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Why does everyone think the Anarchists are so great?

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Sun, 2014-09-28 16:00
#1
Kavlrya Kavlrya's picture
Why does everyone think the Anarchists are so great?
They're inherently bound to ad-hoc construction projects (Their greatest undertakings are holding Fissure and building Locus), they are entirely dependent on the military support of the Commonwealth and the Jovian Republic is their unofficial military ally (As they will gladly shoot down any PC invasion fleet headed out to the Trojans...) By all means, it would appear as if the Commonwealth has left them alone *because* they are so utterly useless, not due to some hugely egalitarian instinct!
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Sun, 2014-09-28 16:24
ORCACommander ORCACommander's picture
*plays Sympathy for the Devil
*plays Sympathy for the Devil* Simply put the people identify with the anarchists through their own need for escapism. the anarchs are so unbound and answer only to their peers and only rarely then. They realize they are all in this together so they treat each other fairly. The ability to work your own hours and then pursue your dreams as you see fit appeals t a lot of people in this generation. personally i do not care for them much. they lack drive and direction. and the commonwealth while mostly great has its own set of social problems i would prefer to stay clear of. Also when the alternative is to be a literal wage slave or operate under practically no social freedom in LLA it is no wonder people turn to the anarchs. much like how romanticized pirates were in Pirates of the Caribbean
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Sun, 2014-09-28 16:41
Kavlrya Kavlrya's picture
I'd rather be a Titanian
The same access to goods in a structured environment where you have the potential to do *great* things. Oh, and they *also* give you a free biomorph as you are given citizenship. :-)
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Sun, 2014-09-28 16:54
ORCACommander ORCACommander's picture
stifling political
stifling political correctness, reputation economy, mandatory voting
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Sun, 2014-09-28 17:16
MAD Crab MAD Crab's picture
ORCACommander wrote:stifling
ORCACommander wrote:
stifling political correctness, reputation economy, mandatory voting
The Political Correctness would be annoying, but is fixable. The economy is not strictly rep based, as there are Kronar. And listing mandatory voting as a downside is kind of laughable in setting. YOU don't vote on everything, your muse would. You might specify a handful of issues that you care about, and your muse would use its knowledge of you to choose on everything else. Easy direct democracy, probably the only way we could ever have it.
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Sun, 2014-09-28 17:22
Kavlrya Kavlrya's picture
But, you see...
I am Scandinavian. Janteloven is like second nature to me.
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Sun, 2014-09-28 17:25
ORCACommander ORCACommander's picture
way i read the kronar was
way i read the kronar was that is was only movable within a company internally as a better way to properly track invenotry and finances. I don't think rimward went into titanian voting laws but since they consider muses people and most places have laws against vote by proxy it would have to be you getting up at the odd hour of the morning and placing a vote manually and i doubt they allow an automation scripts as a safeguard against voter fraud. this is why i prefer republics. once every few years i make a decision on which corrupt dimwitt to hold the full time position of dealing governing bullshit while I plan my next coronal freefalling trip :P
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Sun, 2014-09-28 17:37
MAD Crab MAD Crab's picture
There's no vote by proxy now,
There's no vote by proxy now, but you'd have to let people vote by muse. It is literally the only way the system could work at all. It's not a question of 'odd hours of the night,' with any kind of sizable population there would never be enough time to vote on everything. Kronar is money you get that you invest into other titanian microcorps. It's not a company internal thing, it's a way of letting the population choose what they want their individual 'extra money' to go towards.
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Sun, 2014-09-28 17:43
UnitOmega UnitOmega's picture
I mean, it's pretty self
I mean, it's pretty self explanatory for some people. Anarchists in the setting (who are technically specifically anarchocommunist or anarchocollectivist. Anarchy is just a state of having no strict hierarchical state) exemplify the virtues of Autonomy very well, that all entities should self-determinate and be able to work, learn, grow and associate as they will. But to survive, they must also cooperate when needed. Technically, not even the Titanians offer this, as they still have a large scale system of structures, even if they're all powered directly by the people. Anarchists also decry capital and money, and operate based on the weight of communal reputation and just free giving to handle things beyond the basic living. It's a great ideal that works if everyone involved wants in, and requires a certain kind of culture to employ properly. You have stated you come from probably a different cultural background than many Anarchists are drawn. To you, the system utilized by the Titanians seems self-explanatory as the optimal, but other individuals and even cultures will have a different priority on values. Me, myself, I've always interpreted Anarchists as very self-righteous and sometimes preachy, a little on the high horse because they technically have the moral high-ground or right-of-way. But I personally lean toward the classical libertarian type of Anarchy and would prefer an Extropian Ancap system for my own more optimal society (though if I had to pick another one, Titan seems alright. Direct democracy is the way to go if you're going to seek that kind of autonomist system), maybe leaning more Utilitarian.
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H-Rep: An EP Homebrew Blog http://ephrep.blogspot.com/
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Mon, 2014-09-29 05:28
Smokeskin Smokeskin's picture
Titan is absolutely not
Titan is absolutely not anarchist. They're in the Autonomist Alliance, but they're very much statist.
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Mon, 2014-09-29 06:39
ShadowDragon8685 ShadowDragon8685's picture
Titan is basically the "I
Titan is basically the "I like the Alliance's ideals, but I can't handle living without a government to look out for me with @-rep blinds laws if I fuck up royal and wind up a pariah" option. In fairness, that's not entirely a bad idea. When you're living amongst Scum or other forms of anarchist, you live entirely at the suffrage of you neighbors and habitat mates, and if you make yourself well and truly [i]persona non grata[/i], you're likely to be stripped of your morph and evicted from the habitat on a beam. I imagine it's not so easy to do that as just being a generally crabby bastard, as opposed to something massively fucked-up like being caught interrogating an illicitly-taken fork of somebody, or otherwise grossly violating someone's autonomy, but it [i]can[/i] happen through the accumulation of everyday rep pings if you are a very antisocial or asocial person who gets a shitton of pings and very few bumps, and don't contribute something fantastic and vital to the hab. On the other hand, Titan [i]is[/i] a hierarchy, and if the idea that anyone, even someone you voted for, can tell you what to do and will back it up with the force of law if you defy them makes you rage, it may not be for you. They also only consider you an adult at 25, and they expect three years of civic service of some form or another after that, so if that's not your thing, you might want to stay away. Plus, Titan has a [i]major[/i] samemorph problem, so if you're into morphological freedom... Well, it's not that Titan dislikes morphological freedom, it's just that they're very, very busy making as many morphs as fast as they can, so they're basically mass producing Hazers. Getting anything else probably takes the calling in of real favors.
