this post was submitted on 17 Feb 2026
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Precisely. The original post shows there could still be labor willing to do the work, but it does does not address how that work would be funded. Even if the labor was free there are resources required to build and maintain that plant that are not free. Where do those resources come from?
Wait till you hear about the anarchist that loves going into the mines with toxic gases and all to get the resources for the sewage maintainer guy.
Let's see; keep things running by going into a mine and digging out something that is needed with the proper safety gear, or going into a mine and digging out something with only the safety gear your boss couldn't convince the the government to not require.
Such hard choices...
Yeah, now you just need someone that has a passion for manufacturing safety gear!
You think the issue with non authoritarian collectivization is that people don’t like making things?…
No. The problem is that what people want is not the same as what the people need.
The central problem of economics is that humans have infinite desires, which need resources to be met, and resources are finite. Therefore, we should aim to efficiently allocate our resources to meet the most of our desires.
If in a population of 1000, there are 100 fiction writers, you're gone get more fiction books than you can read, and you're probably die of hunger, because now the other 900 have to sustain the 100 writers for basically no value. Since probably most people will only want to read the top 1-2 that are actually good.
If the other 99-98 other writers don't have any pressure to change careers because the community provides for them, why would they? The thing they want to do most is writing!
And all that is assuming such a civilization exists. From my PoV, dreaming about anarchism makes no sense. Our world was born anarchic. There were no CEOs nor governments. And the people that lived in that world rapidly formed societies that had hierarchies, because that is the most efficient way.
The natural consequence of anarchy is non-anarchy. Anarchy is not a final state, it's transitory. Anarchy is not a stable state.
Just like you can try mixing water and oil all you want, the moment you stop stirring, they will separate.
The only way to keep a non-stable state is by force. That is, if you want anarchy, there must be someone enforcing that there be anarchy. And if that's the case, then it's no longer anarchy, since there is a ruler.
Rapidly formed hierarchies huh? miiight wanna read about early human history.
Hundreds of thousands of years passed before tyrants became the norm
You don't need tyrants for hierarchies. Tribes had sages and leaders.
Hierarchy is not when you are convinced someone is wise lol. Please read a book
When i say that there were sages in tribes, I don't mean that there was just a wise guy. I mean that an elder would basically rule the tribe, because everyone would ask him for advice, and there could be consequences if that "advice" wasn't followed.
Supply evidence for your claim. Modern anthropology basically disagrees with you utterly.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tribe
Under "classifications" plenty of kinds of tribes. Many of them with leaders and hierarchies.
This is a waste of my time. You aren't interested or wanting to learn, you have a cartoon definition of anarchy in your head, you've made no study of human culture and society, you know nothing of the nuanced differences between various cultural groups that have all been lumped under "tribal" and the complex obligations therein, you have not made a study of anything.
Obviously a chief is a chief is a chief, and obviously these structures existed for hundreds of thousands of years. Yep, completel trivial to explain the fascinating details of the egalitarian and not so egalitarian burial traditions we've found, the decorated disables bodies, sites like Çatalhöyük showing stable and identical houses for thousands of years.
If you at least tried to explain why I'm wrong instead of "you're wrong, read a book", maybe I could use your definition of anarchy instead of mine.
The definition I got from this post is "anarchy is when people do the work that they love and they don't have to worry about being paid enough for that work". And I don't think that would result in a stable society, since the demand for some kinds of labor is very different to the amount of people that "love" to do that work.
The reason I say read a book is because you will not learn anything structured and thoughtful in an internet comment section. Too many voices, different levels of academic education, ages, experience, or seriousness.
The foundation for learning about anything is to go to authoratitative sources, to look up terminology etc. It seems very silly, to the degree that it seems bad faith, to form opinions on an ideology without experiencing it in action or reading anything.
It would be like me criticising the standard model of physics, or the power grid, or whatever. I don't have an opinion on whether we could do better with the power grid because I have never studied it.
Talking about human nature or historical societies, having never engaged with anthology is like talking about the function of the spleen having never opened an anatomy textbook.
I mean straight up underneath that silly wikipedia page fragment you linked is a high level discussion of the flaws of the "tribe" or "tribal stage" as a lens for analysing societies and history and how it's not taken super seriously anymore because it doesn't translate well. You're apparently confident that you know what a chief is - universally - but you can't give concrete examples or explain why you think a chief is a small king in the style of absolutist or legalist monarchs with evidence their concrete social roles and privileges.
