RE: Anarchist idiots
June 26, 2015 at 4:00 pm
(This post was last modified: June 26, 2015 at 5:24 pm by Aristocatt.)
I have only studied anarchy a little bit, so I am not very in tune with what anarchists think. I don't have to understand their philosophy to understand that they don't believe that anarchy is going to be a hippie utopia. But as you pointed out, I may have misunderstood what it was some people were asserting.
I imagine they would say the second one is to some extent a true assumption. It's not as though things don't get done under anarchy. The rate at which power lines were put up in Somalia after 1995 increased, and barring a small hiccup, life expectancy also increased. Hobbes' assertion also doesn't seem to hold even among the worst of a society. Pirates in the Caribbean were able to more or less get along with one another even though they had no real rule of law. I would say anarchy is probably not as terrible or impossible as most people make it out to be. I can also understand how with the belief that anarchy is doable, people might value freedom to such an extent that they would choose anarchy over governance. I am not big on making valuations of intelligence based on preferences.
A lot of Anarchists that I have met like to use Weber's definition of government when having these debates. You however may have a different understanding of what a Government, and by it's definition Anarchy, entail.
I imagine they would say the second one is to some extent a true assumption. It's not as though things don't get done under anarchy. The rate at which power lines were put up in Somalia after 1995 increased, and barring a small hiccup, life expectancy also increased. Hobbes' assertion also doesn't seem to hold even among the worst of a society. Pirates in the Caribbean were able to more or less get along with one another even though they had no real rule of law. I would say anarchy is probably not as terrible or impossible as most people make it out to be. I can also understand how with the belief that anarchy is doable, people might value freedom to such an extent that they would choose anarchy over governance. I am not big on making valuations of intelligence based on preferences.
A lot of Anarchists that I have met like to use Weber's definition of government when having these debates. You however may have a different understanding of what a Government, and by it's definition Anarchy, entail.