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Skype and AIM names: Exactly the same as my forum name. [url=http://tinyurl.com/mfcapss]My EP Character Questionnaire[/url] [url=http://tinyurl.com/lbpsb93]Thread for my Questionnaire[/url] [url=http://tinyurl.com/obu5adp]The Five Orange Pips[/url]
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Mon, 2014-09-29 08:53
MAD Crab MAD Crab's picture
On the other hand, if you
On the other hand, if you dislike the idea of evey yahoo in the hab carrying around antitank weapons, vigilante justice, and an entirely directionless state, you might prefer Titan's social structure, police force, and regular voting and forward planning.
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Mon, 2014-09-29 12:01
Lilith Lilith's picture
Eh
Just give me a quiet place on the Brink/Belt where I can hang out and be chill.
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Mon, 2014-09-29 13:18
ShadowDragon8685 ShadowDragon8685's picture
MAD Crab wrote:On the other
MAD Crab wrote:
On the other hand, if you dislike the idea of evey yahoo in the hab carrying around antitank weapons, vigilante justice, and an entirely directionless state, you might prefer Titan's social structure, police force, and regular voting and forward planning.
That's the beauty of it. If everybody has equal access to weapons, nobody can establish a hierarchy of victim and victimizer - a well-armed society is a polite society, after all. And honestly, after the last few years, I can't really say that vigilantees could do much worse of a job than uniformed thugs, and sadly it seems that giving someone a uniform turns them [i]into[/i] a thug a distressingly large amount of the time - and worse, by putting a uniform and weapon on someone and empowering them to use violence against those whom they are ostensibly in a servile position, you turn them into a small 'in' group and Other the rest of their society. As for directionless, who should decide social direction, hmm? Oligarchs and businessmen, perhaps, those with the money to buy votes? Or perhaps you think that people are like children, and they need a strong, paternalistic force guiding them, for their own good, and thus are only competent enough to choose who shall be their Big Daddy, prefering to invest the power and the wheel of the ship of state in the hands of those who are, let's face it, the loud and charismatic, rather than by any measure the most competent.
—
Skype and AIM names: Exactly the same as my forum name. [url=http://tinyurl.com/mfcapss]My EP Character Questionnaire[/url] [url=http://tinyurl.com/lbpsb93]Thread for my Questionnaire[/url] [url=http://tinyurl.com/obu5adp]The Five Orange Pips[/url]
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Mon, 2014-09-29 13:50
Erulastant Erulastant's picture
Perhaps he just appreciates
Perhaps he just appreciates Titan's ability to actually get shit done. Like producing enough morphs that all those infugees can have bodies again. Also, you're confusing a democracy with a republic again.
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You, too, were made by humans. The methods used were just cruder, imprecise. I guess that explains a lot.
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Mon, 2014-09-29 14:12
MAD Crab MAD Crab's picture
ShadowDragon8685 wrote:
ShadowDragon8685 wrote:
If everybody has equal access to weapons, nobody can establish a hierarchy of victim and victimizer - a well-armed society is a polite society, after all. And honestly, after the last few years, I can't really say that vigilantes could do much worse of a job than uniformed thugs, and sadly it seems that giving someone a uniform turns them [i]into[/i] a thug a distressingly large amount of the time - and worse, by putting a uniform and weapon on someone and empowering them to use violence against those whom they are ostensibly in a servile position, you turn them into a small 'in' group and Other the rest of their society. As for directionless, who should decide social direction, hmm? Oligarchs and businessmen, perhaps, those with the money to buy votes? Or perhaps you think that people are like children, and they need a strong, paternalistic force guiding them, for their own good, and thus are only competent enough to choose who shall be their Big Daddy, preferring to invest the power and the wheel of the ship of state in the hands of those who are, let's face it, the loud and charismatic, rather than by any measure the most competent.
Equal access to weapons just makes for a violent society. See violent crime in the US vs Canada or Britain. You end up in an arms race where everybody wants something more destructive. "A well armed society is a polite society" is pithy, but it's also wrong. Vigilantes vs corrupt police is a false dichotomy. Yeah, we all hate corrupt police. But I cannot see how a vigilante group would be better. They have -no- accountability instead of broken accountability. And if two vigilante groups butt heads, I imagine it would look a lot like a gang war. And since this is Titan we're talking about (you seem keep to forgetting) the direction would be a consensus among the population. It is a DIRECT DEMOCRACY. Votes are done by the population, not just representatives. Voting is mandatory and automatic. As I said before, muses are the only way such a system could work, and yet it seems to me like it might be the best possible system.
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Mon, 2014-09-29 14:16
Lilith Lilith's picture
Oh Crab
Thou'rt so wise and rational. Whatever are you doing on the internet?
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Mon, 2014-09-29 14:34
Nerathul Nerathul's picture
If I recall correctly,
If I recall correctly, Rimward state that it is not mandatory to vote on every single issue in the commonwealth, but all citizen are expected to at least keep current on several issues they have at heart. I seriously doubt that muses would vote on behalf of their owner as it remove the whole point of requiring people to be involved in politics and unless a person actually take time to inform themselves on the current issues' situation and the newest development or argument there is no way for them to be able to make an informed choice. A muse can't vote in the name of someone who is completely uninformed about the situation and if someone has taken the time to inform him/herself then it would probably take longer to get your muse to cast your vote than to just do it yourself thanks to mesh inserts.
—
In the sea without lees Standeth the bird of Hermes Eating his wings variable And maketh himself yet full stable
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Mon, 2014-09-29 14:51
ShadowDragon8685 ShadowDragon8685's picture
MAD Crab wrote:Equal access
MAD Crab wrote:
Equal access to weapons just makes for a violent society. See violent crime in the US vs Canada or Britain. You end up in an arms race where everybody wants something more destructive. "A well armed society is a polite society" is pithy, but it's also wrong.
