Capitalism: the cause of and solution to all life's problems

[Travis B.]

Anarchism does not mean deregulation of private enterprise, please don't believe the "an"caps.

The thing is that regulation means some sort of authority, as of course that means enterprises needs to be subordinated to some body from above. Of course, for anarchists it is the authority of the workers' councils which subject enterprises to the will of the people - they just prefer to pretend that that is not a form of authority, on the basis that power flows from the bottom up rather than top down.

[zompist]

I agree in general but I feel that this is not that: if the healthcare department's head is a whateverian and the economic planning head is an antiwhateverian they have an incentive to each rule to the detriment of the other guy, consensus or not. then again that's a problem inherent in democracy, and so democratization perhaps just out and out comes with it.

I don't think anyone's tried a system where different policy areas are each democratically contested.

I agree it'd have to be planned in a way that doesn't produce gridlock. "Health care" vs. "The entire economy" wouldn't work, as they overlap too much. But you could easily have different elections for health care, defense, education, justice, foreign affairs, agriculture, general business. Probably each policy area would need its own taxation authority.

Our political systems are still largely "18th century kings, only elected." I can't believe that that's the best we can do in terms of democratic consultation. It means people can only pick between entire packages of policies, and only a minority is really on-board with all the policies of their party. It also means that people get no choice in the event all the parties agree on something.

("All the parties agreeing" may sound good, but think of (say) neocolonialism. Since 2000 US voters have had no realistic "no wars please" option.)

[Torco]

Anarchism does not mean deregulation of private enterprise, please don't believe the "an"caps.

The thing is that regulation means some sort of authority, as of course that means enterprises needs to be subordinated to some body from above. Of course, for anarchists it is the authority of the workers' councils which subject enterprises to the will of the people - they just prefer to pretend that that is not a form of authority, on the basis that power flows from the bottom up rather than top down.

Actual anarchists, the only one until austrian economists decided to call themselves anarchists, solved this theoretical problem a while ago. You'll general well read anarchos talk about 'unjustified authority' or 'unjustified hierarchy', as opposed to hierarchy in general: anarchists also believe, for example, kids doing what their mums say (though not at infinite lenghts, then again no sane person does). they also believe in giving scientists creedence as a matter of course, and to be skeptical of conspiracy theories involving "scientists lie to you man, the earth is fucking flat" or something. And other times, just speaking of plain authority is a good metonimy here because, in political life, almost all authority is veeery poorly justified. why's the cop get to boss me around or beat me? ah, cause of a paper? liberal laws, you say? I never agreed to that shit. oh, god says so? I haven't seen any gods here, looks to me like it's just you say so. oh, private ownership, is it? ah, but even if we accept the spiel, didn't your grampa steal that land you're kicking me out of? and who says land is a thing to be owned anyway? oh, the law? that law that a few obviously corrupt politicians that are obviously puppets of the burgeoisie have been writing ? ah, I *voted* for them, you say? in those elections that are obviously influenced by billionaires, the CIA and god knows what else, and where actual citizens not under the control of the big corporate-backed parties have basically no chance of getting elected in any decent numbers?. Yeah, nah, man, you just power trippin.

anarchism has for many years been opposition to capitalism at least as much as it is opposition to states: even more, i'll argue to anyone who will listen xD

I agree in general but I feel that this is not that: if the healthcare department's head is a whateverian and the economic planning head is an antiwhateverian they have an incentive to each rule to the detriment of the other guy, consensus or not. then again that's a problem inherent in democracy, and so democratization perhaps just out and out comes with it.

I don't think anyone's tried a system where different policy areas are each democratically contested.

I agree it'd have to be planned in a way that doesn't produce gridlock. "Health care" vs. "The entire economy" wouldn't work, as they overlap too much. But you could easily have different elections for health care, defense, education, justice, foreign affairs, agriculture, general business. Probably each policy area would need its own taxation authority.

Our political systems are still largely "18th century kings, only elected." I can't believe that that's the best we can do in terms of democratic consultation. It means people can only pick between entire packages of policies, and only a minority is really on-board with all the policies of their party. It also means that people get no choice in the event all the parties agree on something.

