So if someone complains about cut and paste you respond with cut and paste? Or we have no idea which part of your long cut and pasted essay was supposed to answer our question, or how. I could even read your cut and paste essay as supporting my claim that anarchists are just pretending that multitudes of 'ad-hoc' committees is just government under another name. What did you really mean? Who knows, you won't say. Not really, how about if we have a death penalty debate and one person just pastes in a pro death penalty article and another person posts an anti-death penalty article. Is that debate? No. There are websites out there, backed by facts, supporting every possible view on every possible argument. If you think there is something impressive about the existance of a website that supports your views, then you are easily impressed. Why not try expressing yourself? Why not use sources to support or back up your argument rather than to provide your argument? Aren't anarchists independent thinkers? Maybe you thought it was cute to throw in cut and paste and then make snide remarks.
Ah how wonderful to see PB once more ranting about practices which he himself resorts to frequently. One can only smirk at the consistency of his hypocritical BS.
In this thread i have 22+ posts. 2 contain text from articles. The rest are my thoughts. Nice try though.
How much do you cut and paste? Enough that you have a cut and paste reponse for anyone that complains about cut and paste. Why don't you try explaining briefly in your own words how anarchist committees replicating virtually every aspect of what would normally be called "government" is, in practice, any different from government.
First response was NOT cut and paste. My response to you was a quote from myself from within the same thread. 1.They wouldn't be "replicating virtually every aspect", what need does an anarchist society have for seatbelt laws, sin taxes, property rights/taxes, corporate law... 2. Anarchism supports direct democracy on local levels. You and your community decide on issue, not washington, not the state of ______, You and your neighbors. 3. By supporting direct democracy and federalism (also called confederation) and free association, you eliminate heirarchal personality worship that has a country voting for a man based on "whether they can sit and have a beer with him". You also avoid the problem of massive bureaucracy and high taxation that plauge communist and socialist nations.
That wasn't so hard, was it? I'm not sure what need capitalist societies have for a lot of these things either, you could almost be advocating libertarian capitalist democracy. On the other hand, you would also need committees to micromanage every aspect of the economy, something which at the moment is the responsibility of the private sector, not the government. Gosplan, anyone? How much steel will the anarchist steel collective produce in 2006, and how much of that will be hot rolled sheet? And of the hot rolled sheet, how much will be non-pickled, non-temper rolled/non-pickled temper rolled/pickled non-temper rolled/and pickled temper rolled? We'll need committees for all that, and they'll have to meet with the committees deciding on iron ore imputs and manufacturing outputs. How will this be coordinated with the anarchist collective steel mill in Korea? The international steel production committee? That's great, but where do communities begin and end? Is greater Los Angeles a community? It assumes a completely unrealistic separation of communities, as if we all lived in isolated, self sustaining little towns. Even things as simple as speed limits - would we have 50,000 communities deciding on 50,000 speed limits? Or can I just drive at 150mph through your residential neighborhood since your community has no jurisdiction over me? What level of mercury is acceptable in bottled water? Whatever you want? What if people formed a community and decided the age of consent is 12? Do we have 50,000 committees deciding things like food and water or environmental standards? As I drove across America, would I pick up a phone book sized list of local rules and regulations as I passes through each and every one of the 50,000 collectives? That's not much more than heresay. Would people vote "correctly"? Would committees of millions really function as direct democracy? There's no reason large scale anarchist committees wouldn't fall prey to the same human vices that any other large group does. Would taxes be lower? Hard to say if income and money don't exist. And as for bureaucracy - gosplan, gosplan, gosplan.
You could label it a lot of things. I think the new revised buzz word for anarchist is libertarian socialist now... I'm more of a fan of mutualism (also known as anti-capitalist free market). But i believe we've already had and abandoned that issue in an other thread. Personally i believe that due to peak oil and even peak metal, those are not going to be much of an issue for very long any way. Goodbye Age of Industry... That point could also be raised on other material goods though. You're assuming there's no planning involved with the current global economic system. Again thats assuming (unrealistically) the continued manufacture and use of automobiles, mercury and the like. As far as i know there are different speed limits in every community as we speak. As far as sex goes, i believe that to be a personal/family issue in the first place. Age of consent being 12? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:AgeofConsent.PNG http://www.avert.org/aofconsent.htm The worldwide average age of consent is already about 16, with some of the states in the U.S.A. being as low as 14/15. Free association, dont like the age of consent where you are, then join another community more inline with your beliefs. What do you mean by "correctly"? As far as human vices, no ones claiming it will be a perfect utopia filled with perfect people. But given the nature of people why allow that amount of power to be consolidated and enforced within a heirarchal system? Corruption, greed and abuse seem far less likely with limited or no authority of one man over another...
That's a contradiction in terms, kind of like... well, like anti-capitalist free market. And yes, you did abandon that issue, unfortunately. That's a rather pessimistic approach - anarchists won't need to manage a complex economy because the world is going to collapse? It seems like a pretty big flaw in anarchist theory. Personally, I'm not worried at all about peak oil. Free market economies adapt, their flexibility is their strength. No, I'm only assuming that there is no government involved in the planning, whereas you have to assume that it is being done by anarchist committees which is in practice no different that government. Yes, I am assuming the continued manufacturing of goods. Unrealistic is assuming the opposite. You were telling us that people vote for those they want to have a beer with. Well, that means they must be voting "incorrectly" so you want a system where people somehow are enlightened to vote for the "correct" reasons. Yes but as I keep pointing out, you can't assume that this ad-hoc committee system would actually work without assuming that society regresses back to some primitive agricultural world of isolated villages.