Except that it isn't. Unequal access to firearms is the problem in the United States. Criminals can get guns dirt-easily, uniformly around the country, but in the places with the strictest gun laws, the violent crime is the worst. See also: Washington, D.C., where guns are outright forbidden unless you're a cop or a fed, and Virginia, right across the river. One bridge separates them, but in Virginny, violent crime is very low, because the barriers to ordinary citizens owning and carrying weapons are low. And where we have no barriers whatsoever to concealed carry, violent crime takes a complete nose-dive. Get this through your head: Criminals are opportunistic. They don't want a shoot-out any more than a tiger wants a life-or-death brawl with a cornered gazelle. The mafia are among the biggest financial supporters of gun-control politicians, because - to paraphrase [i]a mafia boss himself,[/i] "I'm a crook. I'm always gonna have a gun. What I don't want is joe blow having a gun that he can then use against me and my gun. I want to have a gun, and him to have nothing." Also, the reasons for most crime are simply nonexistant in an anarchist society, and the omnipresence of souveilance means that the likelihood of being seen is through the roof. Combine those two, and virtually all offenses against others are going to disappear, because people are not economically pressured to steal, and if they attack someone, they'll almost certainly be set upon immediately by the other inhabitants looking to bring them to heel.
Quote:
Vigilantes vs corrupt police is a false dichotomy. Yeah, we all hate corrupt police. But I cannot see how a vigilante group would be better. They have -no- accountability instead of broken accountability. And if two vigilante groups butt heads, I imagine it would look a lot like a gang war.
Of course they have accountability - an Anarcho-Collectivist, even a Scummer, is ultimately accountable to their habmates and to the entirety of the Autonomist Alliance. The Circle-@ List is the ultimate accountability to an anarchist, and if someone goes off the deep end and starts dispensing shredder fire full-auto because someone pops someone else, their @-Rep is going to take a nose-dive. They'll become a pariah, outcast, and most likely will be dealt with in turn by the rest of their habitat turning on them and forcibly restraining them, and giving them the choice of serious time with a therapist in simulspace, or exile.
Quote:
And since this is Titan we're talking about (you seem keep to forgetting) the direction would be a consensus among the population. It is a DIRECT DEMOCRACY. Votes are done by the population, not just representatives. Voting is mandatory and automatic. As I said before, muses are the only way such a system could work, and yet it seems to me like it might be the best possible system.
If it's such a direct democracy, why are there any elected officials at all? Wake up and smell the hierarchy, they're there to assert control when the public wants something that doesn't suit them. If Titan is [i]sooooo[/i] open, why do they have like, two dozen microcorps formed in the early days out of surviving Scandanavian business and political elites who are [b]exempt from Titan's vaunted transparancy![/b] Sure, public pressure may be a huge deal on Titan, and if I had to pick a hierarchy to live in, any hierarchy, it would win out over even the United Federation of Planets, but they still have a ruling elite who make decisions [i]for[/i] the people, not necessarily with the consent [i]of[/i] those people re: those decisions! Did the Titanian public vote to allow Pathfinder to break off and become an inner-system style Hypercorp? No, they didn't. Did the Titanian public vote to conduct technological digs on an ice moon that some TITAN asswipe tried to turn into a matroiska brain? No, they didn't.
—
Skype and AIM names: Exactly the same as my forum name. [url=http://tinyurl.com/mfcapss]My EP Character Questionnaire[/url] [url=http://tinyurl.com/lbpsb93]Thread for my Questionnaire[/url] [url=http://tinyurl.com/obu5adp]The Five Orange Pips[/url]
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Mon, 2014-09-29 14:58
Erulastant Erulastant's picture
Well, you can say "Hey muse,
Well, you can say "Hey muse, vote 'yes' for me on any vote to increase university funding or morph production, to rework the hab's electric grid to that new more efficient design, and any effective-looking defense plans that involve less than a 1% total tax hike for me. Notify me if there are any conflicts." The idea is that you tell your muse (Or it learns through observation) how to vote on different issues and the muse handles reading the legalese of individual proposals and casting the actual votes.
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You, too, were made by humans. The methods used were just cruder, imprecise. I guess that explains a lot.
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Mon, 2014-09-29 15:57
ShadowDragon8685 ShadowDragon8685's picture
And quite honestly, there's
And quite honestly, there's no way to [i]stop[/i] people from empowering their muse to vote for them, short of [i]invasive[/i] mesh hacking/inserts/a monitor module. You vote through the Mesh. You access the Mesh through your Mesh Inserts, on which your Muse lives and has full access to.
—
Skype and AIM names: Exactly the same as my forum name. [url=http://tinyurl.com/mfcapss]My EP Character Questionnaire[/url] [url=http://tinyurl.com/lbpsb93]Thread for my Questionnaire[/url] [url=http://tinyurl.com/obu5adp]The Five Orange Pips[/url]
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Mon, 2014-09-29 18:02
Smokeskin Smokeskin's picture
MAD Crab wrote:
MAD Crab wrote:
Equal access to weapons just makes for a violent society. See violent crime in the US vs Canada or Britain. You end up in an arms race where everybody wants something more destructive. "A well armed society is a polite society" is pithy, but it's also wrong.
Americans generally aren't armed. And most of the violent crime is state-generated through drug laws. Without drug laws, drug dealers are probably going to be fighting over turf as much as liquor stores.
MAD Crab wrote:
Vigilantes vs corrupt police is a false dichotomy. Yeah, we all hate corrupt police. But I cannot see how a vigilante group would be better.
The problem isn't just corrupt police. The law-abiding police is a much bigger issue. The war on drugs is a major source of violence, not just between gangs and because of all the secondary crime from drug addicts having to support their habit, but also all the innocent people getting locked up for "victimless crimes". There's a lot of other similar legal violence committed by the police, and then there's the enormous protection racket they're enforcing.
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Mon, 2014-09-29 20:56
MAD Crab MAD Crab's picture
Somalia isn't polite. The
Somalia isn't polite. The middle east is not polite. When everybody's got AK47s, anger seems to boil over so much easier. That some people will downvote you is not a huge deterrent once you pull the trigger. I'm not going to argue that any further. We disagree, that's fine. For the police, the problems we have here are completely beside the point. I ask again, are vigilantes better? Say a group of them decide to start the war on drugs back up. Maybe they're even a majority on their hab! Oh look, oppression. Then the other side starts fighting back. Look, gang war! Which is what I said to start.