I totally agree with the latter, "elect the king" is medieval tier democracy and future polsci will gasp at our barbarity. I'd love to be convinced of the viability of the thing, and its inviability is, as you say, super unattested.

But I can't help but think, and this is maybe something akin to a roman asking "but who will want to be servants, then? how will employers be able to really trust employees?" when presented with capitalism, that a few problems will arise with separate taxation.
> who sets those taxes, who can make the decision of "okay, this decade we're gonna really put effort into industrialization" or whatever.
> especially without a market, how do you stop the, say, healthcare authority to reeeally jack up prices/taxes? if you're not up to date with your taxes to the ministry of health, I'm sorry, but you're not getting that kindney bub.
> presumably people would naturally want to pay less healthcare tax and so there's a tendency to lower taxes, and that in itself has a wonderful effect that politicians really want people to be rich enough to pay a lot in health tax cause otherwise the hospitals they go to are bad... but what if you grow a private healthcare market, legal or otherwise? those things just pop up, you know, black markets. it doesn't have to be a capitalistic one, it could be run by mobs, or monks.

you're of course, right that if they don't tax separately the system loses a lot in independence: the fucking republicans won the agriculture ministry... you know what? maybe we don't want tat desalinization project we thought we wanted.

[zompist]

But I can't help but think, and this is maybe something akin to a roman asking "but who will want to be servants, then? how will employers be able to really trust employees?" when presented with capitalism, that a few problems will arise with separate taxation.
> who sets those taxes, who can make the decision of "okay, this decade we're gonna really put effort into industrialization" or whatever.
> especially without a market, how do you stop the, say, healthcare authority to reeeally jack up prices/taxes? if you're not up to date with your taxes to the ministry of health, I'm sorry, but you're not getting that kindney bub.
> presumably people would naturally want to pay less healthcare tax and so there's a tendency to lower taxes, and that in itself has a wonderful effect that politicians really want people to be rich enough to pay a lot in health tax cause otherwise the hospitals they go to are bad... but what if you grow a private healthcare market, legal or otherwise? those things just pop up, you know, black markets. it doesn't have to be a capitalistic one, it could be run by mobs, or monks.

Yes, it's a real worry that people will underfund health care till they need it. If they can, of course, people will vote for low taxes and high services. Or for the party that promises both at the same time, and rarely pays any electoral price for lying about it.

I do think splitting up the budget would make people more responsible, because it's less of a black hole. If we had Health Ministry elections that determined the level of health care spending and taxation, then it would be clear that health care taxation is for health care spending, and if you don't have any taxes you don't get any care. Whereas now most people don't know what the budget division is, and assume that all the spending they don't like is too high.

There is probably research on this, but I think voters are more likely to approve very specific tax proposals, like "we need to build a new library", rather than "taxes need to go up."

A partial success may be the Social Security tax here. It's separate, and there's much less of a clamor for reducing Social Security taxes rather than all taxes. On the other hand, politicians did not keep the baskets in sync, so by this time maybe it adds more confusion than it avoids.

[Torco]

I'm honestly more concerned about the jacking up. people tend to think their job is Very Important, and bureaucrats show surprising consensus that their thing should get more money. even in systems with very high polarization, such as yours, there's a remarkable amount of consensus with politicians on *some* types of spending, such as the military.

[zompist]

I'm honestly more concerned about the jacking up. people tend to think their job is Very Important, and bureaucrats show surprising consensus that their thing should get more money. even in systems with very high polarization, such as yours, there's a remarkable amount of consensus with politicians on *some* types of spending, such as the military.

Fair point. I wonder if we could do something with Frank Zappa's proposal, which was some sort of interactivity. E.g. the voters say they want single payer health. "Fine," the government says. "It'll cost this much. Do you still want it?"

Legislatures are supposed to do this sort of thinking for us, but that doesn't work so well either.

