Peaceful Anarchy

[Indium Flappers]

(split from here.)

At this point we'd just be arguing over nomenclature again. If you want to take private law and law-enforcement, contractual agreement, and so-on, and call it government, then anarchists are fine with government.

It sounds like you're having that argument over semantics with yourself. But you're forgetting the constitutions, by-laws, elected officers, judicial process and record-keeping.

Anarchy means "no-rulers", and market anarchists accept hierarchy if it's voluntary or contractually agreed to. (While communist anarchists accept it if it's "justified", though I'm not sure what this is supposed to mean operationally. The market anarchist position makes more sense to me.) Having "constitutions, by-laws, ... judicial process and record-keeping." does not make the examples in the old west not anarchist. I keep records of my finances, mutual aid societies have by-laws and constitutions of sorts as far as I know, and the merchant courts existing in medieval times constituted a judicial process. So those aspects do not mean an institution is a government.

Having had discussions with anarchists in the past, I would think you would know all of this already.

In regard to the article admitting that private agencies could qualify as government, I assume you refer to this passage:

Also, one has to he careful in always describing private agencies as "non-government" because, to the extent that they develop and become the agency of legitimized coercion they also qualify as "government."

I would agree with this, but I do not think the agencies described qualified. For example, in the mining camps, the only penalty for not agreeing with the rest of the group was not receiving protection of one's land claims or property, so far as I can tell. And in the Claims Associations, trade-sanctions were generally used instead of violence against violators. One could, essentially, opt-out of their system.

The only part that could be valid is the example of elected officials, since these could constitute "rulers", but the article I cited did not seem to indicate that these elected officials were doing any sort of "ruling", for all the reasons I stated above. They acted as justices of the peace, judges and similar.

But you're still left with a peaceful example of the system we advocate.

I have simply pointed out that anarchy doesn't work on a large scale. As long as you're talking about small-scale anarchy, we have little disagreement.

I confess I was not prepared to have you agree with me in any respect. I should, however, have asked you earlier for an operational definition of "large scale" or "large groups of people". To me, a collection of several small-scale communities constitute a large group of people. Since cities today seem to have a higher homocide rate than rural areas, in the U.S. at least, the problem of higher rates of violent crime in more dense populations does not seem to be limited to anarchy.

Your error is that there have been examples of societies or associations of individuals functioning peacefully without a government.

I never said that there are no successful examples; I pointed out (perhaps too obliquely) that there hasn't been much peace or progress on a large (national) scale under anarchy. (Of course this is particularly true when anarchy comes about as a result of the fall of government, and I'm sure that the correlation between long periods of war and widespread anarchy is just a coincidence.)

I'm also sure the correlation between long periods of war and statehood, since there are wars among governments rather often, is just a coincidence as well? Anyways, different nations are different sizes. What are you looking for? 1000 people? 10,000? 1 million? 1 billion? How large would an anarchy have to be while still being peaceful before you would conclude that it can work peacefully on a large scale?

Also, it seems to me that a society intentionally created according to anarchist principles would tend to be more successful than examples of de facto anarchy during a war.

How about the Bedouin, would you say their system of law constitutes a government?

Would you say that Bedouin tribes are not small, relatively isolated and relatively self-sufficient?

Okiedokie, yes, I would say that they are small, relatively isolated, and relatively self-sufficient. As per above, to me the Bedouin population as a whole constitute a large group of people. But this large group is indeed divided into far smaller groups.

anarchists don't have to create a more peaceful world for large groups of people....If they wish to create a more peaceful world for themselves, they can. I'm not going to force it on them.

That first statement sounds like an admission that anarchy doesn't work for large groups of people. That, or anarchists don't believe that peace is vital.

I would not say that anarchism is sufficient for peace, but for the most part the anarchist or quasi-anarchist societies I have studied tend to be more peaceful than their neighbors, and certainly pleasant enough places to live. The ones that people try to create through war or during a war do seem to end up being more violent and in some cases, (Paris Commune, used by anarcho-communists), extremely short lived. But in other cases, where they were created by pioneers or similar, they seem to be peaceful relative to their contemporaries.

Oh my. Do you really want a list?....

None of these remediations require anarchy for their success.