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Mon, 2014-09-29 21:27
UnitOmega UnitOmega's picture
See, this kind of discussion
See, this kind of discussion was what I was talking about earlier involving different values in society and that anarchy relies on voluntarism. MAD Crab raises some good points about lack of codified authority. The whole point of autonomy is that you do whatever you want so long as you're not messing with somebody's agency. Technically, there is no preventative force in place, other than just general balance of power. There is a reactive force in place, the idea that everyone else is likely armed or as easily armed as you, and if you start something, you're going to take a social hit. To some, this might not be a huge downside, and y'know, transhuman future, organic damage isn't a huge deal, to lots of people. If your values are in line with the Anarchist, you think "well, obviously, it's a reputation economy. Antisocial behaviors are like drawing all your money from the bank and throwing it in a lake", and it's a terrible idea that no rational actors (and many irrational actors) would want to take. But if someone acts based on non-Anarchist priorities, they could probably abuse some things about the system. Just as there are some obvious gaps in the Titanian's practical applications, even if their methodology is pretty sound. On the converse, it's also a false comparison to technically call Anarchist militias vigilantism. Assuming they're all acting in accordance to the autonomist style (and there's not a reason to assume the community at large wouldn't), surveillance picks up a "crime" against the community or a citizen in it, then someone hops on, says they're forming a defensive council or collective to solve the immediate issue. Reputable people with necessary skills are gathered as an effectively legitimate body of "law" enforcement, they bag the guy and the community extracts its recompense, whatever that is. It's impossible to build a perfect society, at least for the transhumans depicted by EP. If you're of that mindset, the Anarchists have a lot of advantages which outweigh disadvantages. (I'm probably going to steal the cliff-notes version of this discussion for any time I need to describe an in-universe argument over the @-list between people supporting various branches of Autonomy).
—
H-Rep: An EP Homebrew Blog http://ephrep.blogspot.com/
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Mon, 2014-09-29 22:16
MAD Crab MAD Crab's picture
Every system works if
Every system works if everybody in it follows the principles. It's the failure modes that are interesting. I'm not so against the anarchists as maybe this discussion makes me sound, but I very much believe that they are inherently unstable. Eventually civil war will break out and they'll devolve into another system.
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Tue, 2014-09-30 00:24
branford branford's picture
Erulastant wrote:Perhaps he
Erulastant wrote:
Perhaps he just appreciates Titan's ability to actually get shit done. Like producing enough morphs that all those infugees can have bodies again. Also, you're confusing a democracy with a republic again.
I would also note that the state-loving Titanians possess the only organized and effective standing military in the Autonomous Alliance. Without the Commonwealth's active defensive military support, anarchists habitats would mostly only exist at the pleasure and discretion of the PC or Jovians.
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Tue, 2014-09-30 02:56
Smokeskin Smokeskin's picture
MAD Crab wrote:Somalia isn't
MAD Crab wrote:
Somalia isn't polite. The middle east is not polite. When everybody's got AK47s, anger seems to boil over so much easier. That some people will downvote you is not a huge deterrent once you pull the trigger. I'm not going to argue that any further. We disagree, that's fine.
Those countries you speak of - are you saying they do well when they have a state? With democracy? It is my impression that they fail miserably, and even worse so with a state. No one is saying that everything is perfect without a state, but that for any given population a state will give worse results. I don't know why people always mention Somalia as a failed anarchy. While without government it was doing significantly better than it was with government, and it outperformed pretty much all other countries in the region on growth, improvement in health care and education, etc.
MAD Crab wrote:
For the police, the problems we have here are completely beside the point. I ask again, are vigilantes better? Say a group of them decide to start the war on drugs back up. Maybe they're even a majority on their hab! Oh look, oppression. Then the other side starts fighting back. Look, gang war! Which is what I said to start.
The people who decide to start the war on drugs back up will have several problems: They don't have a monopoly on violence. They can't fund their efforts with taxes robbed from everyone, even those that don't support them. They will face repercussions from everyone else because they're initiating aggression. Such a group of vigilantes are nothing but a criminal organization, and they will face all the same opposition as any other group of criminals, which means they're not going to get off the ground. The barrier of entry for oppressive ideas are simply much higher in a stateless society. Of course, oppression can still happen, it's just much harder to pull off as it takes a MUCH wider support in the population than with a state.
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Tue, 2014-09-30 03:03
Smokeskin Smokeskin's picture
MAD Crab wrote:Every system
MAD Crab wrote:
Every system works if everybody in it follows the principles. It's the failure modes that are interesting. I'm not so against the anarchists as maybe this discussion makes me sound, but I very much believe that they are inherently unstable. Eventually civil war will break out and they'll devolve into another system.
It's certainly true that statism is an ever present threat. Both invasion and the desire in the population to rule over others and rob their money would be constant problems.
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Tue, 2014-09-30 05:59
Lorsa Lorsa's picture
On topic
While I would love to debate the reasons for having a state, vigilante justice, and especially how a state (read monopoly on violence) is a requirement for capitalism, I think that is best done in another thread. This one is supposed to answer the question of why everyone loves the anarchists. The simple answer is of course that everyone does NOT think the anarchists are so great. Quite a few people on this forum seem to be of the opinion that they are indeed not desireable, or even working at all. My answer is simple. Freedom is a very powerful word for many people, and is something many are striving for. The anarcho-collectivists/communists/syndicalists are thus attractive because they give you both negative [i]and[/i] positive liberty, unlike many other systems which only focuses on the negative liberty. It's the ultimate form of freedom, so it really isn't, to me, very difficult to understand why people would think it's great. On an emotional level, most people want liberty. While I believe many might think the anarchists are great BUT wouldn't work in reality, remember that this is a roleplaying game. Pretending is what we (roleplayers) are best at, and so it can be nice to pretend for a while that anarchism indeed [i]would[/i] work. A lot of people are unhappy with the world as it is, or their place in it, and so imagining a more utopian society is alluring. There are also certain, very important, areas that really benefit from an AnCol way of thinking. I am here mainly thinking about scientific research. The more free and open knowledge and innovation is, the easier it is for more people to get involved and add to it, thus further increasing the amount of knolwedge in the world. As I believe history has shown us, science is the best tool for progress, and a free, open society is a lot more efficient in this regard. This may be yet another thing that attracts people to the anarchists in the EP, especially as many people here seem to be quite educated, perhaps having experienced first hand how many things in our current system is stifling to intellectual growth.
