Anarchism

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Is Anarchism viable? (lemmy.dbzer0.com)

submitted 18 hours ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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Why do you believe in it, do you approve it in theory or also in practice? I think a lot of people approve of anarchism in theory but rejects the possibility of it to be put in practice unless we live in an utopia.. which I don't think we do, unfortunately. Maybe techno-anarchism would be more practical? Technology is such badly regulated and ordinary people are punished harsher than corporate so I really think techno-anarchism deserves a lot more attention (not saying anarchism itself doesn't) I see a lot of people here are more knowledgeable than me so don't take my word so seriously, maybe I shouldn't be expressing my idiot thoughts on it, or maybe just embrace it and ask regardless of any shame I might get.

I'm not trying to be mean to anyone, just genuinely wanted to discuss with whoever is willing to chip in on the topic.

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 hours ago (2 children)

The Internet is not an example of anarchy, of course. It's nothing without its backbone cables built with participation of governments and enormous corporations and treated as strategic assets. It's no more anarchist than sea ports. There was a sprinkle of anarchy there in its transient years from an elitarian scientific thing to a common medium. That was not stable. Nothing anarchist can be stable in a system of dominating hierarchy.

I admit it was easy to buy into this fairy tale when I was a kid. In 2006 it seemed that the humanity is one step from becoming free and, well, humane.

You're missing the point of the example. I'm not pushing techno-libertarian utopianism here. I'm not even talking about what the internet does, I'm talking about what it is: A globe-spanning megaproject that connects (nearly?) every country, and is used by a full 2/3rds of existing humans. And it was made without a supreme central authority forcing everyone to cooperate in its creation and maintenance. ARPANET was created by the US, but no one forced the Russians or the Chinese to adopt the IP protocol on their computers and connect to their neighbors.

This is important because a super common anti-anarchist talking point is that people won't cooperate (at least not at scale) unless an overarching authority forces them to. The existence of the internet demolishes that argument. It would be fundamentally impossible if that talking point were true.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 hour ago

It's funny because China (and a number of countries including the US, but particularly China) doesn't really like how open and decentralized the Internet is. If the Chinese government had their way it would not look like this, but somehow they were pushed to join in.

[–] rottingleaf 1 points 2 hours ago

ARPANET was created by the US, but no one forced the Russians or the Chinese to adopt the IP protocol on their computers and connect to their neighbors.

Also no one forced people to adapt railway gauge or PSTN standards.

This is important because a super common anti-anarchist talking point is that people won’t cooperate (at least not at scale) unless an overarching authority forces them to. The existence of the internet demolishes that argument. It would be fundamentally impossible if that talking point were true.

I can't agree. It's the lower authorities submitting to the higher authority. That happens. A small group of authorities is close to one. In fact none are monolithic.