Metal Reviews

I want a world with all the modern technology of today and the hunter-gatherer society of the earlier ages. I want everyone to own their own house, land, farm or whatever the fuck they want. Everyone does the job they want and earns enough money to provide for their family and still have enough money left to pursue their own interests. No religion, thus no stupid unnecessary morality, rules and no peer pressure.

A modern anarchist world, to sum it all up. I could elaborate enough to write a fucking book on it, but this is what I basically want. Call me crazy, but I still have some faith in humanity to think that this would actually work and we can all exist peacefully.

Agreed completely, I don't think it's crazy either.

It seems crazy given the way the world is now, but I think if we were to take the idea of an anarchist society and asked two questions:

1) if it existed could it function economically?
2) is it compatible with human nature?

I think the answer to both is yes.

Star Trek without the Romulans but with the Klingons !

Legalization is a step further than decriminalization. I wouldn't legalize acid, I would merely decriminalize it. But I'd legalize weed.

Why wouldn't you legalise acid?

Rio, Kathaarian, who enforces basic laws to protect life and property?

An anarchist society is not incompatible with a legal system protecting people's lives. The jury system is perfectly compatible with the vision of a collectively administered society.

"Property" would have a very different meaning in such a system. In terms of private consumption (e.g. my right to own my own residence, means of transport, leisure items, etc.) I don't see a problem with maintaining that- see the last paragraph.

In terms of production (i.e. factories, agriculture, universities etc.) the whole point of the system is that private ownership is not protected.

Well, like I said to you the other day, until some collective decides to raise an army or a minority of the collective disagree with the overall actions of the collective. Besides, utopian, much?

Irrelevant criticism, because this hypothetical could happen in any given system. Power would be much decentralised in this system so the risk would be lower.



Which is a regular occurence in any democratic system almost by definition. If I don't like the result of an election then my will and actions are overridden by the collective. You're trying to mangle this into some kind of dastardly covert tyranny. If 60% of Britain votes for AV the 40% who want to retain FPTP will be overridden. Oh no! How sinister!



Read the last few posts. Obviously it is "utopian" because it is so different to the one we live in now. However, what I am asking you to do is speculate: If a system without private ownership of production were to hypothetically exist, would it firstly function economically, and secondly be compatible with human nature. Honestly, I have yet to see any compelling argument as to why it couldn't.

The question is "what kind of world would you like to see?", and this is my answer.

Fair enough. I could spend hours going through your post and pointing out exactly the bits I have problems with, but eh, the thread's not to argue out a compromise we can all agree on.

*memories of wasted evenings spent debating libertarian communism on messenger come flooding horribly back*

*shudder*

We need to find a new mutual interest. Bowls, or conkers, or something.

Agreed with Rio's points there. We will almost always have to agree to disagree on anarchism, even among anarchists. My two cents; the war problem, and protection of property is the most common problem here. But is it any different than today? No. The police can be selected by voting, for example. Every neighborhood can choose their own system of protection, and if they don't like it they can change it. So the police would be chosen from the people who actually want to protect their fellow man, not the stick in some higher authorities hand, swung at the people when they don't behave themselves.

All in all, I'm sure that war and crime will definitely decrease and disappear eventually in an anarchist "utopia". Where people have what they want and can do what they want, where the grass is the same shade of green on both sides, we wouldn't have this much greed and aggression. We merely watched as Hitler murdered 6 million people, didn't we? In my utopia, at least he couldn't rise to such a power anyway. Maybe he would be a serial killer. But we have those today too, right?

The plant union was a carry over from a previous company we purchased in a province (Saskatchewan) that is heavily unionized. To answer your query, it would definitely be an uphill battle to unionize at another location.

Any antagonism comes from the fact they are lagging behind the other locations in terms of productivity. And no, their working conditions and pay is no different. It's kind of like the Russian's complaints about Afghanistan - they agree to change to your face, but the second you leave they return to their old ways. It's been a long hard struggle to try and change their culture.

I agree about trade unions (or professional associations) being useful in terms of setting various standards around quality, working conditions, pay and safety. But as far as I know they don't dictate things like business process, vacation time, benefits, advancement, use of contractors, termination, etc.

So unions can be useful but they can also be counter-productive for the reasons I mentioned in my previous post.

Obviously it depends what you mean by useful and counterproductive, but I don't know anything about your case so fair enough. It is strange that the pay and conditions are no different in the unionised plant than everywhere else and makes me wonder what the deal is.

I guess unions will never dictate things like vacation, benefits, advancement, etc. but if they are strong enough to do their job properly then they should be forcing a consultative role in establishing standards on those things.

AFAIK they don't often have much input on use of contractors, I guess for the main reason that in many cases companies use subcontracting with undermining the union as at least a secondary objective.

"Like a great big pussy, jus' waitin' to get fucked"
-Tony Montana