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Lorsa is a Forum moderator [color=red]Red text is for moderator stuff[/color]
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Tue, 2014-09-30 07:18
Smokeskin Smokeskin's picture
Lorsa wrote:
Lorsa wrote:
My answer is simple. Freedom is a very powerful word for many people, and is something many are striving for. The anarcho-collectivists/communists/syndicalists are thus attractive because they give you both negative [i]and[/i] positive liberty, unlike many other systems which only focuses on the negative liberty. It's the ultimate form of freedom, so it really isn't, to me, very difficult to understand why people would think it's great. On an emotional level, most people want liberty. While I believe many might think the anarchists are great BUT wouldn't work in reality, remember that this is a roleplaying game. Pretending is what we (roleplayers) are best at, and so it can be nice to pretend for a while that anarchism indeed [i]would[/i] work. A lot of people are unhappy with the world as it is, or their place in it, and so imagining a more utopian society is alluring. There are also certain, very important, areas that really benefit from an AnCol way of thinking. I am here mainly thinking about scientific research. The more free and open knowledge and innovation is, the easier it is for more people to get involved and add to it, thus further increasing the amount of knolwedge in the world. As I believe history has shown us, science is the best tool for progress, and a free, open society is a lot more efficient in this regard. This may be yet another thing that attracts people to the anarchists in the EP, especially as many people here seem to be quite educated, perhaps having experienced first hand how many things in our current system is stifling to intellectual growth.
The problem with positive liberties have always been that they tend to infringe on other people's negative liberties. EP (and likely our future) has a technological fix for this - fabbers, robotics and AI gives you the means to give everyone what they need without having to enslave the entire population towards that purpose as the state socialists had to in recent times. For all its pleasantness AnCol is very poor at dealing with scarcity imo, but scarcity is just much less of a problem in EP.
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Tue, 2014-09-30 07:58
Kavlrya Kavlrya's picture
Re: Scarcity
Scarcity isn't really an important factor in EP, and indeed, the new economy is giving the transitional economy a run for its money, as the first real competitor to capitalism. My issue with AnCol has more to do with the possible scale of projects and the lack of a standing army. The Commonwealth is probably one of the more significant polities with respect to scientific innovation in the Sol system.
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Tue, 2014-09-30 08:22
Lorsa Lorsa's picture
Smokeskin wrote:The problem
Smokeskin wrote:
The problem with positive liberties have always been that they tend to infringe on other people's negative liberties. EP (and likely our future) has a technological fix for this - fabbers, robotics and AI gives you the means to give everyone what they need without having to enslave the entire population towards that purpose as the state socialists had to in recent times. For all its pleasantness AnCol is very poor at dealing with scarcity imo, but scarcity is just much less of a problem in EP.
I would argue that the problem with negative liberties have always been that they tend to infringe on other people's positive liberties. A high focus on negative liberty only works well, in my opinion, when you have high availability of free land, such as the case was in the 19th century USA (discounting the native americans here, as history often does). As soon as there is a scarcity of land, the positive liberty of everyone who is not already a landowner plummets to depths so far below those that [i]do[/i] have land that in order to provide equality of liberty, the negative liberties of the landowners needs to be infringed. As for scarcity of goods, I would argue we already live in a post-scarcity society. We just need to realise it.
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Tue, 2014-09-30 09:59
LatwPIAT LatwPIAT's picture
ShadowDragon8685 wrote:MAD
ShadowDragon8685 wrote:
MAD Crab wrote:
Equal access to weapons just makes for a violent society. See violent crime in the US vs Canada or Britain. You end up in an arms race where everybody wants something more destructive. "A well armed society is a polite society" is pithy, but it's also wrong.
Except that it isn't. Unequal access to firearms is the problem in the United States. Criminals can get guns dirt-easily, uniformly around the country, but in the places with the strictest gun laws, the violent crime is the worst. See also: Washington, D.C., where guns are outright forbidden unless you're a cop or a fed, and Virginia, right across the river. One bridge separates them, but in Virginny, violent crime is very low, because the barriers to ordinary citizens owning and carrying weapons are low. And where we have no barriers whatsoever to concealed carry, violent crime takes a complete nose-dive.
The rate of gun deaths and gun suicides are proportional to the rate of gun ownership with a strong correlation. The more guns a society has, the more likely a person is to be killed by a gun. This includes both gun suicide (which has a lowered opportunity cost when you have easy access to guns), and non-suicides (cause by accidental or purposeful shootings). When more people own guns in a society, more people die from being shot. Within the US, this is a fact supported by [url=http://ajph.aphapublications.org/doi/abs/10.2105/AJPH.2013.301409?journa..., and it can be seen in Australia, where after gun control was enacted in 1996, the death-by-gun rate dropped by a third, and there have been no mass shootings since 1996. (there were about once each year prior to the 1996 gun control act).
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Tue, 2014-09-30 11:12
Smokeskin Smokeskin's picture
Lorsa wrote:Smokeskin wrote
Lorsa wrote:
Smokeskin wrote:
The problem with positive liberties have always been that they tend to infringe on other people's negative liberties. EP (and likely our future) has a technological fix for this - fabbers, robotics and AI gives you the means to give everyone what they need without having to enslave the entire population towards that purpose as the state socialists had to in recent times. For all its pleasantness AnCol is very poor at dealing with scarcity imo, but scarcity is just much less of a problem in EP.
I would argue that the problem with negative liberties have always been that they tend to infringe on other people's positive liberties. A high focus on negative liberty only works well, in my opinion, when you have high availability of free land, such as the case was in the 19th century USA (discounting the native americans here, as history often does). As soon as there is a scarcity of land, the positive liberty of everyone who is not already a landowner plummets to depths so far below those that [i]do[/i] have land that in order to provide equality of liberty, the negative liberties of the landowners needs to be infringed.
You make armed robbery sound so romantic ;) I think we agree that negative and positive liberties are at odds with eachother. We value them differently - but that's a political discussion. (Btw, I don't think people should plummet to depths of poverty - just that there are ways to address that while respecting people's negative liberties, and that there are huge costs to breaking negative liberties that needs to go in the equation too.)
Quote:
As for scarcity of goods, I would argue we already live in a post-scarcity society. We just need to realise it.
But we can agree that the future will be even less scarce? I agree that there doesn't need to be poverty in the world at present, but there's still a huge amount of boring work needed to keep society ticking. That work requirement isn't there in EP so AnCol can work, but currently we need either the incentives of capitalism or the coercion of socialism, don't we?
