People here seem to either be anarchists or not know shit about anarchism (although they can sure give you a mouthfull of their non-knowledge with glee).
Start here fellas (wikipedia here is, as usual, a good introduction), and keep informing yourselves. You achieve nothing by bulding impenetrable defence mechanisms.
I don’t often vocally (type-ally?) self-identify as anarchist for the same reason some libertarians don’t often vocally self-identify as “capitalists”, for the same reason leftists don’t often vocally self-identify as socialists, for the same reason some nonbelievers (particularly in the south US) don’t often vocally self-identify as atheists – the word has a stigma, it’s too loaded. Regardless of your reasons for believing (or not believing, as applicable), the word itself causes people either to recoil in disgust or immediately resort to condescension and mockery.
Anarchism is the affirmation of the individual and the independence of self with the complete rejection of centralized authority in being it’s subject.
That is my most basic premise and understanding of anarchism.
Now, now boys, let’s not overwhelm them. They are already scared an disoriented as it is.
And what can you expect, after milenia of effective propaganda?
I think Woodcock’s take on this might be relevant to you (and note that, as a Canadian, his notion of “libertarian” is a somewhat non-American one):
“To describe the essential theory of anarchism is rather like trying to grapple with Proteus, for the very nature of the libertarian attitude – its rejection of dogma, its deliberate avoidance of rigid systematic theory, and, above all, its stress on extreme freedom of choice and on the primacy of the individual judgement – creates immediately the possibility of a variety of viewpoints inconceivable in a closely dogmatic system. Anarchism, indeed, is both various and mutable, and in the historical perspective it presents the appearance, not of a swelling stream flowing onto its sea of destiny (an image that might well be appropriate to Marxism), but rather of water percolating through porous ground – here forming for a time a strong underground current, there gathering into a swirling pool, trickling through crevices, disappearing from sight, and then re-emerging where the cracks in the social structure may offer it a course to run. As a doctrine it changes constantly; as a movement it grows and disintegrates, in constant fluctuation, but it never vanishes. It has existed continuously in Europe since the3 1840s, and its very protean quality has allowed it to survive where many more powerful but less adaptable movements of the intervening century have disappeared completely.” (George Woodcock Anarchism: A History of Libertarian Ideas and Movements)
On this take, Anarchism is an attitude, or temperment, not a faith (or ideology). Just as it reacts against the centralization of power, so to it abandons the centralization of thought. It does not seek to replace. It seeks to displace. What ((“)proper(”)) anarchists seek to accomplish is precisely to facilitate the cyclical process, on an as-needed, incidental basis. Anything else claiming to be Anarchism is, at the very least, corrupted.
Thanks for that oughtist.
Anarchism is ok but libertarianism especially economic is madness, especially given the shit kicking banks and what they did when freed of lending regulations that had kept the borrower/lender quotient on the right side of insanity. What the world does not need now is to let mercantile chancers free from the noose. They are not responsible enough to have earned that trust.
The problem with anarchy is that freedom comes with responsibility, I just doubt most people are responsible enough to use such largesse wisely.
That seems to be the popular theory, that these economic problems are the result of so-called “deregulation”. I’ve seen some pretty significant evidence to the contrary though. Mostly by libertarian/austrian-school thinkers.
And here’s some food for thought: there was pretty much universal ignorance (except notably among some austrian-economics nerds who successfully predicted what happened) that there was even a housing bubble. Not too many people knew it was even going to happen until it did. If you don’t even know that it’s happening, how the hell can you regulate against it? All the regulation in the world can’t help at all if you don’t even know what’s wrong. A wrench isn’t much use if you don’t know what to fix. Or that there needs any fixing. It’s easy to say “We need more regulation” after the fact, obviously it’s a bit harder to figure out what you need to regulate before it gets broken.
So, if regulation is what we need, but the regulators have such a screwed up model of economics that they can’t even tell if anything is wrong with what they’re supposed to be regulating, I suppose the only answer is to just REGULATE EVERYTHING!? Right? If you can’t see why that’s not an option, then economics must not be your forte.
