Which would be a more efficient, more desireble form of government, Totalitarian or Anarchy, and why?
A stateless ‘free’ society/state of nature, as described by Hobbes - No arts, no society, no letters, and what is worst, continual fear and danger of violent death, and the life of man, solitary poor nasty brutish and short.
Utopian social engineering as history has shown leads to mass death. People live with no dignity.
I would choose neither, and opt for a careful middle way, in much the same way as forces of dialectic have done for us in most parts of the world. Emphasis on freedom, emphasis on dignity, emphasis on social justice.
Pollak - The state exists to iron out the imperfections of a free society.
I choose feudalism. Its a anarcy with established states built on power. Its the truest form of goverment man has. It is the basic of all goverments.
Pangloss
Utopian social engineering as history has shown leads to mass death. People live with no dignity.
Oh please… the society we live today and lived more thousand years has proven itself to be incapable to stop mass death, suffering and exploitation, on the contrary, I would say. This idea that ‘utopia’ has existed is bullshit.
It all depends on what you mean when you say ‘efficient’ and ‘desireble form of government’.
First of all, anarchism is not a form of government, is the lack of it.
Something in between, like Panglass suggested, is what we have to day in many countries… does it work? It depends what your means are. If you what to achieve equality, respect and fraternity… then, NO. The thing in between a state with no government and a totalitarian one does not work.
If goal is to have a society of classes, privileging certain classes and limitating the negative and positive freedom of other classes, then yes.
Both, totalitarian and anarchism could or couldn’t work out. Obviously that anarchism is the hardest way, even though it could achieve much more, because you depend on everyone to be conscious of other necessities, while in a totalitarian state, you need only one mind to maintain the system working.
Anarchy can’t exist for very long, and will invariably lead to totalitarianism, as the strong become free to make demands on the weak.
Explain how a society with no government can lead to a totalitarian one.
In an anarchist society there wouldn’t be a strong and a weak, they would all be the same and see each other as the same. The deep root of fraternity which we can’t even imagine what it is.
Do you know Thomas Moore? Maybe you would enjoy reading Utopia.
The same way it's always happened. The world started in anarchy. How could a totalitariam government NOT form from anarchy? In fact, one of the key facets of fascisim is that it almost always rises from an old government being overthrown. If the US fell into anarchy, it would be a race to see who organized the fastest to control resources, and you can bet that nobody is going to give up any power they grab to a 'parliment' or something.
Um, you’re not talking about anarchy then, you’re talking about a global lobotomy. The only way people like that can exist is if there’s an army of soldiers to protect them from others who don’t see things that way.
Examples please
There is a problem here. ‘ANARCHY’ is NOT a political system. Anarchy means a political and social disorder resulting from a lack or absence of governmental authority.
Anarchism, however, is a theory that advocates the abolition of all forms of government as a necessary step towards achieving political and social liberty. It would be an organized society and not a governed society, it doesn’t mean it would be an anarchy.
You can’t make that a rule considering that the Hitler and Mussolini didn’t rise after a coup d’état.
Then again, no one is questioning whether having a coup would be the best way to change a political system, we are discussing which political system is the ‘best’ one. As far as I know, anarchism could be reached by other means either than following a revolution or a coup d’état.
Again, you are using the wrong term. (and i must say that the thread stated with the wrong term)
If you meant anarchism then I can say that it is impossible to reach such social state without going through changes and reforms.
I am not talking about anarchy, for this is not a political system.
You don’t need an army to protect people from other people, we need police, government and soldiers to protect classes from other classes, which wouldn’t exist in an anarchist society.
Every country in the world today has a path to power, either you born with it or you win that power somehow (coup, election, money, fame). If there is no path leading to power and if no one detains any sort of power, then you can’t reach it, and you can’t grab it. That’s how you can avoid totalitarism.
You keep saying that anarchy isn’t a political system. Then why contrast it with totalitarianism? Why can’t we just have a totalitarian anarchy? It’s ovbious that we can’t, and the reason that we can’t is because they are mutually exclusive, and the reason they are mutually exclusive is because they have the same classification, and that classification is…?
People of the same class don't do horrible things to each other every single day?
