Ignorance Abounds

A little over a year ago I had began to embrace the anarchist philosophy and I thought I'd start to debate people about it, just as I do the idea of atheism and rationality. While doing a web search for any mentions of my blog I came across a conversation about me at the well known atheist website Daylight Atheism and I find that this guy calls me "nuts" for being an anarchist.

After a few months of back and forth the moderator of the forums finally closed the comments so I could not reply to my detractors, though I finally did here on my blog much later on.

I looked over the criticisms and my responses and I do agree that not all of my answers were satisfactory; I was fairly new to the idea at the time and did not have as good of a grasp of it as I do now. However, looking back at the responses of these atheists, people I usually consider very intelligent, they sounded much like brainwashed theists with many of their replies. They were being wholly irrational in several instances. Of course, as I've shown, atheism does not automatically protect one from ignorance and error.

I thought I'd reply to some of their claims once and for all. My comments and replies will be in bold.

The first comment I'm going to confront of my accusers was from someone who goes by the name "Mrnaglfar":

"Anarchy, were it achieved, wouldn't last very long. Having no government means no law enforcement, which means murder and rape now become all but accepted parts of life depending on whether the murder/rapist/thief/whatever is bigger, stronger, smarter, or quicker than you are. No one would be maintaining public works like roads, running water, electricity, or really any store (since once there was no enforcement you can bet large scale looting will soon become commonplace, at least intially). Without government, money also loses it's value and we're back to the barter system, which on the scale and size we live in today wouldn't work very well. Lots of people would be starving, injured, or dead very quickly.

Oh, and let's not forget our prisons are about to empty out with no government force at play there. That should make things even more fun."

As I showed in the above link in my reply to this guy, this claim is illogical and false. He sounds exactly like a theists who says, "Without god, everything becomes lawful." In fact, you could even replace god with state with the famous saying theists use of Dostoevsky:

"If [the state] does not exist, everything is permitted."

Of course, as I've shown, the idea of a god being needed for morality is completely unfounded. I argue that the same goes for the state. In fact, one of the reasons I became such an ardent anarchist was because most of the same arguments for god are, ironically, often used for the state! I've expressed these ideas here:

Anarchism vs. The State: Looking at the Facts

Anarchism vs. The State: Civility or Incivility

Statism vs.Theism: The Similarities Are Striking

If the claims are illogical in the case of god, then why not government? Atheists bitch about how evil god is in the bible and how horrible it would be to be ruled by such a being. Well, we are not ruled by god, but by a similarly evil entity: government. Atheists wonder why theists would ever wish to be ruled by such a tyrant, but then completely contradict themselves and allow themselves to be ruled (and defend such rulers!) by those who would steal from us; lock us away for our "sins" handed down by the rulers (an attempt to show the similarities between statism and theism); and murder us. There is an immense hypocrisy here.

A comment by Alex Weaver:

"A society which adopts a system that can only survive if absolutely everyone in it not only actively tries to behave in the fashion most conducive to the survival of that society and that system but succeeds in doing so simply isn't workable. The idea that people will voluntarily refrain from exploiting the system for their own benefit is naive, and has already been tried in a different, more economically focused form advertised with the slogan "from each according to his ability, to each according to his need." The results are a matter of record."

First of all, as I stated in a reply linked to above, anarchism and communism are not the same thing. Yes, some anarchists are communal in their philosophy, but what happened in Russia was not what anarchists wish to happen by any means.

Second, no one said an anarchist society would not have problems. That is a common misconception about anarchism: it is not utopian. Anarchists have solutions to social problems and troublemakers (I've written about it some here and here). That is a completely unfounded strawman argument.

Ebonmuse weighs in:

"Arizona Atheist, your reasoning is fallacious. Just because crime still occurs in a society with a government does not mean that government is ineffective at preventing crime. How do you know how many more crimes there would have been if there was no government making and enforcing laws?

Mrnaglfar's point was a good one, and I'd phrase it like this: Anarchism is an intrinsically unstable strategy. It only works if everyone agrees to participate, yet by its nature it has no way to enforce compliance. With no police, no laws, no government - no overarching authority that has a monopoly on the use of force - all that would happen is that people would begin to ally together for mutual benefit and to impose their will on others. They'd progress to forming larger and larger alliances to outcompete others who are doing the same, and eventually (after, no doubt, much war and bloodshed), we'd just end up with one or several large alliances which control the allegiance of all the population (since any unaligned individual or small group would be quickly snapped up or crushed). In short, we'd end up with exactly the same overall situation as we have now. What exactly do you imagine will happen to prevent this outcome?"

