Memes of Production

Anarchists can organize and fight militarily quite effectively while still maintaining a bottom-up system, as demonstrated by the Anarchist militias of Makhno and Catalonia (and though not Anarchist, Rojava is an example of a decentralized army). The issue all Anarchist attempts have faced militarily is a lack of any allies on the world stage, allowing the authoritarian nations around them to crush them due to lack of supplies (or sudden betrayal of ML 'allies').

How does anarchism prevent ‘might makes right’ from being the prevailing ideology?

How does the world currently prevent that? It doesn't, the largest states do as they wish to the smaller ones, and internally the states do what they wish to the citizens. Under anarchism you would defend your community and your communities would defend each other. You can see this in action in places like the Chiapas were communities defend themselves from the state and cartels.

If there is no system of laws

Anarchism is not a world devoid of rules, in fact it's all about rules. Except these are rules mutually-agreed upon by members of the community rather than dictated by politicians with no interest in the well-being of the community.

how do we protect against rapists and murderers? Does it require everyone to be armed to the teeth at all times just to protect themselves?

How do you protect against rapists and murderers? How do you today, do you ring the cops and wait 30 minutes? Under anarchism the community would ensure its own defence, you and your neighbours and everyone else would be empowered to protect yourselves, and you would want to because its your community. At present you must wait for the bastards to show up and maybe do something to help, if not make the situation actively worse.

Also, how does anarchism ensure we can regulate food safety and medicine?

Why would you want to produce unsafe foods and medicines, there is no profit motive to cut-corners and you are only hurting yourselves.

Is the expectation that everyone produce their own food?

The expectation is communities would produce resources for themselves, and co-operate with neighbouring communities to share what's needed.

How do we protect ourselves against the 1%? They have far more resources than the rest of us, so couldn’t they basically muscle their way to the top and cement themselves there, with no hope of being toppled without some sort of systemic change?

How do you protect yourselves against the 1% today? You don't.

Under anarchism, you actively fight them.

This take is like when people try to shit on communism by describing capitalism

That’s not anarchy, it’s chaos. You’re maybe thinking of warlordism, aka ‘ancap’ or market libertarianism?

Anarchy is a lot of work for its participants. If you aren’t outsourcing management decisions about your life, neighbourhood, region, etc., you have to collaborate in making those decisions. If power is allowed to concentrate, your self-determined governing system collapses and anarchy, by definition, is lost. It’s a life of constant renegotiation.

Rojava is illustrative, as it’s established in a self-conscious anarchic process, and by all reports it’s great in many ways but a lot of daily effort, and is under direct assault currently.

While I agree with you completely, isn't that also what we currently have and all of it is being done for the purpose of profit chasing which wouldn't exist in a society without a government imposed system of value?

Compare how much environmental damage is done by anarchist societies versus governed societies.

It's illegal for us to defend ourselves.

I think a system where everyone has a pretty similar amount of power / influence is way better in dealing with that than systems where individuals are able to hoard power and resources to further their misaligned interests.

That’s consensus you are talking about, and it is indeed a myth, at scale.

Every consensus run organization I have seen chokes up at some point due to a failure of psychology. Statistically, something like more than 10% of the population are guaranteed to be a problem for cohesion, for various reasons. Many are just contrarians and self-identifying as an outsider requires social sabotage. Some are cruel, stupid, or violent. Many are “dark triad” and dangerously deceptive.

So any functional and sustainable system has to acknowledge that fact and plan around never having consensus. There are many approaches to this, and anarchism can work without everyone in lockstep, and still get things done and maintain principles.

Your statement suggests you think that anarchism is hands-off laissez-faire, it’s the opposite. Self governance is DIY and thus constant maintenance of rules and arrangements and goals, and solving problems mutually. An endless hands-on meeting, at least until we are able to automate such things.

See, self-governance involves mutual self-defense, and violence by poison is a mutual problem which requires a lot of coordination to solve, so people will be motivated to get it resolved quickly; dumping might be a very dangerous decision. Anarchism doesn’t let you be a lone wolf, you have to deal with groups of equals and mutual dependence everywhere you go.

Anarchism depends on free exchange of information, I'll give a real life example from people without an anarchist ideology to make this more approachable:

I've recently installed an arch-linux based operating system, knowing that there is ArchWiki to depend on if i need guidance on specific issues, that is solely because the arch community tries to be helpful and documents almost every issue or thing one might need help with.

So now I, someone who's new to linux (albeit with existing knowledge in software overall) and arch specifically, does not need to know anyone personally to fix my own issues.

Do note about this example, that this approach is limited by my existing knowledge and also by how accessible the wiki is, BUT, in other, simpler situations I wouldn't be as limited in my scope.

TL;DR: as long as people can exchange information (ideas, recipes, etc) comfortably, we can expect they will, and we can depend on information sources (libraries, platforms, etc.) to hone our skills, fix whatever we need in the moment, or whatever else.

PS. All anarchists advocate for bringing about a reality in which we all have more free time, so that we may reap the fruits of this and many other aspects of life we want to improve, read about other ideas for a more in-depth explanation.

If you're interested in more, read about Tool Libraries, I'd go into more details about all this but this comment is getting long enough :^).

The “not making decisions for me” part is a very Trump-like thing to say. Society only works by compromise.

Society only works by consent. If the people do not consent to the laws, they are authoritarian and should be resisted.

Any top-down system of governance will never be free by its very nature.

The only free society we will get is an anarchist one where people agree to work together and create rules that they can all abide by. Those who don't want to abide by the communities rules can leave.

I’m going to want to stop him.

Good, do that.

Anarchy is 'no rulers' not 'no rules'. If someone is going to do something harmful for the community, you don't just let them. You are actively incentivised to stop them, because it's your obligation as a member of the community.

Contrast that to today's system, where if someone wants to release factory run-offs into the local water source you can't stop them and they'll ~~bribe~~lobby some politician to let them do it, while arresting you for protesting it

But you do get to participate in those decisions. We are a troupe species, after all.

Anarchism has suffered centuries of propaganda convincing people that it is synonymous with unregulated chaos, rather than more organized than authoritarian schemes. If someone shits in the water, you and all the other people who rely on that water can rightfully observe that that person is impinging on your freedoms and security, and can deal with it using the endless decision making process you’re required to have to get things done in your region.

Freedom is absolutely relative, not relatively absolute. It’s defined and negotiated, not subject to impulse and ego. Under anarchism, you are not free to attack, or shit in drinking water.

You mean what literally happens today where the US does whatever it wants? And the states with their guns makes the citizens follow its laws?

What you're describing is the current state of the world