This feels like projection more than anything else.
There are tons of people who voluntarily do hard, unpleasant, or dangerous work because they care about the people around them. Volunteer firefighters. Mutual aid groups. Community search and rescue. The number of regular people who stepped up during disasters when official institutions failed is huge. The idea that nobody would bother maintaining water systems unless a central authority forced them to says more about how you see people than about how people actually behave.
You’re also mixing up anarchism with “no coordination.” Anarchism isn’t “everyone does whatever they want and society collapses.” It’s opposition to hierarchy and domination, not opposition to organization. Sewage plants and water treatment don’t exist because of some mystical power of the state. They exist because people need clean water. They require technical knowledge, cooperation, and systems of accountability. None of that logically requires a top-down ruling authority.
You brought up Grafton, NH, (I had to google this) but that doesn’t look anything like anarchism. That looks more like a hyper-individualist, market-first version of libertarianism with almost no civic culture. Anarchism, especially in its socialist or syndicalist traditions, is built around collective responsibility and shared management. Those are very different things. “Nobody owes anyone anything” is not the same as “we organize ourselves without bosses.”
And on the clean water point: communities historically pushed for sanitation because cholera and dysentery were killing people. Public health measures often came from collective pressure long before centralized bureaucracies standardized them. People don’t need to be tricked into wanting potable water.
You say the greater good requires protecting people from their own stupidity. Maybe sometimes. But you seriously think centralization magically fix negligence? Flint, Michigan had a state. That didn’t prevent a water disaster. Bureaucracy can fail just as hard as decentralized systems, and sometimes with less direct accountability.
The real disagreement here seems to be about human nature. If you assume most people won’t lift a finger unless coerced, then yeah, anarchism sounds ridiculous. If you assume people are capable of organizing around shared needs when they actually have ownership and say over things, it becomes less far-fetched.
Ok, so you have people willing to work at the wastewater treatment plant. What happens when the Reverse Osmosis pump gives out? Costs $500,000 to replace. Whose going to pay for that? Wait, sorry I forgot we’re in an anarchist society so supposedly no money (if there is money, add on a whole other layer of complexity to the following questions).
So who’s going to build the pump? People willing to work at the pump factory? Ok, where do they get the materials to build it? I’m assuming none of this is local because logistically that’s practically impossible, so who delivers the materials to them? The pump factory is unlikely to be next door to the wastewater treatment plant, so how is the pump delivered? Who is the specialist that installs the pump? Who makes sure it’s done safely and correctly? Are there consequences if it’s done in a way that doesn’t result in clean water?
That’s the thing, anarchism seems great whenever everything is working and everything is already in place. The moment something big breaks, anarchism just doesn’t provide enough resources to get it fixed. We would need a post-scarcity society before we could move to something like that.
Again, you’re assuming complexity only works if there’s hierarchy and profit at the top.
Now I’m no hydraulics expert, but I’m pretty sure a reverse osmosis pump does not need a CEO to function. We have engineers, machinists, operators and logistics workers who coordinate their labor. For the last time, anarchism does not mean no organization. It means organization without concentrated ownership and coercive authority.
The way you frame this makes it sound like the only reason you’d ever lift a finger for anyone is if there’s a paycheck or someone above you making you. That’s not really a strong critique of anarchism. It’s more of a self report about how you see community.
Would you (or any other anarchist reading this) ever want to do an AMA? I have questions, but I imagine that asking them here would feel like dog-piling and I don’t want to do that to you. I’m just curious and want to learn more. The last time I heard people take anarchism seriously, school teachers were quick to shut it down.
I have my own concerns and reservations, but I don’t truly know how much of it exists from being stuck in an authoritarian society, and I simply haven’t heard the solutions yet because of it. I’ve always been a skeptic, and I’m always looking for a new way to think about things, even things I don’t necessarily agree with. I think a question-and-answer session could be quite enlightening.
