The interesting history they don't teach in schools

[nihilistcat]

I'll even help you, here's a wiki article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Restorative_justice

Or, a wiki on somewhat firmer citation basis: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Restorative...ocial_work

Wikipedia is a very fast way to get basic information albeit with doubts about the reliability of what you find there. Restorative justice emphasizes fines, community service, payment of restitution, and apologies made to victims at arranged meetings. We already do that to some extent here in the USA. Yet when trying to explain why crime and incarceration rates are lower in Sweden than in the USA, one should ask what else differs between the two countries besides the structure of their respective justice systems. Sweden, for instance, has a more racially and ethnically homogeneous population than the U.S. does. It doesn't have large disparities in quality between one public school and another. There are few widespread cultures of disaffection analogous to America's Hip-Hop to teach youngsters to reject the legitimacy of their broader social order in Sweden. Because of extensive housing, health, and child care subsidies, people in low-income occupations can make ends meet with somewhat fewer hours of work needed and much less financial stress than in the USA.

In short, although I think we could get mileage simply by shortening some of our draconian sentences and de-criminalizing consumer-level drug violations without loss of crime deterrence, transforming ourselves into a Nordic country may prove quite a challenge.

What about unsavory services, like emptying your shit from a septic tank? ... Extend this to all sorts of goods and services and you quickly revert to some sort of subsistence existence.

Which is what we had during the long era when anarchism actually worked. We lived all of prehistory in bands or small tribes that were essentially self-governing without rulers. But like other posters here I have a hard time imagining you can run a complex civilization without hierarchy.

But it's not a strict choice between the status quo and anarchy. We already make designations between what degree of authoritarianism is permissible and what's not in our public institutions, and so it's not a matter of police or no police, boss or no boss, jails or no jails, hierarchy or no hierarchy, etc. The point is, we should become more intentional about reducing authoritarianism in our society. And I definitely agree ... without the sort of supportive society common to Scandinavia, we can't expect the same outcomes.

Also, abrupt change is usually destabilizing, so I do support gradual change (but right now, change is moving at a snails pace or not at all, so I think we could move exponentially faster than we are today and still be moving gradually enough to avoid destabilizing disruption).