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It seems to me that anarchy is possible, but only without scarcity of resources. This has only occurred in primitive tribes living in tropical abundance where no hateful work is necessary and anyone who doesn’t like the people they are with can simply move to the next patch of jungle in whatever numbers and get on with life. But most places aren’t like this.

So how would anarchy actually work in most of the world. The basic problem is - what stops people from consuming lots of resources while contributing nothing in return? If you believe in property you need an agreed upon means of adjudicating and enforcing who owns what, which is by definition a government. If you don’t have property then you need a means of discouraging excess consumption of common resources while encouraging production and this also needs to be enforced. Hence you end up with some kind of coercive system.

Am I missing something?

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Ghost wrote: ↑

July 1st, 2019, 6:55 am

I imagine for anarchy to work it would require a small population (tribal society) and strong social pressure for people to act right.

Some form of government will always exist because hierarchies always assert themselves. Even if it's just a chieftain and his subordinates, some form of government will always be there.

Then I imagine the chieftain and his crew enforce the proper use of resources.

So it would still be government but on a much smaller, more personal, level.

So anarchy as a theory is bullshit, basically? What you are describing is basically primitive tribalism, which generally imposes much more stringent rules on its members than Western society ever could.

Yes, Ghost is right. Anarchy cannot exist. ANY form of code of government is rule of law, anarchy's antonym. Even if we had a global "reset" as it were, true anarchy would only exist in weird in-betweens and in unclaimed territories. Everyone wants to be a cheif and will become one given the opportunity.

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It’s like that South Park episode making fun of hippies where some hippies were trying to communicate their hippie/anarchist philosophy to Stan and Kyle.
“Wouldn’t it be great if people came together and, like, took care of each others’ needs?”
“We have that. It’s called a town.”
“But what if people just did their own thing for the community, like of one dude makes bread and another looks after people’s safety?”
“You mean like a cop and a baker?”

They just end up recreating a version of what we have now. What they seem to be getting at is that resources shouldn’t be rationed and accounted for, but this is a problem if resources are scarce and require hateful work to generate.