Applying Anarchy: Functioning without government (Part 1)

Some of the toughest questions I get asked about my political beliefs often revolve around how society will be able to function without certain government systems i.e. Taxation, Law & Order, Prison Systems, Roads and infrastructure etc.

In this Part 1 of Applying Anarchy, I will be discussing basic concepts of doing business and living without government as well as property rights.

How could an anarchist society function?

In order for such a society to be achieved, I believe that there needs to be a basic premise whereby the following belief is generally accepted:

"Freedom without violating the freedom of others" So long as society as a whole can grasp this general principle and accept it then we will have made great progress already, this entails:

• Don't harm others physically, emotionally or otherwise
• Respect their property, also, anything which an individual takes from nature and adds value to; this becomes their property

Failure to follow these two simplified principles should be seen as a violation of their freedoms and can not be allowed. This can work without government as I will express in this example: Imagine a tiny village of say 100 people where everyone knows each other. If someone did something bad, everyone would know about it rather quickly. This would cause immediate backfire from the community and the person would now need to rectify the situation to prevent becoming an outcast. This works on a reputation system whereby everyone relies on their own reputation and this will determine their trustworthiness.

Free market solutions to government problems

In a small village this is quite simple and can be implemented based on memory and interactions in the community, on a larger scale, as you can imagine this would become more complex. In a Anarchistic society if someone has a problem, say an unfulfilled business transaction, remember, there is no government to turn to. In this case individuals would be incentivized to show others that they can be trusted. Also it would be a good idea to involve a contract and arbitrator in such a transaction to ensure that both parties live up to the agreement.

A free market ecosystem would evolve whereby people would be able to create their own contracts and choose their own arbitrators and all interactions within the system would be publicly accessible. For the first time in history we have an immutable ledger of truth in the form of the blockchain, this cannot be censored or edited, it could be perfect for such applications. Steemit is actually a very good real life example of this in action. Although there is no central authority to govern posts, plagiarized and wrong or immoral or general shit posts, they will quickly be down voted or the community will be warned by users and projects such as @cheetah bot. This prevents wrongdoers from being able to profit on the backs of others.

Property

What happens when two parties have a disagreement about property outside of contractual agreements? For example two mining companies both stumble across some gold and they both want to mine it. Who gets the rights to the gold? How do we solve this?

Luckily problems of this nature can be foreseen. It would be expected that certain proofs or procedures be adopted to handle the situation. Society as a whole can generally agree that they don't want others to take property that does not rightfully belong to them. In the case of land and the gold that's on it as per the example, you would use an independent service that would act as a registry that would verify that you have purchased or inherited the land, and when.

If you have publicly trusted records that you purchased the land and someone else shows up and declares it's theirs, yet he has no verifiable and trusted record of this, then we can quite safely conclude that the second party is behaving badly and cannot be trusted.

Part 2: Applying Anarchy: Law Enforcement Without Government

I really do appreciate you taking the time to read this first installment of Applying Anarchy. In the second article of this series I will discuss the tough topic of how we could possibly go about enforcing these principles without government involvement.