Government is Obsolete

[Eliahad]

While I understand the sentiment, I think that government is necessary for some things. Infrastructure for example. Everyone wants to use roads, because we have them, but if some private corporation or co-operative owned them and we had to pay them a fee to use them, I think things would get mighty uncomfortable, mighty quickly.

So, that's my opinion, what's yours?

[Eliahad]

I understand we already do that for /some/ roads.

[Mike]

My opinion is that government is inevitable given a large enough population. And the "large enough" threshold is probably somewhere between a few hundred and a few thousand people. I know it's a straw man, but I've always loved the idea from Left Hand of Darkness that the only way to create a functional anarchy is by rigorously enforced lawlessness.

Given that populations will naturally try to form some sort of structure to manage commerce, shared interests, protections, etc etc, the real question is what is the most effective form of government given the current population and conditions. I can certainly get on board with a debate about whether or not current governments are obsolete and how best to change/replace them, but for me, any discussion of doing away with governments entirely is an unrealistic non-starter. People will form rules whether you like them or not, and if they have power, then they can enforce those rules over you whether you accept their legitimacy or not.

[mimekiller]

I kind of see goverment as a big game of tug a war, and even tho I know my side of ZERO government libertarian will never be the rule of law, I will do what I can to pull on that rope even if it just creates a small change in how people perceive the biggest crime family in the world.

[Bonefish]

First I want to make the distinction that I am referring to a State and it's government as one. Governing bodies which are not states(and there are those that exist) are not necessarily what I am talking about. In fact, I have very little problem with the recognition of an authority that I have voluntarily placed myself under. What I take umbrage to, is the idea of a non voluntary contract that stipulates that I am forced to adhere to the laws and mores of an organization that I have no choice but to acknowledge. And the nation state itself is not a given: people have lived prior to the emergence of nation states, and I assume, they will live after the nation state has fallen to the wayside.

What is necessary is law. People need a common set of guidelines that they can follow, so they may exchange goods and services, and have recourse to some form of justice when wronged. Laws are not necessarily established by a state: english common law is a legal thing, and it has existed before any of the states that se it, and indeed, some of it's core elements came into being at a time when no one state cold be said to have hegemony over england. And yet, it exists. Xeer law has continued to be practiced in Somilialand even after the dissolution of the nominal government based in Mogadishu. Sharia law is practiced across the world, by a significant portion of the people, and there is no Islamic State(well... There was a claimant. Whatever).

What would law without a state look like?

[WillyGilligan]

[Phoebe]

Wow, I really like democracy. Even in poor form it beats anything else. It comes in a lot of forms, unfortunately, including rather poor forms. It has the best chance of improving itself, and securing human freedom and happiness, even if it's not always the most efficient or effective way to accomplish things. It worries me how quickly democracy can be transformed into something else. I always felt like we were on a global trajectory for more and more democracy, and better democracy despite ups and downs along the way. Not sure that was right, which is an awful feeling.

[Mike]

Bone, I need your help. I realize I have a narrow-minded view of this subject, because I honestly cannot envision a state-less society that encompasses our current level of technology. Every time I try, I come up with some sort of powerful central authority rigorously enforcing "statelessness" and limiting the powers of entities that get too big or whatever. But of course, a powerful central authority that enforces rules worldwide is kind of the opposite of stateless.

So any time I enter this sort of discussion, I'm starting from the premise that anything outside of my imagination/experience is immediately wrong. So I need help. Give me even the general outlines of how a stateless society would be able to function. How would it achieve and maintain any semblance of stability?

[Bonefish]

Well, it's a point I made earlier, but it bears repeating, constantly: the most fundamental requirement for any stable society is the rule of law. Anarchy is commonly misunderstood as "no rules! Everything goes!", when the most literal translation is more like "Without Rulers". A society that has no laws or customs that shape what is considered acceptable is no society, it's... uh, let's call it chaos, since we are calling the stateless society "anarchy". But laws are a fundamental requirement of any society or social grouping: heck, you have and had your own system of "laws" for governing your family, do you not? Maybe less draconian than roman Paternal law, but still, similar principle. The there major requirement for anarchy is the concept of consent and non coercion: people must agree with you, and you are not free to threaten to bash them with a rock or stick unless they agree with you. You also can't threaten to withold their food, or smear fecal material on their doors unless they agree. These are guiding principles of my political philosophy.