In any event, if you had a society with no government, no military, and full of people with no lust for power, and placed that society almost anywhere here on Earth, I give it 2 years tops before that society is enslaved, killed, or assimilated. If you want to make such a society a global phenomenon, you either need to put lots of LSD in the water, or have a government powerful enough to conquer the Earth and make people that way through eugenics or some other means.
You can’t take away all paths to power. Even with no governments, no money, no property ownership, you’ll still have rape, forced labor, and violence for the sake of violence. It’s in our genes.
I’ll be the first to admit that in a world where nobody craves power over another person, anarchy would do just fine. But what’s the purpose in comparing an anarchy of fantasy people that meet the ideal for anarchy to real life people in a totalitarian regime? I could just as easily say that in a ‘real’ totalitarian state, the President for Life would be supremely wise and benevolent, and all his subjects would selflessly and happily devote their lives to the benefit of the state. Does that prove anything about the usefulness of totalitarianism here on Earth?
I am afraid you are wrong. Anarchy is not a political system. It’s the lack of any sort of organization, like I said before and you decided to ignore. I suggest you check the meaning of things before trying to make your point.
There is no reason to discuss totalitarianism and anarchy, that’s why I said (but you might have ignored again) that superstrongsteve probably meant anarchism and not anarchy.
You can’t have totalitarian anarchy as a political system because anarchy is a political and social disorder resulting from a lack or absence of governmental authority, which isn’t likely to happen in a totalitarian government.
Anarchy is opposed to any organization whatsoever… how can it be a system if it’s not organized? It can’t!
I didn’t say we live in harmony in a society of classes I said the opposite. Doesn’t matter whether you are the same social class or not, clashes will happen as long as you have a gap between rich and poor.
For a Christian you have very little faith …
You are so sure about the 2 years notice that makes me thing that you would be the one to beging the enslavement
If not you, who would do it? How would that happen? Why would they kill?
Don’t just state that, tell me why, how and who would do those horrible things.
The means to reach such society is not in question, but still, I don’t see why you have to drug people to make them act with respect and fraternity towards other people, nature, animals… I believe we all have the potential to do that, the problem is that many people think like you, that we are evil and mean and no matter how hard we try we will end up killing, raping, enslaving. You must be very sad person if you look at the world like that.
Why not?
Forced labour? Who would force you to labour when you can work without enforcement?
I do not believe in ‘violence for the sack of violence’. Violence exists in our world due to social inequality, repression and frustration.
Sorry, but you are presuming that. It’s not in my gene to kill, rape and enslave or even to desire power or money. If it’s in yours, then I’m really sorry for you.
Anarchy wouldn’t do well anywhere. We need to be organized (NOT RULED) if we want to live in a community/society. What you mean is anarchism…, which is different, and would probably work… oneday, who knows.
I don’t know, I haven’t started this thread. But I don’t think anarchism is a fantasy.
That’s what is wrong about having a government and country… this stupidity that we are subjects of a state and should devote our lives to what we call nation but in fact is just a piece of land we ripped off.
I have more things to devote my life to, like my husband, family, friends, myself… They are far more important to me than the State.
A ‘benevolent’ totalitarian governor (I will dismiss ‘supremely wise’ for i don’t think there is such person) is still no good… and if the person is the best human being on earth, they would call elections and win anyway, so there is no point in having a totalitarian state if you are planning to be that good.
So, divy up the funds, get rid of the concept of personal property, or whatever it is you propose, and people will stop raping each other, or killing for fun, or killing for racism or whatever? The kind of changes you’re talking about require massive reprogramming of the human psyche, and have nothing to do with political systems, or absenses thereof.
Christians are supposed to believe that everybody will get along and hold hands if you take away ‘social classes’? I think it takes more than faith to believe something like that.
I just don’t know, it really depends on how the changes you talk about took place. If a magic mind-affecting meteor crashed into the earth and completely changed the basic nature of everybody on earth, then I guess nobody would ever hurt anybody again.