I might not be able to go outside this authoritarian box and explore for myself, but an AMA would at least allow me (and others like me) to look out a window.
How do those engineers get their education? Do they find a mentor engineer? So for each engineering student you need an already engineer teacher?
Or would there perhaps be a school of engineering with a hierarchy to organize the engineering lectures so there could be more students per teacher?
But there’s not only engineering. Perhaps we might also need medical schools, art schools, sewage maintaining schools. Maybe those schools might want to interact with eachother in order to provide consistent curriculums and aid students if they want to switch from one school to another. Perhaps we need a department of education to coordinate all this schools.
Maybe, like we arrived at the department of education, we might want departments for other matters. Look! A government!
If you’re actually interested and not just being debate-y then I’d suggest you read some foundational literature or if you want stuff that’s more how this might work in practice consider reading about the CNT FAI during the Spanish civil war.
The government derives its authority from its ability to direct men armed with guns and torture implements to force you to comply on pain of death or agony.
Seriously if you’re actually curious just read, it’ll be more informative than any silly internet comment section.
Anarchism is a political philosophy and movement that seeks to abolish all institutions that perpetuate authority, coercion, or hierarchy
Why do you think sewage treatment plants exist in the first place? I’ll give you a hint, its not because people came together altruistically to build them (or even regulate that they need to exist).
The Rivers and Harbors Act of 1899 was signed because people, left to their own devices, self-destructively pollute their water supplies. That law mandated people couldnt dump shit in the water. It also was passed because state laws weren’t effective at stopping people from polluting the water
It wasnt enough, so there was the Water Pollution Control Act of 1948. And then the Water Quality Act of 1965. And then the Clean Water Act of 1972, which provided funding to create sewage treatment plants, and mandated that all wastewater be treated to a certain standard. And even that wasnt enough, which is why we later invented the entire EPA, an entity dedicated largely to that one issue (among similar things).
None of that would have occurred without centralized authority, nor would have been necessary if a plurality of people were not inherently self destructive when left to their own devices. Anarchism is opposed to any central authority. Thereby, under the most basic logic, sewage treatment plants would be virtually guaranteed not to exist in an anarchical non-society society.
Giving people at large the benefit of the doubt about an issue they have repeatedly shown to fuck up for centuries is silly. And sewage treatment plants require centralization to be built and maintained.
The Rivers and Harbors Act of 1899 was signed because people, left to their own devices, self-destructively pollute their water supplies. That law mandated people couldnt dump shit in the water. It also was passed because state laws weren’t effective at stopping people from polluting the water
It’s interesting that you quietly swap in “people” where history mostly shows industrial corporations dumping waste for profit.
Working class communities were not the ones lobbying to pour chemical sludge into rivers.
Most of the legislation you listed was not the state heroically saving humanity from itself. It was the state reacting to industrial capital externalizing costs onto the public. Central authority stepped in because private ownership plus profit incentives produced pollution at scale.
You’re treating absence of centralized state authority as if it means absence of rules, standards or coordination. That is not what anarchism argues. It argues against concentrated political authority. It does not argue against collectively enforced norms.
You cite centuries of people “fucking up.” A lot of that history is profit driven extraction protected by law, not spontaneous communal self destruction.
If anything, your examples show that concentrated power and profit incentives required constant correction. That is not a great defense of hierarchy.
It’s interesting that you quietly swap in “people” where history mostly shows industrial corporations dumping waste for profit.
I didnt realize corporations were sentient entities capable of acting on their own, rather than groups of people doing people things…
The 1899 act was legitimately created because everyday people were literally throwing their garbage into water as a form of waste management. So much so that it was difficult to navigate boats safely, ergo “Rivers and Harbors Act” as in the places that were affected by floating masses of garbage
There are HIERARCHIES that coerce people within them to put profit above all else or they lose their position in the hierarchy. I can’t tell if you are a troll or just genuinely haven’t put any thought into this at all.
