I'm not totally against anarchism.. Don't get me wrong. Don't have time to respond in full but yeah

Really, I think people don't want to own up to the fact that politically, the technology is not used. Not in novel ways anyway. We replace the ballot box by electronic ballot boxes - with some sort of superstition towards technology (as though fraud is not possible with paper votes).

Well, I find it interesting how people do not trust the stock exchange, yet ALL peoples savings are being played on the stock exchange regardless of whether you care to know about it. If you have money in the bank, its being played, if you have a savings fund - it is also being played. If you have money in the bank, it's phantom money.

So we are capable of accepting all those concepts as realities of daily life. And yet, we can not use the same technology in a novel fashion which would actually make REAL change? I find it ludicrous.

I also find the times now exciting because the technology actually makes room for novel political systems which previously were limited by size. I really believe in consensus politics. If people can make anonymous choices without being pressured - I believe the majority of people will make the right ones.

In a far fetched mental experiment of mine: I once thought if there was a vote regarding slavery in UK prior to 1830 - which would be 100% representative of the people and anonymous - I think common consent would have abolished slavery much earlier for instance. Because we have an inherent morality and because the interests of the many are usually more in line with this morality.

Before counter argument comes: people say that this can lead to a tyranny of the people, a tyranny of the majority over the minority. That is only true if the majority would all "truly" benefit from the misfortune of this minority as well as the precedent set - in fact, this would be highly unlikely. Usually a narrow group benefits from injustice.

As a side note to the previous post: short time-span, small etc. Please. Spain of 1936 saw what is possible (sure in a crisis state) but we will never know what could have happened there - that state was squashed because of technological disadvantage coming from without. All of Europe wanted Franco to win in Spain.

Also: to answer mendax - because people nowdays like to say that OWS was a failure. To marginalize it and forget about it. In 10 years (if nothing happens in the meantime) people won't know what it was.

OWS = a bunch of bored hipsters smashing windows, blocking roads and being a nuisance to decent working people.

ILN, thankyou for announcing so clearly that you have no idea what you're talking about.

Do you really sympathize with anti-semite, feces smearing hipsters angry because they don't have the job they feel entitled to?

Nope. It's a good job that that's nowhere near an accurate description of OWS then.

What would be an accurate description then? From what I read and saw, that's the impression I got.

For the most part, it was local people committed to trying to make a change in their communities, mixed with a few people who had nowhere else to go. I heard no anti-semitism first-hand, nor were hipsters any more than a negligible demographic there.

OWS was about inequality and it was not a failure. For people in my generation it put that issue on the agenda and for most of us it is still on it.

If anarchism relies on technology, it is doomed to fail.

^

Great point Jeff 'If society relies on technology, it is doomed to fail". Now that is defeatism - almost like saying we were doomed by mastering fire.

Fire? Pah. It was moving out of the oceans that was our biggest mistake.

I never said that TigerBlood. Don't misquote me.

It's even simpler than that really:
Anarchism fails because of math.

Why?

relevant link: http://time.com/3523217/occupy-central-hong-kong-harcourt-road-admiralty-democracy-anarchism-anarchist-collective-china-protest/

It's a perfect little anarchist collective surrounded by a police state which is protecting them and letting them have their perfect little anarchist picnic.

http://america.aljazeera.com/articles/2014/10/17/hong-kong-occupy.html

Yeah, not sure the police are protecting them here.

The police are protecting the state. The police state is protecting its citizens from other states. There is no contradiction.

Perhaps I should say that "Anarchism fails because of counting" even simpler than math.

The reason is because 2 people can beat up or kill 1 person. Haven't you played Diplomacy to understand the importance of alliances?

As long as 2 > 1, you can never expect anarchism to be a valid social "construct" because the strong will dominate the weak. It is only through structure that the weak have any rights at all. There is no way that the entirety of humankind will decide anarchism is right for them. The will to power is too great within us. It is how we have evolved to survive on this planet.

Oh, I see. You don't know what anarchism is. That makes things a lot clearer.

I do, but the ideal of anarchism does not and cannot live up to the reality. In a physical world with bodies and force, it does not work. Humans started that way and will never go back.

You obviously don't know about anarchy then.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarcho-capitalism

Anarcho-syndicalists/communists are morons btw.

Well, apparently I'm a moron, as stated by the person who has spent basically the entire thread writing off things he knows nothing about.

You two should reread the section on "Law and order and the use of violence" with your reality glasses on. It's laughable how much anarcho-capitalist doctrine relies on "an ideological commonality of ethics and morality as a requirement" or maybe...perhaps...there "could be competition among different brands of law, just as there is competition among different brands of cars."

Just like Austrian economics, it's all mental masturbation without empirical evidence. Show me the anarcho-capitalist paradise, please.