So, who’s theory about why the market failed are you going to believe? The people who predicted it, or the people who didn’t? You know who I choose.
Deregulation caused it, Thatcher and Reagan, you can’t regulate against deregulation. All you can do is make sure that it doesn’t happen again, that rules are tighter, and that capitalism isn’t left to chance by socially irresponsible idiots, whose entire raison d’etre is to make as much money as they can at any cost as long as it’s cheap. The human race is not yet ready to be set free, hell it’s not yet ready to be allowed on a lone island: “one week of the year, you get to leave the hospital, and go here. Plum lsland. Every day of that week you may walk on the beach, you may swim in the ocean, supervised of course.”
It doesn’t matter who predicted and many did, both conventional and iconoclastic, that does not by implication make the Austrian school right about anything or the conventional wisdom secure. To be frank those guys are crazy anyway. Like many libertarians they expect a totally free market to work in its best interest and to the beneift of all people by magic, it’s not human nature to work in the best interest of the market, it’s human nature to compete. Since no one seems capable of predicting market fluctuations, let alone stopping boom and bust cycles I somehow doubt the lunatics should take over the aslyum. Give a man freedom in his current state, and he will eventually learn how to fuck it up, no matter what best interests he has at heart.
If two people have a theory about physics, and then they do the experiment, and one of the theories successfully predicted the results, and the other one didn’t, then yes, who predicted it matters.
Have you looked in to any other explanations of the housing bubble other than “thatcher and reagan”? It’d be sad if this was just a case of confirmation bias. Here’s a list of some austrian articles about what happened. They don’t sound crazy to me, they actually sound quite intuitive, and sometimes even obviously true (for example, one of the main austrian arguments: obviously if you artificially lower the interest rates so that poorer and poorer people can get approved for loans, more and more people are going to get loans, which mean demand will go up, which means prices will go up, and when it comes time for those poorer people to pay, obviously you’re going to find a much higher rate of people defaulting on their loans. nothing controversial about that, and that’s pretty much the center of the austrian approach. quite simple, quite intuitive).
Is there a theory of economics? No there isn’t so there is no evidence than any one theory is advisable, hence your argument is unsound. It wasn’t just them who predicted it, does that mean the extremely regulatory conscious people who wanted tighter regulation were hence right? In the trade we call being right after the fact, without having done anything, useless. We also call being right about one fact making a group more likely to be right about anything else a non sequitur. 
Dude I’m not going to write an essay at this time of night. I have better things to do. I know how it happened, it happened because of stampeding herds, deregulation and the idea that increasingly using debt to make money for the minority is sustainable. Even though any fuckwitt can tell you that to make an economy sustainable you have to involve everyone, not just economists and financiers. Don’t use human nature to feed human stupidity, the market crashed I suggest you understand why loaning out money irresponsibly caused it and move on. If you genuinely believe that what happened was some natural consequence then you are very confused. It was a consequence of greed, manipulation of people and idiocy in general. Hard core capitalists generally are not concerned about 20 years from now, just their now. the Austrian school are no more clued up on anything than any other economist. All they are doing is making statements, if they prevented the crash because they could convince people that they were right, someone presumably somewhere might care that they indeed do understand human nature.
In an effort not to be like that guy, I’ll leave you to your ignorance. You don’t seem like a guy willing to learn from anybody who disagrees with you, given your history (mostly with your ridiculous conversation with me about quantum mechanics. god your foot was deep down your throat during that conversation), so I can’t hope to change your mind. All I can hope is that someone more curious might have learned something.
just read this little gem. you’re really good at fitting your foot in your mouth. first you make up stuff about quantum mechanics, and now you completely fabricate a whole explanation for the housing bubble and attribute it to me. you’ll make up any nonsense to try to get the upper hand. you’re nuts brother. I don’t have time for such slimey tactics.
but, you’re just another wrong dude on the internet, gotta leave you to it.
