User-Friendly Anarchy

User-friendly anarchy

Means, Ends, and post-moralists

A lot of people think that morals are simply crude approximations of the things that humans really value. I tend to agree. So let me ask post-moralists one question:

Do you believe the ends justify the means, or do you believe the means justify themselves?

If you believe the ends justify the means, then you have to support the government as it tries to:

Support peace through war.
Support freedom through imprisonment.
Support truth through lies.

Anarchy

The basic principle of anarchy

The easiest way to understand anarchy is to start with morals. And most morals can be boiled down to:

"Don't harm others. Unless they harm you first."

Christianity takes it a step further: "Don't harm others. Period." But pretty much every religion, culture, and nation agrees on the first one. Some people came up with a fancy term, and called it the "non-agression principle". Most other people just call it being a decent human being.

I think it's legitimate to question whether you want to be moral or not. But if you do want morals, then you have to apply them universally. If you apply some morals to yourself, and different morals to others, you're no longer moral, you're just discriminating.

But if morals apply universally, to everyone exactly the same, then there can be no government.

Anarchy

A somewhat anarchist manifesto

I believe in human organization, just not human organization based on violence.

I believe that the vast majority of human life has nothing to do with security, violence, theft, or war. We live on because we desire the good, and we naturally form ourselves into communities that achieve these ends without resorting to any form of coercion. We walk into grocery stores without fear, not because there are police, but because we know that the vast majority of other people do not wish us harm.

Anarchy
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