What would happen to those corporations without the government enforcing their property? Have you ever tried to seize a McDonalds to distribute food to the homeless?
People have property rights too. I wouldn’t want someone seizing the food in my fridge to feed the homeless. Property rights are a good thing actually. The problem isn’t the government “protecting” corporations. It’s that wealth grants a greater degree of control over government due to corruption.
Ultimately though it’s a pointless discussion since anarchists are never going to see what they envision implemented beyond weirdo hippie commune towns because their ideas don’t scale up.
I wouldn’t want anyone to seize the food in your fridge. Unless with “seize” you mean “fill up unprompted” because people know you need to eat and that’s enough reason to give you food, and maybe you’re busy all the time with constructing bridges or whatnot so they also cook for you.
And while corruption is an issue, it’s not the only issue: The very act of having lots of capital to throw around allows companies to direct policy, you e.g. don’t need to grease hands to get different municipalities to overbid each other with tax breaks for your new fidget spinner factory. The BS is inherent in the system.
As to scaling: Possibly. Possibly not. I’d argue that it can’t yet be envisioned, not even by anarchists themselves (and we’re aware of that, hence all the gradualism)… but as you acknowledged that it can work in the small, what happens if all the municipalities we have turn into hippie communes? Would they elect, among themselves, an Emperor Commune to rule over them? I don’t think so. They’d find ways to cooperate at eye level. How that will look in detail, as said, I have no idea, it’s probably going to involve federation and plenty of subsidiarity.
Practically, right now, it makes no difference as most of us are not living in hippie commune towns. First step would be to get there, then we can think about luxury gay space anarchism.
Those small communes only work because everyone is opting in for the anarchist model. Most people have no interest in that model, and so it will never scale beyond such small communities where everyone opts in.
It especially isn’t going to work as soon as you reach the scale where tribalism sets in. That’s a natural human behaviour and cannot be eliminated. The human brain craves an “us versus them” narrative. You know this to be true, because your brain does it too, even if you suppress that part of your brain, it’s still there and you’re aware of it. Some of us can rise above it, but we all know that especially in large groups, humans revert to their more base instincts. The only way to prevent that tendency from dominating society is with the structure imposed by a government.
Like, how exactly would you envision anarchism working in NYC, with the current population of NYC? Not some hypothetical group of people who’ve all drunk the anarchism Kool aid. Literally just how does it work in a city that big with regular people who haven’t read your anarchist newsletter? Because you will never get everyone to agree that anarchism is the way to go. So you’re going to have to come up with a model that works for people even if they don’t want to be part of it.
What would happen to those corporations without the government enforcing their property? Have you ever tried to seize a McDonalds to distribute food to the homeless?
People have property rights too. I wouldn’t want someone seizing the food in my fridge to feed the homeless. Property rights are a good thing actually. The problem isn’t the government “protecting” corporations. It’s that wealth grants a greater degree of control over government due to corruption.
Ultimately though it’s a pointless discussion since anarchists are never going to see what they envision implemented beyond weirdo hippie commune towns because their ideas don’t scale up.
I wouldn’t want anyone to seize the food in your fridge. Unless with “seize” you mean “fill up unprompted” because people know you need to eat and that’s enough reason to give you food, and maybe you’re busy all the time with constructing bridges or whatnot so they also cook for you.
And while corruption is an issue, it’s not the only issue: The very act of having lots of capital to throw around allows companies to direct policy, you e.g. don’t need to grease hands to get different municipalities to overbid each other with tax breaks for your new fidget spinner factory. The BS is inherent in the system.
As to scaling: Possibly. Possibly not. I’d argue that it can’t yet be envisioned, not even by anarchists themselves (and we’re aware of that, hence all the gradualism)… but as you acknowledged that it can work in the small, what happens if all the municipalities we have turn into hippie communes? Would they elect, among themselves, an Emperor Commune to rule over them? I don’t think so. They’d find ways to cooperate at eye level. How that will look in detail, as said, I have no idea, it’s probably going to involve federation and plenty of subsidiarity.
Practically, right now, it makes no difference as most of us are not living in hippie commune towns. First step would be to get there, then we can think about luxury gay space anarchism.
Those small communes only work because everyone is opting in for the anarchist model. Most people have no interest in that model, and so it will never scale beyond such small communities where everyone opts in.
It especially isn’t going to work as soon as you reach the scale where tribalism sets in. That’s a natural human behaviour and cannot be eliminated. The human brain craves an “us versus them” narrative. You know this to be true, because your brain does it too, even if you suppress that part of your brain, it’s still there and you’re aware of it. Some of us can rise above it, but we all know that especially in large groups, humans revert to their more base instincts. The only way to prevent that tendency from dominating society is with the structure imposed by a government.
Like, how exactly would you envision anarchism working in NYC, with the current population of NYC? Not some hypothetical group of people who’ve all drunk the anarchism Kool aid. Literally just how does it work in a city that big with regular people who haven’t read your anarchist newsletter? Because you will never get everyone to agree that anarchism is the way to go. So you’re going to have to come up with a model that works for people even if they don’t want to be part of it.