Chet also says:

[replying to my quote] No one forces their will upon another, or harms another is the golden rule.

"Some people want to do those things, though. Anarchy provides no way to stop them."

It's actually Ebonmuse whose thinking is "fallacious" because, as I said in another post, the very nature of government is force! Anarchism, depending on the society, might punish offenders; or as I've proposed, pay out restitution of some kind. From my research (here) restitution and offender mediation with victims has actually been shown to be just as effective as the punishment model, if not a little more so. They are more moral in that they give something back to the victims, unlike the immoral system we have now that ignores victims to concentrate on the perpetrator.

Again, anarchism is not utopian. The sole idea is that it is wrong for the ruling class to hand down laws and then at the same time break its laws and abuse its citizens. Once that is gone it is up to each society to figure out exactly how they'd like to live and the rules of their town, etc. I've given some abstract ideas that can be applied, but like everything else in life things change and things must be adapted and problems sorted out. There is no such thing as a perfect society. Anarchism is not utopian; it is realistic. It's a fact that in any civilization there will be problems and people must come together to figure out how to solve those problems. However, it does not seem logical to me to have a society that is ruled by tyrants who abuse their citizens and break their own laws with impunity just to have this illusion of safety.

Privatized security is a solution to unjustified uses of force.

3-28-10: It's recently come to my attention that Ebonmuse is the author of the blog, Daylight Atheism. I had never really read his blog much, though liked much of what he wrote. However, as I've said before just because someone is an atheist doesn't automatically make them a completely rational thinker; even myself, though I try my best to check my facts and be as accurate as I can. Being a human being, I am not immune to potentially irrational thoughts. It's my more logical side that I must train to overcome any possible irrational thought. Clearly, Ebonmuse is not thinking rationally about my arguments, nor does he seem to understand anything about anarchism.

Chet says:

"Hiring a security guard, or any other employee, to coerce others by force, would seem to be as much a violation of anarchy as hiring a government to coerce others by force. If the only solutions anarchy has to encroaching rulership are non-anarchic, you're making my point for me."

He also replied to a comment of mine: Many of these things will not stop, but the slaughter of millions would drastically be reduced if statism (and even theism) were abolished.

"There's no such thing as 'statism.'"

First of all, yes statism is a word. Please see this dictionary entry.

Second, anarchism in it's original greek simply means "without rulers", or anarchos, without a king, a pope, and other rulers. Now, true, there is a bit of an overlap with some of the statist institutions and some of the institutions I've proposed to replace the state, but the goal would still be achieved: no state and all things would become privatized.

Ebonmuse says:

"While no one likes force, we recognize that it is not going to go away. No political system has any viable means of eliminating it, especially not poorly thought-out anarchist pipe dreams. The best realistic option is to live in a society that respects the rule of law and gives democratic representation to the individual. That way we as a people can have a rational conversation over how to best harness that power and direct it to good ends, as opposed to leaving it up to the whim of whatever gang or tyrant manages to claw their way up to the top..."

"And the sun is the number one source of sunburns and skin cancer, but that doesn't mean we'd be better off without it."

Another horrible example of attempted rationality. True, but I've never said we can totally eliminate force, however, the greatest perpetrators of it (the government) would be gone. The sunburn analogy is absurd. We have ways of protecting ourselves from the sun. We do not, most times, with the government. If you try to defend yourself against a cop using excessive force the pig can charge with with resisting arrest, even if it's unlawful. Or he can just shoot you dead - most times with no repercussions. The government swoops in and steals your money and there is nothing you can do about because they are too powerful.

A remark by Samuel Skinner I find just plain ludicrous:

"For the record I think the government should have alot more power, but only if it is more transparent and we can trust it."

As I stated above, any more power allowed to this beast would be foolish. Even the "founding fathers" opted for a smaller government because they knew what would happen if it did get too big.

André Phillips said:

"I'm just wondering what determines a victim and a perpetrator if there's no system and no law."

Another moron... Sorry I'm being harsh in this instance but this is truly a dumb question. In fact, I don't even think I'm going to waste my time trying to answer it.

Stargazer1323 replied to a comment of mine:

Sorry, but this one is just silly. There are many purely volunteer fire departments and other services. In fact I learned that, I think it's the Scottsdale, AZ fire department that is run purely by volunteers.

"Sorry, but this comment is actually the silly one. There is a reason why there are volunteer fire departments, but not volunteer police forces. Fire fighters exist to solve a specific problem, they exist to help people, but they do not have the power over the lives or liberty of the people in the community where they work in the same way that the police do. Fire fighters do not carry guns, they do not have the authority to deprive people of their freedom - in other words, they are nothing like the police."

