I like the way anarcho-syndicalism only needs to solve the problems of the individual "syndicate" in question. It's a shame culture has corrupted the word "syndicate" into only being used when referring to "criminal syndicates", as if any private club or organized community weren't also syndicates despite not being criminal in nature. I would have used political parties as an example but the Democrat and Rape Pedo Klan parties absolutely most certainly ARE criminal syndicates...
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Vast majority of problems in the world are caused by people with positions of authority. We treat authority the same way a scientist would, who just discovered that the radium in toothpaste is harmful.
There aren't many examples of authorityless communities to compare to.
The egalitarian Indus valley civilisation was just as technologically advanced, and lasted longer than the roman empire despite being much smaller.
The mapuche a (relatively) egalitarian tribe located in south america, was able to defend itself against the Spanish colonizers for almost three decades.
The early neolithic southern levenant was peaceful for over 10,000 years. we know this because they only started to build fortifications when the Egyptians arrived
despite being much smaller.
It's because they were much smaller. Anarchy doesn't scale.
smaller as in having a peak population of 5 million compared to the roman empire which had a peak population of 75 million people.
Yes, being 15x less populated is smaller.
I dont see why it couldn't scale up beyond just 5 million
Because the larger the population, the more coordination of resources is required. A tiered government structure is the most efficient way to do this. Logistics for a city are very different than logistics for a continent.
And this was before globalization/industrialization too. What worked for societies thousands of years ago isn't a good indicator of what would work now.
But ultimately humans are the problem. The larger the population, the easier it is for bad actors to create positions of power.
Am not familiar with with logistics but arent they already ran decentralized?
But ultimately humans are the problem. The larger the population, the easier it is for bad actors to create positions of power.
I agree. History has shown us repeatedly that bad actors will always eventually find a way to get into positions of power. We reject political authority because we want to break out of the endless cycle of wars, man-made famines and genocides.
The roman empire stretched much further geographically as well. It was imperialism which needed new land to conquer and feed its stratified society. It was not an egalitarian project.
The current system is obviously handling all of the worlds problems so well, without any starving families or climate change driven injustice.
implying scaling is a good thing
Saving this meme, even though anarchy fails to financially reward people for memes.
Conservatives used to make this argument about any policies they don't like and oddly not make the argument for policies they do like.
You can just say "I'm solving more problems than you" and watch them get on the defense
The issue is the people who claim to have the answer for every problem. Delusional, the lot of em.
If everyone else would stop being stupid and vote correctly, then my idea would be great!
i asked a capitalist to feed me when i was hungry and he laughed and told me to get a job. i replied, 'i applied to 200 jobs in the last year' and this smug expression settled on his face and he said, 'try harder, fuckass.'
I can solve every issue right now but I need complete dictatorship to do it.
Let me know when you guys are ready.
Okay, we just solve them one at a time using experimentation enabled by decentralization. Communities pick what works and discard what doesn’t, without a higher power dictating inefficiencies.
Boom. Done. Next question.
This is anarcho-syndicalism, right? It sounds better and better every time I hear about it!
Edit: wait i think i misread you
I thought you said it was something like small organized communities each individually attempting to solve one problem at a time democratically and then everyone adopting the methods that work.
Most anarchist schools of toughs use this framework. If you are interested in the complex system theory side of anarchism The Desktop regulatory state is a good read.
Ooh I havent heard of that book before, thanks for the link. I love complex systems
Heres another one.
https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/scott-nicholas-nappalos-emergence-and-anarchism
What works in one place may or may not work in another. What worked at one time may not function today.
In order to find out, the local nuance needs to be taken into account while engaging in experimentation.
Isn't that essentially what we as a species have done since the advent of civilization?
Yeah until very recently
Eh, if by very recently you mean the last 12,000 years. From when the agricultural revolution started, assholes with armies started existing and exploiting people working the land.
It's the near 100% conquest of the planet by states, and the globalization of the power of companies that is more recent. It's the powerful trying to fully own everything, that is closer to 300 years old.
In 1999, when the Cape Hatteras lighthouse was in danger of collapsing into the sea, it was determined that it needed to be moved inland. The community was outraged, lawsuits and votes followed, and the local community determined that they did not want the lighthouse moved. The Army Corps of Engineers declared that the community of Hatteras was not in a position to win a war against the ocean, asserted the Federal Government's control over the lighthouse, and moved it anyway.
