"That makes no sense."
Sure it does, working 16 hour days vs working 8 hour days. The 16 hour person will achieve more then the 8 hour no matter what the motivation is.

@Fasces

I have to ask: what was the point of this? Either people realize you're trolling and dislike you, or they don't realize (and think you support slavery) and now they really dislike you. As someone who seems to post a lot on the forums, what possible upside could this have?

Studies have shown that working more than 10 hours per day leads to more mistakes and can actually have a net negative productivity after 12 hours. So you yet less done in 16 than in 8 or 10.

I think it's okay to play the devils advocate. Two thousand years ago slavery would have been considered natural and perfectly moral. It is interesting how societies attitudes change. It makes me wonder what people in the future will find morally repugnant about attitudes that we, today, consider normal.

Draug you are absolutely right about working too much being counter-productive.

"I have to ask: what was the point of this? Either people realize you're trolling and dislike you, or they don't realize (and think you support slavery) and now they really dislike you. As someone who seems to post a lot on the forums, what possible upside could this have?"
For fun. It was rather humorous until spyman did what orathaic has done in the passed and found flaws in my arguement using points I would support.

"Studies have shown that working more than 10 hours per day leads to more mistakes and can actually have a net negative productivity after 12 hours. So you yet less done in 16 than in 8 or 10."
Depends what the job is.

"I think it's okay to play the devils advocate. Two thousand years ago slavery would have been considered natural and perfectly moral. It is interesting how societies attitudes change. It makes me wonder what people in the future will find morally repugnant about attitudes that we, today, consider normal."
I'm playing devils advocate? I thought i was just a troll...
But yeah, It would be interesting to see what future societies see as morally right and wrong.

I have a little bit different perspective I guess regarding anarch and whether we need government or not ._.

First of all I think we are always in anarchy and anarchy is inevitable. It is the main ground for political change and there is always a chance that you can get yourself out of the control of power of a government (or another entity) and move into anarchy.

How? Get yourself a shotgun and start killing people =3 you are in anarchy and no law can be enforced on you as long as you are good at it. Go one step further and claim a land is yours and keep everyone out of it. =3 Here you have established what so called political scientists calls "a state". If you can influence the whole world and make them respect you, you will guarantee "internatinonal (or say inter-authorities) recognition and your survival. (But I dont say you are equally powerful with them)

Some people will be your people and others will be under someone else's power. forexample those who are under someone else's power may be called "mafia" if authority is a godfather or a family, or a "state" if under a power syndicate called government. (Dont think it under the consept of "state". Anarchy is possible both in the state or outside the state. What we call as "country" or "borders" are just defective consepts which only defines where the power of the state is valid REGARDING other states, but not regarding other authorities such as mafias, international organisations, etc.)

Until someone else decides to take you down and make himself the power you are in charge. Then someone else will be in charge. As the power ( I make a 'Foucaultian' definition) is too subjective and depends on the context it is impossible to determine who is more powerful at one time. But we can see who "was" more powerful if we look at the History. Therefore we cannot determine an hierarchy among people, and we never know who will be in charge next.

Legitimacy is just a consept made up by people to stay in power. Legitimacy for a tyran is the fear of people, for a charismatic leader it is the love of his people and for democracies it is the consent of these people. So everybody defines it in his way and use it as an instrument to convince people with lesser power. Besides I dont think it is much different if 50 million people are represented by 1 person or 300 (parliament) people. in both systems your "voice" is negligably low for . =3 However if a bunch of people unites their power enough, they can influence the government. If they are powerful enough they can overthrown it. (They may use the existant system for their sake as a "secret syndicates" in conspiracy theories =D, or be the next dictator or "legitimate president", or they can just change the whole system ( as in French revolution which started the change in the tradition, from Empires/Kingdoms to nation-states. I suggest that it can be taken over by multi-national companies as in a company/business-state one day. That tradition changes slow but it always changes. )

Conclusion : The anarchy is inevitable and always exists. Governments are just the cute names for people or groups who has political power(but not necessarily the economical power, religious power or power for welfare)
Do we need governments? That's optional. If you say yes you are enjoying your subordination to some higher powers. If you say no, you are just not really enjoying it. =3

Was that unusual ? =D Looking forward to your comments *-*

No, it didn't work. I don't care if you were doing for giggles or seriously, no one likes to be guilt tripped, and lying like that makes you look like an ass hole, at the least.

Also, slavery is self defeating. Your slaves will feel oppressed and will probably fight for freedom. They will be uncooperative and they may sabotage what ever they are building (occurred in Nazi Germany). How do you force the slaves to work/properly? By either starving, beating, killing a few of, etc them which in the end makes them less productive.

