Anarchism is a fascinating subject. Remember “What if they gave a war, and nobody came?” Well, what if they offered a government and nobody wanted it?

Philosophically anarchism sounds ideal – the last stage of individual freedom. But are not many of us here preparing for the events of at least temporary anarchy?

I would have to agree with Ayn Rand in that the state of our culture is currently not up to it (anarchism). If everybody could internalize libertarian doctrine, that would be a start. But how likely is that? Our culture seems to be moving away from libertarianism in many respects. But perhaps the Marx “thesis – antithesis” will bring us through.

I think that you can have any kind of government, or no government, but if the underlying culture is crappy, your going to have a crappy society to live in. I think that culture trumps everything – it is what you (and others in society)teach your children. I think that libertarianism is capable of offering the opportunity to create the highest culture the world has ever known.

As human beings, we all have ids, egos and superegos. They are all important aspects of our various personalities. Because of inevitable conflicts between individuals and groups of individuals, I certainly would not expect a perfect world with or without a government. We have to accept this imperfection.

At some point, in the far distant future, it would be nice to have some anarchist communities who could opt out of “The System” as an experiment. The proof is in the putting. Perhaps we could learn something useful.

You propose a situation where (even if “might doesn’t make right”) “might makes what is.” That we should acknowledge and agree, and adjust our response accordingly. However, if the particular “might” of the day would always have power, then they wouldn’t have need for propaganda. Nation-states maintain control through persuading most peons to obey voluntarily against their individualist self-interest. So we persuade people to distinguish the concepts of might and right, because with enough awareness, might can on rare occasion switch to the side of right.

I’m definitely not advocating attacking the bully who is guaranteed to beat you. Even when taxes are illegtimate, I still pay them when the duress is real. People left Norway to make Iceland a successful anarchist society for 250 years. That didn’t mean it went without wars, but it successfully avoided having a nation state till the much larger Norway took over. But just because a larger, more powerful entity can take over a smaller one, doesn’t mean that it is either right or more efficient, or best to do so.

So Jack says that we need to have the three branches of government in order to define and protect individual rights and freedoms.

If we accept this, how do we protect ourselves from what seems to be the inevitable reinstatement of a tyranical government? There seems to be all mannner of ways this is accomplished by politicians. A constitution and declaration is fine and dandy, but if its intention is bastardized, as is often done today, we end up in the same boat again and again. Partially at least for the same reason – the strong, with government police power, overcome the weaker. The servant becomes the master.

I suppose that we must be eternally vigilant and try to enculturate others with libertarian thought and action. At the moment, the growth of libertarianism is encouraging, but at the same time we have a very long way to go to make noticeable headway. The Survival Podcast is of enormous value in changing our own lives and in the fight for less government.
I hope that some day Jack will want, and be able, to do a regular radio or TV show in the future. Maybe a talk show where he can demolish statist guests on the air.

Jack,

Here is another great site for ongoing education and book sources for free. They were featured at the TED conference.

http://www.khanacademy.org/
Jim

I’m trying to understand your constructed argument against anarchism as it doesn’t quite make sense to me. It seems you argue that a hypothetical, that *if* some society is more powerful than an anarchist society and if it can then defeat and collapse it…then anarchism is disproven ideologically? The same “if” argument disproves limited government, or constitutionalism if someone could defeat it too then. Or *if* say, the government tells the military to throw survivalists in a gas chamber, and if Oathkeepers isn’t powerful enough to stop it, then that disproves the legitimacy of Oathkeepers by the same argument structure. (And I’ve seen that argument made against Oathkeepers too.)

If I understand, you think a state should take away *some limited* real and legitimate rights from the people involuntarily and the state should use the power of those removed rights to *defend* the remaining rights? Any group that is powerful enough to set limits on a nation-state, is also powerful enough to break them…and they always do, which tends to prove limited government as utopian. Anarchist Iceland stayed independent longer than the USA’s existence to date…and Iceland did so as a small island without an empire to exploit nations and natural resources worldwide.

Jack,
Maybe there should be four branches. Another branch to watch the other three. Or even five as a backup. (two is one)

Jack,
I think I am getting it now. You don’t like the idea of separate branches and what that implies under our current syatem? Is that it? Frankly I’m puzzled as to what you think is correct for a very limited government in this regard.

