Free the Belgrade anarchists!

By piracy I assume you mean copy right infringement rather than boarding their ship, killing everyone, and taking their stuff. The world has spent the majority of it's time without patent law. Patent law is an incentive to get people to invent and publish things. Without it people generally don't. You treat this as an on/off thing. copy write law used to be reasonable. It's only in the last 30 years or so that it changed.

Fair enough, but what did I just say? Anarchism involves consent. Because power is inequitable in our society, we have laws based in coercion, not agreement.

universal agreement never exists. The best we can do is majority rule and constant argument.

rofl

Do words fail you? Let me ask you, what is it that you do?

I've read anima libero's PETA rantings for one thing. That's why I'm laughing. The last post of his I read was complaining and demanding action about the U Madison building a research area designed to treat lab animals in a humane and ethical fashion. He wanted to build a "museum" to his political beliefs involving animal liberation instead so he posts this piece with a photo of this badly abused lab animal that had nothing to do with U Madison implying that this was the behavior that had been happening and was going to continue rather than the exact opposite. Unethical, badly thought out, and fundamentally wrong headed. I saw some similarity here.

She isn't a PETA member as far as I know. She also had a point to make. Take it up with her. Your dismissive arrogance isn't becoming.

Yeah... The opening credits there list the video as being from a former texas air force base.

If it is from U Madison, and you had posted it instead in the first place there wouldn't have had a problem. Well I would still have gone after you for actually complaining about improving the lots of the animals in favor of pushing your political agenda, but that's not at all the same kind of issue.

Make sense or give up.

There's very little actual law enforcement in prison on a micro level. Everyone treats the guards as enemies. No one will turn you in for committing a crime. You don't have to worry about those things that make anarchism complicated like food and shelter. It's nirvana.

Maybe prisons in Switzerland. I wouldn't mind be incarcerated in Switzerland. But in the US, you're liable to be raped. Anarchism is about freedom anyway, not imprisonment.

Ahh.. but the raper you see is merely a practicing anarchist. Rape, terror, murder, and slavery are some of the downsides of anarchy of course, but now they get to enjoy the full experience of their philosophy in action.

I'd say those are the downsides of civilization. People who do terrible things do so regardless of the law. Are you saying that without a codified set of laws you would commit rape and murder?

Think about indigenous tribal cultures. They seem to work pretty well. Someone does something violent and antisocial, they'll be shunned by the group.

Civilization exists to prevent those kinds of things from happening. That's what it's for. The quality of the society is generally measured by how well they prevent them.

As for this shunned by the group thing what do you think prison is anyway? It's the shunning place. When civilizations have had a place to banish people to like, say Australia, they have done it. Lacking that they have to make one.

What are you talking about? Civilization is founded on war, slavery and exploitation.

The societies that thrive the best tend to be the ones in which the citizens have the most freedom. The ones with the least freedom and the worst humanitarian records tend to be the ones in which power is concentrated at the top, and there are stringent codes of law.

Prisons aren't a shunning place. Shunning doesn't involve captivity. To shun is to disallow someone from engaging in your group. It's effective because people recognize that they're dependent on the group. Prisoners remain dependent on society. Many repeat offenders rely on the prison system. They know that they'll be taken care of. They don't have to learn to cooperate with others because they always have that convenient fallback. Weren't you just commenting on what a cushy life prisoners have?

This is one of those situations where there is so much wrong with what a person has said that merely untangling it is difficult.

let me start at the back. You apparently may not have noticed but the world is populated with people. Everywhere. There isn't any place to shun people to. There is no place outside society. no rocky badlands where they can go off and do their own thing. Even if there was people don't stay shunned. They come back and hang around. Then you have to make a system to keep them away, which means finding a place for them to be, then worrying about the humanitarian ramifications, etcetera ectetera, and soon you have prison. The world is not a high school clique'. This is the same mistake the Israelis made when they somehow thought that the Palestinians would somehow just go away when thrown out of their homes.

Anarchism isn't thinking a new thought, it's failing to think through an old one.

Which brings up not thinking things through. Where did I say i favored stringent codes of law? I said the purpose and intent of society is to prevent such abuse and their quality is judged on how well they do that. You reply with an example that supports my point. Totalitarian societies produce human rights abuses and are not thought of well. You're not saying anything here. As for cushy prisoner life what part of being raped murdered or enslaved is cushy? prisoner life is horrible. But the things about it that are the most horrible are not the things that come from the institution, but from being separated from a society that prevents people from abusing each other.

You're being presumptuous. I didn't suggest that people that commit violence should be sent into the wilderness. I was only defining terms. My point was that people who go to prison, particularly repeat offenders, are people that often feel they have nothing to lose. They feel they have no stake in society, so the breach society's rules with prison as their convenient fallback.

