Anarchy

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Again, and you seem to have issues understanding this: THE LITTLE DATA YOU HAVE PRESENTED HAVE DRASTIC FLAWS. That is all that I'm saying.

When you say and I'm paraphrasing "Humans are cooperative by nature, as shown by Y experiment"

Then it's not a baseless assertion, or a disregard for empiricism to say "Y experiment is useless because it doesn't deal with priority 1 needs as defined by Maslow's hierarchy" That is an assertion that your data is for a lack of a better word "BS".

Or to put it in slightly more intellectual terms "The experiment in question is not zero-sum (limited amount of resources), the outcome is not binary (one winner, one loser) and consequences of actions taken do not result in a lessened ability of one participant to take care of his or her priority one needs". As I've tried to tell you for about 3 posts now, humans will cooperate when that gives the highest benefit to them and compete when that gives the highest benefit. To say that humans are by nature competitive or cooperative is largely an oversimplification that has crossed the line to tautology for you, rather than an accurate representation of anything that comes close to empirical.

Cooperation stems from reciprocal altruism (you can look this up in the word of Richard Dawkins), humans are only willing to suppress their base urges so long as they are compensated or threated to (you can look this up in Freud's work) therefore, human beings are only cooperative in a situation where it benefits them more than to compete.

You can look up all my statements in :
The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins
The Future of an Illusion by Sigmund Freud.
A Theory of Human Motivation by Abraham Maslow.

It would also do a lot for your future development and participation in such discussions as this to read An Introduction to Game Theory by Martin J. Osbourne.

And what keeps anarcho communism (or else) from degeneration?

Define feudalism.

Because under no definition I know, anarcho-capitalism becomes feudalism.

Why is such behaviour 'true' of human nature, and other not?

I was in Llandudno the other week. Midway through my wanderings, I found a fairly quiet spot and sat on a bench for a rest, and sustenance of a gingerbread man and a milkshake, and a little people watching. Over the road from me, an elderly lady - about 80, I'd guess - stepped off the kerb and stood between two parked cars. She was peering down the road, leaning forward on her walking stick, but not moving. The road was quiet, but she must have stood like this for about a minute and a half. I was about to go and see if she needed help when a man in his late teens did instead. He asked if she wanted a hand in crossing the road, and she explained that, no, she was waiting for her son to pick her up. She thanked him, he said 'not at all!' and walked off.

Extreme, awful circumstances do not reveal the 'true' us - rather, they infantilise us.

You really have not read Ostrom have you? You really should read your copy of "Governing the Commons" the whole point of the damn book is that the tragedy of the commons is not as common as game theory would have it.

As for your vain hope that I am using the no true Scotsman Elinors work and the work of the Workshops went from Accepting to Rejecting rational choice as statistical, experimental and ethnographic evidence mounted showing how stupid it was. So Ostrom went from Pseudo-science to something as close to science as those in our god-forsaken discipline can accomplish she will be missed .

These are not experts in this field.
Especially not Richard "pop science" Dawkins.
Sigmund "totally debunked" Freud
Abe Maslow is alright but he kind of pulled the whole thing out of his ass.

Fun fact I am published in game theory.

Anarchy would not work because there is too much hostility among the masses there would be no civilization just a bunch of tribes of bandits with everyone out for themselves.

Last edited by AspieOtaku on 19 Sep 2012, 6:19 pm, edited 1 time in total.

The "the people cannot take care of itself" argument was already used against democracy. It has failed once, it can fail again.

and actually he strawmanned all 3 books,expecially dawinks(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M9RicAuk_2U)

So, in other words you're pulling a ad wrongplanet.net fallacy I.E subjectively denigrating the sources of another person without actually offering material which refutes the original argument nor those sources. I suppose that your disqualification of Dawkins would mean the same for Sam Harris, Carl Sagan, and Stephen Hawking as well on the basis of being "pop science".

I'm not really aware of Freud's work being "totally debunked".

I'm fairly sure this is ad hominem, but then if you've proven anything through your posts is that you care little for substance and tend to fawn over simplistic rhetorical devices.