Actually, it's this guy's comment that's the silly one. As I've shown before there can be privatized security patrols. The guy also missed my point. My point was the fact that security patrols, etc. can be privatized and can protect people if they wish. I just used that one real world example of a privatized fire department as evidence that things can be privatized and workable without government intervention. In an earlier post (Censorship is Bullshit) I provided examples of many privatized services that do not require any government intervention.

The ignorance of André Phillips once again:

"I don't understand where these rights come from? If there's no codified law, then what rights are you guaranteed and who decides them? If you just say we all need to live by the golden rule, or we all need to work together, then someone stealing isn't a violation of any rights, it's simply someone choosing not to live your way. It seems to me that true anarchy is deciding that anyone can do whatever they want, whenever they want, and nobody can tell them not to. All you can do is protect your own. By the way, if the solution to looting and theft is that every family hires their own 24 hour protection, imagine the kind of world that produces. I'd rather pay taxes."

The first half is a somewhat decent question, but how in the world is saying "The government grants rights" different from "Our rights are derived from god?" There is no difference and both are arbitrary. That's why we have so many laws that are pointless: drug laws, seat belt laws, etc. To read more about this, please view this.

The rights come from the fact that our innate morality seems to have given us some kind of yard stick to judge morality by, of course in various parts of the world there are variations upon the theme and some things are considered immoral that in another place it's considered proper. However, my point is that in general, people care for one another and help one another, and all live by the rules and guidelines that their society has set. If one breaks said guidelines then the social contract has been broken and something can be done about it. This is done in accordance with whatever the society has determined whether it be a purely restitution based system or a punishment based system.

Oftentimes, instead of actual arguments they choose ridicule because they cannot argue my points:

I had said about the fact that we do not need money:

Government doesn't need to be in charge of printing money if that's what people chose to use. People run those money printing machines, what makes you think someone else couldn't?

André Phillips (in another display of idiocy) replied:

"Seriously? Do all these printers get to set the value of their money at whatever they choose? Can I say my fiver is worth your fifty? You know, I might be OK with that actually."

I feel ashamed that this guy is an atheist; a fellow "rationalist" (in this case I use that term very loosely).

I think that's about all I will post. I think I've responded to them in a much better manner (mostly by linking to other things I've since written) and if anyone has any questions or comments please don't hesitate to leave a comment.

However, I will leave you with one last silly comment. I had stated:

And since we were discussing it - about law and order. As I said before there would be no punishment because what does it achieve? One cannot stop all crime; the victims are left with their lost property, money, etc. while the state prosecutes the criminal. Now, what about the victim??? With this system, I can understand the deep seeded urge for revenge, however, according to a poll I gave earlier people's urge for revenge would be reduced if they would get some compensation.

Alex Weaver replied:

"Will you make up your mind? Does the system have to stop all crime to be worthwhile, or doesn't it? And again, HOW IS YOUR SYSTEM BETTER? It won't stop all crime either, and there are numerous severe problems with any attempt to implement it without government that you have utterly failed to address."

I have no clue by what he means by making up my mind...

I never said a system had to stop all crime to be "better." There is no such system. What I'm talking about is fairness in compensating victims and using our resources to focus on that. And I've already addressed the privatization which can be implemented without any form of government. Hell, think about it. Half of the time government uses private companies for it's services anyway. And what happens in business when we cut out the middle man? Things become more reliable and cheaper, which is exactly what we find with most privatized services (see the post Censorship is Bullshit).

There. Your complaint has been addressed.

I also find it funny that hardly anyone even attempted to argue against my paper (The Tyranny of the State, Part 2) I posted in order to prove them wrong about the state stopping crime to a worthwhile degree. After I began to do more research about anarchism and the institutions that can replace the government I found the answers to most of the questions they sought. All the guy did was cherry pick the data as I showed in an earlier post.

I suppose I shall reiterate my case with the following.

I declare the government to be the greatest threat to humankind (more so than religion) and I think I have successfully argued my case regarding that fact.

I agree with my detractors that there are some unknowns and I certainly do not have all the answers, but the point is this: Who's to say we cannot find an answer? An answer that is morally fair and right for everyone?! That is the entire point. An answer where no one is "above the law" so to speak, like the government, and it's henchmen (pigs) often are.

That is what I propose. If people want to look down upon me for that, then I think they have some serious issues with their thinking.

As I've said before, power corrupts, and to sum up my case, other than fairness to all, anarchism would also mean true freedom because, to quote Rose Wilder Lane, "...a grant of liberties, no mater how extensive, is not full recognition of the fact of individual liberty."

That is the essence of anarchism.

Freedom.