Nor do any of them require a government. I have in the past attempted to some small extent to use political means to accomplish improvements of the sort I listed. I sign petitions fairly often for instance, and I have written to the congressman for my district in regard to electronic privacy. My experience thus far has been that such effort is wasted, and that my energies would be better spent on non-political methods, such as, for example, educating people as to the software tools available to attempt to guard against corporate and state data collection, or at least mitigate it. If you believe that political methods are worth my time, please provide me with some evidence thereof.

In any case, if you take a government and strip it of all of its negative aspects you end up with anarchy anyway, all the remediations I mentioned bring one closer to an anarchist society.

Suicide is illegal I believe, so no, it's not.

No example, as I requested? Anyway, suicide is legal in the United States. As far as I know, there is no law that directly requires a neighbor to intervene in a suicide. That's a nosy neighbor problem, and anarchy won't solve it. However, if it came to it, I (well, my lawyer) would argue that not intervening in a suicide is covered by "Good Samaritan" law.

Here's an example. In regard to it being legal in the U.S. to commit suicide, I confess I am quite surprised, I was under the distinct impression that it was not.

It isn't a few private entities, private security plays a major role in our lives. As does private arbitration. Law is not necessarily a function of government.

But these private functions, however extensive, are subsumed by the governmental milieu and operate within its purview. They hardly demonstrate the viability of anarchy.

What government is international law subsumed under? What government is the black market subsumed under? Sorry but commercial law does better with less or no government oversight.

As far as I can tell, the reason I'm not persuasive is because when I offer real-world examples of the sort of society I wish to live in, you either say it can't work on a large scale or isn't an example of what I'm advocating. Which is incredible really. (There are no apples. What about this? Oh that doesn't count.)

Don't blame me for the failure of your argument.

I don't count an argument not being convincing as indicative of failure, empirical accuracy is my standard.

I have agreed with you that anarchy can work on a small scale. You have shown no examples of anarchy working on a large scale. Private security, arbitration, trash service, and whatever all else are not per se anarchy, and, as they are not the sole providers of these services and they operate within a strongly governmental context, they do not show that running every (currently) government-run aspect of society privately will work. It is a piecemeal argument; there is no evidence that private providers can act as a system to run all of the functions of a society. (I suspect that as services are privatized additively, the failures will increase multiplicatively.) My other objections come directly from the material you have offered as evidence. If your position is that anarchy has been shown to work on only a small scale, then never mind.

I would,
1) consider examples of anarchy working on a small scale to be "evidence that private providers can act as a system to run all of the functions of a society.", (even if it's only small evidence, and not proof, you still can not justify saying that there is "no evidence",)
2) consider, as I mentioned above, collections of small communities functioning without the presence of a state to be examples of anarchy on a large scale,
3) agree with you that examples of alternatives to government being present in a society with a government, and providing a higher quality service, do not prove that they could function without a government, but still contend that they work as evidence in favor of the thesis, and
4) contend that commercial law operating on a global scale almost entirely, if not entirely, outside government purview, is strong evidence that private enterprise can not only act as a system to provide all the needs of a society, but also that law, on a global scale, can be provided privately and would be better provided privately than publicly.

If you're looking for a stateless society that has large populations condensed into a city, some scholars think that Harappan society, (Bronze Age India), could have been a stateless society. (For arguments for and against see here and here respectively.) According to the first article, one of their largest cities likely had tens of thousands of people living in it. The "free cities" of medieval Europe mentioned by Bryan Caplan here may also work as an example, but I haven't studied them enough to know for sure yet.

One other note, you call it a piecemeal argument. This seems strange to me. Science often has to resort to "piecemeal" arguments, that is, one has to take a wide range of different kinds of evidence, none of which directly prove the thesis, and show that a particular theory has explanatory power in regard to all the evidence available. Then one can attempt to find evidence to falsify the claim. But direct observation is not always possible.

It is demonstrable that small communities can live peacefully without government, it is demonstrable that multiple such communities can live peacefully in an area, rarely warring against each other, it is demonstrable that commercial law can be produced on an international and global scale without government design, oversight, or control, and it is demonstrable, (through case-studies,) that in many industries, including the ones most commonly used as an argument in favor of the necessity of government, (roads, police, courts, etc.), private means can provide a higher quality service than public means, and at a lower cost. On the other hand, it is demonstrable that government "regulation" is detrimental to the operation of numerous industries.

In the absence of more formal institutions, stores become important social hubs. The Post Office, too. This is not as true now as it used to be (though people gather at the mall to walk), but it is still a valuable consideration in a government-free society.