You may think I’m being sarcastic, but seriously, you have to give some sort of example of how personal property, class systems, racial hatred, the rich/poor dichotomy, and religious fighting can not only ALL go away, but all go away without any organized body making it happen and sticking around to enforce the changes. Give me an example of how that occurs, and I can tell you how humanity would probably behave based on that senario.
For the above reason, I think it is.
I probably would be happier if I had some convenient group or groups to blame the world state on. I'm sure people who think all the world's problems come from governments, Christians, atheists, black people or Martians sleep a lot better at night.
You talk about potential. Very few people live up to their true potential, in fact I can honestly say I haven't met one. So, does everyone have the potential to treat each other well and live in peace? Yeah, maybe. Will they, if left to their own devices? Never.
(in reply to “You can’t take away all paths to power.”)
Because they exist in the mind. Is there only one apple tree within walking distance? Then someone will protect that tree and throw rocks at anyone who tries to eat from it. Not because The Man keeps the price of apples high, but he’s mean enough to want all the apples, strong enough to keep other’s away from them, and too lazy to plant another apple tree. Oh, and because there’s no authority to stop him. Not everybody is that way. But not everyone has to be that way for your idea to fail. It only takes a severe minority to mess everything up when there’s no one to stop them.
And why would I work without enforcement, and without pay? For the betterment of humanity? If you allow me to work without enforcement or pay, my job will be ‘thief’, or at best, ‘leech’.
And I believe Jesus will save you from your sins. You don’t care at all, do you? What makes you think I care what you believe about violence? What can you prove? All I have to do is watch the news (which I do, for a living), and I can find a dozen examples every single day that seem to contradict your beliefs. People kill each other because they chewed the wrong mushroom, people rape each other and can’t even tell you why afterwords, tribes in the middle of the jungle who have nothing to fight over but mud and sticks kill and eat each other in some parts of the world. You want the biggest disproof of the possibility of anarchy? Here it is: Humanity started off in a perfect anarchy, with nothing to fight over, nothing to own, no social classes, no nothing. The world you see now is the result. If we went back to that, something like this world would come around again. Unless, of course, there was someone enforcing the anarchy.
It's not stupid if that Magic Meteor comes and alters people such that it works for them. Or, if I 'believe' that violence exists in our world from an overabundance of freedom, and people not being willing to adhere to social restrictions. Then it's perfectly plausible, I suppose.
How about I simply say "The second there is an anarchy, I will do everything in my power to re-establish a government, complete with borders, a class-system, and currency, which most people won't get enough of." Statistically speaking, if I exist, there's probably a bunch of people who agree with me, and in this modern age we'll find each other quickly enough. You could say I'm lying, I suppose. You could try to convince me that once I really tried anarchy, I'd change my mind. But aside from those rather weak ideas, aren't I now living, irrefutable proof that anarchy can't last?
Ah, but in *this* example, the people *want* a totalitarian state, because they've all simultaneously 'realized' the futility of freedom and individuality, and that peace and happiness only comes from the threat of death and imprisonment for stepping out of line. Or something like that.
Anyway, the point is, I can claim to believe something radical and unprovable about human nature that makes totalitarianism the best thing ever. I can say "If only people would realize X,Y,Z" and stop being like YOU, we could all live happily in a nationalistic state". But none of this means anything. But if we look at the real world, filled with real people, then we can make a fair comparison.
I am suggesting that a society where one person can buy a cars, study in the best school, gets the best jobs, travel around the world, buy decent food, live in a decent house and other can’t do any of those is a society out of balance. After many hundred years out of balance and the gap between them widening every day it causes damage to the people and you end up with this war of people against other people. It begins with them fighting different classes till it loses the meaning and they fight everyone.
No, you silly, am saying that for a Christian you have very little faith that man could live like equals. Jesus was the bloody first one to open his hand to others, to give everything up, even his life, so we could learn and do the same. THAT’S what I mean.
I agree, however, you need more than faith to look at others like equals.
How absurd…. You are telling me then, that people rather live in violence and wars than peace. Well, I assure you that most of them want to live in peace if they had the choice.
You just can’t live up to your potential because you are not allowed to.
They do. But till recently black people were slaves and people who grew up knowing they weren’t as good as the whites had in mind they were slaves. Now many people see them as equal and that exist in their minds. You can change peoples mind, do you know that? I am not saying it’s gonna happen tomorrow, it takes a few years but it does change.