I think a good place to start for such a legal system is with property law, as it's necessary to have defined ideas of ownership if we are to freely exchange our goods and services to mutual benefit. It's no bueno if I bring my tomatoes to trade with you for your linens, and you bash me with a rock and take the tomatoes and linens. I think, also, such a legal system would have to be compensatory, rather than punitive, in nature. As in, when a crime is committed, there must be an identifiable victim and suspect(I am the victim, and you are the suspect, because you bashed me with a rock and took my tomatoes! You meanie), so there's no such thing as a victim-less crime("Bone was smoking pot while growing his tomatoes, so I bashed him with a rock!"), and in addition, the punishment for the crime would be to compensate me for the damages done, rather than punishing you for the damage done(Since you bashed me with a rock and stole my tomatoes, Kyle gets to bash you with a rock, and somehow I am supposed to feel good about that, even though i am still out my tomatoes).

Now, in order for this to work though, we would need some sort of body that would define the laws, and serve as an arbitrator for the laws. In a state based society, this is the state, and the state is chosen by whatever method works(while some states are representative or democratic, others are enforced via the strongest man in the room.). Now, I object to the state, because it is often non voluntary, coercive, and completely arbitrary. I would prefer a system where we would either all get together to figure out what laws we want to abide by, or elect representatives who would do such a thing for us, with the over-all guiding principles of consent and non coercion: you don't have to obey the law because you will get punished otherwise, you obey the law so that we can all live in a mutually acceptable fashion with a minimum of violence.

I'm somewhat borrowing from my limited reading of Xeer, which is the traditional somali legal system(feel free to google it and read up on it), which is clan or family based. However, he concept of the clan or family in somalia isn't necessarily fixed: one can leave their clan and join another clan. However, the members of a clan are responsible for the actions of any individual in the clan: if you bash me with a rock and steal my tomatoes, Kyle and Jeff would be obliged to compensate me for my physical damage and loss of tomatoes. This creates a system where hotheaded members of the clan are watched and advised by the other members of their clan, lest they incur costs to the whole clan. And if you make enough trouble, your clan will disown you.

In addition, every member of somali society is assigned a "judge" of sorts when they are born, a member of their clan who has upright conduct and an understanding of the law. This judge, known as an "Odal"(i think) serves not only to help arbitrate legal disputes, but to also provide a sort of legal counsel to his charges, and his charges will generally go to him first when a legal dispute has the potential of arising, explain what happened. Then the Odal will arrange a meeting with the aggrieved party's Odal, and the two will form a court, where witnesses and evidence will be presented, and a decision reached. If the two Odals cannot agree on a cort, they will kick it upstairs to a higher sort of judge, or bring in Odals from another third party to serve as arbiters.

The system is not without it's flaws(swearing oaths is, uh, binding testimony...), but I think it offers an interesting framework for a stateless society. I think a more modern touch on it would be to forget the idea of clans, and replace them with either corporations, associations or fraternities. These multiple corporations would agree to broad classifications of what are not allowable, and provide legal representation for their members, as well as compensation if their members are found guilty. They would form investigatory and judiciary councils for hearing complaints, and provide a non biased arbiter for the hearing. I'm partial to the idea of a third party, one that is mutually agreeable to the aggrieved parties, being the judge.

I think it is the very nature of our technological advances that make this a more and more likely and possible mode of governing. Whereas in the past, you merely had to flee the limited reach of your local government, with modern communications, you simply cannot run fast or far enough to escape the news. Further, I think that as production technologies become more automated and less reliant on local labor, there is less of a benefit for centralization. I think other advances, such as digital currencies(bitcoin! and all it's... weird ness) become more commonplace and prevelant, the need for a centralized authority backing up the currency through the threat of force becomes less necessary.