I mean even in recent history, let alone 10s of thousands of years ago, multiple distinct societies were well documented in the Americas with vastly different structures and degrees of privilege among "chiefs" with some acting more like centralised resource distributors and advisors and some as the small kings you imagine.
Anarchy is the absense of hierarchy, there are many schools of anarchy but generally they all agree that involuntary relations wherein one person is elevated above another in terms or access to goods, participation in society, and often fundamentally (as in how these privileges are preserved) the ability to use coercive violence on others.
A well functioning family is anarchic, a friend group is often anarchic, community organisation are frequently anarchic. It is not stupid, it often works. In times of disaster it is almost always people's fucking rad ability to self organise voluntarily that steps in and saves the day.
All of the examples you mention where anarchy works are small groups of <50 people. This post is talking about anarchy in the scope of an entire labor market. That is thousands of millions of people. The context is way different. Furthermore, all of those examples are small anarchic groups in the context of a non-anarchic society.
A family can be anarchic, but they still can call the police if a family member murders another one.
I won't read a book just to argue with someone. Each word has thousands of definitions depending on who uses it. Each different person I've talked to in this thread has a different definition of what anarchy is. If I read a book about anarchy, I can only argue with the author. I won't read 1 book per random person on the internet.
I ask a simple question: how is an anarchic system going to defend against foreign and inside enemies? In any other system this is a simple answer, yet for anarchy I'm encountering walls of text that either sidetrack the conversation or give an utopian answer of "everyone would come together and defend eachother" which has no basis in reality.
I think you're more invested in feeling right than learning why people think differently to you.
Defending oneself from imperial aggression is hard, almost everyone basically just relies on being too much of a pain in the arse + alliances + paying tribute. It's unlikely that would change. Generally state militaries are ineffective vs local decentralised resistance and actually occupying ground. See failures in Iraq (twice), afganistan, Vietnam, Korea etc.
That’s a very definitive sounding comment. I’m going to single out some stuff I don’t necessarily care for.
Reader intended to infer that state capitalism accomplishes this despite ongoing evidence of looting of lower classes
Stop. You’re dismissing reality—people can organize without coercion; people grew and foraged and hunted more than enough for millennia—via a terrible hypothetical.
That’s a fine opinion to hold.
There were no decision makers and nobody performed any disinterested administrative work or otherwise aided the public good?
Stop spitballing prehistory to back up your opinion of anarchism. Study some anthropology. For instance many archaeological digs show defined differences in construction at different times that show evidence of the overthrow of hierarchical rule, and great disparity of housing, in favor of more egalitarian organization and more egalitarian construction of homes and places of gathering.
Money is most efficient when it circulates, because its purpose is to effectuate economic transactions, yes? Yet the current hierarchical world order is squeezing the lowest classes and ensuring they have nothing left to spend in their withering communities while amassing both real and virtual capital. The most efficient way to do what?
I would put forward constant action and striving. I can choose to keep mixing the oil and the water. The ideal democracy is a process, not an endpoint.
All that aside, your original comment that I replied to is still very funny.
We're not talking about capitalism. IDK where you're getting that from.
I'm reading your argument as "the current system sucks, so this other that I propose is obviously better".
Yes, you can keep mixing water and oil. That's the point of my argument. But to do that, you need someone to enforce anarchy. But when you have someone enforcing a political system, you no longer have anarchy. Since that dude/organization is clearly above others, forming a hierarchy.
If it's necessary, someone will do it. If that can't be counted on, we're kinda fucked.
Will you? Because I know I won't
If all that stands between me and the beginning of a society with no oppression is strapping some gear on and doing some manual labor, then fuck it gimme a pickaxe I'm going down there.
Am I suited for it? Absolutely the fuck not, but I'm willing, and I'm sure many others are as well, especially if they know that whatever happens, their safety and health comes before profit, and they'll always come back to a good place. I could certainly stand working until things begin to hurt if I knew every bit I dug up would do good.
Yeah that's cool. You and sewage guy will make a great duo. But the 5 dudes over there organized themselves, acquired a weapon and killed the other guy. They're waiting for you to come out of the mine with all those resources and you don't even know it.
Is that freedom from oppression?
Anarchism is the absence of hierarchy, not organization. The means of the people to use force against violent attempts at theft for personal gain are neither eliminated nor lessened.
So you're saying that you and sewage treatment plant guy will successfully defend against 5 armed men that ambushed you while you were working?
