I personally don't think I'm very much in favor of a nightwatch state. I have to admit though, I'm not much learned in the field of "minarchism." I still strongly believe any centralized power is in danger of corruption.
banan67
joined 3 months ago
No yea, you're obviously right. We can't just take forager social praxis and use it in our society, but we can absolutely learn from them. You have to understand that social pressure goes a lot further than just ostracizing an individual. Humans need eachother, more often than not. We feed eachother, fix eachothers plumbing, teach each-others children how to garden, how to fix stuff. Let's say there is a group of individuals causing destruction (using drones). Well we've acknowledged they're doing terrible shit, so we stop helping them and we make it clear to the rest of the community what these people are doing. In extreme cases we'd have to deal with the situation violently, but it's equally as important to recognize that when we're talking about bad actors in general, we're talking about bad actors in all of its spectrum. From pickpockets, to murders. And I think for each case there is a solution.
Anarcho-capitalism, radical neo-liberalism, unfettered capitalism, call it what you want, in the end it’s basically a breeding ground for monarchism. When you give money all the power in the world you just replace kings with billionaires, unelected rulers backed by private armies.
Yea, I mean I can imagine even if your anti-consumption, if there aren't affordable smaller businesses to support or dependable mutual aid services that can provide food for enough people it's gonna be tough to give up groceries from the monopolized supermarkets. Not saying Americans shouldn't boycott, but we need to be aware that as long as there's capitalism, we're always gonna be choosing between compromised options.
A question in this article that I feel is important. "Has social ecology been eclipsed in ecological anarchism? Should it be revived?"
Partially, yes and absolutely yes. In my honest opinion, it's a great shame that some other anarchistic eco-currents (like anarcho-primitivism, rewilding, and now solarpunk-ish movements) have sometimes pushed Bookchin aside, finding social ecology too rationalist. Its insight, that we need communal, decentralized, directly democratic solutions to ecological collapse, is more relevant than ever. Maybe today it needs to be expanded. Maybe we make it more pluralistic, more attuned to Indigenous knowledges, more experimental. But its core spirit absolutely deserves revival.
This is very insightful. I'm really interested, are there any books or otherwise sources that helped you draw this conclusion? It makes a whole lot of sense, I guess I was kind of ignoring that possibility.
Yea, I skimmed through the comments. Yikes. Really just proves my point that they take these criticisms like a shot to the chest.
Lost me at Bezos.
Yes thank you. Quick google search says your right. My bad.
It drives me crazy that there are people who think us humans are inherently lazy. It's silly to think money is the ONLY thing that incentivizes us to work. We build shit because we want to. Did the native Americans build Tipis and expect to get payed? No! They built another Tipi because they fucking needed another Tipi. Imagine the type of shit we could build in the future if capital wasn't a thing and budget wouldn't be a barrier.
A quick note on the U.S. Constitution: it’s sometimes framed as an attempt to diffuse power horizontally, but that’s not really accurate. The U.S. already had a decentralized system at the time, the Articles of Confederation. And the Constitution was created explicitly to centralize federal power in response to elite fears of uprisings like Shays’ Rebellion. It didn’t introduce shared responsibility; it replaced a fragile form of it with a much stronger central government.
So while it may have used the language of distributed power (checks and balances, separation of powers, etc.), it wasn’t about horizontalism in the sense that I meant. It was about stabilizing and legitimizing state authority which is a very different project.
Regarding your question: What would we do when bandits show up in a town and start shooting and looting, other than shoot back?
...Realistically, I don't believe we wouldn't shoot back. But in my eyes that's already an extreme case of power concentrating, which I firmly believe is preventable before it even occurs. When violence does erupt, collective defense is necessary. But the difference is whether we wait until that crisis point (where power has already centralized in dangerous hands) or whether we create resilient, horizontal networks that make it far harder for any one group or individual to monopolize force and exploit others.
So yes, we defend ourselves when necessary, but the real work is done long before the shooting starts.
Edit: The goal is to build social systems that reduce the conditions enabling those “bandits” to emerge in the first place. Through strong community bonds, mutual aid, shared responsibility, and mechanisms for accountability that keep narcissistic or violent individuals from gaining influence or forming armed factions.