Anarchy
A lot of the stigma against things like atheism in this country probably coem from a feeling of threat from people that have different values and beliefs. They say we're afraid of what we don't know, and we're afraid of change, and I believe this is certainly true of most people. Many people feel content with the system they grew up in and don't even think of the alternatives, or even view them as dangerous or lunatic fringe.
Anarchy has that same stigma going with it. People associate it with violence and chaos, using it as a synonym. Some of this does have basis in fact, of course - many anarchists have been known to engage in violence or destruction in order to achieve their message. And in fact, there may come a time where violent overthrow is necessary. Our founding fathers knew this - after all, they had to fight such a battle! - and that was a large part of the right to bare arms. As I've mentioned in my other posts, it's necessary in order to keep the government afraid of, and thus repsonsive to, the people.
But I've still not explained why I think Anarchy is the way to go, and my last paragraph might even lead you to believe I was for government, just one kept in check. The simple fact is, government will never be kept in check for long, and the concept of a governing body that dictates the lives of the people and forces that view onto people is coersive.
Governments like ours work by telling people what they can't do based on the popular opinion on a matter, often neglecting the individual rights of people in the minority. The larger the government, the less individual freedom the people have. The more the government grows the more it controls and regulates our lives, what we can say, what we can do in the bedroom, etc. The [i]less[/i] the government interferes, the more freedom we have over our lives.
Government serves no purpose, aside from regulating our lives. It is unnecessary. Laws should be transformed to reflect libertarian attitudes - that one is entitled to do whatever the want with their body and property, so long as it doesn't infringe on the rights of others to do the same. This isn't to say there will be a lack of organizations to ensure that they laws are upheld and that our environment's health is maintained for our benefit. It is simply a shift of this organziation from the coercive control of the government directly to the people. It is a matter of removing controls from one solitary power that has the ability to run the peoples' lives and get stronger and stronger to independent groups.
You mgiht say that jumping to anarchy isn't pragmatic, and I am pretty confident that you'd be right. Society as it is set up right now would probably run into a lot of issues if we jumped directly to an anarchal system. That's why I am, at the moment, in favor of a gradualistic movement towards the disbanding of government. We must first lessen the power of the government over our lives, moving away from authoritarianism and toward libertarianism. Optimally, we must try to promote international cooperation and combination. As we grow interconnected, the need for multipel world governments should gradually diminish as we start top mesh together. We must continue to chip away at the role of government and pass it away from this centralized power until it is gone. The problem is that government will always seek to hold its power, and to threaten this is going to be a long and uphill battle, but one that for liberty's sake is necessary.
I'm an anarchist
I'm an anarchist myself.
Have you ever read Henry David Thoreau's "Civil Disobedience"? It is not about anarchy per se (in fact, he lobbies against it), but he makes some interesting points about the negative attributes of democracy. He makes the point that a "majority rules" policy is morally apprehensible. Just because more than 50% of people believe something is right does not make it so.
Anyway, if you haven't, it's a short read. I think you might like some of the ideas.
Good points...No kind of
Good points...No kind of government can be...fair for an extended amount of time, nor will they grant individual rights if they stay long enough...Look at the USA right now, if someone buys a piece of land you gotta get a permit to build Anything, and it's their land...at least they'd like to think that way. Anarchy would be...good, I suppose, in a sense, if people had a VERY strong police force to guard against crime and such. (And execute them so there wouldn't be any crime.) There's only one flaw I see in anarchy and that's what I just pointed out, sort of, there are no definite laws, and no definite police force. The people would be the police, yes, but what if someone wanted to murder someone and said they did it because they broke in when they didn't?
Nice. I'm an
Nice. I'm an anarco-capitalist but I tend to use the label "libertarian", because it is less offensive.
I'm going to have to do a persuasive essay later this year... I'll probably do it on this subject.
I totally agree.
I totally agree. Libertarian government or none at all.
The world couldn't exist
The world couldn't exist with anarchy. As much as I'd love to support the idea of not having a government, I can't. Why? Because a government isn't a BAD thing. It's the corruption that is bad, and there is no government without corruption. In a perfect world, there would be government all the same, minus the corrupt officials.
The world COULD exist as a ture democracy. Sadly I have yet to find a place in this world where one's vote actually counts for something.
But thegovernment IS a bad
But thegovernment IS a bad thing. Government will inherently control and dominate the people it governs. A world in which there is no government is not the same as a world in which there is no order. It is merely a shift of the power directly to the people rather than to an elite group that is supposed to govern the masses.
Democracy is rather meaningless as a government in a society of libertarianism anyhow. If the rules all follow the premise of allowing personal individual freedom so long as your actions don't impose on anothers' rights (including rights to property and life), then the only times when new laws would need to be created would follow new advancements in technology and scientific practices. And inside a democratic system, democracy often fails because it is a majority-rules system in which the minority is always oppresses or at risk of oppression.
You simply cannot have a government that enforces pure libertarian policies, because such a body would be redundant in and of itself. And anything less than libertarian policy is some form of oppression or control.
I also think that government
I also think that government is a necessary evil. Anarchy would inevitably result into chaos.
I do believe anarchy could
I do believe anarchy could work. However...it is much like a commune or small utopia. Communism can exist for a small group of willing participants. It is impossible to work on any sort of grand scale. The same is true of anarchy. For example, if 25-40 anarchists from this site moved some imaginary area in Wyoming and decided to live a life free of government, it could really work. Why? People of like mind and desires are getting together to run their own society.
That sounds like a big
That sounds like a big family (which in some cases is pretty much an anarchist-communist collective)... how about 6 billion people? :P
Anachy never works. I hate
Anarchy never works. I hate the government and all that it stands for, but anarchy would do little to help anything. While our forefathers did battle to overthrow their government, they did it to abolish their overpowered government. They did it to establish the civil liberties we still have today. Even if most of those liberties are compromised in today's society, it doesn't mean that anarchy is the answer. First, the overthrow of the government would go about well. Everyone would be joyed because the controlling big brother figure couldn't tell them what to do anymore. Things would go well until it started to sink in how much freedom everyone had. You could do practically anything you wanted provided you had the manpower/firepower. Without the enforcers what was once America would be in complete disarray. New smaller governments would be formed, alliances would be drawn to protect themselves, and eventually civil war after war would wage until one group overpowered the rest. People can't be trusted with power. It's too much responsibility for most to handle. Money, power, and territory would eventually corrupt any type of society. Best bet is to try and keep what we have as close to the ideal community as we can, and work at it piece by piece. Even if we destroyed the government slowly, people would take the connections formed between each other during the process and form their own party. We are all different, and we all have different beliefs, different comforts in life. Some people take comfort and like the security of a central power watching them. They like the idea that they are safer when a government is established. Men and women have malicious intent. I don't like the government myself, but it's better than anarchy.
If people can't be trusted,
If people can't be trusted, why would we place our trust in people? That's essentially what government is - placing the lives of the masses into the hands of a relative few. I'm not advocating compelte disorder, but rather a shift toward privatization and movement of government controls to organizations run by the people.
Any argument that people cannot be trusted simply runs into the problem of people controlling government. The power is better spread out across the people than in one body, because government will ultimately lead to oppression.