Remember: this is not an action film, this is real life we're talking about.
You seem to be consistently misunderstanding me. Did you seriously think what I meant was "me and this sewage guy are gonna singlehandedly fight off 5 armed men"? That's fucking absurd. What I actually meant was we would obviously have armed guards protecting valuables vulnerable to theft, like any other organized society.
Well. You could've said that if you wanted to say that.
Now it's not 5 dudes. Your land is valuable and the neighbouring state wants to invade you. How do you stop it?
We... Fight a war?
With what army? How do maintain a military without a hierarchy. Without central commands that everyone must follow
I never said that, either. I would say smaller, more specialized units like classrooms, search parties, and militaries benefit from adhering to an authority. It's just general society that cannot have a deemed authority.
Let me illustrate the difference via an example: There is a math class. The class obeys the teacher. Why? Because the teacher is known, in some reliable way, to have the knowledge necessary to teach a class on the subject. They derive their authority from that. The students listen to them because they wanted to learn from them.
So if a math teacher can have authority, derived from possessing the most knowledge about the subject at hand, how does, say, an executive or a legislator or a judge derive their authority? By being the most knowledgeable about... Everything? Just, fucking everything? It should stand to reason, because that's what they want to have authority over! But it doesn't, officials are NOT experts on literally everything. That's the difference.
So in your vision of anarchy there are leaders and hierarchies. There is just no central power that orchestrates them all. Ok.
Now. What is stopping the leader of the military from saying: "you know what? We've got all the weapons, why don't we subjugate our own population and live rich lives?". Resulting in a central authority, which would end the anarchy.
As it turns out rule by the people demands that the people are actually smart and kind to work well. You know, like rule by any other force.
How are those demands going to be enforced?
In most other political systems there is a central authority with a monopoly of violence that can enforce rules via violence.
If your political system only works if everyone acts in the interests of society over their own, then it's not a political system. It's a failure. Because there are plenty of selfish people, and you can't change that.
If your political system relies on people with a monopoly on violence just deciding to be nice about it, what does that mean?
Then that means it's shit.
In a democracy, governments derive their power from the legitimacy that the support of their voters give them. If someone in government decides to "not be nice about it", then most likely the rest of the government would stop it. Remember, the government is made up of a LOT of people. If an entire political party goes nuts, then the opposition would get votes and reclaim the monopoly of violence.
"the rest of the government would stop it" HAHAHAHAHAH HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA LMAO
Sincerely, an American, a citizen of a country responsible for countless genocides and acts as of brutality and oppression, all under a republic, and is currently being taken over by fascists.
First of all, the US is a flawed democracy, not even a real one. And those genocides are done to people outside the US. None of my arguments are about what is morally correct or not.
What I'm saying is that anarchy is not a stable system, it will eventually evolve into a stable one.
In fact, the US right now is a perfect example of what I'm saying. You guys voted an openly fascist imbecile twice to the top power. And the other branches of government gave him even more power. And still, he has only openly killed like <10 citizens out of 330 million. And you guys still have elections. Sure, democracy has eroded a lot. But it's still technically a democracy.
If someone like trump obtained that amount of power in an anarchic society, he would've just killed every democrat in the country.
In a democracy (even if a shitty one), with a good chunk of the population backing him, he still does not have absolute power. More than 5 years in, he hasn't yet managed to end democracy.
Have you ever heard of something called an Indigenous American.
Ah now I understand why this has gone for so long. Your reading comprehension skills are non-existent.
Wait, you imagine that there must be a guy forced into dangerous situations against their will and that this society is better because it forces that guy to exist?
What happens is that different people have different options. For some people, they have options that are way better than mining. For some other people, the other options might not be as appealing because they might pay less or whatever. That is the market.
If nobody wants to be a miner, the pay/conditions of mining should go up enough so that there is someone that prefers mining over what they're currently doing.
This encourages people to do jobs that are unappealing.
On the other side, if you are a bad fiction writer, you're probably not earning enough money to survive. That's because you're spending resources but you're not calming many people's desires, so you'll probably take up a job that you like less but pays way more, and is probably more healthy for the community.
Nobody is forcing them. But if those jobs were not done, we wouldn't have the society we have today. Mining safety gear will probably not have been invented in an anarchy society. Water treatment plants wouldn't either. All those things we have today is because we used our resources way more efficiently than "go do whatever you want, the guy over there that loves farming and the guy over there that loves cooking will keep you fed".