[Ares Land]

I agree it'd have to be planned in a way that doesn't produce gridlock. "Health care" vs. "The entire economy" wouldn't work, as they overlap too much. But you could easily have different elections for health care, defense, education, justice, foreign affairs, agriculture, general business. Probably each policy area would need its own taxation authority.

To be honest, the idea is still kind of half-assed (and is likely to remain so, given that I'm not an economist or a constitutional lawyer!)

I'm very confident, though, that keeping health care separated from monetary policy could work: they already are.
In Europe, monetary policy is the ECB bank's business; health care is a matter left to each member country, with a distribution between various public and private systems.

In the US, of course, health care is the province of insurance companies while the Fed sets monetary policy.

I think there's a sore need for democracy here. The inner workings of the ECB are black magic to most and its decisions seem arbitrary. The picture the people get is that of vaguely Germanic, nefarious people; the less honest politicians can spin this however they like.
The ECB is really doing a pretty good job, but you have to dig quite a bit to find out. Public support would improve if they had to face voters from time to time.

> who sets those taxes, who can make the decision of "okay, this decade we're gonna really put effort into industrialization" or whatever.

Right now taxes are set by parliaments and government, both (ideally) democratically elected. Taking the example of putting effort into industrialization, the general idea is that these kind of policies would be set by a separate entity (a public invesment fund?). The governors of that fund would be democratically elected, ditto with its board. It's not ultimately very different from what happens now, except that the guy running police, the army and foreign policy is elected separately from the guy running public investment.

> especially without a market, how do you stop the, say, healthcare authority to reeeally jack up prices/taxes? if you're not up to date with your taxes to the ministry of health, I'm sorry, but you're not getting that kindney bub.
> presumably people would naturally want to pay less healthcare tax and so there's a tendency to lower taxes, and that in itself has a wonderful effect that politicians really want people to be rich enough to pay a lot in health tax cause otherwise the hospitals they go to are bad... but what if you grow a private healthcare market, legal or otherwise? those things just pop up, you know, black markets. it doesn't have to be a capitalistic one, it could be run by mobs, or monks.

We have a public healthcare system here in France, and it really works pretty well. People wanting both lower insurance premiums and better healthcare has generally given good results. We pay less than the US do on healthcare (11% of GDP versus 17%) with a fairer system.
We do have private insurance on top of regular public insurance. It is kind of pointless but not big enough of a problem that people really care about it. My general feeling is that the system is underfunded.

Again, I think the system would benefit for a split. Here, there's a general consensus that there are two many civil servants. ER nurses, though, are public servants. Does that mean we need fewer of them too? The general public thinks not; politicians, on the other hand, thought so. The consequences are currently pretty deadly.
I think Macron has a solid chance of being reelected, because there are other issues than health. This means the policy of cutting health care costs gets positive feedback. Whereas if a Surgeon-General or something had to be reelected solely on subjects relating to health, he'd probably lose; thus the policy would get the negative feedback it deserves.
The natural tendancy to increase taxes would be balanced by having to confront the voters directly. If the Surgeon General raises the insurance premium, he has to justify it if he wants re-election. He doesn't have the option of switching to another subject.

I'm honestly more concerned about the jacking up. people tend to think their job is Very Important, and bureaucrats show surprising consensus that their thing should get more money. even in systems with very high polarization, such as yours, there's a remarkable amount of consensus with politicians on *some* types of spending, such as the military.

I don't know. Generally the public sector looks chronically underfunded. Looking at the national budget, it's hard to see what could really be cut. I think the democratic control over taxes (imperfect though it is) works in its own way.
A neat effect is that you need progressives taxes to keep things acceptable, which in turns has the effect of reducing inequality. (At this point right-winger like to pull out their trusty Laffer curve. But if you think having billionaires is detrimental to the economy, actually discouraging them is kind of a bonus).