With time, if allowed, people can lose the will of having power. I, for example, don’t like people having power and I hate to have power over other people. What happened to me can happen to anyone, simply, because I don’t see anyone different or inferior or superior. If I, who am nobody and nothing, changes my mind about many things, I don’t see why the rest wouldn’t if given the opportunity.
Let’s talk about you apple story.
I don’t see why this person would protect the tree in the first place. But suppose he is from somewhere else where people behave like that for some reason.
If all the others what to eat from the apple they can easily join together and work together to take this man from where he is. You first need to convince this man that sharing is better, simply because as soon as he have no apples to eat and no seeds to plant another tree, no one will help him. If he is mad and still can’t understand that the community works together to make their life easier then you use force. One man is not capable to deal with a whole community.
Now you are wrong. People of this community works as authority when they need to. They don’t rule other peoples life, they have ways to organize themselves so they can all live in harmony. Is not a ‘do whatever you feel like’ thing. You just would have one, or a small group, making rules that doesn’t help a great number of the community.
You don’t understand, do you?
Suppose this. You are walking home with a friend from work and you see an old lady being burgled. You have the money on your pocket. What would you do? Help the lady and risk losing you money? Or just pretend you didn’t see anything and walk faster just in case you could be the other victim?
Is the same principle than the apple thing. You need to work together and that’s the only way you can change things.
Why do you want to be forced to work? And I didn’t mention not being paid… but since you did.
Why be paid if no one is paid and you can have according to your needs like everyone else?
And yes, people should work for fairer world and humanity… now, if you believe that people SHOULD or must be allowed to exploit others, than I close my case, because we believe in opposed things. I think we can’t and should do that… and that’s where I base my arguments. But if you think people should get from the world all they can, then… never mind all this talk.
No, I don’t care because I don’t believe in God not because I think you are a twat or anything. So it makes no difference to me whether I will be ‘saved’ or not.
I don’t think you care at all. But since we are ‘discussing’….
Why do you think poorer countries have more violence? Why great majority of criminals are from poor background? Why is that in poor countries there is always a emperor or a dictator or a small number of families that detain most of the wealth?
You think that violence has nothing to do with social classes then? That happens that all poor people are just mad and like killing even tho they have nothing to eat some days, they only commit crime because they… like.
Ok, tell then! I’m asking for many posts now and you haven’t given me any examples. And you need to give me many not just one… you can’t count only one example or people killing for fun. Note that people with disturbed background doesn’t count… only those who do it for fun.
I’ll tell you why.
1-People who raped are likely to have been raped before during their childhood
2-They were/are sexually repressed
3-Violent past
4-Drug abuse
5-Alchohol abuse
6-Mental problems
May all these could have been treated in some way. I don’t believe at all that people do horrible things for fun, am sorry, but I don’t think that’s valid. That must have been something that made this person act that way. Tho, it’s not a rule, some could go through similar things and still repress all the ‘anger’
Maybe mud and sticks have more value than you think. But still. Indeed… I agree with that. Culture can be very odd sometimes. I blame that in the lack of scientific knowledge. Most cannibal tribes do that as a ‘religious’ ritual. Like the church used to burn people… things change tho, as I said, it was cultural to have a black slave, not it isn’t.
Were did you get that from?
There has always been reasons to fight… territory, the chief of the tribe or group…. Those things. I just think that we should evolve now and stop fighting for the same old crap… we have the ability and potential to evolve socially to the point of living in harmony. I am not saying, before you sat anything stupid, that you’ve got to love everyone like a blind dumb hippie, I’m talking about respect and fraternity
I know you don’t give a shit for what I believe, but I would think you and the people that follows you probably exploited and earned a lot from a society of classes and clearly doesn’t care for anyone but yourselves and your own personal realizations. Basically I would think you were mean….and evil.
