this post was submitted on 07 Apr 2025
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"Mutual aid is an organizational model where voluntary, collaborative exchanges of resources and services for common benefit take place amongst community members to overcome social, economic, and political barriers to meeting common needs."
Legal systems are far more effective at guiding human behavior than hoping for the voluntary good will of people's hearts.
So your argument is that the only way to get people to live together is under the constant threat of violence from the state?
I'd rather live under a state with a secure monopoly on violence than in a stateless chaos of violence. Anarchy isn't a form of government. It's simply the period before a group uses violence to establish itself as the government.
Let me ask you, would you rather deal with a cop or a warlord?
You do not understand anarchism in the slightest. You are imagining some Hobbsian hellscape out of a disaster movie, which is completely counter to human nature.
This is the definition I am basing my perspective on.
"the organization of society on the basis of voluntary cooperation, without political institutions or hierarchical government; anarchism."
Also human nature has created plenty of hellscapes in the past. Don't think it can't happen again.
Can you give some examples of those hellscapes?
Sparta, the Third Reich, the French Revolution, Chattel America, the British Raj.
My point here is that a lack of a central government will naturally lead to some sort of central government establishing itself. It could come from inside or from an external threat. It's possibly that that government turns out to be authoritarian and oppressive, like the ones I mentioned.
For instance, how would an anarchist ethnically Jewish society hold out against an industrial Nazi Germany should they be so unlucky to simply exist next to them?
The British Raj managed to establish itself and rape India for 90 years even despite there already being established governments in the region. Imagine how powerless an anarchic Indian society would've been to defend against the British Empire at it's peak.
Anarchy is not sustainable. That's why we should strive to put in place a good and equitable government to protect us from that possible tyranny. The problem is the same human forces corrupt government's too.
Huh so they're all based on hierarchical structures. And they came directly from other hierarchical structures. That's interesting. It's almost like your argument is nonsense because hellscapes are a result of hierarchical structures.