I have to disagree with you on military spending. In France there is indeed a fairly solid consensus on the military. Then again, public opinion is remarkably uniform on the matter. It's hard to see such a consensus for the US. There's a huge drop post-Cold War, of course, and there's a correlation between military expenditure and Republican administrations. It doesn't look like Republicans and Democrats are much in agreement here; it's not clear that Republicans are even in agreement with each other (military spending remained stable under Trump and dropped under Bush, Sr.). And of course, the military were unable to keep its cold war budget (in both countries, but particularly so in the US). So it does look like democracy isn't that bad at keeping the military in check.
By contrast, checking the same curve for Chile, the Pinochet dictatorship really sticks out, with the military budget reaching insane levels.

[Raphael]

One problem I see with having too many popularly elected offices is that I've got the impression that most people basically have enough space in their minds to remember one political office in their own country - usually, whatever the office of the most powerful politician is called there - and that's about it.

I think there's a sore need for democracy here. The inner workings of the ECB are black magic to most and its decisions seem arbitrary. The picture the people get is that of vaguely Germanic, nefarious people; the less honest politicians can spin this however they like.

Interesting; in Germany itself, the ECB keeps getting flak for not keeping interest rates consistently high all the time. (There seem to be rather few people in Germany who know much about monetary policy.)

[Ares Land]

One problem I see with having too many popularly elected offices is that I've got the impression that most people basically have enough space in their minds to remember one political office in their own country - usually, whatever the office of the most powerful politician is called there - and that's about it.

Yep. There's probably quite a bit of marketing to be done there.
EDIT: on second thought, given that the president/prime minister/chancellor is often the only one who's really accountable to the public, why bother remembering the others? (I mean, who cares who the Health Minister is? They're generally nonentities who'll be replaced in a minute if politically expedient to do so.)

Interesting; in Germany itself, the ECB keeps getting flak for not keeping interest rates consistently high all the time. (There seem to be rather few people in Germany who know much about monetary policy.)

To be honest, the Germans seem to understand it better than the French. There's a fairly scary amount of people here who think the ECB should just start printing money already. (Nevermind that it already does so and that while it keeps the national debts under countrol, it amounts on a tax on the young and the lower middle class.)

[Ares Land]

Our political systems are still largely "18th century kings, only elected." I can't believe that that's the best we can do in terms of democratic consultation.

Same. And another pretty sobering thought: 18th century kings had very little power, compared to a modern head of government/head of state. The logistics just weren't there. To say nothing of various privileges, multiple levels of more or less private laws, the muddle of institutions, and so on.

Which should make us think twice on the amount of power wielded by a few individuals.

The modern state is just great, don't get me wrong, but the failure modes are scary, even without going into totalitarianism. For instance: I can't imagine doing without public education -- but when it goes wrong, it can convince an entire generation that butchering Germans by the millions is the highest calling one can aspire to, or that South-East Asians and African are subhumans and that conquering them is really doing them a favor.

[Travis B.]

Anarchism does not mean deregulation of private enterprise, please don't believe the "an"caps.

The thing is that regulation means some sort of authority, as of course that means enterprises needs to be subordinated to some body from above. Of course, for anarchists it is the authority of the workers' councils which subject enterprises to the will of the people - they just prefer to pretend that that is not a form of authority, on the basis that power flows from the bottom up rather than top down.

Actual anarchists, the only one until austrian economists decided to call themselves anarchists, solved this theoretical problem a while ago. You'll general well read anarchos talk about 'unjustified authority' or 'unjustified hierarchy', as opposed to hierarchy in general: anarchists also believe, for example, kids doing what their mums say (though not at infinite lenghts, then again no sane person does). they also believe in giving scientists creedence as a matter of course, and to be skeptical of conspiracy theories involving "scientists lie to you man, the earth is fucking flat" or something. And other times, just speaking of plain authority is a good metonimy here because, in political life, almost all authority is veeery poorly justified. why's the cop get to boss me around or beat me? ah, cause of a paper? liberal laws, you say? I never agreed to that shit. oh, god says so? I haven't seen any gods here, looks to me like it's just you say so. oh, private ownership, is it? ah, but even if we accept the spiel, didn't your grampa steal that land you're kicking me out of? and who says land is a thing to be owned anyway? oh, the law? that law that a few obviously corrupt politicians that are obviously puppets of the burgeoisie have been writing ? ah, I *voted* for them, you say? in those elections that are obviously influenced by billionaires, the CIA and god knows what else, and where actual citizens not under the control of the big corporate-backed parties have basically no chance of getting elected in any decent numbers?. Yeah, nah, man, you just power trippin.