I don't know how such people should be dealt with in an Anarchist society, but it wouldn't be a bureaucratic prison system that people get lost in. Perhaps they'd be given options. Voluntary commitment to psychological treatment wards, house arrest, or expulsion to communities that have a place for such people. The point is that the entire community would have involvement in the decisions. Perhaps they'd be permitted to stay, depending the circumstances and severity of the crime, but then of course they'd be shamed and everyone would be wary of of them. Offenders wouldn't just be shunted off to some unaccountable institution and hidden away.

Another thing to consider is that there would be far less violence in a functional Anarchist society in which everyone is treated as equal. People would have little need to harm others because their interests would be equal to those of the rest of society. They'd have civic power, they'd be involved in decision making. Their needs would be looked after. As it stands, we have crimes of desperation at the bottom rungs of our society, and corporate crime at the top. If society were equalized, these motives would dissipate.

I also never said that you favored stringent codes of law. I was saying that some of the most dysfunctional societies do, and the ones with the most freedom tend to be the most functional. Ours falls somewhere in the middle. Better than tyrannies, worse than many other Western democracies.

Have you ever committed a crime? Why or why not?

>"You're being presumptuous. I didn't suggest that people that commit violence should be sent into the wilderness. I was only defining terms."<

OK, I'll take that, so where should they be sent? You seem to answer with

>"I don't know how such people should be dealt with in an Anarchist society, but it wouldn't be a bureaucratic prison system that people get lost in. Perhaps they'd be given options. Voluntary commitment to psychological treatment wards, house arrest, or expulsion to communities that have a place for such people. The point is that the entire community would have involvement in the decisions."<

So basically exactly what we do right now then. there are psychological wards for those that qualify (and are worse than prison btw) There is house arrest via ankle bracelet, and there is expulsion to communities that have a place for such people, namely prison. As for community involvement, we call that a "jury".

It sounds to me like what you want isn't anarchy, it's prison reform. Everyone wants prison reform. Have fun paying for it.

>"...the ones with the most freedom tend to be the most functional. Ours falls somewhere in the middle. Better than tyrannies, worse than many other Western democracies."<
So your definition of a functional anarchy is Europe?!

Juries are carefully selected by lawyers, and even then it's not voluntary for jurors to participate. Not to mention that these juries are often made up of people outside of the communities in which the crime was committed, particularly when it comes to state and federal prosecution. Jurors are also not permitted to know all the details, only what the lawyers carefully select as 'relevant' information.

There are different ways we deal with criminals, but the criminals themselves have little control over what course is pursued. They are rarely given options. They're swept up into a system that only further alienates them from society. Yes, I would like prison reform, given that's the system we have. Anarchism isn't exactly viable as it stands. It's more theoretical, and begins with a state of mind. So we make do with what we have and try to improve on it. I'm not a strong believer in sudden revolution since it often involves destabilizing upheaval, often only setting the system back further. I favor continuous reform, with anarchism as the ideal to move ever closer to.

And no, my definition of functional anarchism isn't Europe. I was merely illustrating the point that when people's needs are met and their freedoms respected, society sees improvements.

Again, I reiterate, anarchism begins as a mindset.

I suggest you read the book The Dispossessed by Ursula K Leguin. It's a speculative science fiction novel about a planetary anarchist colony, and the surrounding civilization. It doesn't portray anarchism as perfect, and addresses many of the potential drawbacks, but it explores the worldview of one of the colonists in contrast to that of the hierarchical civilization he visits. It's pretty insightful if you read it with an open mind.

When you day "mindset" I think you mean philosophy.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophy

As for your description of American jurisprudence I There are reasons each of these things are in place.
The history of jurisprudence in the united states is somewhat complicated and has evolved over time. for the the history and various opinions I suggest starting here.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jurisprudence
You're going to like Rawls I think.

As for LeGuin I Read it many years ago in my teens. In general trying to glean philosophy from science fiction is a bad idea. Science fiction philosophy is a lot like a Detroit concept car. It's there to look pretty and attract attention, not to be driven. It's the creation of a quicko slapped together society for use as a plot device. It is not thought through as a place to really live in. Look at others who try it:

Newt Gingrich is a follower of Robert A. Heinlein, as were a few defunct really creepy hippie cults in the southwest.
The Libertarians all start with Anne Rand and they're generally crazier than a bag of cats.
Do I even need to go near L. Ron Hubbard and Scientology?

it's just not healthy.

I'll take a look at that link soon, and I'll give you a proper response.

I would like to say that our enmity seems to be dissipating, like we're having a proper conversation now.