this post was submitted on 17 Feb 2026
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Flippanarchy
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Will you? Because I know I won't
If all that stands between me and the beginning of a society with no oppression is strapping some gear on and doing some manual labor, then fuck it gimme a pickaxe I'm going down there.
Am I suited for it? Absolutely the fuck not, but I'm willing, and I'm sure many others are as well, especially if they know that whatever happens, their safety and health comes before profit, and they'll always come back to a good place. I could certainly stand working until things begin to hurt if I knew every bit I dug up would do good.
Yeah that's cool. You and sewage guy will make a great duo. But the 5 dudes over there organized themselves, acquired a weapon and killed the other guy. They're waiting for you to come out of the mine with all those resources and you don't even know it.
Is that freedom from oppression?
Anarchism is the absence of hierarchy, not organization. The means of the people to use force against violent attempts at theft for personal gain are neither eliminated nor lessened.
So you're saying that you and sewage treatment plant guy will successfully defend against 5 armed men that ambushed you while you were working?
Remember: this is not an action film, this is real life we're talking about.
You seem to be consistently misunderstanding me. Did you seriously think what I meant was "me and this sewage guy are gonna singlehandedly fight off 5 armed men"? That's fucking absurd. What I actually meant was we would obviously have armed guards protecting valuables vulnerable to theft, like any other organized society.
Well. You could've said that if you wanted to say that.
Now it's not 5 dudes. Your land is valuable and the neighbouring state wants to invade you. How do you stop it?
We... Fight a war?
With what army? How do maintain a military without a hierarchy. Without central commands that everyone must follow
I never said that, either. I would say smaller, more specialized units like classrooms, search parties, and militaries benefit from adhering to an authority. It's just general society that cannot have a deemed authority.
Let me illustrate the difference via an example: There is a math class. The class obeys the teacher. Why? Because the teacher is known, in some reliable way, to have the knowledge necessary to teach a class on the subject. They derive their authority from that. The students listen to them because they wanted to learn from them.
So if a math teacher can have authority, derived from possessing the most knowledge about the subject at hand, how does, say, an executive or a legislator or a judge derive their authority? By being the most knowledgeable about... Everything? Just, fucking everything? It should stand to reason, because that's what they want to have authority over! But it doesn't, officials are NOT experts on literally everything. That's the difference.
So in your vision of anarchy there are leaders and hierarchies. There is just no central power that orchestrates them all. Ok.
Now. What is stopping the leader of the military from saying: "you know what? We've got all the weapons, why don't we subjugate our own population and live rich lives?". Resulting in a central authority, which would end the anarchy.
As it turns out rule by the people demands that the people are actually smart and kind to work well. You know, like rule by any other force.
How are those demands going to be enforced?
In most other political systems there is a central authority with a monopoly of violence that can enforce rules via violence.
If your political system only works if everyone acts in the interests of society over their own, then it's not a political system. It's a failure. Because there are plenty of selfish people, and you can't change that.
If your political system relies on people with a monopoly on violence just deciding to be nice about it, what does that mean?
Then that means it's shit.
In a democracy, governments derive their power from the legitimacy that the support of their voters give them. If someone in government decides to "not be nice about it", then most likely the rest of the government would stop it. Remember, the government is made up of a LOT of people. If an entire political party goes nuts, then the opposition would get votes and reclaim the monopoly of violence.