I don’t think you are lying, no. I think that there is a minority that indeed benefits from a society of classes and they would do whatever is in their hands to keep that society running. They are the minority tho. The majority of the world are not in the same position and once they are given the opportunity they will also defend what they believe is the best…
You and the bloody anarchy… anarchism please… I don’t think anarchy would work… anarchy is… well… anarchy. Anarchism is a different thing… which I am bored to tell the difference now.
I don’t know what sort of life you lead, but definitely you never tried to imagine how is to live under oppression and poverty. Never experienced what is to wake up in the morning with no future to look forward to, or even food to eat for days. All the people who live under the dictatorship of money and power are there to prove that a better society with everyone equal can last if given the opportunity.
I don’t know where you come from, but I really wish you could have grown up (if you are an adult) in a country that had a dictatorship. If you did, then you are mad because I can assure you that is not that fun.
I really want God to exist now…
I won’t disagree with any of that. I don’t think anarchy is a better alternative, considering the state of human nature.
I know what Jesus taught. You’re equivocating believeing in His moral teachings with believing everyone will follow them. Just because I believe the former doesn’t mean I have to believe the latter.
No. I don’t have to complicate my argument to make it easier for you to attack. My argument is simple, allow me to repeat it. People are in positions of power because some people desire power. If you take away all governments, some people will re-instate them just so they can be in power. Some people rape others because they enjoy it. Give them a decent job, all the food, toys, or whatever you want, and whatever is wrong with their brain will still be their, and they will still rape people.
Simply put, many of the problems that exist in society are natural by-products of either human nature, genetic error, or personality quirk. Simple societal change won’t get rid of these things.
Speak for yourself. I own my laziness, thank you very much. There are many occaisions where I have not lived up to my full potential simply because it was easier to goof off or do nothing. If you find yourself constantly thwarted and oppressed, then that’s unfortunate, but I am not.
And don’t tell me “You are oppressed, you just don’t realize it”, because you don’t know me.
What good is speaking in terms of 'can'? I can't argue with 'can'. Sure, it's theoretically possible that someday everyone in the whole world will decide that power sucks, and nobody ought to have any. All the dictators, cult leaders and pop-stars may decide that they really hate having all that adoration and money, and give it all up and become potato farmers. The main reason why I argue anarchy is flawed is because it relies on such a proposterous, unlikely, counter-intuitive (and yet possible) thing to occur before it's of any use. I'm much more interested in finding the best sort of organizational structure for the world as it is, not as it will likely never become.
Yeah, and the jerk happens to have a gun, or a knife, or something, and he kills someone in the conflict, and the people decide “We need to have someone trained handle situations like this” and a government is born. That’s very likely how it happened the first time around.
Do you want me to give you the ethically correct answer so you can prove your point, or do you want me to be honest? If the burglar had a gun and I didn’t, tough luck for the old lady, there’s no sense in two people getting robbed and killed instead of one.
I agree with that. I just don’t think most people will work together unless you make them, or unless they have something substantial to gain.
I don’t want to be forced to work. In your society, I’d be perfectly content stealing. Or, if you prefer, going and getting what I want ‘according to my needs’ without doing any work at all to get it. I’d be happy with that too. How many hours a week do you think I’m going to work if I know I’m going to get the same reward regardless? I think about…5.
No, what I think is that many people will take all they can if you allow them to. I don’t think you can say “People aren’t allowed to exploit each other” without a body devoted to enforcing that.
I don’t think they do, yet. Can you prove that they do?
I’m sure quite a bit of violence is based on social class. Good luck proving it ALL is.
Ok… John Eric Armstrong. Joe Ball. Cesar Barone. Martha Beck. David Berkowicz. Kenneth Bianci. Ted Bundy. Ray Copeland. Jeffrey Dalmer. Albert Fish. John Wayne Gacy. Ed Gein. Timothy Spencer.
What do you want? They do it for fun, they do it because of voices in their head, they don’t even know why they do it. I have no burden of proof here. Show me every serial killer, serial rapist, and etc, can have their crimes traced back to class envy or somesuch. THAT’s the radical theory that needs proof. Can you show me why people like that wouldn’t exist in your ideal community? Or, could you at least show how your ideal community would be better equipped to deal with that kind of person if they did come about?
None of the reasons you listed would be remedied by an absense of law.