"No, it didn't work. I don't care if you were doing for giggles or seriously, no one likes to be guilt tripped, and lying like that makes you look like an ass hole, at the least."
my mother is blind...

"Also, slavery is self defeating. Your slaves will feel oppressed and will probably fight for freedom. They will be uncooperative and they may sabotage what ever they are building (occurred in Nazi Germany). How do you force the slaves to work/properly? By either starving, beating, killing a few of, etc them which in the end makes them less productive."
The main reason why I am against slavery is because of the economic reasons that spyman mentioned.

Also slavery worked in the ancient times really well, otherwise the whole world would have abolished it.

It occurred to me that, basically, anarchy is in fact the only political position that is actually possible. I believe that all other political states are in fact variations or outgrowths of a basic state of anarchy; after all, when you mention the idea of anarchy to most people they will tell you what a bad idea it is because the biggest gang would just take over. Which is pretty much how I see contemporary society. We live in a badly developed anarchist situation in which the biggest gang has taken over and have declared that it is not an anarchist situation—that it is a capitalist or a communist situation. But I tend to think that anarchy is the most natural form of politics for a human being to actually practice. All it means, the word, is no leaders. An-archon. No leaders.

And I think that if we actually look at nature without prejudice, we find that this is the state of affairs that usually pertains. I mean, previous naturalists have looked at groups of animals and have said: “ah yes this animal is the alpha male, so he is the leader of the group.” Whereas later research tends to suggest that this is simply the researcher projecting his own social visions onto a group of animals, and that if you observe them more closely you will find out that, yes there is this big tough male that seems to handle most of the fights, but that the most important member of the herd is probably this female at the back that everybody seems to gather around during any conflict. There are other animals within the herd that might have an importance in terms of finding new territory. In fact the herd does not actually structure itself in terms of hierarchies; every animal seems to have its own position within the herd.

And actually, if you look at most natural human groupings of people, such as a family or a group of friends, you will find that again, we don’t have leaders. Unless you’re talking about some incredibly rigid Victorian family, there is nobody that could be said to be the leader of the family; everybody has their own function. And it seems to me that anarchy is the state that most naturally obtains when you’re talking about ordinary human beings living their lives in a natural way. Its only when you get these fairly alien structures of order that are represented by our major political schools of thought, that you start to get these terrible problems arising—problems regarding our status within the hierarchy, the uncertainties and insecurities that are the result of that. You get these jealousies, these power struggles, which by and large, don’t really afflict the rest of the animal kingdom. It seems to me that the idea of leaders is an unnatural one that was probably thought up by a leader at some point in antiquity; leaders have been brutally enforcing that idea ever since, to the point where most people cannot conceive of an alternative.

This is one of the things about anarchy: if we were to take out all the leaders tomorrow, and put them up against a wall and shoot them— and it’s a lovely thought, so let me just dwell on that for a moment before I dismiss it—but if we were to do that, society would probably collapse, because the majority of people have had thousands of years of being conditioned to depend upon leadership from a source outside themselves. That has become a crutch to an awful lot of people, and if you were to simply kick it away, then those people would simply fall over and take society with them. In order for any workable and realistic state of anarchy to be achieved, you will obviously have to educate people—and educate them massively—towards a state where they could actually take responsibility for their own actions and simultaneously be aware that they are acting in a wider group: that they must allow other people within that group to take responsibility for their own actions. Which on a small scale, as it works in families or in groups of friends, doesn’t seem to be that implausible, but it would take an awful lot of education to get people to think about living their lives in that way. And obviously, no government, no state, is ever going to educate people to the point where the state itself would become irrelevant. So if people are going to be educated to the point where they can take responsibility for their own laws and their own actions and become, to my mind, fully actualized human beings, then it will have to come from some source other than the state or government.

PS
why would you listen to someone who calls them self "Fasces" on the topic of government?
I mean... come on. Whatever disagreements we all may have, I think we can all basically agree that Fascism is probably about the worst way to go.

Communism is worse, but yeah, Fascism has a pretty bad track record

"All it means, the word, is no leaders. An-archon. No leaders."

