To reiterate, your argument was that people in an anarchist society will, as a whole, not take on an ounce of extra work even if it means helping not poisoning their neighboring towns.
No, my argument is that when an anarchist commune makes an anti-social decision based on very reasonable and universal human desires, you have no means of conflict resolution which can stop any intransigent community from acting selfishly at the expense of other communities without going back to the question of "Enforcement".
My argument was that there are social and material benefits to taking on that extra work of cleaning their waste water, and I believe most people would not feel good poisoning their neighbors unless they were extremely uneducated or sociopathic.
Fuck's sake, most of us poison our neighbors every fucking day we buy something we don't fucking need. You feel good about that? Do you think about it, even?
... my point here isn't to guilt you, fuck's sake, I do it too. My point is that these are not rare problems we are discussing. People are very good at closing their eyes, or focusing on their little corner of the world, or offering innumerable justifications for their own behavior or why the burden should fall on someone else.
You believe that the only solution to that scenario is to have a hierarchical government with a big stick to force that group to clean their waste water.
If a community refuses to stop polluting, your only options are some form of enforcement, or letting it happen. Your only response here is "It wouldn't happen often enough to consider", which is utopian to the point of absurdity.
I believe that most places under an Anarchist society would, on the whole, not need the stick. There may be some infrequent specific scenarios where even under Anarchism, that a settlement acts as you suggest. In those cases, especially if the harm was severe or could not be mitigated, the community(s) effected down river may opt to resort to other means to resolve that conflict, such as social shaming, or potentially even sabotage.
Oh, social shaming has a good record on that, does it?
And sabotage? What happens when someone gets fucking shot for sneaking around in the middle of the night - and don't fucking tell me "All anarchists will be completely calm and extremely disciplined gun owners who would never shoot anyone unless they were 100% sure that their life was immediately at risk :)" What if the sabotage creates much more damage than expected? What if the sabotage itself kills people? What if no one admits to the sabotage? Is the sabotage lawful by the downriver community's decision? What's the next step then?
It's not enough for a society to be able to operate day-to-day. A society must be able to operate in crisis, or it will be replaced by a society which can - no matter how much more ugly it is, day-to-day.
Then that population would have to decide between the extra time and work that defense against them would require, or just clean the damn water.
Considering how people tend to band closer together when they feel under attack by 'outsiders', even to their own material detriment? And especially within an ideology, or rather a very specific interpretation of anarchism, that rejects the notion that outsiders have the right to tell them what to do?
By insisting on no violence, you set the stage for mass violence. Endemic warfare. These are the exact fucking conditions that arise in pre-modern societies; these are the exact fucking conditions which predominant in international affairs.
I don’t see how it conflicts with what I’ve been suggesting?
Even to-day we see men and women denying themselves necessaries to acquire mere trifles, to obtain some particular gratification, or some intellectual or material enjoyment.
After bread has been secured, leisure is the supreme aim.