@FS
"I am not proposing that we "immediately, today, tear down all State's in the world but leave everything else intact, full stop".
Good.

"limit the coercive power of the state,"
I have a problem with 'coercive'. Are you suggesting that a state should not coerce compliance with its laws? If you are, what should replace coercion? If not, what do you mean?

"limit the amount of influence it wields economically and militarily, and attempt to give greater decision-making to smaller groups in society."
Agree on both clauses. In Europe the latter is known as the principle of subsidiarity.

"Simultaneously, such action is made easier and more responsible by fairer representation."
Agree.

"Sorry if such beliefs make me whiny and a crazy fundamentalist."
Don't worry, you are starting to sound like a sensible adult now.

"a great deal of decisions by governments have impacts rivalling or even surpassing legislation, and are made in secret, or with little to no consultation."
There may not be direct consultation on a particular issue but the decisions are being made by elected representatives who will consider the impact on future elections.

"Both parties share the same opinions on most subjects, and except on relatively trivial clash issues, are extremely similar with regards to things like social issues, foreign policy, State intervention in the economy etc."
Do you think parties use opinion polls to ignore the results? Do you think politicians turn out on Sunday morning talk shows because they hate having a lie-in? They have a balancing act: stay close enough to base supporters but attract a few from the middle ground at the expense of opposition.

"a potential of nearly 200 hundred million people who are effectively unrepresented and possible against the decision in question".
If someone chooses not to vote that is their right (in most countries) but they cannot then complain about not being represented and certainly I am not in favour of a system which tries to guess what they might want.

"I question the legitimacy of my life being guided by the misconceptions and beliefs of generations long past."
Do you want every piece of legislation older than a certain date to be automatically void or perhaps voted on again? If it matters, it can be changed, in the way that copyright and evidence laws have been updated to reflect changes in technology. If it doesn't, why waste government time on it.

@FS
"If the corporation did not have the legal rights of a human being without the responsibilities, and a friendly government to bail it out when it went astray, do you think they would be as powerful and careless as they are?"
Now you are losing it again.

In what sense do corporations not have legal responsibilities of a human being? They can be prosecuted criminally & civilly; many have paid substantial penalties, they can become bankrupt and they can go out of business. Some have been given state aid, I would agree this has been done very badly, but in countries with social secuirty systems people get state aid too. The only difference is that you cannot send a corporation to jail.

@ Friendly Sword:

"If the communities that occupy the Niger delta had the ability to decide for themselves on a case to case basis whether multinational corporations should be able to operate in thier fishing areas without being killed by mercenaries and Nigerian army brigades, do you think there would be more oil spilled there every year than the gulf spill? I think not."

Ok, so let's say the State of Nigeria is abolished. An oil company decides they want to drill a new well in the delta. The people living in the area say "no, we don't want you to do that". The oil company says "fuck you, we don't give a shit what you and your stupid anarchist commune think, we're drilling anyway" and they move in and begin to drill.

In this scenario, how do the people of the delta stop the company from drilling? How do they actually enforce their will on the oil company?


To consider another scenario, look at the current situation in the Gulf of Florida, with fuckwitted BP allowing jillions of gallons of oil to leak into the sea, causing a huge environmental disaster. Obviously this is a failure of both the company and the state, because the state did not ensure that BP's safety standards were up to scratch. However, BP is now spending huge efforts to plug the leak, and will be forced, by the state, to pay compensation to people (such as fishermen) whose livelihoods are affected.

BP are only doing this because of the state. In anarchism, who would ensure that BP cleaned up after themselves and compensated the victims? How would this be ensured? What if BP just walked away and said "fuck this, we're not cleaning this up"? How would a system of small communes with no state appartus and no real government stand up to BP and force them to act?



"If a majority of Britain voted that the constitution (or whatever you Brits have... a gentlemen's agreement?) ought to be rewritten and the entirety of the lower classes should be sold into slavery (and the lower classes voted to be sold into slavery) what would be your response? Is it a legitimate decision that should be abided by?"

Well done for posing a very interesting question. As you correctly note, given that the lower classes make up the majority of the population, this motion could only pass if a large proportion of the lower classes voted for it themselves. The question of whether people should have the right to give up their rights is a very interesting one, and perhaps even merits its own thread. I'm not sure I have the answer to this.

@Jamie + 1 on the BP comment. BP has already spent $18 Billion (yes, with a 'B') on this issue. No company would voluntarily spend that kind of money no matter how big they were, unless they were getting a return on the investment, which BP is *not* getting. If it weren't for organized government, BP would tell the people of the Gulf to fuck off and ignore the issue completely.

Good job the US is prepared to use coercion. "Pretty please" would have sounded so lame.

"Show me the government that does not infringe upon the rights of anyone, and I will no longer call myself an anarchist."

no one?

"Pretty please" would not have worked. For cooperation of corporations to work, there must be penalties and enforcement of those penalties.

Sic, what you call rights, I call priviledges. The two are very different.

ok before we get into a semantics argument can we define rights/priviledges?

