Anarchism - does it lead to failed states

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IvanV
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Re: Anarchism - does it lead to failed states

Post by IvanV » Mon Jun 14, 2021 5:38 pm

plodder wrote:
Mon Jun 14, 2021 4:35 pm
I’m explaining some libertarian perspectives, which are pretty consistent. You don’t need governments to have police, you need wealth. A government without money isn’t much of a government after all. A libertarian definition of goverment might be an organisation that is allowed to legally compel you to hand over your wealth, under threat of force, without you having done anything wrong.

They would claim that it’s entirely possible to manage without huge chunks of the state, perhaps all of it, and still live in a a modern looking world.
If your schtick is, there are these extreme right wingers who believe this implausible stuff, well there are lots of people who think daft things, and why should we debunk such nonsense?

Wealthy people pay for extra security, because they don't get enough from the police. But they aren't doing it for wider benefit. It is hard to extend it to a model of private policing just because people have money. When Wealthy Person's police start policing other people's business, and perhaps charging them for it, that's the mafia.

I really don't think you can organise a neutral police force, policing society, just because people have the money to pay for it. You need to agree what service you want and how much people pay for it. Which is government and taxation. No more is it easy to provide a country's transport and utility infrastructure, etc, just because people have money to pay for it. I've never seen a model of private provision of public infrastructure that works just because people have money, even when it is paid for as a service, it needs central coordination.

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Re: Anarchism - does it lead to failed states

Post by plodder » Mon Jun 14, 2021 6:12 pm

like health insurance?

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Re: Anarchism - does it lead to failed states

Post by plodder » Mon Jun 14, 2021 6:44 pm

I love the idea that things people need must by definition be "co-ordinated centrally".

I'm no libertarian (honestly) but you mentioned you'd worked in government procurement - which is a dreadful model for getting anything done effectively or efficiently, especially if they "co-ordinate centrally". Everything we hear about the NHS is that the staff are fabulous, it's the idiots who make careers out of "centrally co-ordinating" everything that create tiers of inefficient and out of touch management, each with their own cottage industries. Similarly the railways etc.

I don't adhere to the idea that the state is unnecessary, but you're going to have to try harder than that.

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Re: Anarchism - does it lead to failed states

Post by Martin Y » Mon Jun 14, 2021 6:46 pm

plodder wrote:
Mon Jun 14, 2021 4:35 pm
I’m explaining some libertarian perspectives, which are pretty consistent. You don’t need governments to have police, you need wealth. A government without money isn’t much of a government after all. A libertarian definition of goverment might be an organisation that is allowed to legally compel you to hand over your wealth, under threat of force, without you having done anything wrong.

They would claim that it’s entirely possible to manage without huge chunks of the state, perhaps all of it, and still live in a a modern looking world.
If you're rich I guess you can buy the security and medical care and whatever you need.

I'd agree you don't need need a government to have private security but there's a difference between that and police. And there's more to policing than protecting the people who pay for you from the rabble who want their stuff. Rich criminals also need to get caught and the have-nots need protecting from crime too, otherwise life at the bottom of the heap becomes terrible and you have more people with nothing to lose and maybe something to gain from criminality.

I suppose the libertarian objection to taxation is the element of compulsion and they'd rather everyone just volunteered to fund as much policing as they felt necessary. That seems like a fantasy to me. About as wide-eyed as Radiohead inviting fans to pay as much or as little for their album as they thought fair. People would only pay for stuff they thought directly benefited them, and everything else would spiral down until the wealthy needed paramilitary contractors to protect their compound from marauders.

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Re: Anarchism - does it lead to failed states

Post by plodder » Mon Jun 14, 2021 6:50 pm

Well, if you didn't have to pay what, 1/3 of your pay? Maybe more? in tax directly out of your salary, then another fifth on top for things you bought, then another chunk on booze and fags and fuel, and another chunk when you inherit etc then perhaps you wouldn't be so poor.

The argument is who is best placed to spend the money you work hard to earn. Priti Patel? Johnson? Sunak? Gove? Perhaps Corbyn?

Or is it you?

Under this model we'd soon find out what people wanted.

eta there are huge global industries that provide financial safety nets - insurance, pensions etc. All private.

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Re: Anarchism - does it lead to failed states

Post by Martin Y » Mon Jun 14, 2021 7:01 pm

Certainly there are but health insurance under the British model appears to cost an awful lot less than under the American model. Maybe they're not representative of whatever system libertarians want to try, IDK, but the difference in approach and cost is stark.

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Re: Anarchism - does it lead to failed states

Post by plodder » Mon Jun 14, 2021 7:02 pm

I’m not entirely sure that’s true, when you factor in outcomes.

eta afaik the uk is unusual in having nationalised healthcare as its main provider. GPs are private concerns btw.

