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Old 12-20-2010, 10:02 AM   #48 (permalink)
Guybrush
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Join Date: Nov 2008
Location: Scabb Island
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Contrary to popular belief, anarchy is not necessarily some kind of natural state. Cardboard Adolescent wrote that animals don't form governments. That may be true, but hierarchies of power where most mass towards the bottom and you get fewer on top is very common. When you go to feed the ducks in your park, you may assume that every duck you feed has a place in the duck population hierarchy. The ones closest to you which get the most food are likely on top of this hierarchy while the birds in the back are at the bottom.

Something which is important in evolutionary biology and which also is highly relevant to an anarchy discussion is the concept of stable states. Sometimes, the optimal strategy for everyone in a population would be to be nice to everyone all the time. That would benefit everyone the most. However, that can't easily evolve because even if it sounds nice, such a strategy may get exploited. Let's say you have a society where everyone shares food with eachother. If an individual appears in that population that does not share food, but only takes it, that individual would thrive - he or she would get more food than anyone else. Although everyone sharing sounds good, the social environment in that population would greatly reward the exploitive behaviour.

You can apply this principle to groups of people. I think one of the most important things a society should do is increase the living standards of the people in it, now and for the future. To do that, you have to create a societal environment where it is possible for people to be sharers because that is what benefits us all. This is only feasible if society has also created an environment where exploiters cannot thrive, one that punishes exploitation.

I find it hard to imagine anarchic societies where the strong will not be rewarded for exploiting the weak. We need some kind of central authority with the power to ensure that negative actions have negative consequences, create an environment that punishes exploitation. Neither is anarchy in any way "natural". Believing it's for the best is something I generally consider wishy-washy.
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