I can understand why you would think that. But it’s the existence of my hypothetical viewpoint that proves my point, not it’s ethics.
It’s not that simple, though. If I had, say, just 150 people who agreed with me, and we got armed and organized, no community rabble could stop me. Just imagine a community like what you hold as your ideal, and plunk, I dunno…Iraq into the middle of it, weapons, government and all. How could your community possibly protect themselves from whatever Iraq wanted to do to you, without resorting to government? I know that’s on a grand scale, but on a smaller scale the equivolent could happen in any community.
Read closer and you’ll see that the ‘dictatorships are the best thing ever’ statement wasn’t meant to be taken literally.
Don’t you think we could change this? I mean, we are rational beings after all, aren’t we?
People don’t HAPPEN to have guns, there are ways to get guns and there is where we should look at.
If there were no guns being made, then mean and crazy people wouldn’t get them. That’s why I think having an army is shit, because it works both ways.
You and I disagree that mankind is violent by nature. So, I will pretend, for a while, to think like you and believe that we are indeed violent and horrible by nature.
But again, considering our ability to be rational, which we can’t deny otherwise we would still be living in caves, don’t you think that we should try to put an end and control this?
We managed to control a lot and many people (most of them I would say) are not violent, which means that those people repressed their violence. Can’t we win this fight?
You answered already. What is ethically correct is what should happen, because even though you would walk out on the old lady, you still know what is the correct thing to be done. You are also avoiding violence, which you said to be your nature.
Suppose the guy didn’t have a gun, or that you couldn’t see anything? Would you help her?
Maybe you would maybe you wouldn’t, but it’s obvious that if everyone helped each others instead of saving their own arses then society would be better.
Why do you think that? You mean that people are all selfish and would do nothing to help others?
And when you say gain, do you mean only in a material way?
But then you would be taking things that other worked hard to get. I would think it’s fine if they were bloody aristocrats or monarchs… but not people who are exploited and still have to work.
I understand stealing in out society because some have too much and some have too few…
But that’s wrong. I never said you shouldn’t work, you have to work so you can have something. Suppose the world is destroyed and there are only you left. You will have to build your world and work hard. You don’t need to be ruled to work, you need to work so you can survive, so you can develop…
Take me, for example, I hate my job… well, dislike it… because what I want to do is to write and I can’t have time to write because I need to work
What rewards are you expecting. Material rewards? Money to buy things you don’t really need, you are only told you need?
5 hours is more than enough. If a society is able to organize itself in a way that everyone has a job, then maybe we could have people working 3 days per week, 5 hours a day, or even less.
Only in Britain the unemployment in rising every year, and that’s, within many reasons, is due to machines doing man’s work, and I have nothing against that at all… but if we have machines doing most of the job, that it means you can have less working ours and more shifts.
I could work 3 hours a day and the other 6 could be divided in 2 shifts and another 2 people would have jobs. Suppose my job was something really important for the community… like… err…developing something to save energy… I would be doing my job for the community 3 hours a day, being one of my rewards the use of energy, and still I would have 21 hours of my day to do whatever I liked to… writing for example.
Other people would also work for the community in many different sectors in which I would also be rewarded as I work for them too. See what I mean?
Believe me, no one dislike working more than I do. I thought a lot about a society where we could work 2 days a week instead of 5.
But aren’t they allowed now? Look at the world… as long as you have money and power you can begin a war. Isn’t that taking all the can? Bombing people for money? Not developing eco-friendly industries? I find all that an abuse but they are allowed because of power.
And is the government doing anything about it now? Are the police, the army and the politicians, who are supposed to be the force that wouldn’t allow atrocities, doing anything to prevent exploitation? No… so they also don’t work.
Power doesn’t work… it opens doors to violence and inequality, that’s all it does.
Yes, go to library and check the statistics. Compare Britain to … say… Zimbabwe, or France and Brazil… Italy and Indonesia.
You need to be more interested in what is happening in the world, don’t wait for the statistics to knock on your door… there do exist, look for it.
Did I say all?
