12mo ago

ELI5 why is anarchy not "the guy with the bigger stick" making the rules?

I'm politically agnostic and have moved from a slightly conservative stance to a vastly more progressive stance (european). i still dont get the more niche things like tankies and anarchists at this point but I would like to, without spending 10 hours reading endless manifests (which do have merit, no doubt, but still).

Can someone explain to me why anarchy isnt the guy (or gal, or gang, or entity) with the bigger stick making the rules?

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This is a great question and there are a lot of good answers from people much better read than me, but I'd like to throw in that anarchy is the fact of life. Nobody has authority over anyone else unless that authority is given to them by the person. Authority over someone requires consent from the person (I'm talking about between 2 adults, not like authority over your kids). Yes, pointing a gun at someone's head is an excellent way to get their consent to have authority over them. So in any form of government, the power lies in those who give consent for the government to have authority and validity a.k.a. "the people". Normally this consent is extracted unwillingly through either threats of violence or some kind of hypnosis. It would be cool though to live in a society where citizens willingly and well-informedly (is that a word? I don't give you authority to tell me which are words and which aren't) give authority to a government to manage society so people can focus on living well in a sustainable, equitable, and peaceful system.
- I kinda get where you're coming from... but just as an easy example...
  well-informedly isn't a word.
  I have now told you what is and isn't a word, dispote you explicitly not consenting to me doing so. What happens now?
  In this case? It isn't a big deal. You can tell me to pound sand or ignore me or try to get into a flame war with me over it, but your lack of given consent doesn't inherently prevent me from doing anything to you so I wouldn't agree that its just the way things are naturally.
  There are cases where it is much more important. If what you stated were true, there would be no concept of rape because nobody could do that to you without your consent, and if you have consent, it's not rape. Same with murder... the closest thing would be assisted suicide. I'd also argue that the Palestinians haven't consented to what is happening there. In each of these scenarios, one entity refused to consent, but it didn't impact the other perpetrator from continuing because the victim didn't have enough strength or weaponry or whatever (a bigger stick).
  I honestly don't see how you can have a society without both a mechanism to determine what the shared rules are, someone with a big enough stick to enforce those shared rules. Obviously, the tricky part then becomes ensuring that the enforcers only use their stick when its appropriate. Otherwise, you just end up with authoritarianism.
  
  Thanks for that great response. The truth is that I completely forgot to mention the other side of the equation: those who violate the principle of consent are wrong, which brings us to the really tricky bit
  a mechanism to determine what the shared rules are, someone with a big enough stick to enforce those shared rules.
  I don't have an answer ¯(ツ)_/¯
  
  I think that in an anarchic society, the stick is wielded by every individual and you enforce the rules through a large number of small sticks rather than a central authority with one big stick.
  
  a large number of small sticks rather than a central authority with one big stick.
  This is a great insight, thanks.
- I think you worded that pretty great. Thanks a lot! :)
- You're just redefining the word to make it meaningless.
  You could argue that everything is actually anarchy because there are no "god given" or evolutionary required hierarchies. You could argue that everything is authoritarian because as soon as two people come in contact there's a hierarchy established and one person has power over the other. You could argue that everything is democratic or communist, because in any system that doesn't result in everyone killing everyone else, people make agreements with each-other.
  The actual definition of anarchy is really based on how it appears and functions. If nobody is functioning as a leader and there's no obvious hierarchy, it could be described as anarchy.

209 comments