[karajorma]

Originally posted by icespeed
the thing is, i don't understand how you can have freedom to do whatever you want so long as you don't infringe on other people.

Let me put it this way. What business is it of the governments if I want to have sex with a consenting adult? What business is it of theirs if I want to use cocaine to get high instead of getting drunk?

What business is it of theirs if I have a terminal cancer and would rather die now at a time and place of my choosing instead of 3 weeks from now in intense pain?

The irony is that I feel you do need a government in place to protect and enforce your rights.  That's why I don't support anarchism. I tend more towards the socialist end of the spectrum. You have a strong government working towards the good of the people.

[01010]

You put it far better than I could in my current state Kara. Good man.

[Ghostavo]

Panarchy...

[Jetmech Jr.]

Benevolent Dictatorship, I guess.

[Fergus]

Marxism-nah, I dont like red ("you can keep your marxist ways, its only just a phase")
Democracy-People are stupid, you don't want us to decide anything
Oligarchy-People fight to be an Autocrat
Aoutarchy-see above, add someone who wants power
Anarchims-gonna take some convincing
Xenocracy-Carl rules us
Thearchy- God doesnt exist
Stratocracy-no one ever trusts the military
Punditocracy(my fav)-We are ruled by the satirists, oh I like this one.
Pornocracy-No!
Pollarchy-See democracy
Pantarchy-The idealist's democracy, never gonna happen
Kakistocracy-all governments have been like this
Cryptarchy-what we actually have (yes so what, I played Deus Ex)
Benevolent Dictatorship-I'd take the piss

We


are


Doomed

[Rictor]

How distressing that so many people chose benevolent dictatorship as the ideal form of government.Does freedom mean nothing to you? Stability without freedoom is meaningless.

OK, anarchism. First, try not to conjure up the image of angry hordes rampaging through the streets, thats comeplete crap. Secondly, anarchism the way I see it does not mean no government, it means the freedom to choose your government and/or make you own. Human beings, right now anyway, need and want government, not in the sense of a ruler, but in the sense of a voluntary organization of individuals.

There is no such thing as government except as a collection of individuals. So, anarchism is just the ability to exclude yourself from the authority of tha tgroup of individuals, and form your own group. Once you take it as granted that every person is free to do as they like, so long as they don't infringe upon someone else's freedom (and as I said, that could techinica;;y be interpreted as even being in the vicinity of someone else, but I believe people have enough sense to apply a rational standard for what constitutes an infringement of freedoms.), I believe anarchism is what follows naturally.

All this does is make the concept of a government much more fluid. If I want to break off from Canada because I don't like the way they tax me, fine, I break off, but I also loose any benefits such as roads, electricity and so forth.

And yes, it can be stable. Most people aren't really up to the level where it would be stable right now, I believe that as people grow more sophisticated, anarchism is exactly what will inevitably emerge. It doesn't even mean that anything will change, since government has obvious benefits, it just means that that government will be formed and maintained only because of the voluntary association of individuals that form that government. Small groups are functioning today on the basis of anarchism, and are quite stable. And it has been proven in the past that it can work on a national level. All that is required is the will among people to excersise their freedoms, and let others excerise theirs.

101010: what you're talking about is pretty much what anarchism is today. Libertarian-socialism is another way of describing it. There is a strong streak of solidarity and collectivism, so it sort of transcends the left-right spectrum, favouring both worker control and all the good stuff from the left (helping people) while at the same time favouring small government, like the right.

[Rictor]

I should point out that at I'm not an anarchist, but rather a social democrat. However,, thats not set in stone, and I also believe that, as I said, its what is almost ineviotable coming if things continue on the way they are.

[Ford Prefect]

I believe that as people grow more sophisticated, anarchism is exactly what will inevitably emerge.

That humanity will become more sophisticated is a weighty assumption to make. I tend to arrive at the conclusion that humanity will always be bound to bring the same set of circumstances upon itself.

[Hippo]

Communism.


Well, its the most successfull spinnoff of my persona favorite; Marksism (or however you spell it) ///

[Lightspeed]

Read the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. 'tis all written there

While it may not be the perfect system of government, it'd certainly work a lot better, because the "dictator" is not aware of his situation or power. And you'd keep the simple people happy as well, with the dummy "president"  

Power corrupts, but it is far less likely to corrupt someone who isn't aware of his influence. The people striving for a powerful position are by nature the wrong sort of people for the job. The ideal person to be in power absolutely doesn't want to have the job.

[Ford Prefect]

Indeed.

There are few people I trust less that "natural-born leaders."

[Kamikaze]

Originally posted by Rictor
How distressing that so many people chose benevolent dictatorship as the ideal form of government.Does freedom mean nothing to you? Stability without freedoom is meaningless.

Probably the same reason people flock to religion. It's easy and comfortable and that's a reasonable desire (Not as reasonable a desire as the desire for freedom and knowledge, but that's imo).

I don't think it's a very realistic government though.

While it's possible to be more or less universally benevolent in some respects (food/shelter for everyone, no killings, so on) there are finer points to a government in which it's impossible to be even close to universally benevolent.
Some think abortion is a crime, some think it's a crime to force a woman into motherhood. Deciding on an issue like that would quickly make the dictator not to benevolent to many people.

