and more to the point, to maintain that new way of thinking.

Wait, US Federal loans have interest? Silly strange America.

Why do you think we're in so much debt?

I always assumed it was from private loans. Whats the point of setting up a government loan system that just functions the same as a private loan system (to the point of even being for-profit)?

[SalmonGod]

How do you remove the profit motive? It seems pretty deeply embedded in people. Hell, I want to make profit when exchanging goods or services, and petroleum based products are often the cheapest option, leading to me outselling my non-polluting competitor. (I am assuming that in an anarchic society, people will be allowed to pursue profits and wealth, and thus commercial interests would still exist).

It would seem that anarchy would require a large shift in the way people think, and more to the point, to maintain that new way of thinking.

We're starting to go deep on this to the point where there are many various schools of thought in anarchy that would answer this question differently.

I am somewhere in the area of an anarcho-syndicalist/social libertarian.  I see the concept of property as the root as most of our problems.  To understand this, you have to understand a very important distinction between property and possession.  A possession is something you claim ownership and control of that you personally relate to in your life.  Something that you actually use and depend on or have an emotional connection with first-hand.  Property something you claim ownership or control over that you do not have such a connection with.  Something that is owned by one and rented by another would be considered the property of the person who owns it, but the possession or the person who lives in it.

I believe that society can function on possession alone, and that property is unnecessary and damaging to human relations.  Without property there is no means by which a person can accumulate more than they need, and the concept of profit becomes meaningless.

Yes, it requires a huge shift in the way people think.  Any form of anarchy requires a major cultural revolution.  However, such revolutions have happened before.  It happened when human beings discovered the secrets of agriculture and developed sedentary lifestyles, which further led into population centers, specialization, and so on into modernity.  The way we live today is really completely UNnatural, as we have plenty of anthropological proof that the conceptual foundations that civilization functions on, such as property, are completely alien to indigenous ways of life, which as I mentioned before is how the first 98% of human history was lived.  Civilization developed in certain ways according to changes in circumstances, not according to some fact of human nature.

And I believe we're in the midst of a drastic change in circumstances right now that may be as deeply uprooting as the drift away from hunter-gatherer life.  I think it's all about communication.  Our methods of social organization have always been limited by available forms and speed of communication.  The advent of written language had drastic effects on the functioning of society, then again the printing press, and until a little over 100 years ago, written word on physical media was the pinnacle of our capability for distributing information.  Civilization developed to process on functions of centralization because of these limitations.  Information and decision-making ability was consolidated into hierarchies of authority, because limiting the flow of communication to strict social channels was the most efficient way we had to keep things organized and operating.  Natural, memetic dispersion of information was incredibly slow and unreliable.  All of the political and economic systems we've seen through history were algorithms for different styles of centralization.

Modern mass communications has rendered those previous limitations obsolete, and thus gives us the opportunity to completely reverse our organizational paradigms.  Natural, memetic dispersion of information is near-instantaneous.  Anything can be communicated to anyone anwhere, selectively or en-masse, at any moment.  Infrastructure that filters information to the people who would find it most relevant and that helps people to make constructive social connections is becoming ever more sophisticated.  Because of all this, de-centralized organizational structures are now more resilient and powerful than centralized ones.

Think of civilization as a computer, communications capability as the hardware, and socio-economic structures as operating systems.  Our operating systems are all designed for hardware that is outdated.  We have a supercomputer, but we're running Windows 3.1.

[GrizzlyAdamz]

I'd like to point out hardware and software aren't as interchangeable as your metaphor suggests- without that paradigm shift in how people think, trying to maintain that supercomputer infrastructure just wouldn't work- who would maintain it? How would it filter information? Who makes sure no funny business happens?
Because metaphors are fun, that supercomputer was designed by windows 3 for windows 3.

[SalmonGod]

I'd like to point out hardware and software aren't as interchangeable as your metaphor suggests- without that paradigm shift in how people think, trying to maintain that supercomputer infrastructure just wouldn't work- who would maintain it? How would it filter information? Who makes sure no funny business happens?
Because metaphors are fun, that supercomputer was designed by windows 3 for windows 3.

Who maintains Wikipedia?  Who filters its information?  Who makes sure no one defaces it?  There's no direct answer to that, except everyone does.  And it works.

Culture and society do form positive feedback loops that make change difficult, but they still have to interface with reality.  We're seeing a rise in tensions right now as obsolete structures are increasingly incapable of managing the realities of the world today.  Today's most heated global conflict is over freedom of information.  People are trying to freely distribute information that used to be centrally controlled as it wasn't possible to be any other way, and old infrastructures that used to take that control for granted are now having to fight viciously for it.  So we have conflict raging on many levels over intellectual property, privacy, whistleblowing, education, etc.  The fact that this conflict is happening shows that the potential for paradigm shift is on the table right now.

[Devling]

Who maintains Wikipedia?  Who filters its information?  Who makes sure no one defaces it?  There's no direct answer to that, except everyone does.  And it works.

Actually... Admins.
Literally people who's express purpose is to maintain wikipedia, filter out BS, and make sure no one defaces it.

[PanH]

It exists also in Europe. It's maybe less spread, but it definitively exists.

And from what I've heard, it's worse in Japan.

Yes, Japan is quite strictly regulated. There's quite a bit of propaganda there.

The same as today ? Nothing ??

Wait what? Nothing? To Google you go. However the point is that there is nothing to stop people polluting in an anarchist society, and that a structured government at the least allows for the ability to regulate this by placing restrictions on peoples freedom.

There's not much. Environnemental laws are often ineffective, and concerns mostly companies, and not really individuals. So no, nothing prevents me from burning coal. A good chunck of today's energy come from coal.

Who maintains Wikipedia?  Who filters its information?  Who makes sure no one defaces it?  There's no direct answer to that, except everyone does.  And it works.

There is actually a bit of organization for Wikipedia.

[SalmonGod]

Who maintains Wikipedia?  Who filters its information?  Who makes sure no one defaces it?  There's no direct answer to that, except everyone does.  And it works.

Actually... Admins.
Literally people who's express purpose is to maintain wikipedia, filter out BS, and make sure no one defaces it

Yes, those people exist, but a huge portion of the work is done by what's referred to as "the long tail".  There's a handful of people who are dedicated and contribute/monitor a lot, and then there's a massive number of people whose contributions are very small.  That latter portion is so much larger that their cumulative effect is much larger than the dedicated crowd, and Wikipedia wouldn't be able to be what it is without that.

There was a TED talk about exactly this and its implications for the evolution of organizational structures in the modern communications era.  Glancing at it right now, it looks like Wikipedia has tightened up a bit in the last couple years, but my point still stands.

[Devling]

Okay but the metaphor is still flawed.

Also, you mean to say that while a cast of people contribute a lot to a thing, but that the overall quality of the thing is determined by many people?
So like a country or government?