Ah, quite right!

edit: oh I forgot, it'd be nice if my tax money wasn't spent on traumatizing children in Pakistan. If you really want a list of the crimes "our" government has committed, watch the Young Turks.

That also is not an issue of the form of government, or the presence of government. Lots of governments don't traumatize children in Pakistan. (By the way-- children in Somalia are pretty traumatized, too. Of course Somalia doesn't have pure anarchy....)

Somalia has a government now, so far as I am aware. In any case, assuming that it was a genuine case of anarchy, I would call it a negative outlier. I do not claim that anarchy is necessarily peaceful, only that peace is possible under anarchy, (with which you agree), and that peace is possible on a large scale under anarchy, (with which you do not agree.)

In any case, if everyone who disagreed with the wars the U.S. government has entered into could stop paying their taxes until the troops were brought home and get away with it, I would expect the troops would be brought home with all due speed. A private business can not force someone to pay for actions they find heinous. If they could, they'd be a government.

[David Franks]

I keep records of my finances, mutual aid societies have by-laws and constitutions of sorts as far as I know, and the merchant courts existing in medieval times constituted a judicial process. So those aspects do not mean an institution is a government.

If policy decisions of the officers and judicial decisions are binding, if officers can act as agents for fiscal and other contractual actions, and if records are official, then that tends to show that a structure has the authority of government. If authority is the problem, then how is this preferable?

And in the Claims Associations, trade-sanctions were generally used instead of violence against violators. One could, essentially, opt-out of their system.

How large were these individual claims associations? What level of societal nicety was involved?

I confess I was not prepared to have you agree with me in any respect.

You big silly.

I should, however, have asked you earlier for an operational definition of "large scale" or "large groups of people".

Note that I refer to relatively small, relatively isolated, and relatively self-sufficient groups. I would probably add level of societal nicety to the list of considerations, because the higher the level of societal nicety required or expected, the smaller the group will become for the requisite level of success.

cities today seem to have a higher homocide rate than rural areas, in the U.S. at least, the problem of higher rates of violent crime in more dense populations does not seem to be limited to anarchy.

That is true. Of course the fact has nothing to do with government; it has to do with people.

Anyways, different nations are different sizes. What are you looking for? 1000 people? 10,000? 1 million? 1 billion?

I would expect the maximum population of a successful anarchic society to be much closer to 10,000 than to one million. But don't forget that isolation and self-sufficiency also play a role. Do you think that the Northwest Arkansas MSA could be a successful anarchy? I don't. I doubt that Washington County alone could pull it off. Tontitown seems to be headed in that direction. On the other hand, I doubt that even the estimable Hogeye Bill has managed to turn the lovely hamlet of Hogeye into an anarchic Elysium.

How large would an anarchy have to be while still being peaceful before you would conclude that it can work peacefully on a large scale?

I believe I referred earlier to a national scale. Say, the area and population of Arkansas: 52,000 square miles; 2.95 million people.

Also, it seems to me that a society intentionally created according to anarchist principles would tend to be more successful than examples of de facto anarchy during a war.

Almost assuredly.

Okiedokie, yes, I would say that they are small, relatively isolated, and relatively self-sufficient. As per above, to me the Bedouin population as a whole constitute a large group of people. But this large group is indeed divided into far smaller groups.

And it is at the tribal level that their system works best. At the ethnic level, their system of hierarchy, justice and loyalty is at best an interesting concept, and in practice a motto.

I would not say that anarchism is sufficient for peace, but for the most part the anarchist or quasi-anarchist societies I have studied tend to be more peaceful than their neighbors, and certainly pleasant enough places to live. The ones that people try to create through war or during a war do seem to end up being more violent and in some cases, extremely short lived. But in other cases, where they were created by pioneers or similar, they seem to be peaceful relative to their contemporaries.

Would those contemporaries happen to have even less government?

Nor do any of them require a government.

You offered anarchy as the (unnecessary) solution to problems-- many of which aren't due to government in the first place, and some of which are addressed by anarchy only when it approaches being governmental.

I have in the past attempted to some small extent to use political means to accomplish improvements of the sort I listed. I sign petitions fairly often for instance, and I have written to the congressman for my district in regard to electronic privacy.

Have you ever addressed a governmental body, served on one, spoken to a representative or other government employee directly by phone or in person, or joined an advocacy group?

My experience thus far has been that such effort is wasted, and that my energies would be better spent on non-political methods, such as, for example, educating people as to the software tools available to attempt to guard against corporate and state data collection, or at least mitigate it.