Then you should be familiar with the results of various studies done with prisoner's dilemma.

No 'true us' can be defined. Surrounding factors alter human behavior. If a whole nation feel bullied by other nations, organizations like NSDAP can easily seize power. Poverty can make a person violent, death of a relative can convert an atheist to a complete fundementalist and so on.

It seems people on this thread does not accept that anarcho capitalism is a form of anarchism. I disagree, and there are various opinions about that categorization. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarchism_ ... capitalism But, whatever. Lets say it is ''degenerative'' and does not worth a debate.

So, lets take a look at anarcho communism. My critique will be based on Kropotkin's view.

Considering the fact in the first paragraph, a ''just anarchy (?)'' can only be sustained if resources are abundant and equally distributed. At this point some claim that a transition is required to provide those conditions. OK, now we are at the famous transition sequence: A proleterian dictatorship to overthrow the government -> a communist state to handle the transition -> anarchism.

That proleterian dictatorship actually tried it in history, and it failed: USSR. Nothing else to say.

Anarcho communists know this fact and they think that anarchism can only be reached directly with a revolt of the whole society. It should be direct, without leadership, to avoid the corruption problem that USSR encountered. Now, lets talk about its possibility. In history, some did fight for this cause. These are from Wikipedia:




An anarcho communist guerrilla leader? An anarchist army?! This concept manages to violate both non-violence and lack of authority tenets. Nothing else to say, again.

Oh... Yet I want to ask these questions: How can someone see a possibility of an anarchist world? Who can persuade weapon dealers, Apple, Exxon, Microsoft etc. without forming another organization? Finally, if it is not anarcho communism or anarcho capitalism, then what system are you talking about?

On the other hand, if you say force can be used to govern the transition... Obi-Wan Kenobi, the floor is yours:

''You have become the very thing you swore to destroy''

Last edited by Somberlain on 19 Sep 2012, 7:06 pm, edited 2 times in total.

and actually, you just demonstrated that you don't know what a straw man argument is.

Also, reciprocal altruism is the bases for Dawkins' book "Nice Guys Finish First" as well. You are currently guilty of a straw man as you are presenting my argument as being based in the exact thing Dawkins mentions in the intro, namely reading "The Selfish Gene" by title only, which is not what my argument entails or is based on.

Freud literally says that humans (he uses the term "man") are only willing to suppress anti-social urges when they are either bribed to do so, or threatened to do so.

When it comes to Maslow it's interesting that it's not a book, its a paper.

The reason why such behavior is "true" is that it deals with our basic or rather priority 1 needs, namely survival. I stand up for old ladies and pregnant women on the bus, not because of my good heart but because it's social protocol. If someone ran onto the bus with a gun, I'd use the pregnant lady as a human shield while beating the gunman to death with the old lady.

Threats of death strips our social constraints from us and show us what kind of animals we are. Your story of the old lady and the young man only proves that humans will perform good or cooperative acts when they present no downside to them. Which is in essence my argument throughout this thread.

"Anarcho-capitalism" is way too authoritarian to be a form of anarchism. In anarcho-capitalism; you are born without property and therefore born without liberty due to their ethics. Propertarianism destroys liberty. And you can't own yourself, because you are yourself.

You see threats of death as stripping social constraints, because that's what you expect - even want, maybe - to see. That you would use the pregnant lady as a shield etc says more about you than about how humans 'truly' are.

If we stop assuming altruism - or even kindness - is a problem to somehow be accounted for in terms of selfishness (cuz selfish genes, etc), that social protocol or morality is some sort of veneer, the idea that extreme conditions necessarily reveal our 'true' selves disappears.

If so inclined, I could starve and beat and terrify my dog. To suppose the resultant snarling, terrified, anxious animal would be the 'true' Dougal is simply a matter of perspective.

The image above is Maslow's hierarchy of needs, as you can see the needs above safety and physiological deal with relationships with other people all of which require that social conventions be upheld to a fairly high regard. Thus, unless more primary needs are threatened, these are the needs we seek to fulfill, with the effect that we act in accordance with impression management rather than our true nature.