But I believe (not that you care what I believe anyway) that after years of society that values money and power above people, minds can be disturbed. There are probably people who born with more tendencies to act violently, and I assume that I am one of them. If I am angry I can… well, be very angry… but I had a nice childhood, if I was born in a very low class living with violence and poverty around me I could well become a killer or whatever.
The same with people who go mad and think that killing is right… those that claim that god asked them to kill their parents… I think is cased, if not because of classes, by peoples in society itself. Problems that we, nowadays, don’t seem to be interested in solve… we rather lock them up and wait them rotten.
Sorry, but I can’t agree that they were born killers. For me society has a part to play in their distorted values. Why? Because a society where human being’s live and health has less value than money, power and fame, that’s what happens. You can’t blame them for looking at another human as it was a piece of wood. You said yourself that you wouldn’t help the old lady… and I am not calling you a serial killer, please, no way… is just that our values are distorted and some people can go mad because of that.
You copied their names from a list, but have you checked their backgrounds, what they believed, what made them act like they did? You can’t just assume they all did it because they didn’t have anything else to do… they were probably people either religiously fanatic, or distorted childhood, or even mental problems that weren’t treated… whatever the reason was, it shows the lack of respect for human life…. Which again, is not just a characteristic of a serial killer, but of our society in a whole.
You can take all the names of the A-Z Serial Killers List, and post them under this threat, it won’t change the fact that serial killer are not the ones responsible for the mass violence in the world. Even if you sum all their victims it won’t get close to the number of children that are killed by hanger every year in the world due to lack of value for human’s live, and who is to blame for their death? Not Jeffrey Dahmer, I assure you that.
Are you American… cos I feel you are quite obsessed with guns.
There would be no guns… and if there were, what makes you think you and your group would be the only ones to have them?
You talk like it was a very powerful and armed group against a very thick and old community….
Well, we are doing whatever the American government wants and still we have a government of our own. A community, society or nation can be very powerful is acting together… to fight or not. But once you put this society as a bunch of lousy and lazy people, then obviously they can’t do much.
Oh… but is best that anarchism, is it?
Like I’ve said a couple of times, if humanity underwent radical changes, then anarchism could work. The fact that these radical changes are nessicary for anarchism to work in the first place is the whole reason I think it’s a bad idea. Show me a mechanism for these kinds of changes, and we can talk about the potential for the world some day becoming the kind of place where we could have an anarchism, but right now, it’s not.
If no guns were being made, then crazy people would carry machetes. Either way, that had nothing to do with my point, which was, a community needs an organized, trained, and regulated force in order to deal with menaces like this effeciently.
You’re the one that needs to make radical and improbable statements about human nature, not me. All I’m saying is there are enough horrible and violent people to make an anarchism a very dangerous unstable society to live in. No comments on human nature nessicary.
Certainly. Are you now going to argue that everybody would do what they thought was most ethical, if it wasn’t for The Man keeping them down or some such?
Particularties aside, if my gut told me my chances of saving the old lady were greater than the chances of me and her both getting killed/robbed whatever, then I would help. I’m not defending that as some ultimate ethical view, that’s a conjunction of my ethics/courage/empathy.
I don’t need to say “All”, and I won’t. I mean, “Enough people would be lazy or selfish to throw off the system such that our overall standard of living would be much lower than it is now.”
I’m not trying to justify stealing, I don’t think it’s ever justified, regardless of how much person A thinks person B deserves what they have. I’m just saying that if I get the same thing for my efforts no matter what I do, there’s a whole lot of things many people would do besides “hard work”.
You sure couldn’t devote much time to writing in an anarchism.
I said 5 hours per week. But hey, as long as we're pulling numbers out of nowhere, I suppose there's no reason we can't say an anarchism wouldn't allow us all to work just 5 hours a week, or even less.
And If I could only have what I *really* needed, I'd be miserable, and so would you. I'm below the poverty line in the US, and I still have tons of money for things I don't need. So I'll stick to my life of luxury in a capitalist state, thanks.
Kinda, except I don’t see an explanation for why exactly an anarchism would leade to smaller work weeks. Are you assuming a future where robots do all the work for us? If so, that could happen just as easily in any government system.