anarchism has for many years been opposition to capitalism at least as much as it is opposition to states: even more, i'll argue to anyone who will listen xD

Um, the anarchists I knew were definitely not "anarchocapitalists", which we hated and thought of as supremely un-anarchist, as we viewed the authority of the capitalist as being authority just as much as the authority of the state. Even then, some of us admitted that we were essentially recreating the state under a different name; instead of the parliaments and executive bodies we would have workers' councils, instead of police and the military we would have workers' militias, and so on.

Of course there would be some differences, such as there would be no law or rights to speak of - everything would be decided democratically in an ad-hoc fashion, something that I have come to oppose, because it would enable all kinds of arbitrary decisions where the majority at any given moment would have complete deciding power in any given context. This is another reason I have moved from being an anarchist to being a democratic socialist, as I came to see law as necessary.

[Raphael]

Even then, some of us admitted that we were essentially recreating the state under a different name; instead of the parliaments and executive bodies we would have workers' councils, instead of police and the military we would have workers' militias, and so on.

Frankly, the first time I saw you post something like this, in an earlier post of yours, I was quite surprised by it. Because, you see, that's more or less how I would describe some forms of left-wing anarchism - but I'm not an anarchist, have never been an anarchist, and generally have a fairly cynical and negative view of anarchism. So seeing an actual anarchist, or even former anarchist, seeming to agree with me on that point was and is kinda weird.

[Travis B.]

Even then, some of us admitted that we were essentially recreating the state under a different name; instead of the parliaments and executive bodies we would have workers' councils, instead of police and the military we would have workers' militias, and so on.

Frankly, the first time I saw you post something like this, in an earlier post of yours, I was quite surprised by it. Because, you see, that's more or less how I would describe some forms of left-wing anarchism - but I'm not an anarchist, have never been an anarchist, and generally have a fairly cynical and negative view of anarchism. So seeing an actual anarchist, or even former anarchist, seeming to agree with me on that point was and is kinda weird.

The key difference that we saw it from how we viewed the state was that we saw the state as being top-down whereas we saw what we were for as being bottom-up, and the word "authority" we specifically associated with the former - we did not see the power of the workers' councils as being a form of authority. About militias, we saw them as specifically necessary because when the revolution came around, we would need to defend the workers' gains from both domestic police and armies and foreign armies attempting to crush the revolution, as had been seen in previous revolutions. Unlike police and military, we saw these militias as defending the workers' power rather than enforcing the rule of the state, and saw the need for these to be representative of the people as a whole to avoid them being formed from the self-selected few.

[Raphael]

Travis B., one key problem I see with your model is the word "worker" - worker's councils, worker's militias, etc. I am not a worker, have never been a worker, and am fairly unlikely to ever become a worker - I have mental issues that keep me from doing a regular job. So if the state I currently live in would be replaced by the version of anarchism you used to support, the main practical change for me would apparently be that I'd move from having very little say in how things are run where I live, to having absolutely no say in how things are run where I live. I would effectively be ruled over by a group of people I don't and can't belong to. Which is, of course, exactly the thing that anarchists promise me would become impossible if things were run their way.

[Travis B.]

Travis B., one key problem I see with your model is the word "worker" - worker's councils, worker's militias, etc. I am not a worker, have never been a worker, and am fairly unlikely to ever become a worker - I have mental issues that keep me from doing a regular job. So if the state I currently live in would be replaced by the version of anarchism you used to support, the main practical change for me would apparently be that I'd move from having very little say in how things are run where I live, to having absolutely no say in how things are run where I live. I would effectively be ruled over by a group of people I don't and can't belong to. Which is, of course, exactly the thing that anarchists promise me would become impossible if things were run their way.