I have had the good fortune to sign a few petitions lately that have had some effect, as well as effecting change through the activities mentioned above. As far as effort goes, petitions are very easy, and letters to your various representatives are easy, though generally a dead end if you're not saying what their staff is told to want to hear. (I did get a lovely reply from Kathleen Sebelius when she was the governor of Kansas.) That isn't necessarily the fault of government; I would argue that it is the fault of corporate control of government. I'll give you extra points if you can show that anarchism at the national scale is more proof against corporate control than government is.)

If you believe that political methods are worth my time, please provide me with some evidence thereof.

You'll just have to apply yourself a little more diligently. Have your friends join you.

In any case, if you take a government and strip it of all of its negative aspects you end up with anarchy anyway, all the remediations I mentioned bring one closer to an anarchist society.

Good question-begging.

What government is international law subsumed under?

Various supranational organizations that act in a governmental fashion. (They create law that nations then follow.)

What government is the black market subsumed under? Sorry but commercial law does better with less or no government oversight.

Maybe for commerce, but not for the rest of us. Society is for people.

I don't count an argument not being convincing as indicative of failure, empirical accuracy is my standard.

You probably should. If your argument isn't convincing, it doesn't matter how good your empirical evidence is. Have you ever been in sales, education or the ministry?

I would,
1) consider examples of anarchy working on a small scale to be "evidence that private providers can act as a system to run all of the functions of a society.", (even if it's only small evidence, and not proof, you still can not justify saying that there is "no evidence",)
2) consider, as I mentioned above, collections of small communities functioning without the presence of a state to be examples of anarchy on a large scale,
3) agree with you that examples of alternatives to government being present in a society with a government, and providing a higher quality service, do not prove that they could function without a government, but still contend that they work as evidence in favor of the thesis, and
4) contend that commercial law operating on a global scale almost entirely, if not entirely, outside government purview, is strong evidence that private enterprise can not only act as a system to provide all the needs of a society, but also that law, on a global scale, can be provided privately and would be better provided privately than publicly.

RE 1) the evidence you offer is not evidence that what works at the component level will work at the system level. When you have a functional large-scale society with, say, two-thirds of government functions handled privately, let me know. That will be evidence.
RE 2) However you wish to consider them, a bunch of small-scale anarchies is not a large-scale anarchy, any more than the fifty states are, on their own, a big state.
RE 3) They only prove that some government functions are like businesses.
RE 4) Really? Pick me up some fresh elephant ivory, Cuban cigars, absinthe, laetrile and a child sex slave. I'll get them from you at the next Freethinker meeting.

...Harappan society, (Bronze Age India),...According to the first article, one of their largest cities likely had tens of thousands of people living in it. The "free cities" of medieval Europe...may also work as an example, but I haven't studied them enough to know for sure yet.

Maybe. How large, how isolated, how self-sufficient? What quality of life?

One other note, you call it a piecemeal argument. This seems strange to me.

The fact that a government can work well with a couple of privatized functions, and the fact that many possible functions can be privatized (though we don't know that all of them can) do not combine to show what you want it to show.

Science often has to resort to "piecemeal" arguments, that is, one has to take a wide range of different kinds of evidence, none of which directly prove the thesis, and show that a particular theory has explanatory power in regard to all the evidence available. Then one can attempt to find evidence to falsify the claim. But direct observation is not always possible.

Excellent point. When you have shown scientifically that large-scale anarchy is possible, I'll believe it.

It is demonstrable....

But it apparently is not demonstrable that anarchy works at a large scale. Perhaps it can be demonstrated through computer modeling.

Somalia has a government now, so far as I am aware. In any case, assuming that it was a genuine case of anarchy, I would call it a negative outlier.

How unfortunate for your argument that the closest thing we've had to large-scale anarchy lately has to be considered a "negative outlier". If it helps, I think Yemen also comes up as an example.

In any case, if everyone who disagreed with the wars the U.S. government has entered into could stop paying their taxes until the troops were brought home and get away with it, I would expect the troops would be brought home with all due speed.

They probably could get away with it. I've known people who didn't pay taxes for years and eventually got things settled without undue duress. Have you tried?

A private business can not force someone to pay for actions they find heinous. If they could, they'd be a government.

Apparently you've never lost a house to illegal foreclosure.