That’s all too bad. I fail to see what it has to do with our discussion, though. Besides, I think if you watch modern war, you’ll see that wars over money and territory are common among tiny countries in upheaval, not well-established large nations. In other words, the smaller a body of people making the desicions, the easier it is to go down this route. Corporate life is the same way. The biggest, most ruthless scams are nearly always perpetrated by small ‘companies’ of a few people. Most of that kind of activity that comes from a large organization involves affecting a very large group of people in such a way that they barely notice any harm from it. To summarize, individuals or small groups of individuals do more wrong when left to their own devices than large organizations in the spotlight.
Um, YES, of course. People are arrested, fined, jailed, deterred or otherwise stopped from exploiting other people every single day. Yeah, some stuff still happens, but it’s nothing compared to what would go on if the police etc. weren’t around.
OK, I can accept that. More crime per capita happens in poorer countries. You realize, of course, that if we took all the world’s wealth and devided it out evenly, the world would be a lot closer to Indonesia than Britain, right?
You said “Violence exists in our world due to social inequality, repression and frustration.” Now, I realize ‘frustration’ gives you a huge out if you want it, but otherwise this certainly seems to imply ‘all’ or ‘nearly all’. IF you only meant ‘some violence exists in our world today due to…’ then I fail to see how getting rid of those things is going to make the kind of difference you describe.
Yeah, you blame a certain kind of materialism because it contents you to do so, and that’s fine. I read your explanation about society valuing power and money over human lives, and some other person could jabe just as easily said serial killers come from "a society that scoffs at traditional ethics’. or ‘a society that won’t admit meat is murder’ or ‘a society that thinks man really landed on the Moon’, or any of a hundred other things. You have a pet theory, and that’s nice- we all do- but this doesn’t take away from the fact that you have nothing to point at that shows people like that wouldn’t still exist in an anarchism, or anything to show an anarchism community would be kept safer from them if they did exist.
Again, none of which would be cured by an anarchism. By the way, I don’t have to prove where these people got their ideas from- But good luck proving any of them did what they did because of ‘class envy’ or somesuch. A rigorous government can protec people from monsters without the reasons why they commit there acts being an issue.
Do you realize the massive organized effort it would take to get enough food to every corner of the Earth, and the opportunities for exploitation in that effort if there was no governing body overseeing it?
Which, of course, was not my point in posting it. You asked for lots of examples of people who killed for their own pleasure and not because of some societal pressure, and now you have them.
I didn't mention guns, I just said 'armed', but that's ok. But to go with the gun thing, I'm assuming part of our rise to anarchism would be everybody throwing their guns into a big pile and burning them (on an honor system, of course), along with all the books describing how to make a gun?
And I don't care if my group are the only people with guns. IF we're the only ones acting as an organized body to accomplish a greater goal, we can exploit a much much MUCH larger group of disorganized rabble who may or may not have a few guns, and may or may not have any experience using them. That's the power of organization, and the proof of that principal lies in the success of things like governments and prisons. If there were no more gun factories, it would be that much easier to keep the people under my power from defending themselves once I take whatever firearms they were hoarding away from them.
Eh, I don’t want to stir up political pride arguments of some sort. To put it in a generic sense, if Country A exists as a sovereign nation near a much more powerful country B, that sovereignty is due in part to the fact that Country B allows them to have it. Now imagine the US is the only country with any weapons, and it’s run by Saddam Hussein, or your favorite Evil Warlord. How much freedom do you think you (I’m assuming Britain) would have? As much as the Evil US wanted you to have, which would likely be very little.
I don’t understand this, but I’m going to assume this was meant to be “BUt it’s better than anarchism, isn’t it?” to keep the conversation going. I think it’s very hard to compare totalitarianism to other forms of government, because obviously so much depends on the temperment of the leader. I would say that in general, a fascist state has the potential to be more peaceful, more stable, and develop faster than an anarchism. It’s foreign relations will generally be very poor, due to nationalism, and there’s always the risk of a real nutter becoming the leader and messing things up. My ideal government would be about halfway between an American style republic and a dictatorship- I see a lot of room for making things effecient by eliminating useless elections and politics, but I think the government needs to be restricted by a Constitution and be somewhat representative.