I see rights as something that all humans inherently have. "god given rights" "birthrights" whatever.
priviledges are something granted to you by the/a government (a governing body)

So which of our freedoms do we relegate to the government? right to life? freedom of travel? freedom of speech/press?

@draug I agree that coercion is necessary, I was having a dig at FS who wants states to stop coercion.

I suggest that the Universal Declaration of Human Rights is a good start for a list of fundamental rights. A good government will ensure that its citizens enjoy those rights.

@sic: anarchist

A good government will ensure that it's citizens are granted the rights that all humans should have? Who violates human rights more than governments?

How about drug lords and would be warlords for starters, sic?

I didnt say governments are the only institutions that violate human rights. Far from it, and your examples are wonderful. But governments do so with such frequency and egregiousness as to make drug lords seem like kids with a squirt gun competing against firefighters.

I contend that most western governments do more to enable human rights than they do to deny them. Of course, they can & should do better on both fronts.

IMHO ensuring the human rights of its citizens is the primary responsibility of government.

"I contend that most western governments do more to enable human rights than they do to deny them."

But why get all excited that the state grants you rights you should have anyway, while infringing on others.
This goes right back to rights vs. priviledges. What do we see as inalienable rights?

OK Draug,

For one, drug lords obtain their power from operating against State's in an environment of illegality. Remove the illegality of drugs and the drug trade no longer will necessarily fall under the jurisdiction of those who are willing to fight against government enforcement (aka dudes with guns). Drugs just become another commodity, as they were for nearly all of human history without resulting in the collapse of human society.

Secondly, what is a warlord without a miniture State infrastructure? He cannot operate by himself, obvious. Your average warlord needs an army, he needs rules, he needs a justifying mandate for his power (eg. helping his henchmen or doing God's will etc.) and he needs an enforcement mechanism. The term Warlords itself is merely a way to describe dictatorships in a way that makes them sound more illegitimate by comparison.

One again, this is an example of the existence of the powerful all encompassing State being justified by the threat of even more heinous examples of coercive power.

I'm not saying that warlords aren't a legitimate threat, because they are, but it is important to note that the nature of the power wielded isn't much different. The difference is the manner in which the power is justified, and the amount of input the governed get in thier rule.

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What do I mean when I say coercive power is used unjustly? Just take a look at how drug laws are enforced in the United States. Take a look at the racial element. Take a look at how the State reserves it's right to throw citizens in jail (theoretically) for not purchasing health insurance. Take a look at how the government reserves the right to throw protesters in jail for 'disturbing the peace (hint: it just means protesting when the government isn't interested in being protested against). Take a look at how American hegemony, how European hegemony, and the hegemony of thier multinational corporations are preserved not through the righteousness or goodness of thier actions, but by thier large armies and fearsome weapons.

Most frightening of all, the leader of free world has the ability and the supposed mandate to kill anyone in the world (citizen or not), without trial, without consent from the governed, for the crime of 'posing a threat' to American interests. He has even joked about it.

I would submit that in a free society, none of the above should be allowed to occur. The only reason they can occur is because the State is so powerful and has both a mandate and ability to use force on anyone it wishes without having to justify it if it so chooses. (Nicely for us, it usually does :))

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Regarding the threat of corporations:

Note that my stance here is that because corporation won't be so large, they won't be so powerful, and they won't have government armies along with them, they won't pose nearly the same hazards. Additionally, is it so crazy to believe that were the military machines of the world disbanded for the most part, that corporate incentives for raping the earth might severely diminished?

@Sic: "Who violates human rights more than governments?" I answered your question. Please provide proof that governments in general do more harm and violate more human rights. The only ones I could see being worse than the drug lords who are shadow governments themselves or warlords who are microgovernments, are seriously evil dictatorships (the Kim Jung Il's of the world).

And I would argue that a "government" that doesn't recognize the people is nothing more than an oversize warlord and not a real government at all.

@FS - I was actually posting that as you were doing yours. So we agree that warlords are "governments" as much as dictatorships are "warlord feifdoms".

@FS - Who is going to keep the corporations from becoming so large? If you take down a government of the people, you open up to abuses by the corporations that allow them to grow larger because youtake away their accountability.

Company A makes big and powerful automatic weapons. Company A decides they want to get into the water business. Company A moves into the primary aquafer for a region and stops up all the water, demanding that the residents pay them for it. The residents would move against Company A, except Company A has gunsa dn the residents don't because Company A is blockading the region as well with their guns.

Now, Company A has all the residents under their thumb and set their sites higher. Unless Company B comes along who is already bigger and decides to swallow Company A, Company A keeps growing.

The best you can hope for is a benevolent despot in the company that owns your town and that your company is bigger than the neighbors so they don't challenge for ownership.

