Can an anarchist planet support 7 billion humans?

Question

Rather than talking about which aspects of normal society are compatible with anarchist philosophy/ideology, I wonder if the human race and the earth are compatible with the things that modern anarchists want.

This contemplation goes back to the green anarchist argument that civilization is the main cause of pandemics, not viruses and bacteria. It's really hard to argue with this point of view if you look at it with an open mind: how would people be getting epidemically infected by COVID if it wasn't for airplanes and cities? Without those two things, clearly some people would die, but not all at once like is happening now, and the virus itself would go extinct.

As somewhat of a tangent, I also wonder if having a rapidly transient society or culture is in any way compatible with the goals that anarchists want to accomplish. My theory as to why COVID is such a huge problem in the US is:

-people are always coming and going through any means necessary

-the US is kind of a "melting pot", that despite its violent white-christian roots, people who are not often really like to come to the US for various reasons...

Of course, you could have something like bolos, where nomads are a thing, yet given the amount of space that human's take up, i think that having communes and "going back to the land" are waaay more capable of changing the earth to our advantage...You don't even have to buy land, you could have anarchists living in the woods who moonlight with everyone else. There's still so much land that is not occupied by humans. Avoiding participating by not working or contributing money to the things that destroy so many other things seems like the golden standard for any sort of lifestyle.

This is about as far as I can go as an anarchist visionary! Please help me! I don't want to be working at the anarchist-federation power plant!

Comments

Do anti-civ folk have an explanation for pandemics in the animal kingdom? If civilization is the cause, why does it occur in the animal kingdom?

From my reading anti-civ ideas, they generally agree with science (or soft-science) that civilization began somewhere around 12,000-15,000 years ago. There's evidence indicating endemics occurred 15,000-20,000 years prior to the rise of civilization that may have turned into an pandemic over a period of time. So, anti-civ folk may want to revise their insinuation that pandemics are caused by civilization. Civilization just makes it easier for diseases to spread in humans.

It's difficult to eradicate a virus. I think smallpox is the only one that has been eradicated since it infects humans and not animals. I doubt the cornoavirus-19 could be eradicated unless humans kill all animals it exists in. Viruses are like inanimate objects waiting for a host. There's disagreement on whether they're living things on its own.

I personally doubt an anarchist planet could support 7 billion humans. Maybe two billion humans could live on anarcho-earth. On an anti-civ earth it'd be much lower and food would be depleted being one of the many things leading to the thing anti-civ folk dread the most.

Just think of all the competition between the different variants of anarchism on top of all the irradiated areas they couldn't live. Man, it would be a massive cluster-fuck. Perhaps then cannibalism would become more socially acceptable. 8^)

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i don't agree with you saying that only 2 billion anarchists could live on the planet, yet i do think the idea of 7 billion people living in a world without laws and institutions really scares the shit out of people who are into politics yet who are not sympathetic to anarchist ideas.

Yeah i have a problem with the way anti-civers have attempted to "explain" things to people during the pandemic, civilization clearly makes pandemics and epidemics way more hazardous yet it isn't their root cause. Who knows why 'rona happened? So much speculation...

anyways, i think hypothetically the planet we live on could support 5-7 billion people who aggressively oppose authoritarianism if they lived in forest-cities and put a very serious cultural/religious emphasis on the food they produced. I would think there would also have to be a pressure for the younger people to be involved in producing the food and medicine, and there would have to be serious social consequences for people who don't want to have a part in it. Yet, if it were legal consequences, to me that would imply it not being an anarchist society. This fictitious world I'm talking about would also have to be way less bureaucratic than the current one is, maybe they would have systems of ethics and systems for agriculture but beyond that -- no systems.

EDIT: i said eco-cities originally but that's not really what i meant as "eco-cities" sound like elaborate greenwashing

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I cant see an anarchist earth with a population of 5-7 billion anarchists with little systems in place and super anti-authoritarianism. I don't think they could ever achieve such a high population of 5-7 billion to began with. There'd need to be a bunch of messed up complex structures, that anarchists dislike, and relationships to make better utilization of natural resources and somewhat complex distribution network among other things that encourages or supports the human population growth to splurgasms, me thinks.