Iceland had about 100,000 population during its medieval anarchist period. That was about the size of the combined Greek city states during the age of Socrates. Here is how the society worked.

A person, group, family, or clan could form a government, and that government charged for their protection and court services. There wasn’t just one, or even a fixed number of governments. However, what is so odd to modern thinking is that each government was not a contiguous territorial monopoly. So if one person felt their government was not efficient or fair, then they could switch their membership like we switch electricity service today. Further, if you thought no existing government was good enough, you could start your own government. (But if you were in it alone, that was still dangerous because it would leave no one in your government to seek justice if you were killed.) Now warfare occasionally happened between clans, but when every war had to eventually be settled by paying the man-price for every kill, they were kept limited. The Icelandic Sagas make people think that Iceland was always at war, but read more closely, you notice it goes from the story of one war right into another, but there was actually a generation that passed in between the wars. If anything, I think they were too militarily oriented, but I’m still judging by the sagas.

Totalitarian governments often say you can leave, but you don’t get to take your property/land with you, because they have total and final control over land under their dominion. In Iceland, switching governments didn’t mean you had to move. A little economics means that the lower the barriers to switching governments, the more efficient governments must be to compete. This is why Jefferson thought the ideal independent government should be a “ward” IIRC, referring to an agricultural neighborhood of maybe 10,000 people.

David Friedman (Milton’s son) goes into quite a bit more detail on Iceland’s history and anarchism.

Separately, the 3 branches of government are misidentified. The real dividing line would be bureaucracy, corporatocracy, and military.

Here’s a video by Stefan Molyneux on Anarchism vs. Minarchism.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BQARRsOgi08

He runs Freedomain Radio, and has over 1,500 podcasts on philosophy and anarchism.

@Jack,

Yes, without universal respect and adherence to a set of principles, there is no way Anarchy could work. The larger the group, the more likely that SOMEONE will deviate from that theoretical set of principles, and create a need for some sort of system to protect the people in the system.
There would have to be an inherent benefit to adhering to the principles, and even then, that cannot account for people who see a larger benefit in violating them. Bottom line…I don’t see how it works outside of a purely theoretical model.

@Everyone,
In regards to a 3-branch governmental system…I have no problem with it at all. Further, I claim that there is little wrong with the system of government established by the US Constitution. The problems arise from VIOLATION of that system of government, and this continues, because of the unwillingness of the people to punish those who do.

Holy Cow, that Freedomain Radio guy amazes me…for how incredibly delusional he is. Don’t get me wrong–he is mildly entertaining in some ways. What I see here is someone using the appearance of logic and rational, while talking around in very convenient circles of his own making. He’s basically arguing with himself, and SURPRISE, he wins!

I hear objectivists make accusations of “mysticism” a lot, but this form of “logic” fits that description as well as anything else I’ve ever heard it applied to. Delusional fantasy under a cloak of rational thought is what this is–in my opinion.

It’s also telling that he sort of mildly mocks any criticism he faces as a means of ignoring it.

Maybe I’m being a bit too quick to criticize, but on the other hand, first impressions are often pretty good.

Regarding the report about helping vets through organic gardening, below is an article about inmates at Leavenworth being taught about gardening, and raising nearly a quarter million pounds of produce to feed themselves and the needy.

http://preview.tinyurl.com/3pbty9x

For perspective:
http://www.taiwannews.com.tw/etn/news_content.php?id=1622116
2011-06-08 11:06 PM

More tests came back negative Wednesday on sprout samples from an organic farm in the northern town of Bienenbuettel but the farm is still considered a possible source for the outbreak. German Agriculture Minister Ilse Aigner said eight clusters of patients _ more than 50 infected people _ can now be tracked to that farm.

“That means even if we have no (positive) sprout test results yet we have indications based on tracking nutrition the affected people eat,” she said. “We are even looking for more cases that can be linked to the farm.”

http://www.cnn.com/2011/WORLD/europe/06/09/europe.e.coli/
June 9, 2011 9:42 a.m. EDT

The sprouts came from the farm which officials believe could be the source of the outbreak. But initial tests showed no sign of E. coli there, agriculture officials in the German state of Lower Saxony said Monday.