It technically means "no ruler/ no rule". Peter Kropotkin said it means "absence of authority". Virtually every anarchist I've read or talked to or worked with calls themself an "anti-authoritarian". But you're right, anarchists dislike leadership. Which is why if you've ever worked in an anarchist organization, you'd know that no decisions get made, nothing gets done, we have to debate everything for hours just to do one small task, and people who don't speak up are intimidated into following the "consensus". After all, it's a consensus based organization. So if anyone objects, a decision is stalled. What this does is either one of two things: 1) silence debate and dissent, because no one wants to be the ass who blocks a decision or 2) stall a decision endlessly. In both cases, it is not democratic, it is not egalitarian, it is both inefficient and authoritarian. It completely sacrifices results for process, and the process is dysfunctional.
In the few places where anarchism has been somewhat influential, like in Spain during the civil war, anarchism has not proven to be more moral or more effective. On the contrary, when the Spanish anarchists weren't sabotaging efforts to fight the phalangist uprising, they were engaging in torture.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2003/jan/27/spain.arts

As for leadership not existing in nature, this contradicts volumes of work on dominance hierarchy within animals. Even if true, I fail to see why humans should behave like animals or act "according to their nature". Humans do not have a nature. Humans have transformed so many times and created so many different forms of society that the idea that there is a single human nature does not make sense.
You are correct that in SOME primitive, stateless societies there is a tendency to lack hierarchy and authority. But I think it speaks volumes that all societies which evolved past primitivism developed some kind of authority or leadership.

What anarchists and other anti-government/anti-leadership types fail to demonstrate is why are authority and leadership the worst possible things in the world, that everything else, including social well being, need to be sacrificed at the altar of smashing authority. Anarchists also fail to acknowledge the progressive role government has played throughout history. Most of human progress the past couple of centuries can be attributed to the more active role the state has played in creating better living conditions.

""lol i'm not criticizing capitalism when i point out that those companies have committed true evils."

then why point them out?"

because being capitalist != supporting companies in whatever they decide to do.

you can be capitalist and still call a company evil.
false dichotomies will be the end of our race mark my words.

It's sort of weird to be pro-capitalist and wring your hands about evil corporations though. Evil corporations are built into the system. How do you have an economy built around greed and selfishness in which corporations do not behave this way?

whats wrong with greed and selfisness is the real question

@ putin

It's true that the consensus process can be problematic. I have to say though I think its oversimplistic to say it always ends in one of those two ways. I have seen consensus work beautifully many times before, even in very large (a few hundred) groups of people.

I must say though, I think its very sad that you dont trust yourself to make your own decisions about your own life. Who do you trust over yourself? power huungry vladimir who cant seem to leave the kremlin?

Well, Fasces, nobody can figure out what you think is morally good or morally bad. So until you explain what in your mind is something that is actually morally wrong, any discussion about "what's wrong with X" is going to go nowhere. It seems to me that you don't think anything is morally wrong. But please tell me if that is not correct.

"I have to say though I think its oversimplistic to say it always ends in one of those two ways. I have seen consensus work beautifully many times before, even in very large (a few hundred) groups of people."


Heh, exactly. "Very large" in an anarchist world would be a few hundred, whereas the real world works in the realm of millions or in some cases, over a billion.

If you've seen consensus work beautifully, I'd like to know what kind of decisions were made. Where they remotely controversial? Or did everyone just assent like sheep because they wanted to get something done? What, in your mind, is a "beautifully" working consensus process? I've yet to see any such process that can remotely be described as such. Simple majority rule in such organizations always works better, faster, more efficiently, and allows people to openly disagree without feeling intimidated. On every level it is superior. Not saying that majoritarianism without flaws, but consensus will makes majoritarianism seem like heaven on earth.

"I think its very sad that you dont trust yourself to make your own decisions about your own life. Who do you trust over yourself? power huungry vladimir who cant seem to leave the kremlin?"

I fail to see what dysfunctional anarchism has to do with "trusting myself". Perhaps it's because anarchism is such a petty bourgeois, self-absorbed, anti-social, and individualistic ideology that that's all that matters, yourself. But once again we live in a community, a society, where people besides ourselves exist. So in order to do what is best for the community, we need government. More than that, we need a government that works.

But anarchists flip that upside down. All that matters is the individual and not hurting any individual's feelings, not forcing an individual to ever have to abide by other people's decisions, never demanding sacrifice of individual interests for the collective. Society be damned, we need to have a purified process before we can do anything. And if you don't like it, obviously you have a slave mentality that worships leadership.

sure there are billions of people on earth but no decision includes billions of people. And decisions that include large numbers of people arent really collective decisions are they. america has over 300 million people, but American policy is not decided upon by 300 million people. Decision making should be local. No one should decide what happens in a neighborhood except the neighbors. No one should decide what happens in your bedroom but you. etc. A good example is the zapatistas in chiapas and their "bottom up democracy".

Dont confuse individual responsibility to a community with individualism. You obviously dont trust your own ability to make intelligent decisions or you wouldnt need someone else to make them for you.

"So in order to do what is best for the community, we need government."

you'll really have to explain this one. especially to my neighbors that fixed the potholes last week, and two months ago got the crack dealers to leave.