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Re: Anarchism - does it lead to failed states

Post by Martin Y » Mon Jun 14, 2021 7:07 pm

Might depend on how you measure the outcomes. If saving a rich life is different from saving a poor one for example.

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Re: Anarchism - does it lead to failed states

Post by IvanV » Mon Jun 14, 2021 7:56 pm

plodder wrote:
Mon Jun 14, 2021 6:44 pm
I love the idea that things people need must by definition be "co-ordinated centrally".

I'm no libertarian (honestly) but you mentioned you'd worked in government procurement - which is a dreadful model for getting anything done effectively or efficiently, especially if they "co-ordinate centrally". Everything we hear about the NHS is that the staff are fabulous, it's the idiots who make careers out of "centrally co-ordinating" everything that create tiers of inefficient and out of touch management, each with their own cottage industries. Similarly the railways etc.

I don't adhere to the idea that the state is unnecessary, but you're going to have to try harder than that.
I did write an earlier post in this thread on these matters. I wrote in particular about roads, and the failure of private provision of roads in the past. Perhaps direct yourself to the provision of an efficient network of highways in a state that has money and no government. You can charge people tolls, but probably not enough for the less busy roads, that was the previous problem. And putting the roads where they ought to go without eminent domain will be very difficult.

We have private provision of much of our other infrastructure, which is made easier when it is a service people have to pay for by units. But we still need the state to specify the standard of service and regulate the price, or we'd be stuffed by all the monopolists.

The irony of the US health service is it spends almost as much per capita as the UK on its publicly funded health services, and that only supplies a minority of the population. For the rest, voluntary health insurance leaves the can't-afford-its or I'll-wing-its uninsured, unless you have a state backstop. And the US health outcome per unit of money spent is among the worst in the rich world. It's not better than the UK, poor as our health outcomes are, we spend so much less than the US. Even the US doesn't leave bleeding people to die in the road, insurance or not, but it doesn't do much to treat their diseases if they are uninsured and can't pay the full cost.

I earlier started trying to write a description of a voluntary insurance model of policing to show that it couldn't work, but stopped because my heart isn't in putting up a convincing model. Really if you advocate it, it is your job to write a detailed description that might work and have others criticise it. But let me put up my model, and show why it doesnt' work. And you can pick it apart and suggest a working model. I think if such a model existed, then someone sensible would have written about it and promoted is.

The first issue is coverage. Do we have a state where the police ignore the murdering and robbing of the uninsured? Does everyone else have to pay extra for the policing when it's a don't-want-to-pay who suffers the crime? So I think it has to be compulsory, not voluntary insurance, or there is massive free-riding problem. If paying is compulsory, then that's a tax. An important difference between police and health is that police has large elements that are inefficient if locally duplicated, so you would have a local monopoly element, as with network utilities. So as with the network utilities you would need an authority to specify the service and the price, and make it behave itself, or we'd be ripped off. Unlike say water service, you wouldn't be able to charge people for specific services rendered. If you charged people a fixed charge per head, well Mrs Thatcher tried that. We get away with it for TV licences, but in theory you can't watch if you don't pay, and it's in the category of things we expect to pay a fixed cost. If you charge people proportional to their income - for protection of their person - and per unit of wealth - for protection of their property, and they have to pay, then what you have really is a tax. Businesses would have to pay to on some scale. So actually what you've ended up with is local taxation and local government to fund and control the police. As happens everywhere with good governance.

And ultimately, if you have minimal governance, who stops the police force taking us over and ruling us? That's sort-of what's happened in Russia.

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Re: Anarchism - does it lead to failed states

Post by WFJ » Mon Jun 14, 2021 8:42 pm

IvanV wrote:
Mon Jun 14, 2021 7:56 pm
And ultimately, if you have minimal governance, who stops the police force taking us over and ruling us? That's sort-of what's happened in Russia.
We would have a free market in police forces so there would be no single police force to take over and rule us. Of course if my neighbour could afford to pay a bigger and better police force than me, he could arrange for them to protect my house from me.

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Re: Anarchism - does it lead to failed states

Post by plodder » Mon Jun 14, 2021 8:54 pm

roads: interesting example. the state in the UK is currently rolling out a huge expansion of the road network, which will cause colossal environmental damage, with pretty spurious public benefits to match. A private company wouldn’t do something this stupid.

Also: lots of roads in the UK are privately owned.

The model for repairs and maintenance (and perhaps even planning) would be subject to the market. If there’s demand for roads (or transport routes) some smart arse will figure out how to exploit it.