Oh, and without big corporations, we have no standards. So if you got your wish and all the corporations stayed small (companies really, not corporations, as there wouldbe no incorporating jack squat), then there would be no standards across an inducstry because there'd be no big corps to set and enforce them. Imagine your computer not working when you cross from one geopolitical region to the next because the powergrids aren't consistent. Now, add to it that there are hundreds of competing computers and OSs not just the three primary OSs we currently have. Blizzard wouldn't be writting Starcraft II for all of the OSs, just whatever ones gave them the best kickback.

"Company A makes big and powerful automatic weapons. Company A decides they want to get into the water business. Company A moves into the primary aquafer for a region and stops up all the water, demanding that the residents pay them for it. The residents would move against Company A, except Company A has gunsa dn the residents don't because Company A is blockading the region as well with their guns."

Have you ever heard of the water wars Draug?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2000_Cochabamba_protests

Part of the reason why Bolivians have a somewhat negative impression of the USA.

More importantly however, how is a giant gun-making congolmerate going to stay in business if there are no large State actors? Answer: They won't, unless they become one. Only militaristic States have the massive size and interest necessary to fund automatic weapon production on a large scale. Didn't you watch Lord of War? :)

My question is, if you'll indulge in a bit of fantasy here, lets America is cut off from the rest of the world. An island in a vast ocean say. There is no centralized government, other than the notion that everyone is culturally American, and the fact that the different regions engage in trade with eachother and share media, etc. Decision making is made on a regional basis, by small communities that allow every person a say and a part in the decisions. Economic entities exist, but the individuals in the economic entities are liable for what they do to whatever community they effect. Communities prtect themselves from crime, and the roughly even nature of the disparate communities prevent power from being exercized over large areas.

Now, in this type of governing system, where is a powerful corporation going to come from?

Obviously the above situation is a bit fantasy-like, but it demonstrates that corporations are not naturally occuring entities in any human society.

Draug, if the market rewards similar standards, what prevents industry standards from occuring anyway? Historically, the three main reasons for different standards (eg. railroad gauge sizes) have been in order; (a) emerging design attempts (b) Different States applying and enforcing different standards and (c) Brand warfare.

Reason (a) naturally disappears with time, (b) won't exist, and (c) exists anyway, but is easily preventible with proper consumer knowlege and desire


At a certain point, companies made software compatible with microsoft because that's what consumers were using, not because it was government mandated, or because one huge corporation was in charge of all the software.

@Friendly - that isn't anarchy. It is small government, but government just the same. You have rules and laws and some sort of penal system when they are broken. Correct? I hope you aren't naive enough to think that everyone will just get along. That isn't human nature. Human nature is a pwer struggle so the strongest can get ahead and the weakest get left behind. It's called evolution and it applies to human relationships as surely as it applies to natural selection.

I'm glad you admit your view is pure fantasy cause you can't undo the last 100+ years of industrialization.

I would also point out that technological progress would be greatly slowed and our beloved computers would probably never have been created nor would the internet as there would be no cooperatives to allow this to happen.

"I contend that most western governments do more to enable human rights than they do to deny them."

But why get all excited that the state grants you rights you should have anyway, while infringing on others.
This goes right back to rights vs. priviledges. What do we see as inalienable rights?

Repeat posting Sic?

And he said enable, not grant. Different words with very different meanings. Enable could better be viewed as protecting. In other words making certain those rights are not taken away by someone else. Granting implies that they would be the ones taking those rights away.

double post was an accident.

why are you always so hooked up on semantics? It seems like you are just arguing to argue.
Anyway, who takes away rights more than governments? except maybe corporations.

It's not semantics when the implications are different. Saying something is bad and saying something is evil (just an example here) are too different things. Evil implies intent. Tornadoes are bad. Warlords are evil. The same applies to granting versus enabling. Granting implies the threat of revocation. Enabling has no such implication.

Government is such a huge, generic term. Western governments do more to protect rights and, in my 40+ years of experience, do not generally take away rights unless the person has given them reason to (i.e. the death penalty in some states for convicted murderers). Despots, yes, they take away rights. They kill on a whim just because you disagree with the person in power. But civilized, first world countries do not do that.

And I have heard all the arguments about the minority votes and backed my views of that argument being bullshit because the actions of the small local and state governments throughout the south in the 50s and 60s (and even into the 70s) no longer take place. And the reason they don't is the feds stepped in and put checks and monitoring in place. So any minority that doesn't vote now is just fucking stupid. So no need to cover that one.

If you disagree with the death penalty, that's your perogative. I feel a person who takes a life wihtout cause, owes a life. therefore I more than back the death penalty. I have gone to witness an execution and had no problem with it (have a friend of yours mother murdered by an armed robber just because she walked into a convenience store in the middle of the fucking day and your view will change too).

And I know you believe people have a right to live in a house, whther they pay for it or not, but I disagree. They have a right to basic shelter. We have homeless shelters. They do not have a right to a 3 bedroom ranch with all the amenities if they can't afford to pay for it. That isn't even a freedom. It is a priviledge granted by the banks that they are abusing the moment they cease to pay their mortgage.