Heh, anarchists are typically called "man-archists" in my circles for a reason. It's all so very macho. "You don't trust yourself", etc. What you don't get is that it has nothing to do with "me". The world does not revolve around me, as it appears to revolve around you. I don't trust people to put aside their petty differences and agree 100% on everything of importance all the time. It's foolish and unrealistic. It's a recipe for disaster if you have to make an emergency decision about anything. It has nothing to do with me and my own abilities.

"Decision making should be local."

Right, so when Hurricane Katrina heads, you'll have no broader community by which you can turn to for aid. Better yet, you'll be so consumed with "democratic" decision-making that you'll all drown by the time you decide anything. Not every issue facing local communities only affects local communities. Coordination on a broader scale is necessary if we are to have anything approaching civilization. Giving absolute sovereign to each individual neighborhood is horrifying. Who decides what roads are getting built? Which neighborhood has the resources to build roads? That's another thing about anarchism, with local communities calling all the shots about everything, there will be huge disparities in wealth and prosperity between neighborhoods. I mean we see this all ready with education and local school boards making decisions about that, and funding being based on local property taxes. There will be no central authority to redistribute wealth from richer areas to poorer. So if you happen to live in a neighborhood where there is run-down schools, no jobs, dillapitated buildings, and little in the way of infrastructure - too bad. Telling other neighborhoods they have to help you out is "authoritarian" and obviously means you don't trust yourself!

"A good example is the zapatistas in chiapas and their "bottom up democracy"."

Haha, yeah all anarchists love Subcomandante Marcos because he's a white guy wearing a ski mask in the middle of the tropics writing on his laptop. The Zapatistas don't challenge the power structure or accomplish much of anything, so they are fetishized by utopians. How is their revolution going? Oh, is infant mortality still twice the national rate in Chiapas? Oh, and they've given up any form of struggle against the Mexican power structure, content to have meetings with political celebrities and post videos online? Yeah, the Zapatistas are a real model. Gone are any discussions of how to get to the end stage or how to get to this magical utopian world of anarchism. Practical problems are completely ignored by groups like the EZLN and their anarchist hangers-on. And they can continue wearing their ski masks and acting all macho while the people of Chiapas continue to suffer thanks to a lack of imagination of how to deal with real problems.

On the other hand, Maoists in Nepal managed to wage a multiple decade long struggle and got the kingdom abolished (I believe they even tried to legalize gay marriage), but they're not fetishized because heaven forbid they are effective and have leadership. The results, once again, don't matter. What matters if the process. If people are starving or drowning while we debate the process, oh well.

*hits, not heads.

Humans form governments. Whether or not it's right or wrong is irrelevant; even if anarchy were successfully brought about, those pesky peoples would just go and organize themselves right back into governments again.

All right I will reiterate: We shouldnt analyse the issue only from the perspective of states.

I think anarchy is perpetual, but any other systems are temporary.

Examples: Governments never have the control over mafia. Otherwise they wouldnt be mafia but prisoners. =3

Besides even from a state-focused perspective, if you are strong enough you can -all by yourself- claim a land for yours and you can start your own state. See principality of seeland or other so-called "microstates".

Anarchy is not really a state of everyone being equal and no one has the power over any body else. Anarchy is,as opposed to hierarchy, a system in which no one is superior to other and everyone has at least a chance to overthrow the reign.

Among states there is no such authority though some states are self claimed leaders, regionally or globally.

Inside the states there are people who rule their own life. Maybe some high ranked police chiefs or army generals. Maybe some mafia families... or maybe a tarzan living in a forest freely without awareness of anybody else... =3

look I cant have a productive conversation with you if you insist on assuming all sorts of things about who I am and what I believe.
If I say, I like cake, you'll say how birthday candles are a fire hazard.

oh and we dont have to form governments. We used to like being subordinated to a King or an Emperor under an organisation called "Empire". Then we invented "nationhood" and consented to be subordinated to a President or a parliament or maybe still to a dictator under an organisation called "nation-state".

But history shows us that in one night, kings and dictators can be overthrown, parliaments can be couped and power can change hands. What makes it possible is the perpetual existance of anarchy. =3

"look I cant have a productive conversation with you if you insist on assuming all sorts of things about who I am and what I believe.
If I say, I like cake, you'll say how birthday candles are a fire hazard."

Yes, it's all about you. I made a number of points. But this how you're going to dodge them. FIne by me.

"you insist on assuming all sorts of things about who I am and what I believe."

And really, you say this after doing little more than repeating your mantra about how I don't trust myself. Hilarious, really. But I've never met an anarchist who wasn't a shameless hypocrite.