Political Memes

I appreciate your response, and will respond fully later. Edit before I post: turns out later is immediately when I started typing. (Again, very much appreciate your engagement)

But just quickly wanted to get in that I very much dislike cars, just a convenient example because of cars being notoriously long to get in the Soviet union.

Which I recognise was not a anarchist project.

I want to preface this, this is all with the assumption that any system has successfully met all the fundamental basic needs of health, shelter and food, and is no longer capitalist.

Your proposed system isn't even anarchy to me though, a federalised system? Smells a lot like a an archy to me. Freely associated groups, who set rules amongst themselves? Doesn't sound very anarchist at all, sounds quick democratic if you ask me, though that might be my bias talking.

Sure, Europeans states are free to do what they want, with certain restrictions they agree to by being part of the EU. This reeeeealy doesn't scream anarchy to me (replacing states for freely associated smaller groups). Plus, I don't really think being able to up and leave it a great way to run a overall society anyway, as sometimes disagreements will not be settled by the groups in question, and the rest of the larger federated group will need to enforce the consensus. Is this anarchy? Really feels like some kind of democracy to me.

(I invite you to correct misconceptions, in your view, as I am cognisant I may be straw-manning you here due to misunderstanding. I have no yet read the long FAQ you linked)

No group would "raid" other groups because they have friends in all those groups.

I would suggest groups wouldn't necessarily need to stay in one place, of course no one wants to hurt friends. Go a couple hundred kms down the road, steal some shit. Yes, most people won't, I wouldn't. Even fewer people would if hypothetically their needs have been met. But there will be people who will. How will we deal with this?

Let's say I accept federated groups are "anarchist", which I don't, what is to stop other federated groups coming to raid your federated groups stuff. (Yes this is tribalism, but let's be real here, if your system relies on everyone letting go of tribalism, and being educated you're never going to achieve it, there will be dumb people, there will be some subset of tribally minded people, or people who have different aims that the majority. A hypothetical: you're from a federated group from an area with fewer natural resources (more on how I think a moneyless ordering system would not work, and would fail to adequately distribute finite resources later), you're having a laugh if you there's no chance they would organise an army to get more resources.

If they do, is your group gonna organise an army in time? Else, you already have standing army? How are you going to play your part as the federated group, by sending someone from your collective? What if your collective has no one willing to be a soldier, hmmm wouldn't it be great if we had some way to compensate people for their time so that you can specialise in a large federated group of people. If you have a standing, paid army, and all the other groups are keeping all the other groups to their word and pulling their weight, this does not feel like anarchy to me. That's a federated democratic state.

On ordering things. I'm not capitalist, it's a stupid system, but supply and demand aren't made up things we can leave behind in a post capitalist world. There will be stuff that is more desirable and people will want it more. How exactly do anarchists propose allocating these things fairly. First in best dressed? That will mean long waits for some things, and none for others. This is silly because people have different wants, and value things differently.

Money is great. It's just accounting, and allows for greater personal choice (in a hypothetical post-capitalist world where amassing wealth is made impossible).

I have $x, I'm gonna spend most it on dance classes, because I really like that, and barely any on clothes, because I'm not a fashionista. Others might spend more on nicer food, but hate dancing.

Some options with moneyless ordering the things you need, without money

1. Everyone orders more of something than there is to go around, lots of waiting for high demand stuff :/
2. You limit how much someone can order in total value (this is money, in my view)
3. Each group decides what they feel like making for others (this sounds like social debt, to me, which ultimately is money without the accounting, it's money by feeling rather than numbers). Sucks, because what if I want something from some random group across the world. Boy, wouldn't it be great if we had some medium of exchange people would accept in place of debt :O

Money also seems necessary, because while there are many jobs (including mine, I'd do mine) which are fine to do, I think there are some jobs who should get paid more. Working unsocialable hours at a bar? I think you ought to get paid more for that. Air traffic control at 3 AM. Yep more money. Working in sewer work? Yeah, I think you should get paid more.

How, exactly, are you gonna deal with that without money? Just hope people are willing to do the necessary jobs? Let people work however much they want, okay, now we have a worker shortage in XYZ undesirable area. Nah, pay them more, enough so there are enough people to do the job. Sounds like your federated group needs to get together and decide how to fairly pay these people hmmmm. Gonna need to enforce that, smells a lot like regulation :O

Small freely associating groups are no longer possible we have cities of millions. And people will disagree, absolutely no doubt about that. Are you suggesting breaking those up into smaller groups to be managed entirely separately? Sounds like a nightmare at city scale. And if you hand wave it away to say, oh we can set up larger structures to freely associate city wide rules, well, again this doesn't exactly smell like anarchy to me, unless any part of the city can just go, nah, we don't want to associate with you, we want our lovely park to ourselves now, if you're then enforcing them to do something when they don't want to (not blocking off their neighbourhood), it doesn't really feel like anarchism, (to me) it feels like democracy.

If you're suggesting keeping groups of millions, are you seriously suggesting not having a police force? Not having courts? Like, I'm not in the US, and I get how bad cops are there (and somewhat generally elsewhere), but what, you think crimes are only committed by people in poverty (which is a large part, sure).

Generally, most people are good, would have little to no reason to commit violent crimes in a socialist/communist world, but, there will be some level of violent crime, for which you would need some system to deal with fairly. And you will need to enforce it on those who don't agree. Else what, dude across the city negligently caused my friends death, but doesn't think it's his fault, and his group also doesn't think so. What are we going to do, politely agree to disagree? Or, is it then gonna have to be taken to some justice system all the groups agreed to. What if the group really decides not to play ball, and they control vital infrastructure? Threaten to leave the federation if they don't get their way?

Hate to tell you, family is a kind of tribe, and you cannot be claiming people won't be tribal in the future.

I would say, it's something to be managed and controlled for, and I don't think anarchy would do it.

This was a ramble, I will get around to reading the FAQ haha, hope you enjoy rebutting my not very well laid out arguments!