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RE: From the Monday Steem Desk, September 18th, 2017: The Inevitability of Anarchy / Upcoming Show Announcement / JP Morgan's Crypto Creep

in #vjlive7 years ago

I'm not convinced that the large percentage not voting are doing so because they are anarchists. I think they are apathetic. Which unfortunately doesn't represent the assertion of self ownership that is the hallmark of anarchists, but rather represents the submission to perpetual juvenility of the collective.

They don't vote because they are so used to someone else taking care of large parts of their lives that they can't be bothered to even show up for charade of citizen rule that voting represents.

To me, that large number of non-voting citizens doesn't represent progress or promise, but instead represents the reason why unfortunately, anarchy will never be able to emerge as a stable system -- because anarchy is always contending against its own success.

Self organizing systems like society evolve to meet the conditions they are faced with. When life is hard, humans are tough and adaptable because the weak die. Thus tough conditions actually make us individually and collectively stronger. And eventually, this toughness and collective strength produces success. But then this success allows us to live in a less severe environment, which paradoxically weakens us.

Thus if you were to establish a successful anarchistic society, it would be very productive, but then you would have to contend with the softness and weakness this productivity and affluence would create in the successive generations. The successive generations, raised in affluence, would have a different picture of the way reality works than their anarchistic parents did. And they would fall victim to the mind fuckery of impossible ideas like collectivism because, deprived of interaction with causality and the real world, they would have no learning experiences of how the real world and causality actually work. They would be mesmerized by the idea of collective decision making and democracy, and would then turn around and vote to end anarchism, which they would not see as freedom but instead would see as callous disregard for the suffering of others.

The only way anarchism could remain stable is if you allow people to fail and then learn from their mistakes, and only when they have learned to value independence and learned the necessity of self reliance, be allowed to join the community. You would have to enshrine the anarchistic equivalent of the Amish Rumspringa.

The way it is now, that large block of non-voting people are not and will never be future anarchists. They are instead sheep who trust the shepherds to keep them safe and keep the food coming. And if they are ever deprived of safety or food, they will turn out in record numbers to vote for whatever demagogue promises to set things right, by whatever means necessary.

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They would be mesmerized by the idea of collective decision making and democracy, and would then turn around and vote to end anarchism, which they would not see as freedom but instead would see as callous disregard for the suffering of others.

Entirely possible.

and only when they have learned to value independence and learned the necessity of self reliance, be allowed to join the community. You would have to enshrine the anarchistic equivalent of the Amish Rumspringa.

"Allowing" individuals in and out of a community can only legitimately be done based on private property, so the idea of a society barring people from entering by any other authority would not be a voluntarist conception.

"Allowing" individuals in and out of a community can only legitimately be done based on private property, so the idea of a society barring people from entering by any other authority would not be a voluntarist conception.

Hmmm.

There are two responses to that. One response is to value the idea of voluntarism higher than any other consideration, and thus to say that, if it violates voluntarism, then it has to go.

But that way is to value ideology over reality or practicality. Which makes us no different and certainly no better than the collectivists.

The other way is to recognize that we need to consider not just the primary or initial effects of changes to the system, but also to anticipate the secondary effects as well, because those secondary effects will have consequences that are just as real and permanent as the primary effects were. We can't just stick our head in the sands about the outcome of choices because it offends the ideological world we have created in our heads.

So if we see society as an adaptive, self organizing system, and we can predict what will happen when we make changes to that system based on the feedback process that all self organizing systems use to achieve equilibrium, and we can anticipate the consequences of the ideology, which is that the ideology will eventually bring about its own demise, then which one ought to go? The ideology or the practicality?

I'm curious why you feel private property is at odds with voluntarism?

Or perhaps I should say, private property owned by more than one individual?

I'm not convinced that the large percentage not voting are doing so because they are anarchists.

I did not make that argument.

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