Guys, you don’t need to figure out how everything could work. You just need to acknowledge that forced subscription to an organization isn’t ideal. We can figure out the rest one step at a time.
Decentralize one thing at a time and the rest will come as society evolves. No need to define a master plan.
Where do you have forced subscription? Again someone from Iran?
Where I live, I am forced to pay taxes to pay for professional sports stadiums 300 miles away. (Some of which where demolished years ago). Do I support the charity model for that? Absolutely. Will it ever happen? No. Things happen through the path of least resistance. If one jurisdiction won’t tax it’s citizens to support such foolishness, another will.
We have to invent a better way – And that better way is being invented. We also have to vote no on nearly everything done the old way… so that the better way becomes the path of least resistance…
Where? Interesting choice of words.
Good answer. Good answer.
Personally, I refuse to take part. I don’t wish to furnish their actions with legitimacy. Gandhi had the right idea here.
Are you suggesting that conflict resolution cannot be achived without a central authority? If so a lot of human beings around the world have yet to reach adulthood as they are still apparently need parents. What’s to prevent simply opting a third party mediator of some kind? No need for a central authority.
Nothing wrong with voting on this scale because you could always opt out. Or if it’s just you and your neighbour you could flip a coin. Or you could offer to pay the difference between the cheap contractor and the quality contractor. You could also campaign for additional crowdfunding and political support to get the higher quality contractor. My point is there are all kinds of options that are totally voluntary at one’s disposal. Honestly I don’t even know why we’re discussing “public” vs “private” property as everything is private property as it has to be owned by someone or some group. The only “public” property is property that specifically has been set aside by the owner(s) either individually or collectively for public use. If you crowdfund a road for public use then obviously you want it to be used by the public. Would you turn ownership over to the public? Maybe maybe not but even if you did that wouldn’t negate the fact the road was still private property. I would simply be owned by a different collective. One solution to your little decision making problem would be that if minorities didn’t agree with the vote they could simply sell their share of the road as a way to opt out of the collective or buy more shares of the road.
Try looking up the definition of anarchy sometime. Anarchy is self governance, no rulers. Which means when you start trying to impose force on another you are trying to become their ruler and that is not anarchy, that’s dictatorship and authoritarianism. Ironically however human attatchment requires hiarchical systems therefore I think we’ll always have power dynamics of some kind the crux of the matter I think is entering into them voluntarily and not by force.
If you think we live in a democracy today you are delusional. We live in an oligarchy. But even so I would not support democracy beyond the municipal level. Even democracy on the local level is inherent to corruption but at least people are generally familiar with the issues and the possible impacts it’ll have. But on a provincial or national level it gets progressively worse. One cannot be familiar with the local issues in a town on the other side of the country, nor the ecology, nor even the politics. Granted with the advent of the internet we can learn a great deal but even that is limited to what is published.
Do I like to pay my rent? No but I agreed to it and therefore I must or else I get kicked out onto the street. No nobody is FORCED to support the consequences of other people’s decisions however if people don’t support others there are natural consequences of THAT decision as well. You seem to be overlooking something here friend and that is that NOT helping someone can be as dire to one’s health and as expensive as investing the energy in helping them, sometimes even more so. You are also overlooking humanity’s natural tendency to bond with one another and form attachments.
Okay I’ve got housemates, both of which are fairly untidy and take FOREVER to do dishes (and have very weird ideas about doing them too). So awhile back I ended up getting totally exasperated and just doing them myself. Point is if one sees a job that needs doing then one does it. If you want your road built and no one is stepping up you have to step up yourself and crowdfund it or pay for it yourself. It isn’t about equal distribution of labour or resources. It’s about voluntary interaction. How is it fair to coercively take what does not belong to you? Look at maidsafe. They proposed a project that would benefit everyone and crowdfunded over a million dollars in a day! And look how much as been raised in people buying safecoin? Is anyone quibbling over unequal distribution of funds? No. Who cares! Give what you can when you can. Fair does not mean everyone all gives the same amount. That’s like the thinking of a six year old. We’re not in in kindergarden anymore. Tons of crowdfunding projects don’t get funded this is true. This creates competition for marketing and quality of products. It also acts as a guage for what society values.
Try not paying your taxes sometime. Perhaps you’ll reconsider your definitions.
No anarchy is defined by self governance, even the very word is defined that way. An = self and archy = governance. You can do whatever you like by by definition if you are exerting force upon another you are not abiding anarchy or voluntary action but rather are acting as a statist. And more to the point IF you exert force upon another they have the right to defend themselves.
It is true many anarchists are pacifists precisely because they believe so strongly in voluntary action. Personally I draw the line at defending people. If you’re hurting someone or shooting up the place or something I’d step in and take you down but even in that capacity it’s more of a protector defensive capacity than “You will be assimilated. Your culture will adapt to service us. Resistance is futile.” It’s more like “Dude you’re scaring and hurting people. Calm down and let’s talk about this over smoothies. Chill.”