Authorities said that does not mean their suspicions were wrong; they would not expect to find evidence of E. coli if the tainted sprouts were no longer in the supply chain.

And Wednesday, Lower Saxony agriculture officials said three workers at the suspect farm had diarrhea in early May and at least one has been diagnosed with the dangerous strain of E.coli.

Authorities have also found that a cafeteria in the town of Cuxhaven, where 18 people came down with the infection, had also received sprouts from the farm in question, said Natascha Manski, a spokeswoman for the state agriculture ministry.

http://www.bnet.com/blog/food-industry/why-killer-e-coli-outbreaks-are-here-to-stay/3229
June 9, 2011

The problem has to do with both the nature of E. coli and the way agriculture has been centralized in the U.S. and to a slightly lesser extent in Europe. An E. coli infection can take more than a week to produce the first symptoms and by the time it’s diagnosed, good luck getting horribly sick people to remember what they ate on Tuesday two weeks ago. And the more time that passes, the higher the chance the contaminated food will no longer be in the food supply.

@ Brian

What you are describing is still a feudal system. When my money can buy better protection than your protection, my protection can tell you what to do and kill you if you don’t comply.

There is a country that operates like this today. It is called Somalia.

For the most part the US doesn’t monopolize protection either. In most states there are very few places you can’t be armed.

@inbox485

I was prepared to offer a rebuttal but happened to come across this passage of Voltairine de Cleyre which I offer instead:

“They thus took their starting point for deriving a minimum of government upon the same sociological ground that the modern Anarchist derives the no-government theory; viz., that equal liberty is the political ideal. The difference lies in the belief, on the one hand, that the closest approximation to equal liberty might be best secured by the rule of the majority in those matters involving united action of any kind (which rule of the majority they thought it possible to secure by a few simple arrangements for election), and, on the other hand, the belief that majority rule is both impossible and undesirable; that any government, no matter what its forms, will be manipulated by a very small minority, as the development of the States and United States governments has strikingly proved; that candidates will loudly profess allegiance to platforms before elections, which as officials in power they will openly disregard, to do as they please; and that even if the majority will could be imposed, it would also be subversive of equal liberty, which may be best secured by leaving to the voluntary association of those interested in the management of matters of common concern, without coercion of the uninterested or the opposed.”

David Friedman goes into more detail in “The Machinery of Freedom” which is now available for free as PDF on his website: http://www.daviddfriedman.com/

To say that anarchism isn’t anarchism because there is governance and voluntary government is confusing a simplistic interpretation of the etymology with a definition of a word and philosophy. Part of the problem is when people make “government” and “state” as synonyms instead of distinct concepts that do overlap.

Similarly, we don’t say that a Democrat is someone who believes in democracy or a Republican as someone who believes in Plato’s Republic. Of course, those are parties as opposed to philosophies and so change with the times, but it is wrong to use etymologies as definitions in general, otherwise a Cretin is anyone who is Christian. http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/cretin

Pertaining to the topic of “free” books and education, I checked out the NAP that was listed in the show notes. Based upon Jack’s comments, I was expecting more; however, I was very much disappointed.

I perused the site over various subject areas. It seems to me that much of the information is the kind of BS you typically expect published from liberal government agencies. I found nothing, so far, that provides fundamental instruction in any area of study. The assumption is that you’re already educated, and that you are wanting to maybe explore current research. Just look at the section on climate change to see what a crock of BS is passing as educational material. There is an awful lot of so-call “policy” type publications in the stack, which is a tip-off to government based, ivory tower, think tank type garbage.

This is not to say that there may be some useful information buried in the stack, but I think one would be much better off looking in other places for useful educational material.

I understand your feelings about anti-depressants, but some people do need them. Sometimes they have the opposite effect, but that means the doctor must carefully manage the patient to determine which drug works and what doesn’t. I use them and after 10 years of trying to get by without them, I finally gave up and started using them full time. I would not go back to living without them. I ranch for a living and that life style does help, but is not a cure. My disorder is genetic. PTSD is induced and may not need the medication, but if monitored carefully, may help. The problem with the VA is they don’t provide the close supervision of the use of the drugs and they don’t catch when a bad reaction is occurring. Use of mood altering medications is an art and it can take up to 3 years to work out the right combination for an individual.