Now, one major disadvantage that such a system has is that it's vulnerable to outside coercion and manipulation. If an outside force finances and supports one faction more than the others, that one faction can begin to exert more authority and control over others, which leads to polarization and conflict, or the imposition of a state. I don't really have a good solution there, except to get rid of all the states. Unfortunately, it's hard to do that in a fashion I find acceptable according to the principles of consent and non-coercion. So, I guess the best I can do is advocate for gradual reforms that nudge us along in that direction.

I do believe the State is obsolete, however, much like the aristocratic warrior elite who was rendered obsolete by gunpowder, it may take a while for them to get the message.

[Phoebe]

This sounds like a smaller-scale democracy that we just decided not to call a democracy, and that maybe would do less stuff than most other democracies do. It's people will be subsumed by some other more powerful state once they produce anything of value.

[Bonefish]

[Phoebe]

I'm not trying to argue against you; I can't really figure out what you're arguing for. So it's not that you oppose having a government or a democracy, but that you want only a very decentralized one, with smaller decision-making units? I'm not really clear how that's Anarchy.

[El Jefe]

I'm still unclear on the actual enforcement angle. So you risk losing your clan, so other clan-members now need to expend their time watching over potential problem citizens. Are these watchers trained in actual investigative procedures? Evidentiary rules? If they are...how is this different than a state-run law enforcement organization. If they aren't...how are we determining whether a crime (I'm not sure what to call it here...breaking the clan laws?) took place.

So Lisa hit Bob with a rock, and took his carrots. Nobody else saw it happen. Bob doesn't have his carrots, and has a lump on his noggin. Lisa has an actual rock available to her. So, the watchers say clan law was broken, right? Lisa says no, it wasn't, and refuses to pay any compensation. A few years later, Bob tells the story about hitting himself with a rock and getting his ex-girlfriend kicked out of the clan. Lisa, long since dead without a clan, is now due compensation. It will clearly help Lisa a great deal, being dead.

Snark aside on that last bit, I'm trying to figure out how the enforcement angle works without resembling simply being like any of our current state-run actors, but maybe with more social awareness and better training? Can you cover that part of it a bit more?

[Phoebe]

Tangent: I was amazed to discover there are magazines, trade publications if you will, that help document what the lives of now-dead people are worth in various legal situations. Or they can price out the average compensation due for things like a finger, or an arm, or a long-term bladder dysfunction or something. Presumably if we just have these magazines we'll be able to settle some things.

[WillyGilligan]

[bralbovsky]

So, governments and laws and economic systems each have theoretical ideals, which are never realized.

Fear and selfishness always come into the equation. An economist recently won a Nobel explaining that people in economies didn't act rationally - who knew? (Anyone who ever shopped with a teenager for a prom dress, that's who, just one example btw.)

We have governments, and professional governors - chieftains, captains, mayors, kings - as a natural extension of specialization, for the same reason we have tailors and millers and smiths. Those aren't bad ideas. We need them, just like we need cobblers and coopers and chandlers. In practice, they get wrecked by selfishness and fear.

Over the years we have tried to evolve systems that were less vulnerable, but it's very tricky, especially when you connect the dots on economics, which is politics, which is economics, which is... you get the idea. Greedy folks get hold of the rules so that they benefit greedy folks, and it's wrecked for everyone else.

In an ideal system, laws would be independent of economics. if only...

There's one other huge complication: yesterday.
Ross Perot discovered the hard way that although it was easier to start a government or economy from the bottom up, and design it carefully, this shuttle has already left drydock. The inertia of history, of all the financial messes and all the racial messes, and all the environmental messes we have made, those things stay with us. We don't like them, but they're ours. Until we face them, correct for them, compensate for them, we won't ever build a clean trajectory.

Taxation, like democracy, is a terrible idea; it's just better than all the other things we've tried.

[Bonefish]

[Bonefish]

[Phoebe]

The Sioux tried to resist. Just throwing that tidbit to the wind; no idea about the rest of the argument.

[El Jefe]