To my (self-labelled anarchist) view, anarchism is not a complete political doctrine and does not propose an off-the-shelf solution for all problems. It is a general direction: reduction of coercion in society. Hopefully to the point where none is required. "But what about criminals, prison, armed police?" yes, we don't have non-coercive solution for everything. We just know that where no-coercive solutions exist, we should favor these. And that's already a pretty radical program.

public works

I am not sure what you specifically project in anarchism, and whether you are talking about the actual construction work or the decision-making but these typically tend to work better when all stakeholders are involved in the project and there are already public works cooperatives out there.

healthcare

You mean health insurance or actual medical care? In my country (France) actual medical care is already done by a staff of people who accept a level of stress and a low pay they could easily escape given the qualifications required to work in a public hospital, but cling to it due to their will to accomplish a useful work. Remove administrative hassle and the need to pay for a right to live and they will happily work for free there:

Same applies for most teachers, researchers, caretakers, farmers, that I know.

How do anarchists propose handling public works, healthcare, etc?

Well, how we do it now?

During the Spanish Civil War, anarchists socialized many industries. What they found out was that you could just remove people from most management positions and continue work as before. Very rarely a manager was actually needed, and when it was they would simply elect one of themselves to fulfill the role for a while.

Talking about healthcare specifically, in many countries that have public healthcare, the system is already decentralized. Because it needs to be, otherwise they can't properly answer the demands from their communities. Again, you just need to remove pointless middle-men and other workplace hierarchies (like physicians being more important than nurses), and stuff tends to get better.

There's an entire essay just for how would anarchists do public service like healthcare. tl;dr, healthcare wasn't even provided by states in the early modern period, it was provided by mutual aid societies. These societies had to be divested of power for states to monopolize the provision of services.

Community banking and funds mostly. Health-care similarly. It's actually not really such a big problem to organize these things, so I always wonder why people give this as examples for why Anarchism wouldn't work. If anything, large bureaucratic state systems make these more difficult and expensive.

Made me think of the song "Give the Anarchist a Cigarette" by Cumbawamba:

https://inv.citw.lgbt/watch?v=4Gzyd3u1Jh0

Anarchist, and generally the whole far-left part of the spectrum can be divided between revolutionary (often vanguardists) and reformists (like yours truly). So no, anarchist does not always imply burning stuff (but can) and the old image of the anarchist bomb maker comes from the Propaganda of the Deed theory that is generally considered discarded.

Anarchy is the only way to stop an asshole.

If you're an asshole in anarchism, you'll fuck your neighbor's life.

If you have a State or other giant hierarchy filling assholes with power, they will fuck everybody's life. Case in point: every single billionaire alive.

Anarchy is. Period.

The rulers of 'God', laws, police, military, and so on, all know this. There is nothing 'out there' that somehow magically 'govern us'. It's all in your head, taught to you while you were young enough to make all that life-long beliefs. And it is rare for adults to then question those beliefs because that's the way childhood and adulthood works, across species.

There's nothing to the foundation of of our current society but ideas. And so it's fragile AF - and what remains real underneath those stories is anarchy: people want to help each other and they know how to take care of themselves. Give them space, and they'll be happy.

That's why the folks who lord it over you come and beat the shit out of you, put you in a cage, or shoot you in the head if you get out of line.

Or even if you simply wish to opt out! Sure, you can go into the forest. But try to bring too many people with you and we'll punch you and YOUR funny ideas into the pavement.

Anarchism is the act of always trying to throw the Ring into Mount Doom. Our 'systems' of rule, political machines, laws, police, borders, bla bla bla, are just different versions Sauron's ring. They all want to use the Ring to help in some way, and all inevitably become his servants.

I'd argue that it's a bigger problem when assholes are able to take over the positions of power they're typically attracted to and make the lives of others miserable. I'd much rather assholes just be, like, kinda uncooperative but no more influential than anyone else.

Can you be more specific what you mean by asshole?

Because if someone has a shitty personality I just stop associating with them, like not inviting them to parties. An anarchist society ideally would greatly increase my autonomy when it comes to the decision on who I interact with.

I don't know where you live but all the governments I've seen are full of assholes. As the sociologist and not anarchist Charles Tilly noted, government is organized crime. Some assholes thousands of years ago set up a protection racket and we've been living with the consequences ever since. Every benevolent act by government merely legitimizes the violence they inflict.

Who made any choices for others?