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Re: Anarchism - does it lead to failed states

Post by Grumble » Mon Jun 14, 2021 8:57 pm

plodder wrote:
Mon Jun 14, 2021 7:02 pm
I’m not entirely sure that’s true, when you factor in outcomes.

eta afaik the uk is unusual in having nationalised healthcare as its main provider. GPs are private concerns btw.
GPs make the bulk of their income from the NHS though. Average lifespan is longer in the U.K. than the USA so I’m going to take a guess that outcomes are better too. I’m sure you can pick an example like “what about x cancer” but lifespan is surely the right overall measure.
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Re: Anarchism - does it lead to failed states

Post by plodder » Mon Jun 14, 2021 9:02 pm

no, because the USAians eat a lot of junk food.

needs stats to demonstrate vfm for various levels of private healthcare.

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Re: Anarchism - does it lead to failed states

Post by dyqik » Mon Jun 14, 2021 11:18 pm

plodder wrote:
Mon Jun 14, 2021 9:02 pm
no, because the USAians eat a lot of junk food.

needs stats to demonstrate vfm for various levels of private healthcare.
You need to include the non-monetary costs to healthcare consumers there, as well.

I spend several days (probably more than a week) a year trying to understand my insurance options, dealing with insurance rules and trying understand how to contact the correct healthcare person that accepts my insurance. None of which are necessary in single payer or single provider system.

Oh, and I pay about a fifth of my salary for the privilege of doing that.

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Re: Anarchism - does it lead to failed states

Post by Bird on a Fire » Mon Jun 14, 2021 11:46 pm

Quite a confused thread, with everybody seemingly operating to their own definition of anarchism.

It's definitely not the same thing as the sort of free-market libertarian capitalopia some of you are imagining, for instance.

And the optimal scale at which to organise things depends entirely on what the thing is. I suspect the answer isn't always "the nation state", though.
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Re: Anarchism - does it lead to failed states

Post by monkey » Tue Jun 15, 2021 12:13 am

Bird on a Fire wrote:
Mon Jun 14, 2021 11:46 pm
It's definitely not the same thing as the sort of free-market libertarian capitalopia some of you are imagining, for instance.
Anarcho-Capitalism is a thing. They have a yellow and black flag.

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Re: Anarchism - does it lead to failed states

Post by Millennie Al » Tue Jun 15, 2021 12:46 am

WFJ wrote:
Mon Jun 14, 2021 8:42 pm
IvanV wrote:
Mon Jun 14, 2021 7:56 pm
And ultimately, if you have minimal governance, who stops the police force taking us over and ruling us? That's sort-of what's happened in Russia.
We would have a free market in police forces so there would be no single police force to take over and rule us. Of course if my neighbour could afford to pay a bigger and better police force than me, he could arrange for them to protect my house from me.
In a free market for police forces there's nothing stopping separate police forces merging for efficiency. Once this results in forces of different sizes, the small ones would quite quickly get absorbed into the bigger ones, leading to a very small number of very strong forces. A bit like how farms tend to merge. And given a few very strong police forces, it's inevitable that they'll start serving their own interests rather than the interests of those apparently paying for them - since power beats money.

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Re: Anarchism - does it lead to failed states

Post by Millennie Al » Tue Jun 15, 2021 12:46 am

Bird on a Fire wrote:
Mon Jun 14, 2021 11:46 pm
Quite a confused thread, with everybody seemingly operating to their own definition of anarchism.
Yes, It's total anarchy in here!

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Re: Anarchism - does it lead to failed states

Post by Martin_B » Tue Jun 15, 2021 12:57 am

plodder wrote:
Mon Jun 14, 2021 6:44 pm
I love the idea that things people need must by definition be "co-ordinated centrally".

I'm no libertarian (honestly) but you mentioned you'd worked in government procurement - which is a dreadful model for getting anything done effectively or efficiently, especially if they "co-ordinate centrally". Everything we hear about the NHS is that the staff are fabulous, it's the idiots who make careers out of "centrally co-ordinating" everything that create tiers of inefficient and out of touch management, each with their own cottage industries. Similarly the railways etc.

I don't adhere to the idea that the state is unnecessary, but you're going to have to try harder than that.
Is this true, though? Administration in the NHS costs a fraction of administration in the American health care system. Not quite an order of magnitude difference, but not far off, IIRC.
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Re: Anarchism - does it lead to failed states

Post by secret squirrel » Tue Jun 15, 2021 6:25 am

IvanV wrote:
Mon Jun 14, 2021 9:38 am
secret squirrel wrote:
Sat Jun 12, 2021 7:56 am
Where have Anarchist ideas such as those of Kropotkin led to failed states? I can only think of a handful of places where they have been tried, and in all those places external forces make it difficult to attribute failure to inherent problems with the ideology (e.g., can we really attribute the failure of the Makhnoists in the Ukraine to Anarchism? How about the present situation in Rojava?).
To separate this from the atheism thread, where I referred to arnachism as inevitably leading to a failed state, got some come-back.

