AC-ism in history?

[mosdef]

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Since i really don't know much about AC, could someone give me some help in explaining which mentioned human rights would be greater in AC-ism?

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The fundamental belief on which AC is built is universal recognition of property rights. Government undermines property rights with most of it's actions. There's one.

[MiloMinderbinder]

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The answer is you. Did you need to use violence and coercion to get your job? To get your partner? When you bought your groceries? Your whole life is an AC society (well until April 17 at least). If violence is wrong in the personal and wrong in the abstract why does it become right in the foggy middle ground of government?

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I have never experienced this 'violence' you speak of - please elaborate.

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Try not paying your taxes.

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Why would I do that?

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Because you don't like giving 20% of your income to a gang (who did nothing to earn 20% of the fruits of your toil) who spends more than the rest of the world combined on a huge, powerful military that generally serves as a tool for special interests, not you.

For starters.

But if you don't mind that, just send me 10% of your income and I won't even use it to kill anybody. You save and the world saves. And I profit.

[MiloMinderbinder]

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If by protection, you are talking about the US military keeping me free, then I am happy to pay for that.

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LOL. Yeah, because if not for the US military, then hordes would be crossing the oceans to kill you. Oh wait. It's largely BECAUSE of the US military that hordes want to cross the ocean and kill you.

[MiloMinderbinder]

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There has never been any large society that even came close to ACism.

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Nor has there ever been a large society that protected individual rights if the group or powerful wanted to violate them. So I guess that means we should endorse continued violation and coercion because its the norm.

And by the way, wouldn't it have been appropriate if in 1770s Americans said "there has never been a large society that can be a functional democracy without a monarchy or militant leader at the helm".

Yeah for status quo.

Change is bad.

Just ignore that every ounce of progress in history was against the prevailing norm and status quo.

[Zygote]

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For me AC-ism beliefs have much more in common with times of Wild West or times of industrial revolution than to modern societies.

I find it difficult to accept that living in such unregulated societies would be better or even more fair to the most population. I doubt a society where profits are put above the people would lead to any freedom at all since people would have only as much freedom / rights as they could afford it.

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American Experiment in AC: The Not So Wild West

[Vagos]

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Notice that when pvn says "everyone", he clearly does not mean the very small percentage of people who murder, steal and rape on a personal level. I would guess this is about the same percentage of people that would flat out refuse to dial 9-1-1 for someone who is dying right in front of them. So we can dispense with the highly unlikely and outright ridiculous hypotheticals too.

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Not completely on point, but I wouldn't be so certain that people will call for help Kitty Genovese

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This one anecdote doesn't refute anything I said.

[Jamougha]

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If there was ever an AC society and it is no longer AC, there is a reason for it that can be shown to be a practical or theoretical failing of AC itself.

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So if Hitler had conquered us in WWII, that would have been a failure of our form of government? Interesting theory, but I don't agree.

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Also all those democracies that were overthrown by the US show that democracy is a failure and totalitarianism is a success.

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If democracies showed a consistent pattern of failing in the short term then that would invalidate democratic government, yes. The existence of multiple stable, extremely prosperous democracies with high standards of living and good human rights is essentially what validates the system.

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A stateless Ireland lasted a thousand years before they were conquered by the British (essentially the Death Star at the time). That's quite a lot longer than any democracy has ever lasted.

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People lived for tens, arguably hundreds of thousands of years without a state, so I'm not really sure what your point is. That situation becomes unstable once food production allows standing armies and professional bureaucracies. It's not exactly an advertisement for anarchism either; transpose the death rate from violence to 20th century populations and it's equivalent to a global nuclear war once per century.

[BuddyQ]

[tame_deuces]

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Notice that when pvn says "everyone", he clearly does not mean the very small percentage of people who murder, steal and rape on a personal level. I would guess this is about the same percentage of people that would flat out refuse to dial 9-1-1 for someone who is dying right in front of them. So we can dispense with the highly unlikely and outright ridiculous hypotheticals too.

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Not completely on point, but I wouldn't be so certain that people will call for help Kitty Genovese

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This one anecdote doesn't refute anything I said.

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Well, bunk it up with the Milgram studies and you'll know that people don't really act very idealistically, they don't always act rationally, they often do what someone else tells them too and they don't always mind coercion and there is usually a coercer or too hiding out in any modestly large group of people. They're people.

And that's my beef with these debates in general - proposing that cultural structures negating AC principles may very well arise in some setting where AC is the norm, even if ACists doesn't support them, is usually just ignored.

[superleeds]

This is the problem with all AC's examples of Acism. They are either feudal systems based on some form of hierarchy or they are systems ultimately backed by some form of government, the classic example being 'The not so wild west'.