Make up stuff about quantum mechanics. Lol. There are some pretty clever people on this site in the field of physics. If I was making it up they would challenge me. Trust me they would hand me my ass in a sling. In fact if I was making stuff up I would be honoured to be told I was, because I would learn.
Read what, if you’re going to insult me and then tell me I told you about some stuff about the housing bubble? Who are you talking to, and on what planet do you live? At what point did I mention the housing bubble? It’s fairly significant, but what is more significant is manipulating human nature without moral conscience to make money. It’s what we do, it’s what the Austrian school would do given half the chance, because we aren’t evolved enough to be responsible, yet. what lets down libertarianism is not that they don’t have good ideas, it’s that they think having good ideas makes them immune from human stupidity, once they get into a position of real power.
Now you’re just being a dick. I have never said you were wrong just that the idea that someone is right about something does not mean they are right about everything let alone anything.
Please don’t bring the past into this, what part of quantum mechanics that I said specifically was wrong? In that conversation you quoted a blog, expected me to agree with someone’s opinion then claimed not doing so was somehow proof that you knew what the hell you were talking about. You know no more about physics than you do about Jesus.
You can change my mind, you can do so without the condescension. Your choice.
Flannel just because I don’t agree with someone does not mean I don’t enjoy getting to the bottom of their beliefs. And likewise if you want to discuss quantum mechanics again and produce valid science without referring to some blog, I will be all ears. One only has to reply to the material one is shown. That material wouldn’t of passed on any serious physics forum, hence I did not take it seriously. If you don’t believe me then go to a serious physics forum, quote that link as proof and see how fast you get banned. 
How’d you go from saying “libertarianism is madness” and “those guys from the austrian school are crazy” to “don’t be condescending, I can change my mind.” I think you were being more honest about how you really think before, when you were being more dismissive. You’ve shown yourself to be the kind of guy who literally, without hesitation makes things up when his position starts to look bad. Your debate tactics in that regard remind me of the type of conversation when I was a kid that went something like this: “My dad can beat ur dad up” “Nu uh, my dad’s a professional wrestler” “My dad killed a bear with his bare hands.” “My dad killed superman.” You know what I mean? Where the kids don’t have any better recourse but to just make up things to one-up the other person. That’s how you talk here, on ILP.
So no, I can’t change your mind. You’ll make up things – and maybe even actually convince yourself that they’re true – to make sure you keep your mind exactly the same. I’ll save my breath for someone more honest.
Oh for Gods sake grow up. I like being contentious sometimes, when I want to see a valid argument. I am especially contentious when I am not knowledgeable about a subject, because I want to see an argument that is logical. I’ll read your links when you stop making out I am a big fat liar pants on fire.
I like being contentious, it doesn’t mean I think I am absolutely right, far from it, I am not an authority on the subject of economics, it is one of my weakest fields. But hell if you’re going to whine about me, let’s just agree not to talk to each other ever again so we can avoid discussion. 
Not for yourself then. It’s the web stop getting beaten up because people say bad things, you didn’t like, awwww. You can change my mind, I am not a robot.
Calrid read the OP.
Then meditate on whether I’m right or not about your impenetrable defence mechanisms.
Then, in my imaginary world where intellectual honesty exists, go to the wikipedia article and read up.
I’ve read that before, and I know it well. To accuse me of intellectual dishonesty, or putting up defence mechanisms is unfair. I haven’t claimed anything about anarchism per se, only that in and of itself libertarianism is a belief. I don’t think the American right wing of anarchism is likely to work, I Would like to see why and how it could in a decent argument. I will respond unfavourably to people who tell me I am of one opinion, when they are assuming what my opinion is. I make no apologies for that.
I agree there are a lot of theories of anarchism that have very valid goals, very valid ideals and a good positive ideology. I don’t however think that libertarianism as minor as it is as a system in the broad spectrum of anarchism has anything going for it. I would love to see a reason to be wrong. I don’t come here to be right.
That is quite a 180 my friend.