Nostr Web Client

In theory yes, in a practical sense it is not as easy it becomes more problematic once your community enlarges >1000 inhabitants.

Trust me I grew up and lived in a community as you describe it for a large part of my life which functions almost exactly as you explained it. Therefore I know it could work well if strategically well organised.

Government if you mean by the state yes, but also local smaller communities have government where the process of democratic elections really work for a head or a council which make certain critical decisions for the community as there is also accountability because they are not out of reach for the rest of the community.

Jeff Swann 2y ago

Anarcho-capitalism has no democratic process, no public councils, & no political leaders of any kind. All services would be privately supplied & funded, & anyone who does not like a particular service would be able to support a competitor or start their own.

I suspect that getting from here to there will involve a lot of active local disregard for federal & state laws & any other dictates of larger institutions. And I think those larger institutions will increasingly lack the resources & political will needed to enforce any decent sort of justice or order. This seems likely to happen at all levels at once, & I think we can already see it happening with States & counties defying federal demands around covid, States effectively nullifying federal drug & gun laws, etc. Uber, is actually a decent example; it started in direct defiance of taxi monopolies in most major cities, but they were too popular to kill by the time legal action was attempted. Uber isn't even decentralized. I think we will see truly decentralized versions of all sorts of services that will undermine all sorts of laws & regulations. Eventually the political institutions that remain will just be seen as irrelevant groups of incompetent authoritarian weinies hurling empty threats to annoy the people who are actually doing something productive.

Smaller communities may be more successful in the short to medium term. I suspect major cities will continue to degrade into socialist hellholes, as has been the trend for some time.

Reply to this note

Please Login to reply.

Discussion

The Conscious Contrarian 2y ago

Well described potential scenario.

I guess a key factor is going to be just how much violence and coercion the decaying institutions are going to be able to muster? I suspect this is going to vary a lot, in some places they are going to fight brutally (see France, parts of the US recently), in others there is going to be little resistance.

Adeptus 2y ago

A smaller population will have, potentially, more success at maintaining social norms. Personal responsibility being one of the most critical for fostering an environment where anarcho-capitalism can succeed.

Jeff Swann 2y ago

I suspect some sort of web of trust style reputation system will also emerge in order to scale accountability or personal responsibility in some form to larger populations.

Adeptus 2y ago

Which would, in turn, require enforcement.

Jeff Swann 2y ago

Reputations don't have to be "enforced," you may just be unable to access certain services without a certain number of other positive dealings with people trusted by a certain seller. For example, I may sell you a car part that you pay for upfront, but I may not sell you installation of said part unless you have a certain number of positive dealings with people within my social network. Reputation just follows you around like a credit score. A "social credit system" is a perfectly reasonable governance tool so long as it isn't centralized & you can't be black listed by some monopoly institution. There may very well be competing social credit syatems with different standards that people care about.

Adeptus 2y ago

You are correct. "Reputations don't require enforcement"

But the system that tracks and recognizes them does.

Enforcement from and by whom and how is certainly up for debate, but it will require enforcement nonetheless.

Not enforcement of reputation but of the rules and methods by which it is quantified and tracked.

Jeff Swann 2y ago

Just need some sort of standard developed so that people can rate each other in different ways & those ratings can be weighted in some sane & helpful fashion. Lots of social graph problems to be solved in decentralized systems.

Adeptus 2y ago

Which is why small communities are far more likely to accomplish and maintain a system that will work.

Any larger system will fail in the face of human nature.

Jeff Swann 2y ago

Nah, I think, like Bitcoin & the internet in general we will see certain standards emerge that will spread & scale to facilitate the development of robust global trade networks