This feels like projection more than anything else.
There are tons of people who voluntarily do hard, unpleasant, or dangerous work because they care about the people around them. Volunteer firefighters. Mutual aid groups. Community search and rescue. The number of regular people who stepped up during disasters when official institutions failed is huge. The idea that nobody would bother maintaining water systems unless a central authority forced them to says more about how you see people than about how people actually behave.
You’re also mixing up anarchism with “no coordination.” Anarchism isn’t “everyone does whatever they want and society collapses.” It’s opposition to hierarchy and domination, not opposition to organization. Sewage plants and water treatment don’t exist because of some mystical power of the state. They exist because people need clean water. They require technical knowledge, cooperation, and systems of accountability. None of that logically requires a top-down ruling authority.
You brought up Grafton, NH, (I had to google this) but that doesn’t look anything like anarchism. That looks more like a hyper-individualist, market-first version of libertarianism with almost no civic culture. Anarchism, especially in its socialist or syndicalist traditions, is built around collective responsibility and shared management. Those are very different things. “Nobody owes anyone anything” is not the same as “we organize ourselves without bosses.”
And on the clean water point: communities historically pushed for sanitation because cholera and dysentery were killing people. Public health measures often came from collective pressure long before centralized bureaucracies standardized them. People don’t need to be tricked into wanting potable water.
You say the greater good requires protecting people from their own stupidity. Maybe sometimes. But you seriously think centralization magically fix negligence? Flint, Michigan had a state. That didn’t prevent a water disaster. Bureaucracy can fail just as hard as decentralized systems, and sometimes with less direct accountability.
The real disagreement here seems to be about human nature. If you assume most people won’t lift a finger unless coerced, then yeah, anarchism sounds ridiculous. If you assume people are capable of organizing around shared needs when they actually have ownership and say over things, it becomes less far-fetched.
Ok, so you have people willing to work at the wastewater treatment plant. What happens when the Reverse Osmosis pump gives out? Costs $500,000 to replace. Whose going to pay for that? Wait, sorry I forgot we’re in an anarchist society so supposedly no money (if there is money, add on a whole other layer of complexity to the following questions).
So who’s going to build the pump? People willing to work at the pump factory? Ok, where do they get the materials to build it? I’m assuming none of this is local because logistically that’s practically impossible, so who delivers the materials to them? The pump factory is unlikely to be next door to the wastewater treatment plant, so how is the pump delivered? Who is the specialist that installs the pump? Who makes sure it’s done safely and correctly? Are there consequences if it’s done in a way that doesn’t result in clean water?
That’s the thing, anarchism seems great whenever everything is working and everything is already in place. The moment something big breaks, anarchism just doesn’t provide enough resources to get it fixed. We would need a post-scarcity society before we could move to something like that.
Again, you’re assuming complexity only works if there’s hierarchy and profit at the top.
Now I’m no hydraulics expert, but I’m pretty sure a reverse osmosis pump does not need a CEO to function. We have engineers, machinists, operators and logistics workers who coordinate their labor. For the last time, anarchism does not mean no organization. It means organization without concentrated ownership and coercive authority.
The way you frame this makes it sound like the only reason you’d ever lift a finger for anyone is if there’s a paycheck or someone above you making you. That’s not really a strong critique of anarchism. It’s more of a self report about how you see community.
Would you (or any other anarchist reading this) ever want to do an AMA? I have questions, but I imagine that asking them here would feel like dog-piling and I don’t want to do that to you. I’m just curious and want to learn more. The last time I heard people take anarchism seriously, school teachers were quick to shut it down.
I have my own concerns and reservations, but I don’t truly know how much of it exists from being stuck in an authoritarian society, and I simply haven’t heard the solutions yet because of it. I’ve always been a skeptic, and I’m always looking for a new way to think about things, even things I don’t necessarily agree with. I think a question-and-answer session could be quite enlightening.
