I am really confused by this post. I would not say that my 'ideal' is getting rid of government. What I would say is that I think that competition tends to produce more efficiency. And government does not allow for competition. Do you really believe that the various government agencies are as efficient as privately run organizations? Do you really believe that public (K-12) schools are as efficient as private schools or home schools?

So results don't matter, as long as our intentions are pure it's all good?

How in the heck did you ever come up with the assumption that ACists were against safety nets?

And a wise man once told me that Democracy= 2 wolves and 1 sheep 'voting'! on what's for dinner.

What makes you think that I am better at figuring this out than you are?

My mother uses her own money and her own time to buy, prepare, and serve food to homeless men in a homeless shelter. She does this despite the fact that she is taxed so the government can get money to perform this same series of tasks. If there were no government so she didn't get taxed to have the homeless people fed do you think she would be less likely to do what she is already doing with her time and money in this regard?

Are you really expecting someone who supports the idea of an ACist society to be able to predict and delineate details about how billions of people would organize and conduct their day to day affairs? I wouldn't trust someone who claimed to be able to do that and would in fact consider them to be absolutely crazy and delusional beyond belief.

An indirect response: The incentives and costs of living in a society without a government would be completely different than the one she lives in now. In AC land she may have to pay more money to use roads, police insurance, fire fighter insurance, or whatever government provided service that is subsidized by the rich in our current environemnt.

Direct response: She would have more money. But she would not have more time or help. Time and help would probably be just as important as fiscal resources. I am not sure how much it would help if she had some more money, assuming that she would have more money. Which is a bold assumption imo.

And this is what we love about youz guyz... every one of your personal "theories" of ACism is as different and imaginary as a 4-dimensional snow flake.

Maybe you are not aware of this but I have not made a secret of the fact that I used to be a homeless person. I have lived in homeless shelters and eaten at soup kitchen. I have lived in the 'government provided safety-net' out of necessity. And I am not 'doing well' economically at all. Yet I am ACist and believe that the poor would be better off under ACism. How can this be?

We can certainly agree to disagree on this, I am fine with that. But I happen to have a fairly unique perspective on what it means to be poor in comparison to the vast majority of posters here in this forum and have lots of good reasons as to why I believe that the poor would be better off in AC land rather than in our government land. (I don't intend to go into all the details in this thread, not because I can't, because I think this thread is whack and because I have went into a lot of detail about this in other threads in the past).

bk,

I have never been homeless, but my mom was on welfare when I was born. So we can go back and forth on anecdotes. That does not change the fact that your post is not really a response to what I posted.

As I explained early on it seemed pretty clear to me that people were mis-characterizing the beliefs of ACists and lumping them togther as if they all have the same beliefs...so I started to basically not read many posts becaue despite my and others objections I did not see this behavior change on the part of certain posters. So I have only read select posts in the past many pages.

My insight is that too many people make too many assumptions about what others believe.

So then we can probably agree she would not be LESS inclined to spend her time and money doing such things than she does at present, yes?

As opposed to every one of you statist guys having the exact same cookie cutter view to every aspect of life?

I agree. Your mom would be the same person in this hypothetical system. How AC land effects her money, time, and amount of help is pure speculation.

Then how about this:

The people who are helped the most under a government system are the people who own the government. The uber wealthy. And they use the government to subsidize their own agenda, getting you and me to pay for things that benefit them, since they are in control of the government.

Eliminating government will remove their ability to forcibly get you and me to pay for things that increase their wealth and power. If they want a military they will have to pay for it themselves. If they want people to buy their products they will not be able to get government to take out contracts with them, using your and my money to buy their goods and services without our permission or voluntary consent. They will have to actually advertize their goods and services and compete for your and my money.

This will make it harder and more costly for the uber wealthy to accumulate more power and wealth than it is at present. I will agree that it's unlikely that the uber wealthy will tend to become poor in AC land, but contend that the playing field will not be tilted in their favor as a matter of LAW, backed up by a military force they do not even have to support financially despite being able to use it for their own ends like they can and do now.

Dude, "statist" isn't a group of people. And I'm the anarchist "statist" anyway, if you didn't know. But the whole "statist" line is always LOLtastical...

Sailor: As opposed to every one of you land-lover guys having the exact...
Dude w/hair: As opposed to every one of you bald guys having the exact...
Zombie: As opposed to every one of you living guys having the exact...
ACist: As opposed to every one of you "statist" guys having the exact...

But why are you prating on about the darn "statists" anyway? Nobody asked you about "statism" that isn't even on topic. We are asking about ACism. Why don't ACists ever want to chat about ACism? Why does it always matter what someone else "is"? Why can't they explain their "ideal" in a stand-alone manner?

We know why they are always trying to change the subject.

Besides democracy (for those governments that use it), what parts of the governments do you want to get rid of?

Thissssssssssssss.

ACists need to repeat this like a mantra until it sinks in.

NO. What we are really (well at one time anyway) expecting is a coherent response to some of the problems with the basic tenets of ACism. Like, given the history of mankind, the exploitation of children is likely to be a reality in any society. What are the ACists mechanisms for curtailing this? Unless off course your in that splinter group (off which apparently according to you their are literally thousands off now) which concedes that yeah life is going to suck for some but hopefully I'll be in the group enjoying my cheaper Nikes and paying my DRO's instead of my money being stolen by government.

"No... except yeah, every time this comes up, it's just this INCREDIBLE COINCIDENCE that it turns into this endless series of nitpicking detail questions but we don't want to know EVERY detail, just.... lots and lots and lots of them."

What are the evolutionists mechanisms for turning dinosaurs into birds? I mean, we don't need to know the details of how billions of lifeforms will organize... we just want to know what lifeforms will evolve over the next 100,000 years. Clearly anyone who believes in evolution should be able to tell us something so BASIC.

LOL no dude, the only reason there are a lot of Qs is because the "ideal" has a lot of logical holes.

We aren't asking for EVERY detail... LOL no.

We are asking for ANY details.

OK I'm game. All life forms will evolve over the next 100,000 years. Some will disappear in that time. New species will appear in that time. But they will all evolve or die.

Now your turn please. What mechanisms would you put in place to counter some organizations becoming powerful enough to be a law unto themselves. You know just in case bizarro world happens and the markets fail to keep everyone in check?

In that analogy I think the ACists are saying "I don't know if evolution is right, but maybe the dinosaurs could have evolved into squirrels and then into sunflowers and then into marble carvings of birds who were magically turned into real birds by a genie. I mean, USE YOUR IMAGINATION, JEEZ, THERE ARE LITERALLY MILLIONS OF WAYS IT COULD'VE HAPPENED"

"P.S. I'm not actually going to tell you if I think evolution is true."

where do acists think the state came from? it seems like they believe it was thought up in a room somewhere, or some dude wrote a book. kind of like how they think acism can be implemented. it's just hilarious to me.

1. No one trusts corporations and everyone's first thought is always around some becoming all power so people will be very invested in keeping them in check and will not patronise any company that is becoming too powerful.

2. All competing companies have a huge incentive to keep the playing field level so will spend a good deal of money to keep people informed of any company gaining too much power.

3. If all else fails we're back to the current status quo (oh noes) and we have to sell AC to people all over again.