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RE: Steemians: What's your economic philosophy?
how would that work in practice? Can you point to successful implementations of an anarchist system?
how would that work in practice? Can you point to successful implementations of an anarchist system?
only in my dreams for now. Unfortunately every single corner of this planet is occupied by an armed tyrannical government.
Liberland (I'm sure you've heard) may obtain some small territory in former Yugoslavia to experiment libertarianism. I hope some day an Anarchy nation could also be formed, problem again is where. Btw you should interview Vít Jedlička president of Liberland on your programme if you haven't already.
Spain/Barcelona in 1936
The only way I could imagine (and it isn't hard to imagine) is a state whose main goal is to render itself obsolete by encoraging us to create strong and self sustainable communities and basically only serving as a helpful resource. This could lead to the formation of autonomous zones where people could experiment with whatever kind of ideas they'd like outside of the law that everyone is following in the rest of the country. In those communities, we'd have a chance to see what human nature looks like under a variety of different circumstances.
I would like for us to adopt a gift economy to the greatest extent possible, but I realize we have a long way to go. In my lifetime I hope to see pay-what-you-want become less fringe and more supported by the mainstream.
Nope. It hasn't been tried. Yet, is that a reason to keep trying the same things over and over again? Is that a reason to keep having the same arguments that have already occurred for more than a century and not learn the lessons from the outcomes of those discussions and experiments?
I tend to believe in Anarchy as my Utopian goal. Not Anarchy in the Chaos bent but rather in what it really means. From Anarchos meaning No Rulers. Noone with the right to tell others how they must live. There can still be naturally occurring leaders you can choose to voluntarily follow or not follow as time suits you and depending on the task/purpose. Yet a leader is not the same as a ruler.
However, I do try to be realistic. I do not believe the world is ready for Anarchy. We have some human nature problems that are great at corrupting ANY system no matter how great it sounds. The only way to counter human nature is with education and giving people the tools to notice those things and resit them. The problem is the education systems seem to be removing those tools at a steady pace. It leaves the populace largely emotionally driven rather than rationally. It turns most topics into something akin to a religion with how intractable people are. It leaves a population that has forgotten that not only is okay to be wrong occasionally, it is an important part of learning. The tool that is lacking is critical thinking, and particularly the ability to identify and notice the large amounts of logical fallacies that are used in almost every discussion. A lot of appeal to emotion, appeal to popularity, appeal to authority, and appeal to the stone fallacies. Being able to critically think gives the tools for people of disagreeing points of view to still be able to work together. Without it, it tends to lead to intollerance and one trying to destroy the other.
This is not an environment Anarchy would do well. Honestly, it is not an environment that ultimately any ideology will do well in other than for the short term.
We need to be willing to try new things. If they fail. Learn from it. Adjust. We need to stop recycling the same ideas and same systems and expect a different outcome.
We also need to stop WHAT IFing to death things that have not been tried. Some things we may not be able to see other options until we at least try them. Does the new thing have to be anarchy? No. Yet it should be new, rather than being stuck on the hamster wheel repeating the same crap over and over that has been done in history.
I choose to target critical thinking as the windmill I tilt at. Why? I don't see most ideologies working in the long run unless most of our population becomes skilled at critical thinking.
I believe in freedom. I endorse voluntarism.
Free Market Capitalism only remains Free Market until the government steps in. All aspects of monopolies and such people try to lay at the feet of Free Market actually seem to involve government interaction either in the form of laws, restrictions from competition, etc. Do they happen yes? Yet, I haven't been able to find examples where that happened for longer than a short period before the market corrected that didn't persist without the assistance of government.
Furthermore socialism and communism basically both become ultimate forms of monopoly. Socialism is cronyism to it's core. The thing that corrupts capitalism is cronyism. It also impacts communism. Could any of those ideologies work? Maybe. Yet that same human nture problem can corrupt any ideology. That is what I was getting at.
I don't believe I have the right to tell you or anyone else how they should live.
I also don't believe other people have the right to tell me how I should live.
Quantity of people is irrelevant. There is no magic number where force suddenly becomes acceptable.
In practice, I would point you to another term of poly-centric law and poly-centric governance. In some respect I'd say that we work within a somewhat poly-centric legal system in the abstract but when you zoom in to a local level it is still based off the monopoly of a territorial claim. It is not too far fetched to see how poly-centric law works today, but to move to the truest form is not in practice, but in effect would offer a market for governance. I would label myself as a "Libertarian" to most people I speak with but if were really talking I'd identify as an Anarchist. But Why should I and a majority of like-minded people get to tell a minority their government cant pay into a 'universal healthcare' if they want? and likewise (and more reality based) should I have the majority tell me I have to pay into a 'universal healthcare' government. What if we didn't vote for people (with power for a timespan) and instead payed them directly. Well the idea is that you'd pay your government truly voluntarily and receive it's benefits, and I would to mine. And where these two governments agree on things they form collations like lets say to fund a Parks department (So I can still have nice hiking trails) and where our two disagree with other governments like lets say i.e. (National Conservative Government) who pays for a Department of Defense (which is offensive) and outlawing it's own citizenry abortions We'd have no coalition, and both our citizenry of your and my government pay no for their war (and if that were the case like with the overarching unpopular "Iraq War' the funds collected by the "Governments /Parties/" would not be able too, or at the very least I would have to pay for the military who invades and nation builds foreign soil.
I'm rambling, but how would it work in practice, just like now except more market effects (and Markets for Governance is the most critical one which is monopolized) And most libertarian types will point to the closest historic examples as mentioned like medieval Iceland and Catalonia (Spanish Civil War times, and was a Left-Anarchism)