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Tue, 2014-09-30 11:20
Kavlrya Kavlrya's picture
...
Would you kindly define 'coercion'?
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Tue, 2014-09-30 11:31
Smokeskin Smokeskin's picture
LatwPIAT wrote
LatwPIAT wrote:
ShadowDragon8685 wrote:
MAD Crab wrote:
Equal access to weapons just makes for a violent society. See violent crime in the US vs Canada or Britain. You end up in an arms race where everybody wants something more destructive. "A well armed society is a polite society" is pithy, but it's also wrong.
Except that it isn't. Unequal access to firearms is the problem in the United States. Criminals can get guns dirt-easily, uniformly around the country, but in the places with the strictest gun laws, the violent crime is the worst. See also: Washington, D.C., where guns are outright forbidden unless you're a cop or a fed, and Virginia, right across the river. One bridge separates them, but in Virginny, violent crime is very low, because the barriers to ordinary citizens owning and carrying weapons are low. And where we have no barriers whatsoever to concealed carry, violent crime takes a complete nose-dive.
The rate of gun deaths and gun suicides are proportional to the rate of gun ownership with a strong correlation. The more guns a society has, the more likely a person is to be killed by a gun. This includes both gun suicide (which has a lowered opportunity cost when you have easy access to guns), and non-suicides (cause by accidental or purposeful shootings). When more people own guns in a society, more people die from being shot. Within the US, this is a fact supported by [url=http://ajph.aphapublications.org/doi/abs/10.2105/AJPH.2013.301409?journa..., and it can be seen in Australia, where after gun control was enacted in 1996, the death-by-gun rate dropped by a third, and there have been no mass shootings since 1996. (there were about once each year prior to the 1996 gun control act).
I think you're misinterpreting the studies and their implications. ShadowDragon is comparing violent crime to gun laws, which is reasonable. You're comparing gun deaths to gun ownership. Obviously gun deaths go hand in hand with gun ownership, but if total violent crime drops, then that's a good deal and gun ownership becomes a good idea, doesn't it?
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Tue, 2014-09-30 11:55
Lilith Lilith's picture
Smokeskin wrote:Obviously gun
Smokeskin wrote:
Obviously gun deaths go hand in hand with gun ownership, but if total violent crime drops, then that's a good deal and gun ownership becomes a good idea, doesn't it?
As someone who has once stared down the barrel of a loaded gun, I can politely say that I do not agree.
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Tue, 2014-09-30 13:08
Smokeskin Smokeskin's picture
Lilith wrote:Smokeskin wrote
Lilith wrote:
Smokeskin wrote:
Obviously gun deaths go hand in hand with gun ownership, but if total violent crime drops, then that's a good deal and gun ownership becomes a good idea, doesn't it?
As someone who has once stared down the barrel of a loaded gun, I can politely say that I do not agree.
I'm very sorry to hear that happened to you. But are you saying that if for example we could statistically trade 2 knife murders for 1 gun murder by allowing guns, we shouldn't do that?
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Tue, 2014-09-30 13:12
Smokeskin Smokeskin's picture
Kavlrya wrote:Would you
Kavlrya wrote:
Would you kindly define 'coercion'?
Like the dictionary :) If it is in regards to my comment on socialism, doesn't socialism force you to work for the state? You're not allowed to keep the fruits of your labor, that is state property to be redistributed.
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Tue, 2014-09-30 13:56
LatwPIAT LatwPIAT's picture
Smokeskin wrote:I think you
Personally, I'm not too fond of the anarchists. Certain authors and some fans seem to love them, but I found the lavish way in which they were given every advantage ever at no cost, complete with 20 pages of [i]Rimward[/i] telling me how great they are and have no substantial problems whatsoever, made them a dull polemic. A particularly noteworthy problem here is that anarchist space in EP is supremely dull; while the hypercorp Inner System sourcebook has plot hooks dripping from every page, the anarchist habitats tend to have all their problems solved by anarchism being the best thing ever and hypercorps being evil, so there's just less to do when there are anarchists around. They have a strong GMPC tendency - take Locus, for example, which is full of boring NPCs who are supposed to be skilled and awesome. I don't particularly care for anarchist superhackers or arms dealers or Magnus Ming and his special snowflake backstory as a Firewall proxy and superhacker scientist co-founder of the Titanian Commonwealth, NAC board member, TAU professor, and one of the most famous people in the Solar System. Characters like that are boring and add little to the setting. It feels like some childish attempt at fanfiction, where the good guys (the anarchists) are given all the virtues in the world because they're the good guys, and therefore can never fail, while the bad guys (capitalists) are loaded down with problems and stupidity because clearly nobody who's a capitalist could also be competent. It makes me hate the anarchists with the fury of a thousand suns out of sheer [i]spite[/i].
Smokeskin wrote:
I think you're misinterpreting the studies and their implications. ShadowDragon is comparing violent crime to gun laws, which is reasonable. You're comparing gun deaths to gun ownership. Obviously gun deaths go hand in hand with gun ownership, but if total violent crime drops, then that's a good deal and gun ownership becomes a good idea, doesn't it?
The rate of homicide is also proportional to gun ownership, as is the [url=http://www.numbeo.com/crime/indices_explained.jsp]crime index[/url]. A high rate of gun ownership seems to neither make people feel more safe, nor make people less likely to be murdered. Whatever violent crime a high rate of gun ownership is supposed to protect against, it sure isn't the kind of violent crime that kills people.
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Tue, 2014-09-30 14:04
Lilith Lilith's picture
Smokeskin wrote:I'm very
Smokeskin wrote:
I'm very sorry to hear that happened to you. But are you saying that if for example we could statistically trade 2 knife murders for 1 gun murder by allowing guns, we shouldn't do that?
That would assume that the nature of crimes is something akin to setting sliders in SimCity that we could adjust liberally, or some sort of ratio or graph that we could easily control by turning a dial. Sadly, I think we both know that reality doesn't work that way.
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Tue, 2014-09-30 14:23
ShadowDragon8685 ShadowDragon8685's picture
Lilith wrote:Smokeskin wrote
Lilith wrote:
Smokeskin wrote:
Obviously gun deaths go hand in hand with gun ownership, but if total violent crime drops, then that's a good deal and gun ownership becomes a good idea, doesn't it?
