| VAMatt said: You're just arguing in against a straw man again. At no point did I say I don't want collective action. At no point did I say that I don't care about dictators around the world. I said that I personally do not have a plan to topple dictators, because my efforts are focused on raining in the United States, state of Virginia, and Fairfax County Governments. I specifically stated that I support efforts to cast off dictators anywhere in the world. I want all people to be free from government coercion, and being forced to do what other people think is best for them under penalty of death or caging. At the end of the day, that's what government is. "Do what we say or will stick you in a cage or murder you." I absolutely do not want any humans to have to deal with that.
I'll add one further point. If you take a look around the world, and throughout world history, at least for the last few thousand years, essentially every major atrocity has been perpetrated by government. I certainly do not trust government to stop government from doing bad stuff. They have an absolutely abysmal track record of doing so. The UN is just the most recent rubber stamp that governments have given themselves. Fuck that. |
I'm saying that supporting the dissolution of large diplomatic and at least partially democratic institutions leaves you with no viable plan to topple tyrants. The larger and more consolidated a regime, the less likely for it to just collapse in an Arab Spring style event or any sort of revolution. China and Russia, China especially, are approaching dystopian levels of power. You say you support collective action, but don't seem to understand that to counter power on such a grand scale as China will take collective action on a similarly grand scale. Which is why I say that your cynicism to collective action on a global scale, at least to me, speaks to insincerity in your beliefs, since you focus on your local area but support global action that would only leave us defenseless against foreign imperialistic empires that would eventually render your local anarchy a moot point.
Not all major atrocities have been done by governments. Great concentrations of power are the source of all atrocities, because atrocities require great power. The more consolidated the power, the greater the potential to throw all of that power into commiting an atrocity. Organized religion, almost every single major one, has committed atrocities. That isn't government. Corporations have committed atrocities. Small businesses don't because they're too small. Large ones, particularly international ones that can run from stricter laws by going to countries with more corrupt governments, and ones that have monopolized an industry so that consumers can't avoid them easily, are most able to commit atrocities. Corporations aren't governments. Any type of large organization, government or not, can and has commited atrocities. Not all governments commit atrocities though, and not all commit them equally. You can point to governments of great size that commit significantly fewer and less serious atrocities than others, and the key is in how democratized the institutions of that government are. Churches aren't very democratic usually. Corporations are usually extremely undemocratic. Governments at least have the potential to be democratic, and the more democratic it gets, the less the risk of atrocities. Most of our atrocities here in the US, for example, come from the machinations of our deeply undemocratic intelligence institutions, and from lobbying and propaganda from deeply undemocratic corporations, particularly the war industry.
If you want anarchy, it must be achieved from the top down, not the bottom up, because only the collective action of enough smaller powers can defeat a larger power. You focus too much on government, particularly the size of it, when your real enemy is consolidated power in all its forms. If I found a way to erect an institution (or series of institutions) that was perfectly democratic, large enough to fend off governments, and able to make their functions obsolete, I would immediately begin advocating for the dissolution of all governments everywhere, from the global to the local, and then would advocate for that institution and would accept that its scale would be adjusted according to what is democratically wanted. Technology holds some promise in this matter, in the form of blockchain, mesh networks, and more, but we are no where near close to that yet. So for now, I advocate for democratic government, other democratically responsive institutions, and any and all institutions that serve to stave off tyranny in as pragmatically and long term a way as possible, and for the reform of such institutions to become more democratic. Even in the longest of long terms, however, I would never support complete anarchy because it would just lead to power consolidating somewhere, not necessarily a government, and a pope of a global church or a CEO of a global megacorporation are every bit as tyrannical as a dictator of a global government.