My ideal society would be governed similar to the Edenist society in Peter F. Hamilton's Night's Dawn series. It's a fully democratic government where every citizen gets a single vote in decisions (this is enabled via a psychic link between all citizens in Edenist culture) at every level (city, habitat whole society, whatever).
There usually aren't very many decisions to make though, the society is based around tolerance and open-mindedness (it is a psychic culture after all, sharing thoughts and feelings is encouraged though not required).

[karajorma]

Originally posted by Rictor
And yes, it can be stable. Most people aren't really up to the level where it would be stable right now, I believe that as people grow more sophisticated, anarchism is exactly what will inevitably emerge.

By the time people are sensible enough for Anarchism to not simply devolve into anarchy there will be much better systems in place (such as meritocracy).

Quite frankly I don't believe it will ever work and it certainly won't work now. This is supposed to be a debate of which government would work best now not which one would work best in cloud cookoo land where the world contains nothing but sensible people.

[.::Tin Can::.]

Traditional FTW!

[Rictor]

Well by that standard kara, no one would ever have given democracy a try. The alegations make aganst fully democratic rule (more involvement in political and social decisions, as well as allowing freer association) are the same ones made against democracy by the proponents of oligarchy, back in the day. Simply, that it would be too chaotic, and that the masses couldn't handle it ina responsible manner. For the record, I also support what you described, more democratic society, because thats a realistic goal to shoot for. Thats why I said I'm social democratic.

I'll try to explain it with an analogy. Capitalism means that anyone can trade with anyone else, be it an individual or a group of individuals, on whatever terms the two parties agree to. If a certain group of people want to set up a communist-style business, they are allowed to do that, since capitalism is simply the absence of restrictions on trade. Or if they want to pay their workers 5 cents an hour, and they can actually get someone to agree to work for that kind of money, thats OK too. Capitalism is the system within which all other systems are possible, because its simply a way of saying "do your own thing".

Thats almost exactly the way I regard anarchism. You have the freedom to do your own thing. If 300 million people want to form a nation, and call it the United States, and have all the laws and rules currently in the US, so be it. But if someone doesn't want to be a part of that nation, and joins with like-minded people to form the United Republic of Aaradvark, which will be a socialist/monarchist hybrid, thats fine too. All it is is the absence of any restrictions on freedom of association.

Its the system that contains all other systems, but it does not restrict people from choosing any system or force any system upon anyone who does not want to participate.

[Stealth]

no human is perfect, therefore there will never be such thing as a perfect human system of government

[karajorma]

Originally posted by Rictor
Well by that standard kara, no one would ever have given democracy a try.

Sorry but that's not true. Democracy doesn't start out with the same stupid assumption that all people can be trusted to abide by a basic tenet (i.e your declaration that Anarchism requires that everyone understands that every person is free to do as they like, so long as they don't infringe upon someone else's freedom).

There are so many flaws in this system that its not funny. I can't believe that any rational person would claim that its a working system of government.  

The system just doesn't work. What happens if the Republic of Aaradvark decided that it has laws that the neighbouring republics don't agree with?

Suppose an Aardvarkian citizen shoots a kid who was getting his football back from their garden? The Republic says that it's trespassing to do that and laws were enacted to say that you can kill trespassers. What can the republic who the kid was a citizen of do without violating the rights of Aardvark?

What do you do when a Aardvarkian citizen comits a crime and then runs next door to the Great Mafialand (a republic which has no extradition treaty with Aardvark because it was set up by criminals).

The whole thing is just a mess. You'd end up with all the states having to exert force over their neighbours all the time in order to get what they wanted.

[Knight Templar]

Socialism.

With naked chicks.

[icespeed]

so really, what everyone wants is 'i do what i want but you can't do what you want to me', and a government that somehow enforces that.

sorry, don't think that's gonna happen.

[Blaise Russel]

Originally posted by icespeed
so really, what everyone wants is 'i do what i want but you can't do what you want to me', and a government that somehow enforces that.

sorry, don't think that's gonna happen.

I think it's more 'Let's all do what we want to do, so long as it doesn't hurt anybody else'.



I'm technically in favour of an anarchy of sorts, in that I would prefer 'countries' to be formed out of people who willingly join together as a nation rather than arbitrary lines drawn out over the landscape... societies would be formed by individuals coming together with a clear understanding of what they could expect to contribute and receive and knowledge of that society's basic tenets.

With this, there would be room for ideologies of all sorts - all the democrats could form their democratic society, the communists their communist society, the fascists a fascist society, the dictators and dictatees a dictatorship, the theocrats a theocracy... not just one, but a society for every possible permutation of thought, every possible interpretation of ideology tempered by the willingness of the participants to compromise.

All of this would, naturally, be underpinned by the realisation that the perfect society is defined not according to some definition writ unto the universe, but by the participants of that society - a society is measured not against some metre rule of 'goodness' built into existence, but against an individual's own preference and desire, and since such preference is, well, individual, the perfect society changes for each and every person. And also a general feeling that attacking one another physically is pointless and disrupts an otherwise peaceful balance. War, perhaps, would be thought with ideas, not bullets.

Unrealistic? Damn straight. But we are talking about creating a single 'perfect society' for the six-plus billion completely different people inhabiting this miserable planet, aren't we?

Now who's unrealistic?