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0 pointsmikem1704y ago0 comments

In defence of the quote, it did mention trading essential liberty for a little security. Implying a bad trade.

I agree with what you say about these decisions being made as a society, and there being disagreements.

I would like to point out that you may misunderstand anarchists. Anarchists understand disagreement over such trade-offs better than most, and work harder than most for compromise and census. Anarchists are fine with large political structures and rules, as long as they are not forced upon anyone. Anarchists prioritize not forcing anything on others [0].

An anarchist might refer to what they have been doing in Switzerland for the last 150 years as a great example of bottom-up direct democracy in action [1], which is basically what political anarchy is. Currently a country of 8.5 million people, Switzerland is split into 26 cantons (they divide into more when needed). Each canton has its own constitution and parliament (averaging ~330k people each). Cantons are divided into municipalities (some large, like Zurich, and some small, with only 2-3k people). A big part of their political culture and the structure of their government is that what can be done locally is done locally, and the people are in charge. People can petition for a vote to not only create new laws and amendments, but to have laws they don't like removed.

Many of the problems in the U.S. are due to the fact that the federal government was never meant to be as involved in our lives as it is (10th amendment, powers default to the states) and was not designed to be responsive to the people (technically states vote for president, not people). So now there are 330 million of us arguing about more and more stuff. Even worse we allow rich people and corporations to fund politicians (which is illegal in most civilized countries), to the detriment of most people. The U.S. needs less plutocracy (rule by the rich) and more democracy (rule by the people).

Sorry, this has been on my mind lately. I just learned about how much anarchists are into democracy, and about Switzerland's democracy.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarchists (refer to first sentence)

[1] https://wolf-linder.ch/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/Swiss-poli... (page 4 shows how powers are divided)

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ineedasername4y ago· 1 in thread

Anarchists prioritize not forcing anything on others

That's pretty much what I meant. Bottom up democracy is one thing, but if people can opt-out of the results of that democratic process then things can fall apart, and an inability to opt out goes against anarchist principals:

Does everyone in a Canton agree? If not, it's rules are still imposed unwillingly on some. Aren't there still rules imposed upon the entire population that each Canton must observe?

Although I admit that was oversimplifying in my prior comment when I characterized anarchism as simply one thing. There are multiple schools of thought, and I suppose that not all of them reject all aspects of the "social contract". They do, however, exist at the extreme end of the balance I mentioned.

mikem170OP4y ago

I'm going to ramble a bit, interesting conversation...

> Bottom up democracy is one thing, but if people can opt-out of the results of that democratic process then things can fall apart, and an inability to opt out goes against anarchist principals?

> Does everyone in a Canton agree? If not, it's rules are still imposed unwillingly on some.

What exactly falls apart? If half the people want to go left, and the other half right, is there something wrong letting them each do their own different thing? Is it so important to be united at scale that people should be forced into something they don't want to do?

It is my understanding that when power originates with the people then municipalities, cantons/states, and federal governments only are invested with powers if enough people in those structures agree. Ideally consensus - nobody vehemently opposed. Otherwise the smaller groups retain their independence. Along these lines the Swiss have the ability to repeal laws via petition/referendum. Like you said before, societies need to figure out for themselves the details of how they handle these things.

The Swiss legislate their social programs at the canton level, each an average size of .3 million people. If you have a problem you can knock on the door of your representative, each answering to a couple thousand people. You might even know that person already.

Compare that to the U.S. where most social programs are legislated at the federal level, involving 330 million people, one representative per 500k+ people. Look at the disaster that is health care in this country, written by industry lobbyists, overriding several new and interesting state plans, passed just barely by one senator who died before the bill was finished, almost repealed by the same margin several years later, still fought over and still a mess.

I don't understand why many in the U.S. think we have to do things at the federal level when the Swiss do the same things in cantons that are the size of U.S. counties or mid-size cities.

There are things the Swiss do at a federal level, like foreign affairs, national highways, nuclear power, etc. I don't know how flexible they are, but if a canton didn't want to participate wouldn't it make sense that the non-participating canton doesn't get the benefits - no federal defence, no highway, or none of the nuclear energy? Is that necessarily a problem? But they agree these are things worth cooperating on, and they do.

David Graeber (democracy/anarchy) and Lepold Khor (bigness problems) influenced my thinking on a lot of this.

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