Then don’t. If you cannot scale voluntarily then that is the point at which you need to diverge. Instead of using force to unite a group use voluntary action and allow for the possibility that it will divide at some point, and possibly reunite in some manner at a later date.
Where I live I am forced to pay taxes to replace the sewers in a city 400 miles away - in another sodding country.
I am forced to pay taxes for illegal wars in support of an economic dictatorship 3000 miles away - on another sodding continent.
And as far as I and most of my compatriots are concerned, our greatest enemy these days is not some bunch of terrorists but the scum who won’t pay their share of the taxes.
So stop whining like spoilt kids…
You know, you should have a word with @jreighley on definitions and stuff…
I see most all of this discussion as a distraction… Lots of people want to argue against “Anarchy” because it is an easy target – But I am not in favor of switching to anarchy anytime soon.
MaidSAFE Is paid for voluntarily and should be able to maintain its need for resources by using SAFEcoin.
If that works, there are probably a lot of other public interest projects that can be funded in a similar manner. People who believe in a cause can create currencies that will grow in value if the projects built provide value. Where this works, it is VASTLY superior, to people who believe in something asking the government to make their fellow citizens pay for something that they may or may not want, having it built by government contractors that may or many not care, to be maintained by a government that is just doing what it’s voters told it to do.
Many things are paid for and maintained by governments not because they need to be, or because they ought to be, or because that is the only way – They are done in such a manner because people know how to run political campaigns. They know how to get votes. and winning an election is easier to do than fundraising. The river flows through the path of least resistance. If we build a better way, with less resistance then a lot more projects will flow through our route than the other route…
Anything we can build for the public good without coercive taxation we ought to. Be it Linux, MaidSAFE, a local YMCA branch, a sports stadium, a utility grid, A meshnet whatever… We are building a better way. Anyone disagree with that?
Yes
You benefit, you pay. No freeloaders whining about “freedom”.
Which point are you disagreeing with exactly? Or are you talking about something different?
The best way to elicit change is to make the old system obsolete.
Certain things should be in public ownership
These include but are not limited to
Health Care
Public transportation Rail - local and national buses
Electricity Gas Water production and distribution
Telecoms network (until a viable mesh network is available)
Any party standing on a manfesto including the above would walk any election in the UK - and most other civilised Western countries.
Using groupthink politics to explain why what is ought to be doesn’t prove much. Politicians can fearmonger about anything, but that doesn’t make them right very often.
My electric isn’t publicly owned, and I stated earlier in the thread. I am sure it works just as good as yours. It’s pretty darn cheap too.
But I didn’t say everything needed to be funded by crypto-funding – I just said where possible – we ought to expand the ability to do so.
In that case the 3rd party would be the central authority making the decision then - rather that the eminently more sensible idea to de-centralise the decision making to the group of town residents democratically. I just really can’t believe how you repeatedly do this…you complain about central authorities and then suggest an extremely centralised solution…lol 
still centralised…lol
Sorry, but what possible incentive would anyone have to own or buy a share of the road or buy more shares than they already have?
I’m just telling you what the public seems to think. Best of luck with your non-publically owned electricity
My publicly owned electricity was stolen from me by a bunch of “freedom-lovers” along with many other assets that were collectively built up by the people of the UK.
We got a choice of colours of handsets for our phones but precious little else - and its certainly not cheap.
Expand the ability to fund whatever via crypto funding if you want but remeber this - if most of the people contribute to a resource and it benefits the many - then it should be owned collectively - and that requires a state apparatus. Ask the people (and spare me the “sheeple” gags) and they will tell you they approve of that. No matter what our one-sided media will try to tell you because we know who controls that.
The public mood on this side of the pond is for the renationalisation of our utilities and transport. Privatisation has been disastrous for everyone but the privileged few.
Will maidSAFE be owned collectively? Or ought it be nationalized too?
I remember the wonderful days of publicly owned and operated electricity in my country (New Zealand, which was following the British model prior to privatisation. We used to be called the ‘Kosovo of the South Pacific’ - a reference to Communism).
The blackouts were simply fantastic. And getting the government to do anything about it? Impossible. Which is why they eventually privatised; people got sick of supply falling short of demand and demanded that there be another way. I can’t remember the last blackout caused by insufficient supply. There have of course been storms and heat-waves that have caused blackouts, but these 1 hour or two examples pale in comparison to the three weeks we were without electricity in 1988, back when the wondrous government was in charge of electricity.
But I’d bet that you would just recommend everyone use less power ‘for the good of the collective’.
I agree with you, however, on how privatisation has worked. The errant conclusion you come to, is that privatisation itself is a bad thing; privatisation that occurs under a crony-run system such as the state of our governments is no argument against privatisation as a whole.
