Wouldn't anarchy just re-create capitalism, totally meritocratic capitalism?

[Havet]

Yup, and withholding food from a hungry person to get a chair cheap is manipulating someone through action or inaction. Please read your arguments carefully.

It would be in monopoly, if the person had all the food., therefore there would be coercion. But there isn't any monopoly, so the chair maker can find a better deal somewhere else.

What does 'indirectly' mean? The ones who knew but did nothing, like the British and American governments who refused to bomb the railway lines? Are they responsible? What about the train drivers? Are they responsible? What about the railway engineers? Are they responsible? What about the people who make the sandwiches that the train drivers had for lunch? What about the cobbler who mended the shoes of the man who went to work at the bakery that made the bread that the bus driver who took the railway engineer to work, who fixed the points so that the next day a train taking 1,000 people to Auschwitz could go through? Who exactly is responsible?

The ones who should be held responsible are the ones that ACTIVELY (aka directly) killed and enslaved those people. Those that acted indirectly are, for example, the people who led to the arrest of some jews and that denounced them, or that offered their own resources to help track the jews (money, food). Some people even pretended to befriend with jews so as to trap them more easily. Clearly this is wrong.

Now people who did nothing had no moral obligation towards others. The british and american governments are not responsible for the death of the jews, even though they could have prevented them. They are not the ones who wished them to be killed, and acted to make it happen. Their INACTION doesn't count as ACTION, and therefore fails to prove how they were directly or indirectly responsible for their murder.

The train drivers (im assumign the ones who took the jews into concentration camps) are indirectly responsble. They allowed their death to happen. They contributed to it. And the railways engineers who specifically made the lines and the trains to transport the jews, knowing they will be killed, are also accountable. But not the others who didn't know. If people know, or have the resources to know they are doing harm, then they are indirectly suporting the actions.

Not everyone in Americca speaks English. So, "Americans don't speak English" is a reasonable statement in your book is it?

No, but it would be a reasonable statement in your book. It is you who like to use flawed concepts that do not describe human action in an optimum way. Since not everyone in america speak english, then the sentence "AMERICAN'S DON'T SPEAK ENGLISH" is as flawed as the sentence "AMERICANS SPEAK ENGLISH". Therefore we must abandon that word to better describe what is happening: X% americans speak english and Y% of americans speak spanish and Z% of americans speak portuguese and so on.

Yeah, everyone has in some ways contributed to everything.

A bloke called Tony dropped a fag packet on the street. He made the world a slightly different place. A woman called Maureen led her children across the road at a particular time, meaning that the bus slowed down instead of running the lights and knocking over a chap called Sean, on his way to a conference about how to make internet connections work better. Trevor, the old man down the road, has been personally responsible for turning at least 8 young children turning from a potential life of crime. In the future, more than 2,000 people in his neighbourhood will be spared petty crime because of it...

Not EVERYONE contributed to it. You can't judge actions by all the little things that happened to support it, but for the actually intended effort done at making it. This is why a person who makes the food an engineer will eat is NOT responsible for the contruction of the building that follows.

Yes; and Dr Asid, who has just pioneered a new form of cancer treatment, did it through the support work of 35 people in the labs, who themselves were trained by 600 other people over the years, in statistics and bio-chemistry and a whole host of other disciplines; they were transported over the three years of the project by more than 3,000 transport workers, their workplaces were cleaned by 70 ancilliary staff, the supplies (made in 35 different factories employing 27,000 staff) were brought by 800 delivery workers whose vehicles were built and serviced by more than 3,000 staff, the results were announced over time in 60 magazines (combined staff 18,000 people) and on more than 600 websites (12,000 regular contributors), the computers at the lab were serviced by the IT department of 40 people, built by 700 more, the software they used was written by 40 different companies employing more than 160,000; and after all this, if his life was just work, and transport to and from work, DR Asid would be dead because he hasn't eaten anything. And neither has anyone else involved.

The 1.2 million food production (farming, processing, cooking, catering staff, food retailers, and the transport and support staff for all these, etc) workers and family support (his wife making the dinner etc) have all contributed to this process. So; while Dr Asid may be the name on the front of Scientific American, without the work of all these 1.5 million other people, he wouldn't have been able to do his job.

"For the want of a nail, a shoe was lost; for the want of a shoe, a horse was lost; for the want of a horse, a rider was lost; for the want of a rider, a message was lost; for the want of a message, the battle was lost; and all for the want of a nail" (I quote from memory).

And yet, you insist that in wars, nails are not important - at times you even seem to claim there are no nails, or at least no processes leading from nails, merely riders, who are independent of anything else. You are, how can I put this, "wrong" I think is the word I'm looking for.

You can't judge actions by all the little things that happened to support it, but for the actually intended effort done at making it. This is why a person who makes the food an engineer will eat is NOT responsible for the contruction of the building that follows.

[Outinleftfield]

Okay, a hypothetical situation for the anarchists among us to mull over.

In this anarchist society a farmer falls ill, he begs a Doctor to treat him, sensing an opportunity the Doctor says, "Yeah, of course, but its going to cost you your farm, your entire farm's produce and your farmhouse". This farmer can either die or agree to the Doctor's terms, the Doctor becomes rich doing this over and over again.

He and the other Doctors agree not to teach anyone other than their own sons and daughters the medical profession, to ensure you end up with a system of ultra-wealthy Doctors, who in addition to inheriting all that their parents have earned 'exploiting' sick people are able to do the same. This goes on for five or six generations and you end up with the Rockefellers and Oppenheimers of your new society.

How do you stop this system arising?

Even if the doctors did try to do this who would enforce their property rights? I assume that if we have an anarchist society most people agree with the basic principles of anarchism, so most people would see the doctors exploitation of the farmer as illegitimate and the farmer would be free not to give the doctor any of his property and if the doctor tried to enforce his 'property rights' other anarchists would help the farmer defend himself and his labor from the doctor.

Furthermore how are the doctors going to make sure all the doctors in the country are on the same page? What if some doctors think this idea is wrong (which admit it would inevitably happen)?

And out of interest, without a government to intervene won't people with guns and bombs and grenades and the rest of it just march in and take over other people's property. If you think buying property fair and square is theft, which you clearly have indicated that you do, wouldn't this be 10 times worse?

Do you think people who don't commit crimes because of harm that could come to them from the government care whether it's the government that's doing it? As long as society responds to violent crime in some way it will be dealt with. I doubt in an anarchist people are just going to sit back and let people run around taking other people's labor like they do in capitalism. People will organize and defend themselves.

[Havet]

Even if the doctors did try to do this who would enforce their property rights? I assume that if we have an anarchist society most people agree with the basic principles of anarchism, so most people would see the doctors exploitation of the farmer as illegitimate and the farmer would be free not to give the doctor any of his property and if the doctor tried to enforce his 'property rights' other anarchists would help the farmer defend himself and his labor from the doctor.

Furthermore how are the doctors going to make sure all the doctors in the country are on the same page? What if some doctors think this idea is wrong (which admit it would inevitably happen)?



Do you think people who don't commit crimes because of harm that could come to them from the government care whether it's the government that's doing it? As long as society responds to violent crime in some way it will be dealt with. I doubt in an anarchist people are just going to sit back and let people run around taking other people's labor like they do in capitalism. People will organize and defend themselves.

good post, although i wouldnt bother, he's banned already...