I might not be able to go outside this authoritarian box and explore for myself, but an AMA would at least allow me (and others like me) to look out a window.
How do those engineers get their education? Do they find a mentor engineer? So for each engineering student you need an already engineer teacher?
Or would there perhaps be a school of engineering with a hierarchy to organize the engineering lectures so there could be more students per teacher?
But there’s not only engineering. Perhaps we might also need medical schools, art schools, sewage maintaining schools. Maybe those schools might want to interact with eachother in order to provide consistent curriculums and aid students if they want to switch from one school to another. Perhaps we need a department of education to coordinate all this schools.
Maybe, like we arrived at the department of education, we might want departments for other matters. Look! A government!
I think that you should read about anarchism because you’re so confused that it’s difficult to explain where.
councils, working groups, community bodies, assemblies etc are all entirely compatible with anarchy.
It is not opposition to collectivism, indeed anarchism is (generally) deeply collectivist.
How is that different from a government?
If you’re actually interested and not just being debate-y then I’d suggest you read some foundational literature or if you want stuff that’s more how this might work in practice consider reading about the CNT FAI during the Spanish civil war.
The government derives its authority from its ability to direct men armed with guns and torture implements to force you to comply on pain of death or agony.
Seriously if you’re actually curious just read, it’ll be more informative than any silly internet comment section.
Oh yea, and how is that working out for you?
Everyone in Lemmy is American, everyone knows that
Why do you think sewage treatment plants exist in the first place? I’ll give you a hint, its not because people came together altruistically to build them (or even regulate that they need to exist).
The Rivers and Harbors Act of 1899 was signed because people, left to their own devices, self-destructively pollute their water supplies. That law mandated people couldnt dump shit in the water. It also was passed because state laws weren’t effective at stopping people from polluting the water
It wasnt enough, so there was the Water Pollution Control Act of 1948. And then the Water Quality Act of 1965. And then the Clean Water Act of 1972, which provided funding to create sewage treatment plants, and mandated that all wastewater be treated to a certain standard. And even that wasnt enough, which is why we later invented the entire EPA, an entity dedicated largely to that one issue (among similar things).
None of that would have occurred without centralized authority, nor would have been necessary if a plurality of people were not inherently self destructive when left to their own devices. Anarchism is opposed to any central authority. Thereby, under the most basic logic, sewage treatment plants would be virtually guaranteed not to exist in an anarchical non-society society.
Giving people at large the benefit of the doubt about an issue they have repeatedly shown to fuck up for centuries is silly. And sewage treatment plants require centralization to be built and maintained.
When will it be enough?
It’s interesting that you quietly swap in “people” where history mostly shows industrial corporations dumping waste for profit.
Working class communities were not the ones lobbying to pour chemical sludge into rivers.
Most of the legislation you listed was not the state heroically saving humanity from itself. It was the state reacting to industrial capital externalizing costs onto the public. Central authority stepped in because private ownership plus profit incentives produced pollution at scale.
You’re treating absence of centralized state authority as if it means absence of rules, standards or coordination. That is not what anarchism argues. It argues against concentrated political authority. It does not argue against collectively enforced norms.
You cite centuries of people “fucking up.” A lot of that history is profit driven extraction protected by law, not spontaneous communal self destruction.
If anything, your examples show that concentrated power and profit incentives required constant correction. That is not a great defense of hierarchy.
I didnt realize corporations were sentient entities capable of acting on their own, rather than groups of people doing people things…
The 1899 act was legitimately created because everyday people were literally throwing their garbage into water as a form of waste management. So much so that it was difficult to navigate boats safely, ergo “Rivers and Harbors Act” as in the places that were affected by floating masses of garbage
There are HIERARCHIES that coerce people within them to put profit above all else or they lose their position in the hierarchy. I can’t tell if you are a troll or just genuinely haven’t put any thought into this at all.
I didn’t realize it takes rocket science to understand the difference between individual behavior and institutional incentives.