I understand this (I was just using the terminology typical of anarchists, which unfortunately based on the incorrect assumption that all working class adults are workers of one sort or another). This is why I myself am for having councils representing people other than just workers, e.g. representing people by geographic area (on a small scale) and representing various interest groups, of which representing workers is only one interest group.

[Torco]

Fair point. I wonder if we could do something with Frank Zappa's proposal, which was some sort of interactivity. E.g. the voters say they want single payer health. "Fine," the government says. "It'll cost this much. Do you still want it?"
Legislatures are supposed to do this sort of thinking for us, but that doesn't work so well either.

I like that, yeah. maybe the ministry of health can put stuff in ballots like "30% increase in hospital coverage, +0,9% healthtax for the next year" or something. you know, vote-as-menus.

We have a public healthcare system here in France, and it really works pretty well. People wanting both lower insurance premiums and better healthcare has generally given good results.

sure but in public healthcare systems -i wish we had one- prices are kept low cause the senate or whatever has to allocate dosh, and so they want to lower budgets wherever convenient: if it was up to the plumbers, plumbing prices would be pretty high.

Even then, some of us admitted that we were essentially recreating the state under a different name; instead of the parliaments and executive bodies we would have workers' councils, instead of police and the military we would have workers' militias, and so on.

I mean, sure, and instead of slavery we have employment and poverty but that substitution is, on the whole, a good thing. same with anarchist worker's militias. One must not, I think, aim for perfect systems.

[Ares Land]

Travis B., one key problem I see with your model is the word "worker"

That is a very important point; and besides anarchist and/or socialist terminology is completely out-of-date. Society and social classes don't bear much resemblance to what they did in Proudhon's or Marx's time.
Industrial workers are now a fairly tiny segment of the population compared to what was true back then.

Not that early communists had a very exact picture of their society. After the revolution, the Soviets more or less assumed that society was divided into bourgeois and farm and industry workers. They had no concept of intermediate categories (small shopkeepers, small landowners). These were very few in number, true, but essential to the economy. The consequences were pretty dire, first for said categories (deemed bourgeois with the associated repression) then for everyone, second because, well, replacing them wasn't planned at all.

Um, the anarchists I knew were definitely not "anarchocapitalists", which we hated and thought of as supremely un-anarchist, as we viewed the authority of the capitalist as being authority just as much as the authority of the state. Even then, some of us admitted that we were essentially recreating the state under a different name; instead of the parliaments and executive bodies we would have workers' councils, instead of police and the military we would have workers' militias, and so on.

Anarchocapitalists aren't uninteresting. Their own idea is that everything would rely on natural law, which does make a bit of sense. Their problme is that natural law (insasmuch as there is such a thing) doesn't say what they think it does. They think it's wrong to exert violence over people, but consider that you can harm people by inaction, and besides restrict violence to strictly physical violence.
IMO, sitting on $100 billion while your workers are on food stamps, a la Jeff Bezos is condemnable (harming people through inaction) and that employment contracts signed under threat of starvation or poverty are invalid. (It's not exactly signing a contract at gunpoint but it's not much better.)
I could go on all day: property is a fairly non-obvious social construct -- and doesn't work like they think it does.
That said, they have interesting ideas about how a stateless society would be run. If we assume their premises are true, for argument's sake, they are likewise very much recreating states, and in fact states much more oppressive than the ones they're denouncing.
(Think your insurance plan will let you walk around without a mask or smoke pot? Think again. Think the homeowner's association will let you walk around with a concealed gun? Fat chance.)

I still think there's a fundamental problem with the state as we think of it, and democracy doesn't fix it. It can in fact, condone oppression and does so routinely. Democracy improves things, but it's not entirely satisfying.
Whether the state will help or oppress you depends on the goodwill of (in the best case scenario) the majority. What happens to you when the majority doesn't care, hates you or is just wrong?
(Not that I have a solution, though)

sure but in public healthcare systems -i wish we had one- prices are kept low cause the senate or whatever has to allocate dosh, and so they want to lower budgets wherever convenient: if it was up to the plumbers, plumbing prices would be pretty high.

