Question

Which country is now closer to the anarchist ideal in your opinion?

Comments

seriously...?

country? as in, nation/state?

"the" anarchist ideal?  

i have to step back and try a bit harder to see this as an honest question asked in good faith by someone really wanting to understand anarchy...

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Funkyanarchy, you have just made me register to the site, so the I could answer you :) Yes, this is an honest question, asked in good faith by someone curious about anarchy. Perhaps it could have been better fourmulated as "in what country would an anarchist feel happier these days?". Because countries, regions, etc are different. Some have more rules, more "effective" goverments, are cleaner. Others are messier but rules are more easily bent and perhaps you can have more freedom (provided you have a decent income so that you don't have to work like a slave which however is not that easy). Usually these are North/South differences. I am curious about how anarchists feel about this.

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The basis of anarchism is a rejection of the ideology and practice of statecraft and government. Anarchists generally don't play favorites when it comes to ranking states in order of individual comfort and/or happiness. Whatever makes a government "effective" (why the quotation marks?) is sure to annoy anarchists of all stripes, making the aspects of ineffectiveness irrelevant. All governments rely on coercion, force, violence, exploitation, oppression, and the intrusion of its institutions into the daily, private lives (such as are possible) of citizens and non-citizens. There may be more freedom in the US than in North Korea, but at the end of the day, police harassment (up to and including extrajudicial execution), jail time (and it's important to recognize that the US has the highest per capita inmate rate in the world, despite it being a free country...), homelessness, denial of access to healthcare, and the possibility and actuality of war all exist on a continuum of horror. All governments share those tools, and deploy them more or less often or brutally depending on whatever advantages the rulers feel might accrue to them at any given moment.

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hi whatever, welcome to being registered/the site.

could you change your post to being a comment, rather than an answer (click on edit, then click on "make answer into comment").

thanks for clarifying your question, also.

lawrence answered, in their normal caustic manner, with a valid anarchist answer, to which i would just add that yea, if we were to answer where we want to live, it would make more sense to answer by region than by  country or even state, which are both too big and are also State/law/etc-defined terrains, not human-defined ones.

let me know if i'm being too brief.

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whatever, i appreciate your clarification. 

as an anarchist, i would choose to live in a particular place - bioregion? - based on factors completely unrelated to governance (except for avoiding it). weather, terrain, local wildlife, nearby friends and lovers, accessibility to water, etc... those are the things that would influence my choices for where to create my life. which government claims control over that area is merely an enemy to be avoided as much as possible. i guess the poorer that government is, the less they are able to impose their will upon me. at least that seems to be how it works in my experience. when i lived in new york or california, cops were always everywhere. now that i live in one of the poorest counties in one of the poorest states in the u.s., i rarely come across them. poverty works! :-)

"perhaps you can have more freedom (provided you have a decent income so that you don't have to work like a slave which however is not that easy)"

i just want to point out that your point above makes huge assumptions about life choices. one only requires a "decent income" when their choices and priorities demand it. shifting one's priorities can dramatically change one's need for money. your statement seems to equate "freedom" with economic abundance. that is strictly a capitalist view. and as an anarchist, i want capitalism (and the mindsets it creates) gone just as much as i want government (and the mindsets it creates) gone.

make any sense?

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I wouldn't mind living in certain parts of nm.  I was just there for around a month, and as far as I could tell was money/wealth isn't necessary and there seemed to be a complete lack of the po-po's.

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By a decent income I mean having enough to eat, dress, have a shelter, buy some books and shampoo, travel and have enough free time to do it, raise your children and show them some interesting places, and so on. You don't have freedom without that, and believe me many don't have. I'm not talking about a consumerist capitalist lifestyle.

Funkyanarchy, It does make total sense above a minimum bellow which you'll do nothing else than trying to survive and that's not freedom for me.

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whatever,

i agree about the things/activities you mentioned as wanting to have/do, but don't discount the ability to do those things without money. i've eaten, got clothes, shelter, books, and traveled to interesting places with little or no money quite often. and i stopped using shampoo...the results amazed me!

edited to add: i live in the u.s., and i know the ability to do/obtain those things without (or little) money varies by which part of the globe one lives on.

Answer 1

I live in the US, and so the short answer is that the US is where I would feel most comfortable living, as an anarchist. Not that it is ideal, and not that I actually feel "comfortable," but I grew up here, I know the rules and to an extent how to game the system (though the system still games me harder).

More importantly, to me, I don't hold fantasies that there is some better place I could be. Frankly, I have a pretty good spot right now on the outskirts of a large city with a sizable anarchist scene, the place I live is relatively stable, so I don't expect to have to move, like, ever, and it is by a protected greenbelt, meaning development can't actually encroach much more than it currently has (as I type that I am imagining ugly modern duplexes going up in the three or four houses around me, the rich asshats who would move in, and what a nightmare that would be...) I'll still take this spot, which I have a somewhat lifelong connection to, over finding somewhere that might be somehow better by some metric that I don't actually understand.

Not to disparage folks who choose to withdraw, or move to find better conditions, I have often thought about escaping to the woods, and I know folks who have done that, and even some areas where there are small anarchist communities doing that (funny thing - most of these communities seem to be populated by egoists... so much for the red anarchist strawman about communal trumping individual...). I am not saying I won't do that at some point, but for now I prefer to do what I can with what I have where I am.

Comments

it's interesting that egoists are doing that, im going to do something similar when i am able but i will probably be doing it by myself, and only live there part of the year

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i imagine the folks who sail the seas without any "permanent" home must feel a certain type of freedom most of us don't.