As someone who has once stared down the barrel of a loaded gun, I can politely say that I do not agree.
As someone who has been openly intimidated with a gun, I can politely say that my biggest fear with the situation was that police were, at best, 5 minutes away if they drove like demons and were relatively "nearby", and more likely 15-20, whereas I [i]could[/i] have had a gun in my possession available to use if the other guy got crazy with his, except that I didn't have one. So allow me to disagree with your disagreement, and [i]not[/i] politely.
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Tue, 2014-09-30 14:25
Smokeskin Smokeskin's picture
LatwPIAT wrote:Smokeskin
LatwPIAT wrote:
Smokeskin wrote:
I think you're misinterpreting the studies and their implications. ShadowDragon is comparing violent crime to gun laws, which is reasonable. You're comparing gun deaths to gun ownership. Obviously gun deaths go hand in hand with gun ownership, but if total violent crime drops, then that's a good deal and gun ownership becomes a good idea, doesn't it?
The rate of homicide is also proportional to gun ownership, as is the [url=http://www.numbeo.com/crime/indices_explained.jsp]crime index[/url]. A high rate of gun ownership seems to neither make people feel more safe, nor make people less likely to be murdered. Whatever violent crime a high rate of gun ownership is supposed to protect against, it sure isn't the kind of violent crime that kills people.
Now you're just making stuff up. Just by googling gun law crime relation I found for example this as the top two - both articles look at multiple studies: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/29/weekinreview/29liptak.html?pagewanted=... According to the study, published last year in The Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy, European nations with more guns had lower murder rates. As summarized in a brief filed by several criminologists and other scholars supporting the challenge to the Washington law, the seven nations with the most guns per capita had 1.2 murders annually for every 100,000 people. The rate in the nine nations with the fewest guns was 4.4. http://people.howstuffworks.com/strict-gun-laws-less-crime1.htm It appears to be the same picture throughout: studies show either less crime with more guns, or no correlation.
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Tue, 2014-09-30 14:37
Smokeskin Smokeskin's picture
Lilith wrote:Smokeskin wrote
Lilith wrote:
Smokeskin wrote:
I'm very sorry to hear that happened to you. But are you saying that if for example we could statistically trade 2 knife murders for 1 gun murder by allowing guns, we shouldn't do that?
That would assume that the nature of crimes is something akin to setting sliders in SimCity that we could adjust liberally, or some sort of ratio or graph that we could easily control by turning a dial. Sadly, I think we both know that reality doesn't work that way.
That was the argument being made for gun control though. Ban guns, crime drops. But the relation doesn't seem to work that way, though of course causation is tricky business with these things. But what I was saying was that we should look at gun laws/ownership in relationship to total crime (like ShadowDragon did), not just gun crime (like LATWPiat). My point is that nobody cares much if they're killed with a gun or a knife, which you seemed to disagree with?
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Tue, 2014-09-30 15:28
ORCACommander ORCACommander's picture
Ify ou guys want a gun debate
Ify ou guys want a gun debate break it off else where I can happily ignore it
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Tue, 2014-09-30 15:55
LatwPIAT LatwPIAT's picture
Smokeskin wrote:Now you're
Smokeskin wrote:
Now you're just making stuff up. Just by googling gun law crime relation I found for example this as the top two - both articles look at multiple studies: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/29/weekinreview/29liptak.html?pagewanted=... According to the study, published last year in The Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy, European nations with more guns had lower murder rates. As summarized in a brief filed by several criminologists and other scholars supporting the challenge to the Washington law, the seven nations with the most guns per capita had 1.2 murders annually for every 100,000 people. The rate in the nine nations with the fewest guns was 4.4. It appears to be the same picture throughout: studies show either less crime with more guns, or no correlation.
A New York Times article is clearly proof that I'm making stuff up. If you're going to accuse me of being actively dishonest, I suggest you gather more proof of my dishonesty than "a New York Times article contradicts me", because otherwise you're just pulling accusations out of your ass to discredit me.
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Tue, 2014-09-30 17:07
kindalas kindalas's picture
Moderation Time
[color=red]This thread is drifting off topic. [/color] [color=red]I very nearly closed the thread and issued official warnings. However I reconsidered because I don't think things have gone past the point of no return.[/color] [color=red]There are people in this thread who have deeply personal experiences as they relate to guns and violence and I don't think discussing those experiences has anything to do with Anarchists as it relates to Eclipse Phase.[/color] [color=red]If anyone wants to spin off guns as they relate to crimes or as they relate to negative (or positive) personal experiences they can do so in the off topic forum. [/color] [color=red]In this thread that avenue will get warnings.[/color] [color=red]Kindalas[/color]
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Tue, 2014-09-30 20:13
branford branford's picture
Lorsa wrote:While I would
Lorsa wrote:
While I would love to debate the reasons for having a state, vigilante justice, and especially how a state (read monopoly on violence) is a requirement for capitalism, I think that is best done in another thread. This one is supposed to answer the question of why everyone loves the anarchists. The simple answer is of course that everyone does NOT think the anarchists are so great. Quite a few people on this forum seem to be of the opinion that they are indeed not desireable, or even working at all. My answer is simple. Freedom is a very powerful word for many people, and is something many are striving for. The anarcho-collectivists/communists/syndicalists are thus attractive because they give you both negative [i]and[/i] positive liberty, unlike many other systems which only focuses on the negative liberty. It's the ultimate form of freedom, so it really isn't, to me, very difficult to understand why people would think it's great. On an emotional level, most people want liberty. While I believe many might think the anarchists are great BUT wouldn't work in reality, remember that this is a roleplaying game. Pretending is what we (roleplayers) are best at, and so it can be nice to pretend for a while that anarchism indeed [i]would[/i] work. A lot of people are unhappy with the world as it is, or their place in it, and so imagining a more utopian society is alluring. There are also certain, very important, areas that really benefit from an AnCol way of thinking. I am here mainly thinking about scientific research. The more free and open knowledge and innovation is, the easier it is for more people to get involved and add to it, thus further increasing the amount of knolwedge in the world. As I believe history has shown us, science is the best tool for progress, and a free, open society is a lot more efficient in this regard. This may be yet another thing that attracts people to the anarchists in the EP, especially as many people here seem to be quite educated, perhaps having experienced first hand how many things in our current system is stifling to intellectual growth.