For perspective: by 1800 the world's population reached a billion and by 1920 it hit 2 billion people. For like 6 billion people many would have to live in big cities and urban areas that probably wouldn't ever become self-sustainable It would be a likely be bad idea for all to attempt to live off the land for a few reasons too. There's about 66 million sq. miles of habitable land- 36 millions sq. mi. of forest and 30 million sq. miles that is farmable. It would be roughly 150-175 people per sq. mi. Bunches of trees probably be chopped down to clear land for farming.  Lack of trees would cause a massive amount of people to die, mass animal die offs, less oxygen & food... but on the flip side, cannibalism probably would stop being taboo. It's like a conundrum of how did the hypothetical anarchist world reach a population of 5-7 billion people.

If many of the anarchists were turned into Enlightened Ana®chist™ by the good news of socialist anarchism at some point, then they could potentially reach a population of 2 billion and not too much more This has given me an idea.* There seems to bunch of bureaucracies federations or unions cooked into it that'd help population to increase. As I understand anarcho-socialism doctrine and prescriptions for a future society ideas would quite possibly be just slightly less unpleasant as it is today. You'd go to work in the anarchist mine, factory, or power plant... Then off to a weekly union meeting, a community meeting, federation meeting, or all. Work and meetings = Fun

5-7 billion anarchist people is far just too much to maintain or get to. 1-2 billion sound somewhat more plausible to me.

*I'm gonna write a short story about a group of anarchists on anarchist-earth that come upon a group of 13 anarchist. The group of 13 would turn out to be social anarchists that brought not only the good news of socialism, but also a machine that can turn water into Four Loko. Then I'm going to try and see if I can get some anarchist press to publish it.

that's it for my ramblings

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The thing I don't like about bureaucracies is they contradict a more flexible way of living. Interlocking federations and bureaucracies is very close to the way that people live now adays, except with less meetings...That's why I despise the black rose anarchist federation, is the only way to complete their fantasies is to have some form of state communism, which i guess to some people may be better than what we have but would be oxy-moronic to use "anarch-" to describe it...

the only reason i'm a little hopeful about something greater than 2 billion people is because you could actually fit the entire current human race on a very tiny piece of land smaller than the state of new york...which means if modern humans were able to give up some of their toys, they could probably live in a city state that occupied the upper part of africa...that's not a vision i'm excited about, but to me that means most humans don't have to die. Yet, this is just probably my liberal humanist clinging to it's final breaths of life...

Plus, cannibalism is a great idea too! You could even have mutualistic cannibalism pacts, where one group/tribe/society says "okay, when this one tribe member dies, we garauntee their body if you share some meat with us", and of course when it becomes less taboo people will hunt humans which isn't necessarily a bad thing either!

I certainly sympathize with those who think pandora's authoritarian box was opened a little too late for any sort of major anarchy to happen :-/ It's my guess that those people will be the ones who enforce authoritarian values when chaos and disorder pop up. I like it how with COVID most american anarchists basically just revealed the fact that they are basically just democrats who pay lip service to more radical sounding ideas like "de-colonization"...

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this question seems to be making some sweeping assumptions and generalizations.

what exactly is "an anarchist planet"? a planet where only those who identify as anarchist (can) live? where only anarchic relations are allowed? how is "anarchist" defined? verified? enforced? do "modern anarchists" all want the same things? what does it mean for the "human race" and the earth to be compatible with that? can you expect - or even envision - a single answer that applies globally? is a planet populated by nothing but "anarchists" desirable? to whom?

it is my opinion that mass society cannot possibly be "anarchist" (which is not to say anarchic relations don't exist in spite of that); mass society requires class society. nothing i have ever experienced, observed, read about, discussed, dreamed of or masturbated to has shown me otherwise. so, how many humans can live on the planet without mass society? i would not even hazard a guess.

i think "pandemic" describes the scope, communicability and (to some extent) severity of an infectious disease as it spreads. i would not say civilization causes pandemics, i would say civilization creates the perfect environment (crowding, travel, types of non-human animal interactions, etc) for infectious disease to develop, spread and mutate/evolve. you still need some pathogen(s) to actually cause the infection, best i can tell. i'm not sure what green anarchist argument (that says viruses are not the cause of pandemics) is being referred to there.

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it is correct that my question was a scientific masturbation funky...quite a keen insight. Obviously more humans "could" live on earth, and no, mass society can't really be an anarchist one. You could have a situation though where 98% of the mass societies go extinct, and then for whatever reason the survivors decide not to heavily centralize authority, but i believe that humans over time tend to adopt authoritarianism as a reactionary survival thing since not every corner of the earth accomadates them very well.