[Indium Flappers]

I would not say that anarchism is sufficient for peace, but for the most part the anarchist or quasi-anarchist societies I have studied tend to be more peaceful than their neighbors, and certainly pleasant enough places to live. The ones that people try to create through war or during a war do seem to end up being more violent and in some cases, extremely short lived. But in other cases, where they were created by pioneers or similar, they seem to be peaceful relative to their contemporaries.

Would those contemporaries happen to have even less government?

No, they happened to have more government.

Nor do any of them require a government.

You offered anarchy as the (unnecessary) solution to problems-- many of which aren't due to government in the first place, and some of which are addressed by anarchy only when it approaches being governmental.

I guess I'm not making myself at all clear. I'm not so much offering anarchy as the solution to problems, merely noting that the solved state happens to be, among other things, anarchistic.

I have in the past attempted to some small extent to use political means to accomplish improvements of the sort I listed. I sign petitions fairly often for instance, and I have written to the congressman for my district in regard to electronic privacy.

Have you ever addressed a governmental body, served on one, spoken to a representative or other government employee directly by phone or in person, or joined an advocacy group?

No, and given other methods available to me I have little desire to do any of these things. After watching Campaign for Liberty and other groups try to make headway through political means, I've come to the working conclusion that there is little I can do right now to help, and little anyone can do to stop things from getting worse. It seems like if all of the effort and money were poured into some more direct way of helping people, it could have more of an effect. Could be wrong though, I'm quite the pessimistic sort if you haven't gathered that yet.

If you believe that political methods are worth my time, please provide me with some evidence thereof.

You'll just have to apply yourself a little more diligently. Have your friends join you.

Oh I'm sure. But having friends join me is a good idea in both political and non-political means.

I don't count an argument not being convincing as indicative of failure, empirical accuracy is my standard.

You probably should. If your argument isn't convincing, it doesn't matter how good your empirical evidence is. Have you ever been in sales, education or the ministry?

I have been in the ministry before, yes. I have little, (read 'no'), interest in returning to the style of thinking employed in such endeavors, nor do I think such a style of thinking or discourse is appropriate for education. In any case, I do not believe that people can be convinced of things in the first place.

Science often has to resort to "piecemeal" arguments, that is, one has to take a wide range of different kinds of evidence, none of which directly prove the thesis, and show that a particular theory has explanatory power in regard to all the evidence available. Then one can attempt to find evidence to falsify the claim. But direct observation is not always possible.

Excellent point. When you have shown scientifically that large-scale anarchy is possible, I'll believe it.

Of this I am doubtful, but doubt is a habit of mine.

It is demonstrable....

But it apparently is not demonstrable that anarchy works at a large scale. Perhaps it can be demonstrated through computer modeling.

There's a study here that uses some kind of computer shenanigans, (that's a technical term), to "test" Hobbes's theories about how people would behave in a "state of nature", but like so many articles it is behind a pay-wall, and so I have no idea what it says. In any case, while this is certainly something I've thought of before, computer modeling suffers a similar pitfall as arguments from economic models or various sorts of hypothetical propositions derived from intricate logical schemata. Namely, it may be subject to the biases of the programmer, modeler, or logician. There is no shortage of ways to argue that any particular social system ought to function well because of premises and deductions and philosophical minutia. We still crash with spectacular colors into the bedrock wall of the necessity for real-world, empirical evidence.

In any case, if everyone who disagreed with the wars the U.S. government has entered into could stop paying their taxes until the troops were brought home and get away with it, I would expect the troops would be brought home with all due speed.

They probably could get away with it. I've known people who didn't pay taxes for years and eventually got things settled without undue duress. Have you tried?

Ok, let me rephrase. I know there are people who stop paying taxes or avoid some taxes through various means, that's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about not paying for something the way you don't pay for a pizza if you go to McDonald's instead of Pizza Hut. If police, courts, militia groups, etc. had to rely on voluntary compensation for services rendered, then their income would be tied to the quality of their service and to whether or not their customers were ok with what they were doing. Or more accurately, I should say that in the cases in which police and arbitration are paid for voluntarily, the quality of the services tends to be higher in various ways than if they are not. So, rather than say "get away with", let me instead say that it ought to be legal for people to stop paying for police, courts, military, etc. (If you're about to bring up the free-rider problem, then I'm about to recite an article by Bruce Benson I already cited a couple of times.)

