Ignoring the massive cost, legal hurdles, and the opinion of the residents/government/outside powers, if you could magically grant independence to certain territories or form new bigger nations from existing ones with no repercussions to yourself, what new countries would you create?
Please treat this as a non-serious post, let’s not get into a massive political debate, those never end well.
If there are no nation-states, how do we determine what amount of force is justified for self defense? Who enforces violations of that rule and what are the available punishments? What is our recourse when said enforcers decide to ignore any violence against people who deleted their reddit accounts?
Anarchy is a great ideal, but there are some things governments do that we shouldn’t trust to self-organizing collectives. Unless “union of transphobic gang rapists pedophiles” is something you want to defend.
(Bit snarky, but honestly curious as to your answer.)
What makes states more trustworthy than self-organizing collectives?
Keep in mind, Israeli invaders (often mislabeled “settlers”) would be an example of self organizers.
Without the backing of the Israeli state they would not be so untouchable.
And would then be touched by which state? Individuals? They organize too - based on race. Who will prevent that organization?
It feels like every hole poked in anarchism is responded to with some level of leadership and organization, defeating the whole argument.
What stops a self-organizing collective from becoming racist, sexist, transohobic, and pro-rape?
I doubt you or I or anyone else here would join such a collective, but what would be our recourse when one forms and rapes my son or lynches your daughter?
Modern states at least have the benefit of a basic theory that they cannot simply un-person people who live within their borders. I dont see what the ewuivalenf mechabism would be to encourage a self-organized collective from doing so.
What stops a state from becoming the same?
What are you talking about? Most modern states routinely strip people within and outside of their borders of rights, deport, murder, or enslave them.
Modern states suspend the rights of individuals to lifer or liberty as a punishment for breaking a rule. Rules like “don’t rape people”.
At least in theory, you can move to another nation or campaign for better treatment in essentially all modern states, exempting a small group of pariah states that still mostly don’t rape people as punishment.
Not a single person I’ve seen has so much as suggested any mechanism whatsoever that would keep “self organizing collectives” from becoming fetit pools of bigotry and violence. We know that will happen because such groups arise in every nation already, but their impact is curbed specifically by the power of the state.
“Get rid of the government and we’ll all do the right thing” is libertarian bullshit to cover their glee at taking things away from others. If you aren’t a pro-rape libertarian, figure out how your proposed system would protect the vulnerable at least as well as modern states do.
They also do it for rules like “wrong skin color,” “wrong country of origin,” “wrong sexuality or gender identity,” “born into poverty and stole food,” “suffering from drug addiction,” or even “possessed a completely harmless drug like weed.” And the punishment is often the total depravation of rights and forced labor tantamount to slavery.
“The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich and poor alike from stealing loaves of bread.”
This wasn’t a good argument in feudal society when peasants could leave and find another Lord or live on their own, and it’s not a good argument now. Choice is pointless when all your choices share the same constraints.
What mechanism prevents states from becoming fetid pools of bigotry and violence, and how has it been working so far? The power of the state does not curb this behavior, it curbs its rivals while engaging in that very behavior themselves by maintaining a monopoly on violence.
Anarchy is not the lack of government, it’s horizontal governance. Hierarchy is not necessary for community policing or restorative justice. I’m not an American Libertarian which is an irrational ideology, as it wants capitalism without the state, which is impossible because capitalism is enforced by the state. Without the state protecting private property there can be no capitalism.
That’s a fuckload of words that barely come close to answering the question of “what in this new system of yours protects against rape gangs”?
Maybe drop your edgy hate-fetish and answer the question instead of attacking other ideas? Because this is the closest you came and it’s handwavey as fuck.
Listing three Adjectice Noun keywords works just fine as for signaling to others who agree with your abstract goals that you can get a beer together, but does fuck all to convince anyone to join or respect your cause.
I care about boys and girls not getting gang-raped, and such rape-gangs being effectively punsihed so they stop being such and others are incentivized not to follow their lead. Extant states today attempt this through the state monopoly on proactice violence and the various political and legal systems which determine when such violence may be used.
You’re suggesting eliminating “the state”, meaning the thing that results from said political activity and through its various judicial systems does the aforementioned proactice violence. While I agree that this system is imperfect, I am not at all convincded that whatever you are suggesting would be even at least as just because you keep wasting your words on arguing how the current system is bad.
