Haha.. I'm playing devil's advicate everywhere at the moment.

By advicate, I mean advocate.

He also seems to be a very good player; 14 games playes, with 5 wins and only 1 defeat.

You are entirely entitled to your views on animal rights, and the symmetry of your position is fine, but I also have the right to my personal views.

The ones you expressed are disgusting to me, i would fight to change the law to prevent animals like you from harming animals which happen to not be human; except my country's laws already do so.

Claims about the greed of politicians aside, i don't have a problem with a government when it enforces such laws, i am glad to have such a system in place. (even if it is not ideal, it does some good - which is of course based just on my personal value system...)

Yeah... I had a pretty good run with 4 wins and 5 draws... But I've had a string of survives and my first defeat yesterday. Sometimes there's just nothing you can do.

@C-man: this is very illuminating, until now I thought these kind of ideas only existed in the minds of Hollywood script writers. They strike me as bonkers and/or unworkable but in the interest of open-minded discourse, I will bite.

- You say that communities will have a company in mind. Can you explain the process by which this happens? For example, will there be a selection period? Advertising? Must all members of the community agree on the same company?

- Will a community have only one supplier company or many? Will the companies supply more than one community? Who will own the companies? Will they make profits for their owners?

- How will the company be paid? Assuming that there is some kind of service fee: how will the fees be set? what currency will be used? will the fee be levied equally on all community members? In what way does this service fee differ from taxes levied by local or national government?

- How will changes in the service be decided? If the community is dissatisified with the service/cost can the supplying company be changed? If one member of the community is dissatisfied what is he/she able to do? Is their only choice to leave the community?

- Why 150? Why not 1500 or 15000? If 150 is a strict limit what would happen if the population grows beyond that size? Will young people be kicked out (like young lions are)? or will old people be left to die?

- Will people travel between communities to work? or marry?

@C-man: I am also curious about the following points.

- would natural wealth be distributed? If so, how? For example, if community A is sitting on an oil well does it have to share the ouptut with community B next door? or community C on the other side of the country? In the transition period would it be first come, first served in grabbing natural resources?

- your personal ideal is a community of 150 on anarchist (no leader) basis relying on the natural goodness of the American people. What would happen if another group of people, perhaps less moral than yours, decides to form a larger community, hire a more powerful private army and invade, maybe to seize resources? Will you rely on your own defences or do you expect some other party to intervene on your behalf? If so, who?

- how do you expect this society to come about? Will individual communities be allowed to leave the nation whenever they are ready to or will the whole nation, even all nations, break up at the same time? What will be the process by which this is approved? If a person with physical property in that location, who does not wish to join, be allowed to stay? if thet are forced to leave will their be compensation? who will fund it?

@C-man: sorry to ask so many questions but you said "I have thought this through a lot" so you must have answers to them.

150 is dunbar's number http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunbar%27s_number

in bussiness any corporation with more than 150 employees is advised to split them into seperate divisions, in amish communities the break up their villages when they go beyond 150 members - this can be explained if you consider that without any law enforcement it becomes too hard to enforce behaviour with peer pressure alone in a group larger than 150 members.

Also it is a rough estimate, and other numbers have been suggested including as high as 290.

for something more directly related to anarchism vs centralisation and regulation see: http://www.dennisfox.net/papers/commons.html

how you would deal with members when numbers went above 150 would depend on a local decision, i don't see why i should be able to prescribe here a solution which would suit all such community-companies.

Chances are you'd all be cousins in a few generations with a pool of only 150 people (assuming some of these will already be related).

Then again, inbreeding will be the least of your worries. You're describing how mankind was organized back in tribal times... surely the peak of human civilization... too bad then the Romans came, or the Spanish (for those living in the Americas).

Again, I am sure there're communities exactly as you imagine somewhere in Africa or the Amazon. It sucks to live there... but you'll have no government to deal with, so should be happy anyway :)

Your argument follows the same logical flaw that a spoiled child would have, still living with his parents and depending on their support, but asking why does he have to follow the house rules. If you don't like it it's you that has to leave - not the people that were there before you. Really, how hard can it be to comprehend this???

And did you really give the Amish as an example of how to organize communities... why don't you just join them then? :)

I didn't suggest these communites should isolate themselves from each other, infact as i'm imagining companies which share their local decision making (democracy) i also think they should be arranging trade deals with their neighbours.

The advantage of knowing your neighbours is obvious when you look at crime statistics in any modern city. If you see someone you don't know you will have reason to question why they are in your community.

Also unlike others i'm not in favour of most anarchys, i am just pointed out some of the reasoning and potential benifits which are apparently lacking in our current system.

@Diplomat- First of all, I'd like to say that if you haven't read my earlier posts, I'm now for a different type of anarchy.It was communist anarchy for a while, but now I think it would be better to just abolish government and take it from there, giving people the choice of what they want to do. There could be small Anarcho-communist communes, whwere everyone shares everything, or larger communities that I have described buying law and order on the free market. A lot of what happens would hinge on what would happen to property in anarchy.
Anyway, in answer to your questions:
- You say that communities will have a company in mind. Can you explain the process by which this happens? For example, will there be a selection period? Advertising? Must all members of the community agree on the same company?
- The members forming the community would already have known about different companies, and picked the one they liked the most. Then they would get people together that also like the company to form the community. If you don't like the company, don't join the community.