Ah, yes, I see your point. No, I don't think the healthcare system gets to set its own budget. It's controlled by an elected overseeing body.
We split Parliament in several parts, basically. One house handles the usual state stuff, another health insurance, another education... But everyone's elected just as before.

[Raphael]

Not that early communists had a very exact picture of their society. After the revolution, the Soviets more or less assumed that society was divided into bourgeois and farm and industry workers. They had no concept of intermediate categories (small shopkeepers, small landowners).

Oh, if I understand Marxist theory correctly, traditional Marxists did have a concept of intermediaries - the hated petty bourgeois. However, that group was supposed to have disappeared on its own during the later stages of capitalism. I suspect that on some level, Marxists never forgave the petty bourgeois for stubbornly continuing to exist when, according to Marxist theory, it should have disappeared, and that this may be part of why they hated and often still hate the petty bourgeois so intensely (of course another reason is that many Marxists started out as young people from a petty bourgeois background who rebelled against their environment).

Anarchocapitalists aren't uninteresting. Their own idea is that everything would rely on natural law, which does make a bit of sense. Their problme is that natural law (insasmuch as there is such a thing) doesn't say what they think it does. They think it's wrong to exert violence over people, but consider that you can harm people by inaction, and besides restrict violence to strictly physical violence.

And even then, they ignore the fact that property itself is ultimately based on physical violence.

and that employment contracts signed under threat of starvation or poverty are invalid. (It's not exactly signing a contract at gunpoint but it's not much better.)

Yes, that's one of my most fundamental disagreements with libertarians and anarchocapitalists.

[Travis B.]

Travis B., one key problem I see with your model is the word "worker"

That is a very important point; and besides anarchist and/or socialist terminology is completely out-of-date. Society and social classes don't bear much resemblance to what they did in Proudhon's or Marx's time.
Industrial workers are now a fairly tiny segment of the population compared to what was true back then.

The thing, though, is that there definitely is still a working class, except the working class in developed countries has been shifted into service roles rather than industrial ones.

Not that early communists had a very exact picture of their society. After the revolution, the Soviets more or less assumed that society was divided into bourgeois and farm and industry workers. They had no concept of intermediate categories (small shopkeepers, small landowners). These were very few in number, true, but essential to the economy. The consequences were pretty dire, first for said categories (deemed bourgeois with the associated repression) then for everyone, second because, well, replacing them wasn't planned at all.

As Raphael mentions, even early communists and socialists had the concept of the petty bourgeoisie, which precisely are these intermediaries.

Um, the anarchists I knew were definitely not "anarchocapitalists", which we hated and thought of as supremely un-anarchist, as we viewed the authority of the capitalist as being authority just as much as the authority of the state. Even then, some of us admitted that we were essentially recreating the state under a different name; instead of the parliaments and executive bodies we would have workers' councils, instead of police and the military we would have workers' militias, and so on.

Anarchocapitalists aren't uninteresting. Their own idea is that everything would rely on natural law, which does make a bit of sense. Their problme is that natural law (insasmuch as there is such a thing) doesn't say what they think it does. They think it's wrong to exert violence over people, but consider that you can harm people by inaction, and besides restrict violence to strictly physical violence.
IMO, sitting on $100 billion while your workers are on food stamps, a la Jeff Bezos is condemnable (harming people through inaction) and that employment contracts signed under threat of starvation or poverty are invalid. (It's not exactly signing a contract at gunpoint but it's not much better.)

Agreed completely.

I could go on all day: property is a fairly non-obvious social construct -- and doesn't work like they think it does.
That said, they have interesting ideas about how a stateless society would be run. If we assume their premises are true, for argument's sake, they are likewise very much recreating states, and in fact states much more oppressive than the ones they're denouncing.
(Think your insurance plan will let you walk around without a mask or smoke pot? Think again. Think the homeowner's association will let you walk around with a concealed gun? Fat chance.)

For this kind of reason, "anarchocapitalism" would very likely be far more oppressive than democratic states are.

