Posted on 01/14/2002 6:38:35 AM PST by SteamshipTime
Anarchy has two traditions present in this country. The older one, American anarchy, is based on sufficient self-discipline that civil government is not necessary. The European model which came out of Russia and Eastern Europe is based on overthrowing civil government by force.
If, as statists content, all men are fallible and thus incapable of self-governance, then why would a group of them be any more capable?
Rational anarchist bump.
Good. You have admitted your illness.
That's the first step on the road to recovery.
Force is no order.
It works in the free market because there's a force ready to beat the crap out of anyone who steals, murders, destroys or otherwise does something centrally detrimental to the free market. You can't participate in a free market well if someone just waltzes off with whatever you're marketing, or just shoots you and dumps your remains behind a grocery store dumpster.
"People sleep peaceably in their beds at night only because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf."
- George Orwell
(Shall the "rough men" be hired only by those who can afford their services, or hired for all by general taxation?)
Anarchy only refers to an absence of government, not an absence of order. The word specifically refers to government, not order, which is why there is a different word for the absence of order, known as "disorder."
Monarchy - from "mono" and "archy" meaning "government with one ruler."
Aristocracy - meaning "government of and by aristocrats.
Democracy - meaning "government rule of the people."
Anarchy - meaning "absence of government."
The government whose absence we refer to by the term "anarchy" is the institution of government , not individual self-government in the sense of self-discipline, which term might better be used for the latter concept to avoid confusion. Thus, anarchy need not a and in fact does not mean the absence of order.
on the subject of crime, is the fact that a crime committed against an individual is punished by the state for the 'good of society'. The victim of that crime is most often victimized, yet again, by the very people who are charged with protecting them.
How would anarchy better deal with individuals who couldn't/wouldn't govern themselves?
Yet, the fact remains that anarchy - in the strict sense of the word "without government" - is the natural human state of affairs. We evolved to live in circumstances in which there is no government. Despite the lack of government, there most definitely was order.
One of the more important insights of this article, something I had never considered, is how much we ignore the rules and strictures of government and legalisms. If we did not we could not survive. After all, government is not order. It is stasis.
Since we do ignore government in running our lives, this means to me that it is an expensive and intrusive irrelevance.
Take it up a notch: Absence of societal government is societal disorder.
Not really. This is apples and oranges. And you are again equating level of "governance of self" with good behavior.
This is the error. By way of example, I'm sure many religious terrorists have extremely well ordered, well-disciplined lives. Look what they end up doing.
By contrast, look at the disorder that is often part of the personal lives of many happpy, productive geniuses in history.
In fact, a touch of obsessive, irrational behavior can be a very productive force for an individual, or it can be detrimental to their lives. The same in government leads to, well, you know the history of the Soviet Union. They had no shortage of government, but who could call that a healthy, productive society.
But the most important difference in the comparison you make here can be summed up simply by this: If you choose to self-govern well or poorly, that is YOU making that choice and you are free to change that. When (societal) government governs, it does so whether you like it or not.
Wise guy. Of course such things will happen with government...but it would happen a lot more without government.
"The only reason some people are alive is because it's illegal to kill them."
Absolutely untrue.
0.000000000000001 may be small, but it's not zero - and there's a big difference.
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