Will a community have only one supplier company or many? Will the companies supply more than one community? Who will own the companies? Will they make profits for their owners?

- Will a community have only one supplier company or many? Will the companies supply more than one community? Who will own the companies? Will they make profits for their owners?
- A community would usually have one supplier comapny. It could have more, but that would cost more. The companies would supply many different communities. Their owners would just be like owners of companies today. The owners would get a profit.

- How will the company be paid? Assuming that there is some kind of service fee: how will the fees be set? what currency will be used? will the fee be levied equally on all community members? In what way does this service fee differ from taxes levied by local or national government?
- The company would be paid my the members of the community, with some form of currency or trade. The price will be determined just like the price for anything else would be determined. The fee will be levied equally on each community member. This is different from taxes for two reasons, one, the fee is for the services provided directly, while with taxes, you give the government part of your money, for a lot of things that don't even benefit you. Two, if you don't want to pay the fee, you can go to another place with a lower fee, or even no company and therefore no fee. With taxes, if you leave your country, you'll just find that another country has taxes, and another.

- How will changes in the service be decided? If the community is dissatisified with the service/cost can the supplying company be changed? If one member of the community is dissatisfied what is he/she able to do? Is their only choice to leave the community?
- If more than 50% of people in a community want to change the company, it will be changed, and they will decide which new company to choose. Anyone who is unhappy with that choice will leave. If one person is unhappy with the company, then yes, their only choice would be to leave.

- Why 150? Why not 1500 or 15000? If 150 is a strict limit what would happen if the population grows beyond that size? Will young people be kicked out (like young lions are)? or will old people be left to die?
- I wasn't the one that came up with 150, that was Ivo. I would rather have mech larger communities of varying size, but once they start getting over 100,000 I would advise splitting up the communities.

- Will people travel between communities to work? or marry?
- If they want to.

- would natural wealth be distributed? If so, how? For example, if community A is sitting on an oil well does it have to share the ouptut with community B next door? or community C on the other side of the country? In the transition period would it be first come, first served in grabbing natural resources?
- If your house was on top of an oil well, would you expect to have to share it with your neighbor? No? Well community A won't have to share it either. (and there is no way to make them.)

- your personal ideal is a community of 150 on anarchist (no leader) basis relying on the natural goodness of the American people. What would happen if another group of people, perhaps less moral than yours, decides to form a larger community, hire a more powerful private army and invade, maybe to seize resources? Will you rely on your own defences or do you expect some other party to intervene on your behalf? If so, who?
- As I stated before, the communities would be larger than 150. But if this scenario still happened, the communities company would defend them, as long as that was in the contract. If it wasn't in the contract, then they are screwed.

- how do you expect this society to come about? Will individual communities be allowed to leave the nation whenever they are ready to or will the whole nation, even all nations, break up at the same time? What will be the process by which this is approved? If a person with physical property in that location, who does not wish to join, be allowed to stay? if thet are forced to leave will their be compensation? who will fund it?
- I don't know exactly how this would come about. Different people will be trying different things. I would probably just want to outright abolish the government, but that will take some time.

P.S. I would like you to take the test I gave the link to. (the second link) Then you can tell me your score and read the stuff from the first link.

"150 on anarchist (no leader) basis relying on the natural goodness of the American people"

150 people is few enough people to allow everyone become involved in the decision making process - that means democracy without representative democracy (ie you don't elect a representative you choose to represent yourself)

practically it would be possible to be invovled in multiple different co-operatives at the same time, though how much of your individual resources you choose to spend in each one would have to be a personal choice (or perhaps contractually determined)

There may be a question about who will take care of the sick - insurance for the whole group might cover medical expenses (or they could run their own insurance scheme where each member contributes and they spend money on those who need it) what would be considered 'poor' is another important question - anyone excluded from a given community would be left to fend for themselves. This underclass would no doubt appear and suffer without any social welfare to pick them back up... though i liek to think they would be employed/exploited by various communities to do work they didn't want to do...

@C-man: thanks for answering my questions.

Sorry, I lost track of who had suggested community size. 100,000 is a substantial number to organise. Without any form of leadership that will be tricky. Good luck with that.

Let me advise you to run a proper selection procedure before deciding on which company to choose. In 25 years' experience I have not yet seen a company which is intrinsically bad but I do know that you will not get good value for money unless you run a competitive tender. Once a supplier is in place they need to be managed on an ongoing basis. As a small customer of a (likely) larger company your position is not strong. Good luck with that.

Currency is going to be interesting. Having your own will create costs and make it hard to judge value for money. Using someone else's means you are exposed to their bad financial discipline (ask Germany about Greece). Good luck with that.

Obviously some communities are going to be better off than others. Having an oil well under yours will be handy and so will having one of those supply companies incorporated in yours. You are going to need the income to fund your private army to stop other communities taking over. I hope that you don't both have the same military contractor, or that they haven't offered your army a reward for giving you up. Good luck with that.