I wholly agree that the Anarchists, and to a demonstrably lesser extent the Titanians, have appeal to some players of EP (not me) due to the escapism provided in an RPG, particularly where the anarchists have been, IMHO, idealized and romanticized by the game's authors. The setting's purportedly post-scarcity society also helps mitigate or entirely avoid many of the obvious pitfalls and risks of actual anarcho-collectivisim, no less in the outer reaches of our solar system. I also think that they are much preferred over the liberty-loving Extropian anarcho-capitalists (whose extreme capitalism in the setting is not hindered by the lack of a state and its monopoly on violence ;) ) because these capitalists, like the PC, Morningstar, LLA and Jovians, represent and recall contemporary society and culture, and its more "conservative" disposition at odds with the likely more progressive politics of the authors and many players. However, although I have no desire to debate the benefits of non-hierarchical collectivism, I do somewhat disagree that it necessarily offers the most advantageous environment for scientific research. Much to the chagrin of many, some of the most scientifically advanced civilizations, ancient and contemporary, were also the some of the most closed and repressive, including Nazi Germany, the Soviet Union and China of today and yesteryear, not to mention research and innovation by corporations worldwide. Concentrated and centralized planning, competition, profit, negative motivation and directed and appropriated resources often far outweigh the benefits that may be provided by "openness," few protections for intellectual property, or large numbers individuals that may come and go at their discretion.
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Wed, 2014-10-01 04:16
Smokeskin Smokeskin's picture
branford wrote:
branford wrote:
I also think that they are much preferred over the liberty-loving Extropian anarcho-capitalists (whose extreme capitalism in the setting is not hindered by the lack of a state and its monopoly on violence ;) )
I don't understand the sentence in the parentesis. What do you mean by "is not hindered by the lack of a state"?
branford wrote:
because these capitalists, like the PC, Morningstar, LLA and Jovians, represent and recall contemporary society and culture, and its more "conservative" disposition at odds with the likely more progressive politics of the authors and many players.
I don't agree with this notion. The Extropians aren't conservative at all, and they're not enforcing scarcity on the population by limiting their access to technology. The Jovians have their bioconservatism, which Extropia doesn't enforce. Unlike the PC and Morningstar, Extropians don't give any sort of protection or special rights and access to corporations - there's no lobbyism, no politicians to buy, no subsidiaries, no limited liability to shield you from lawsuits, there's no intellectual property and no patents so you can't call on government forces to shut down competitors. All those nasty things of contemporary society and culture are presented and amplified in other factions, but not in the Extropians. They're very, very different animals.
branford wrote:
However, although I have no desire to debate the benefits of non-hierarchical collectivism, I do somewhat disagree that it necessarily offers the most advantageous environment for scientific research. Much to the chagrin of many, some of the most scientifically advanced civilizations, ancient and contemporary, were also the some of the most closed and repressive, including Nazi Germany, the Soviet Union and China of today and yesteryear, not to mention research and innovation by corporations worldwide. Concentrated and centralized planning, competition, profit, negative motivation and directed and appropriated resources often far outweigh the benefits that may be provided by "openness," few protections for intellectual property, or large numbers individuals that may come and go at their discretion.
The way I see it, there are some very different branches of science. One is the "old fashioned" kind of basic scientific research. Some smart people go around and come up with strange ideas, refine and test them, and maybe they hold up and become theories. This sort of science is very hard to force through, and there's generally little financial gain in them (except in the very long run, but far beyond the scope of investors). This sort of science is handled better by an open community, and you generally need smart people to be given free reigns to succeed in it. The other kind of science is more directed. There's a problem, and you throw some scientists and engineers at it to come up with a smarter solution. Or someone who has been building gizmos comes up with a smarter idea for making the gizmos and gets a team to perfect it. Or maybe just making gizmos a bit smarter/faster/stronger/cheaper. I think that sort of stuff is typically handled much better by corporations who can properly incentivize the people working on it. If you take Soviet Russia, they did have some open scientific communities where the scientists were free to pursue their interests, and they got some results. They also had some dreadful outcomes from when they tried to force their ideals on science - communist genetics for example was a disaster and its implementation in seed selection hurt their agricultural sector badly. In the more direct tech development, back when they were competing with the US state they kept on par, but when the US corporations and their R&D entered the fray they blew the communists completely out of the water.
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Wed, 2014-10-01 04:53
branford branford's picture
@Smokeskin:
@Smokeskin: First, with regard to the best environment to scientific research, I was neither defending nor advocating a position. I was simply observing that more "structured" and less open, even repressive, cultures often produce great advancements in scientific understanding. I also acknowledge that closed cultures sometimes may engage in more open scientific research, and vice versa. Second, with regard to my use of "conservative" as the reason why the Extropians are not nearly as favored as the Anarchists and socialist Titanians, I think you might be taking my use of the term too literally and not in the context of my overall point. I placed "conservative" in quotes to denote that I was taking some liberties with the term and do not dispute your more general descriptions of the Extropians. I was not implying that the Extropians were conservative in the contemporary political or social context. Rather, "conservative" was used to denote that the Extropians were "old fashioned" capitalists inspired by and extrapolating current western economic and political trends (e.g., lack of regulation) that the authors and many liberal EP players definitely do not favor, unlike the idealized more "progressive" socialists and anarchists in the EP setting. And third, my parenthetical about the Extropians was simply a friendly nod to Lorsa (note the wink ";)" ), to whom I was responding to in my comment, who noted the debate on whether a state and its monopoly on violence was necessary for capitalism to thrive. The existence of the Extropians in EP certainly offers a particular perspective on that issue.
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Wed, 2014-10-01 08:38
Lorsa Lorsa's picture
@branford
@branford It seems that you agree with my assessment of escapism and the its allure, especially amongst roleplayers. Your points on societies and scientific research are valid, although I would like to point out that the countries you mention might have had closed research with respect to the rest of the world, but being very open in themselves. Their access to individual minds, of comparative amount to the rest of the world, gives them the ability to compete. I highly doubt that Iceland for example, would show the same level of scientific progress if it worked under such a society. I readily admit that my arguments that the autonomist way of thinking is best suited for science was overly simplified. It is, as you pointed out, a complex issue, but I still believe that if we were to construct a "perfect" system or society for scientific progress, then openess and sharing of information would be part of it.
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