The social contract (which is, granted, not a signed document. and nobody thinks it is) yields mutual support and benefit. That's how a functioning society works. — Bitter Crank
Your vision of family (at least as you have projected it here) expects violence and ruthless exploitation. It isn't that ruthlessly exploitative families never have existed. — Bitter Crank
Families are generally nurturing and loving. — Bitter Crank
The social contract (which is, granted, not a signed document. and nobody thinks it is) yields mutual support and benefit. That's how a functioning society works.
The social contract of mutually beneficial behavior would exist in an anarchist society as much as, maybe more than, it does in a hierarchical society. Our human ability to mirror other people's needs, desires, pains, etc. long preceded civil society. — Bitter Crank
No. Without a functioning social contract, you have chaos, and all you can do is try to stay alive. — Bitter Crank
Yes they are, and states are not. — Tzeentch
Statism also requires that everyone is on the same page in terms of ethical conduct. If anyone violates certain rules, for instance, he can be kidnapped and imprisoned. — NOS4A2
I’m not so sure it’s utopian, though. A consequence of ending a monopoly on violence is its dispersion, and I’m sure most anarchists are aware of that. Violence will occur; people will try to seize control; and hopefully they will be met with the force of free people. — NOS4A2
This is because we have been pacified for far to long to conceive of and work towards these arrangements. — NOS4A2
There are states which fail to meet my expectations: quite a few states, really. Burma, Afghanistan, Russia, China, North Korea, Mexico, El Salvador, Ethiopia, and Somalia, for example. Not a complete list at all. At any given time in history, most states have managed to meet your expectations of violence and exploitation including the United States and the various nations in the European community. — Bitter Crank
The root of the problem is not in the existence of states per se. It is in the perverse behavior of those who wield power. — Bitter Crank
States function through laws. Laws function through the threat and application of violence. — Tzeentch
This is exactly the problem I have with the idea of the social contract. — Tzeentch
Therefore, I assume you will fly the anarchist banner. — Bitter Crank
Now, you also express antipathy to this idea of the "social contract". A lot of people dislike the term. Fine -- one can get alone without using that term. — Bitter Crank
I'm just discussing an idea. — Tzeentch
It's not ideal that such violence-supported impositions are needed, but its being non-ideal is irrelevant unless there's a better alternative. — Isaac
yet both these examples can perform feats of reciprocal altruism that some humans can only presume to be “unnatural”. — javra
: it's the unrealistically optimistic belief that all individuals in a large grouping of humans can remain ethical toward each other’s needs without hierarchical governance and policing - and that it's this very governance which makes many humans less than ethical. — javra
My response would be, don't try to control people against their will. — Tzeentch
Yet if the politicians passed some law or laws you don't agree with, does anything make those laws so special that they have to be obeyed even if they are dumb or harmful? — AntonioP
bviously I have no problem with people consensually interacting and voluntarily committing to mutual obligations, preferably also without violence playing a role. — Tzeentch
And if people violate those mutual obligations, or wish to be violent? What do you do with Viking marauders or pirates? Warlords, criminal gangs, serial killers, rapists? What about would-be conquerers who are raising an army? It happened in the past. Plenty of rulers conquered their way into power.
all of whom can be dealt with by any sufficiently armed group of people. — NOS4A2
for he’s already been denied for so long the right and means to protect himself that he’s been left a sheep to the wolves, so to speak. — NOS4A2
fI’m not positive a group of anarchists are any better at doling out violence and justice than a government, but it’s difficult to see how they can be any worse. — NOS4A2
People have their freedom restricted either way. — Isaac
Even if we all agree anarchy was morally superior, how do we suppose the world remains in anarchy? — Marchesk
I've just argued that government is inherently a violent instrument, so there is no such thing as "great government" as far as I am concerned.
Protecting people against direct physical violence is a noble goal. If government was to limit itself to that task and that task alone I could consider it a grey area.
Anything else does not warrant violence. — Tzeentch
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