The move was a huge success. The lighthouse is now safe from collapsing into the ocean, despite the efforts of the local community.
I'm not saying submitting to a higher power (in this case a higher level of expertise) is always better... but sometimes it is.
Local communities are so much better than higher power that you needed to stretch for anecdotal evidence from the 20th century.
More lighthouses are being destroyed by the climate change that the Army defends and creates directly.
Gee thanks for the government, without it one lighthouse might have collapsed eventually.
But if in one community you don't have anyone that has a sufficient level of expertise for some area or another, that might lead it to collapse into pseudoscience and bad decisions. I don't mean that you need a central authority, but you for sure need local authorities in X or Y question inside every cell of the federation.
That makes me wonder, is the pseudoscience that has infiltrated our central authority the inevitable result of a weak point, or merely someone fooling all of the people some of the time?
21st Century:
Grafton, NH, AKA the "and then the bears came" town.
Local community (demographically taken over by a bunch of libertarians) votes to slash town budget and regulations, including trash pickup.
And then the bears came.
A concentrated community of Right-wing libertarians/Anarcho-capitalists are destined to destroy themselves if they attain any sort of power, as they follow the Ayn Rand school of selfishness to the extreme. Grafton, NH isn't far off from how Bioshock explored the same ideas and how it would lead to societal collapse.
left wing libertarainism/Anarchism, on the other hand, is mainly collectivist, and we have well documented examples of that political theory working extremely well when put into practice.
1936 Catalonia during the Spanish Civil War organized an Anarchist society with over 3 million participants, and they documented much of how exactly they ran it, right down to how they kept the electric trams for public transport going (there is a fantastic book embedded at the bottom of that article, Collectives in the Spanish Revolution by Gaston Leval, which offers more details on other aspects of how they operated that society).
It's a fantastic historical event we can learn from and build upon.
Libertarians aren't the brightest bunch to begin with, but regardless, saying "look at this community that was wrong" in response to people wanting to remove central authority is not really an argument against the idea.
The entire point is that people are free to govern themselves. Governing well is up to the local communities. Some would do better than others, certainly. But with time, people would discover what works and what doesn't. They would make mistakes like these and learn from the natural consequences of their actions. It's imperfect because humans are imperfect.
And a community would decide to prevent climate change more than a country would because...?
climate change that the Army defends and creates directly
Uh huh. You didn't answer the question. My town can't even successfully vote to keep the water district, there is no way we'd ban CFCs (let alone have done the necessary research) or fossil fuels. Everything you hate about the people of this country is because of the people who live in every town. It's the same people.
I did answer the question. Now you're moving the goalposts from lighthouses destroyed, as per the meme.
You cannot seriously think the conversation is exclusively about lighthouses destroyed
How is that "boom done"?
Sounds like it would be an excruciatingly long and possibly neverending process.
It's about the journey, not the destination. Any system with a ceiling inevitably becomes recursive.
Well duh.
We're dealing with humans here. It's going to be an excruciating, unrewarding, frustrating, and usually violent process no matter how we do it.
that's why we have a thriving community right next to one that's ripping out its publicly managed topiary every decade. it's not "experimantation enabled by decentralization", it's grift and public policy failure
what definitively works is my community conquering your community
thanks for all the stuff, and the slaves
We'd already have a revolution by now if the time anarchists and MLs spend strawmanning each other was put to good use
And of course you'll drop every single thing giving issues in the current system.
I mean, I usually just ask how we protect people dependent on extremely complicated global supply chains to survive for medicine or things like glasses.
Pure anarchy can't work and is very ablest. Dgmw fuck capitalism
No but you don't understand, there would be a person who just likes making eyeglasses who would do it for you!
And if there isn't one in your commune, or there is one, but they're mad at you? Tough shit I guess. Try not pissing people off next time.
I really don't understand where the idea that anarchism = no trade came from
Are you taking the piss? I would expect everyone on a sub this niche would know global trade is possible without direct control.
Anarchism is when nobody does anything because there's no profit motive and also we hate people with disabilities I guess.
It can with small communities a la Hunger Games minus the killing of children and a central authority.
The world is complex and multifaceted. We can't even understand or describe reality in its fullest. Everyone including myself are just operating on an extremely small and reductive version of what we think the world is.
Pretty much how religion works. Oh you don't have 4k video and a by the nano second description of the big bang? It's clearly in my magical book, a fictional being that has zero actual basis in reality made it. Much more plausible.
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