The point is, right now there's no serious threat to the "powers that be" that their income is going to go down at all if they start killing innocent people. Well, ok, if they continue killing innocent people. Under an anarchist system, for reasons detailed elsewhere which I can get into if you wish but which I shall refrain from iterating presently, it would be far more difficult for any institution to build up the power required to commit the various atrocities that modern states have committed over the last century or so.

My experience thus far has been that such effort is wasted, and that my energies would be better spent on non-political methods, such as, for example, educating people as to the software tools available to attempt to guard against corporate and state data collection, or at least mitigate it.

I have had the good fortune to sign a few petitions lately that have had some effect, as well as effecting change through the activities mentioned above. As far as effort goes, petitions are very easy, and letters to your various representatives are easy, though generally a dead end if you're not saying what their staff is told to want to hear. (I did get a lovely reply from Kathleen Sebelius when she was the governor of Kansas.) That isn't necessarily the fault of government; I would argue that it is the fault of corporate control of government. I'll give you extra points if you can show that anarchism at the national scale is more proof against corporate control than government is.)

I'm unfortunately not going to get to respond to everything you've said at the moment. In any case, I think this point, (about corporate control), is worth talking about more in depth. But first, may I ask what anarchist literature you have read? I'm trying to figure out where you guys are getting the idea that corporations would be a thing in an anarchist society.

Edit: Oh heck, never mind, I found a free copy of the article on Hobbesian Jungles and whatnot.

No idea if it's large scale or not, haven't read it yet.

Edit 2: Ok never mind again, this isn't pure computer modeling, it's more experimental economics like Vernon Smith's work. Dealing with real people using a computer interface, in other words, not with ai or similar. I thought I'd seen some computer simulations done to study economic behavior which involved pure computer simulation. I'll have to do some searching later.

Sorry if I misled.

[Joeknows]

I really enjoy your willingness to consider very interesting topics Indium Flappers. You are like a flower blooming in the middle of winter.

Anarchy isn't as scary as all the connotations that go with it. It just means functionally "not arcing" or not ruled by something overarching. If it is anarchy from principles and morality, then it is a TERRIBLE idea! But more and more lately, it is being recognized as a state of peace, where no one forces us to do what everybody else voted on, or what some elected legislator decides is best for his jurisdiction. So many people are getting angry about being mistreated, that they want to turn this into a "hot" revolution with blood and guns. This is NOT The solution, or any solution at all. The only option available is a "cold" revolution, or a revolution of the mind. One where our thinking changes as a precursor to a better world. A world where people actually WANT to participate, where no one is being victimized by the other side of the table. A world where our economic policy of nationalism won't end up decaying the foundation of other countries to the point that they are forced to immigrate in mass across our borders to find a safer place to live. Just like the nationalist party of Germany eventually turned into the nazi movement, we have to recognize that ideals that only benefit a tiny majority, will never last long enough to create anything good from it.

We need to recognize that foremost, the government in place in America is a "laissez faire" or free trade system. In this, it protects the "actions" of individuals, over the rights of individuals inherently. So we filled that gap of "free action" with a methodology that we call "business." In the best situation for a business, the person buying has all the information, and the person selling is largely ignorant. The best way to increase the amount of profit, is to create a knowledge differential between the producer and consumer. If the consumer knew that cheaper apples were for sale a few blocks away, he wouldn't buy from the first vendor he saw. If the customer knew that half the fruit was rotten inside, he wouldn't buy as much of it. So we created this creature called "business" and have let it evolve for a few hundred years into the "perfect machine." And that "perfection" reached is a reality where companies like Monsanto spend millions of dollars just to avoid telling you what they put in their products. We have effectively created a world divided, one in which any business might be able to reap the benefits of the inadequacies of its challengers.

But this methodology of business isn't "sustainability" itself, it is just a short-sighted system of belief. The economy and the corporations are not the same thing, as we have basically become a corporatocracy where the employees of major companies accept jobs as legislators, and then are picked back up by the company when their term ends. This is a rather glaring problem with what we claim is democracy. But since they have enough money, we allow for it in our "free trade" protected system.

Maybe we aren't ready for "anarchy" right now, as the greater majority of humanity has a difficult enough time controlling themselves. But once we develop education between us until it presents a clear and decisive point that all can agree on, we might be able to create a workable system where nobody is forced by violence or coercion to behave according to the "rules." And I want to thank the Freethinker's group for playing a part in this evolution of common sense, even if I tend to disagree with almost everything that a few of you happen to say!