Just because the current system is bad doesn’t mean some other system wouldn’t be worse.
Everyone’s missing the point that states are self-organized collectives that subjugate people. What in the world does anyone think is the alternative definition of a state? That states were organized by “someone else”? It’s ridiculous! England didn’t make the USA. A self organizing group of people made it and they fought England and won militarily and then they kept self organizing it and then when people resisted them they applied violence to them.
Like what alternative is actually being described here? I feel like I’m reading insanity here
Presumably, an “anarchist state” would limit the things it uses its authority to enforce to only include violations of the freedom to assemle, with said authority broadly derived from large internal collectives similar to how a “libertarian state” would rely upon large businesses.
I don’t think either one is at all workable, though.
A plausible postmodern state could be constructed with freely permeable borders and persons assisted in either immigration or emmigration in the interest of harmony, including banishment as a plausible punishment for wrongdoing. But implementing the would require either a strong international agreement of free migration or a genuinely limitless frontier.
That’s why I didn’t propose an anarchist vision. I do recognize the need for states. Just very very weak ones.
Nation states are a different case altogether though. You can have a multinational state. Sure, it is easier for a state to continue existing if the landmass it controls identifies as a single nation. That helps give it legitimacy.
I’d recommend reading more about nation states and why nations ≠ states.
In common English nation, state, and nation-state are near-synonyms for the collectives created by people which exercise ultimate authortiy to enforce rules on conduct within a geographic area, with some variation due to the nominclature used by said collectives for their various subdivisions.
I’m not sealioning. I’d love to read either an actual answer to my questions, a treatise on your “non-anarchist” idea, or even just a passionate rant about terminology.
But quibbling over vocabulary instead of answering questions, without even offering a single link or reference and instead just saying " do your own reading", is simply bad form.
We’re here on social media, and if you don’t want to have a discussion silence is always acceptable.
My bad. I incorrectly assumed that the above terminologies were common knowledge. I should’ve provided direct links. Well, here they are:
Difference between nations and states
Definition of a “nation-state”
When I talk about nations and states, I talk from the perspective of these definitions. As you can see, they’re not really synonyms. It’s not squabbling about terminologies. If we have a different understanding of what different words mean, then our logical arguments are going to look very different. I’m not saying that your definition is wrong or whatever. I’m just clarifying how I define these terms in my arguments. That way, you can understand what I mean to say.
As for the “questions” you posed… I’m not sure exactly what answers you want me to provide. I already told you that I do believe that states need to exist. We’re in agreement there. I just don’t think that it’s healthy for society to divide itself among different nations. Seems quite a waste of mental space, resources, etc. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
(Apology accepted. Sorry if I was painfully American)
The (very British) definition of “nation” you used isn’t at all sensible with what the OP asked. To use meriam-Webster’s definition as a guide, you meant definition 1.a.1, but there are six other listed definitions.
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/nation
That being said, a “nationality’ (meaning the same thing you called a” nation") will inevitably arise within any soverign state (https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/state, meaning 5.a) which persists for a long enough time. The most obvious example perhaps being my own country, in which a distinct “american” /nationality arose after our civil war, although the distnct non-British nationalities of “Canadian” and “Australian” in those respective countries would also be excellent examples. (As would “british” itself.)
While we’re on odd meanings of words, it’s probably worth mentioning that “race” is an archaic synonym for the same idea, although that usage fell out of common usage some time after the establishment of chattel slavery based on skin color.)
Lemme explain the sensibility even when we use 1.a.1. I said the idea of a nation itself should cease to exist.
An analog would be religion. If someone asked me, “what’s your religion?”. I would say, “I’m non religious”. I wouldn’t reply by saying, “my religion is atheism”.
Similarly, if someone asked me what nation I belonged to, I would say something along the lines of “technically, I’m under the jurisdiction of XYZ state, but I do not identify as a member of any nation.”
I’m hoping that this becomes the majority viewpoint. That’s how my answer is sensible even with 1.a.1.
And as for “will inevitably rise within any sovereign state which will persist for a long enough time”, it’s not true necessarily. Example being myself and so many other people (anarchists, lib socialists, even right wing libertarians). Yes, it has been true throughout history (descriptive), but I’m hoping it isn’t going forward (normative).