Good vs Evil and the egoistic anarchist
The separation of the world into good and bad, us and them, x or y is the beginning of most problems. As an individual I do and should not care if I buy my services from a bad people. All I care about is the service, the person offering it is irrelevant.
For example bitcoin mining. I dont care who does it, I dont know who does it and I dont need to know who does it. I can validate the proof of work and that is enough.
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On a personal level one can (and should) of course boycott certain actors for moral reasons. But it rarely stays in the realm of personal action. We quickly call for legislation aimed to prohibit bad actors from making profits with good products. Once we have identified some people as "evil", we need power and control to fight them. And the way to obtain that is by centralised authority.
By trying to make the lives of bad people miserable we create a power that has control over our lives and that decides between good and bad in terms of human irrational ideas. Add corruption and it is a recipe for disaster and the main reason for most of the terrible events that we have observed in the past hundred years. The people we fight in wars are always evil monsters trying to kill our babies, or worse.
The anarchist position is to judge people by what they offer and not who they are. That implies that we allow people we dont like to prosper as there should be no instance other than free markets deciding on their success. By evading the moral circus of political action and focusing on free market incentives, anarchist are often seen as terribly selfish and egoistic. And yes, egoism, even unhealthy one, is fine with anarchists. But that does not mean that egoists actually do like anarchism. That would mean that they have to get their hands dirty working. For all the assholes out their it is so much easier to play the political game and pretend to be one of the "good guys/gals". In contrast to the common opinion, the anarchists that I know are among the most helpful and selfless people. They are not judgemental, they accept human errors and flaws, they are tolerant, they help people in need, they build communities, they fight for peace, ...
I prefer to come at this from a very different angle.
Good - wholesome, creative, building
Evil - destructive, denigrating, degenerative.
And, in the future we will be able to see the difference between good and evil. They have very different patterns. They are not just some arbitrary thing.
A good tree cannot bear bad fruit, and a bad tree cannot bear good fruit.
The trouble with our current centralized authority is that we have evil people running it. So, even if they wanted to help, what they did would be twisted and create more destruction.
Your idea of getting a good product from an evil person is not doable.
Lets take the iPhone as an example.
What has been touted as a great piece of digital computer goodness
has been found to be spying on you. Using up more and more of its process running viruses. Collecting your data without your knowledge.
And the worst thing, is that it is not your phone.
The phone belongs to Apple, the police, the state, and the carrier all before it can be said to be yours. Any of these people have the ability to take your phone from you (physically or electronically).
The iPhone is an evil device.
At least it was less evil then the previous cell phones.
When a phone can tell you which application is / was using the microphone, and then isolate and kill that application, then we would be on the correct track.
I would say that good people are defined by offering good products and bad people by offering bad products. That is a morality free statement. If you add morality you can find the situation where morally bad people offer something good. And that leads to the call for authority because you dont want to be alone when all your friends enjoy the good offer. It think the best example is actually bitcoin mining, because there is no possibility of fraud.
I dont like nazis. But does that mean I should reject a block mined by a nazi? Does that even matter. The proof-of-work is blind to morality.
But I agree, when you use a common sense definition of good/ bad then you find that a bad actor offering good service is almost impossible. But most people dont do that. They define good/bad according to their political brand.
I look at it like when I was a child and we had our neighborhood crew of about 15 kids. We lived with large expanse of woods and space so we were always building forts, jumps, and organizing games etc. It was almost perfect anarchy: we each had our ideas and our energy and our bodies to participate, and there was no outside force and aside from basic human manipulation (come play with meeee), there was no unfair mental programming that some of us employed over others. So when Leah wanted to work on the bike ramp, and Shawn wanted to build traps, and I wanted to play kickball we worked it out in this way: your energy went towards the project or entertainment you valued most. And we would often split up and do different things and meet back up to try out and see what each group had been working on. That's how I view purchasing from 'bad actors' or working for, or collaborating with etc. I am giving my energy not just to the product I buy or the direct project i do at work, but because of the way our work given is not equal to what we are given back, that profit is excess energy that person will utilize outside of said product or serivice,so it really does matter. We are now giving people stockpiles of labor and resources and energy and since we know they will use that stockpile for what is in our eyes not useful or even harmful- we absolutely should make our choices based on that. I often look at everything, like who do I want to share my ideas and specific geniuses with. who am I making more powerful by this relationship. And, yes, they may be making us more powerful so it becomes a question of do I think the power I'm giving and what they will use it for is well balanced or even more than offset by what the power they give me . But, like you pointed out, you now are locked in a power struggle, and as each gets stronger the possible destruction gets stronger, so I prefer nonescalation and just do not participate in anything or with any person that I don't trust with my reality. There was a qoute I thought of when you said that . I think its by Terence McKenna that is something to the effect that it is better not to confront bad ideas instead just working on good ideas, because when you confront the bad ones you allow the 'enemy' to create the rules that you are now locked into playing. Very true, and not worth the struggle.
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