I still think there's a fundamental problem with the state as we think of it, and democracy doesn't fix it. It can in fact, condone oppression and does so routinely. Democracy improves things, but it's not entirely satisfying.
Whether the state will help or oppress you depends on the goodwill of (in the best case scenario) the majority. What happens to you when the majority doesn't care, hates you or is just wrong?
(Not that I have a solution, though)

This is a problem with democratic states, and is just as much a problem with any other kind of majoritarian system. But at the same time, minorities can oppress just as well.

sure but in public healthcare systems -i wish we had one- prices are kept low cause the senate or whatever has to allocate dosh, and so they want to lower budgets wherever convenient: if it was up to the plumbers, plumbing prices would be pretty high.

Ah, yes, I see your point. No, I don't think the healthcare system gets to set its own budget. It's controlled by an elected overseeing body.
We split Parliament in several parts, basically. One house handles the usual state stuff, another health insurance, another education... But everyone's elected just as before.

I would support having separate structures for different functions of society, e.g. instead of workers' councils that run everything, there would instead be bodies for managing things ranging from healthcare, education, infrastructure, zoning, and so on.

[sangi39]

I've been wondering recently if a sort of "central vs. split" + "popular vs geographic" style of voting and elections might make sense (but this could be a UK-centric idea), e.g.:

1) There's some "House" which seats are elected (through some form of proportional representation), on a regional basis, but in a way that no individual region has a majority of seats (this does disproportionately underrepresent some regions at the expense of others)
2) There's some other "House" which is elected, across some larger region, on the basis of population alone (regardless of the number of regions mentioned above, the entire electoral sphere, at this level, would be equally divided on the basis of population)
3) Decisions which effect a whole region require a) a majority of sub-regions to vote in favour of that change and b) a majority of the population within that region as a while vote in favour of that change (this, however, I think, is likely to stand in the way of break-away movements within the system, so perhaps moves towards self-determination should only be given local concern)
4) There's a sort of "local council up" system in which members of some group of amongst elected councils are elected, from amongst members of those councils, are elected, from within, to hold higher positions (this includes the groups both directly and indirectly elected)
5) There are directly elected counterparts to those positions
6) "top-tier" positions are actually devolved positions, e.g. you're not (or the larger council grouping isn't) electing one representative, but you're, instead, electing a person to a certain position (say, minister for health, finance, housing, the environment, etc.)
7) Indirectly elected councils always serve in an advisory role to directly ones elected ones (
8) No person can serve more than two terms within an elected position
9) No person can switch directly from a directly elected position and vice versa
10) All elected representatives, regardless of "rank", are subject to an "end of term" judgemental procedure (I guess sort of like a mandatory impeachment, to use what I think might be the closest US terminology) - basically everyone is held accountable for any and all actions during time in office, and some randomly elected group of "constituents" and those trained in judicial procedure spend some amount of time going over it (since it's a political matter, though, I can see the need for the judicial portion to exist mostly to maintain proceedings)
11) There also be a level of sortition involved (honestly, I'm not sure if this is mostly me messing with my own system, but say 5% of any "official" is elected by sortition for like 6 months, just to have a voice)
12) Within the variously locations in which elected bodies meet, individuals or councils can directly address the entire elected body (not one at a time, but all at once, placing those willing to speak within the central position) (I assume there will need to be some procedure for decised who gets to speak, but I do think this is where sortition has its highest value)

And then you'd have stuff like "the wage of elected officials is tied to the average wage of people within that region +/- some level of expenses regarding travel. Staffing, I guess, could also be an issue. How do you handle the bureaucrats within that system? They can't each be elected by the public, so they have to be brought in by some other method.


I honestly don't know how well this plays into any socialist/communist/whatever system, or if it's just another electoral system which will disproportionally positively affect the capitalist class now, but as a middle ground, combined with, for example, strong moves against anti-worker propaganda, moves towards critical thinking from a young age, and the introduction of "play" democracy (so, like, kids electing when nap time is) within a larger "no, really, this is probably the best sort of way of thinking you can have", maybe it would make sense?

As some lone person in rural North Yorkshire, England, honestly, any feedback would be great