It is a tenet of development economics that without a centralised state with credible security, you will not get any economic development, because instead people will fight for control. And you can't develop in a state of continuous war where someone may be along any minute to separate you from your newly built irrigation system. That's a brief summary, and doubtless a caricature, but if you want the longer version I would strongly recommend the classic modern development economics text, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Why_Nations_Fail. It is not a dry academic text and is accessible to the layman. Nor is it a big fat book.

Essentially it is a human nature argument. Power abhors a vacuum. It is human nature that there are always people who will take advantage of the possibility to take over. It is not dissimilar to the similar observation that communism is doomed to fail because it depends on behaviours from individuals that are contrary to human nature. So if you have anarchism, then either that degenerates to perpetual insecurity and fighting (Somalia, DRC, Yemen, etc), or else someone wins and succeeds in imposing a non-anarchist stable state, be it nasty or nice, eventually.

I've never studied specific theories of anarchism. I had a quick flick through the wiki articles on Kropotkin and Makhno. But as far as I can see if it's anarchism, than means not having a central state capable of providing security. And so you will get people trying to assert control, whether external or internal. In the particular cases Secret Squirrel mentions, it was external parties who took advantage of the lack of credible security to impose their control. My argument would be that something like that was inevitable.
I think you're probably correct that states on an Anarcho-Communist model potentially have big problems defending themselves from external threats, and history has so far supported this view. But it's worth noting that e.g. Makhno and the Paris commune did have some level of military organization. Makhno's Black Army was quite effective fighting the Whites and the Ukrainian right wing nationalists, for example. Though not as effective as the Black Army, the Paris commune did offer some organized resistance to the army. So this kind of Anarchism doesn't mean no authority or force at all, rather that the force and authority is derived in some admittedly vague sense from 'the people'. While I'm not an expert on Anarchist theory, my impression is that it's in some ways similar to modern social democracy, but with an emphasis on cooperative development rather than competition based markets.

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Re: Anarchism - does it lead to failed states

Post by secret squirrel » Tue Jun 15, 2021 6:27 am

monkey wrote:
Tue Jun 15, 2021 12:13 am
Bird on a Fire wrote:
Mon Jun 14, 2021 11:46 pm
It's definitely not the same thing as the sort of free-market libertarian capitalopia some of you are imagining, for instance.
Anarcho-Capitalism is a thing. They have a yellow and black flag.
It's a very silly thing though, and it's only really a thing people have heard of because it's convenient for rich American loons to fund propaganda for it.

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Re: Anarchism - does it lead to failed states

Post by plodder » Tue Jun 15, 2021 7:44 am

it’s less silly than committee-driven collective ownership.

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Re: Anarchism - does it lead to failed states

Post by secret squirrel » Tue Jun 15, 2021 8:18 am

plodder wrote:
Tue Jun 15, 2021 7:44 am
it’s less silly than committee-driven collective ownership.
Incorrect. Small scale collective communities at least have historical precedent of being fairly successful in places, and the worst that happens to them is that they turn into something else. Anarcho capitalism on the other hand is just awful in principle, and anyone who can't see that is, and I choose my words carefully here so as not to cause offence, an absolute idiot.

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Re: Anarchism - does it lead to failed states

Post by Martin Y » Tue Jun 15, 2021 9:11 am

Bird on a Fire wrote:
Mon Jun 14, 2021 11:46 pm
Quite a confused thread, with everybody seemingly operating to their own definition of anarchism.
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the thread.

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Re: Anarchism - does it lead to failed states

Post by plodder » Tue Jun 15, 2021 9:15 am

secret squirrel wrote:
Tue Jun 15, 2021 8:18 am
plodder wrote:
Tue Jun 15, 2021 7:44 am
it’s less silly than committee-driven collective ownership.
Incorrect. Small scale collective communities at least have historical precedent of being fairly successful in places, and the worst that happens to them is that they turn into something else. Anarcho capitalism on the other hand is just awful in principle, and anyone who can't see that is, and I choose my words carefully here so as not to cause offence, an absolute idiot.
You won't be offending me, I'm not an anarcho-capitalist. But I did work in a small collective organisation for over a decade and it was hamstrung by Handforth Parish Council style decision making. It was, constantly, a very very silly place to work.

It was also, interestingly, directly competing with a local authority services (charging for a service that people were already paying for out of taxation) and it demonstrated that even if hamstrung by silliness the private sector can significantly outperform "centrally co-ordinated" services, even to the point where people will pay twice (see also: health insurance). It's still going almost 20 years after I left, and it's just as silly as ever.

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