Island thought experiment
If 100 people crashed landed onto a desert island and had to survive (either individually or collectively), how would they do it? How would they structure and govern their society?
Would they create a government? An entity with the right to make laws, tax people’s labor “for the greater good”....
Or would they naturally move into an anarchistic society? A society where everyone works together as best they can to survive individually and collectively while honoring each other’s free will choice
Island Analogy
All proofs for how Statism is violent, immoral and simply doesn’t work , and how anarchism/voluntarism is the only way of organizing society can be demonstrated through imagining a small group of people living on an island together. How do those people naturally and spontaneously work out how to live together peacefully and allow for them to survive and thrive together?
You can do this thought exercise with people and see how they decide to organize their society - and you can only tell them at the end that the way they will inevitably choose to organize it is anarchist/voluntarist.
People will naturally default to a libertarian, anarchist, voluntarist society. Perhaps also with some Anarcho-socialist aspects depending on the personality of the people and their trust and friendship with one another
It is not saying that the island will be paradise and there will be no issues or problems. Life is messy, life requires meeting challenges But people will be free, people will be responsible - there won’t be violent aggression that is sanctioned. Nothing is perfect in this world. It is not possible to create a perfectly safe society right now until human consciousness awakens.
Why the island analogy is effective
They get to see what an anarchist/voluntarist society would look like and how it would work
It wouldn’t be violence and chaos, it would be voluntarist and people doing their best to work together without the presence of government authority, external authority or monopolization of violence.
They are taken outside of the bounds of the regime of authority.
In this situation, people don’t have a government authority to run to, no police So they are forced to work things out on their own without reverting to petitioning authority and relying on government
The “Final Decider”
On the island there is no “Final Decider” There is no right answer There is no ultimate Authority
There is no centralized plan
Nothing to default to - people have to be responsible and work it out On the island there is no centralized plan or centralized anything - only a collective of individuals You don’t need to appoint a King or create a government to make decisions
There is no guarantee that everything will be ok.
There is no royal class that will be in charge of “taking care” of everyone and everything.
People learning to accept some amount of chaos and uncertainty.
That no-one can ever control everything and make every ok. That often you just have to do your best and figure things out. Government claims to solve our problems and keep us safe and free - but it actually does the opposite
Political ideology doesn’t really matter
When discussing the island and how people would handle it, it doesn’t matter whether someone is Democrat or Republican.
Because there is no authority for these two sides to petition government to do what they want. They just have to work things out directly between themselves.
On the Island, even socialists aren’t socialists
People naturally default to free market anarcho-capitalism
Example: Someone creates a bow and arrow, another person agrees to borrow that tool and then share the fish they catch 50/50. The socialist would say that the person who made the bow and arrows doesn’t own them and must share it with the community. That other members of the community could just take the bow - this would lead to less individual creation, less abundance of capital and resources. People would not feel the pride of their own work and own creations.
(Only in a tight-knit community could it operate as truly socialist)
What would happen
The people wouldn’t create a government, the would voluntarily work together to survive. But if someone didn’t want to work with the others, they would go to a different part of the island and do their own thing.
People would probably mutual agree to work together.
They wouldn’t just say “every man and woman for themselves”
- *A natural division of labor and free market exchange They would each do different tasks that they are more skilled at/interested in.
Some would fish, some would pick fruit, some would plant seeds and grow food, some would build simple homes, some would build boats, some would explore the island for new resources, some would entertain with singing and music or comedy, some would provide medical care…. The fisher would then voluntarily trade some fish for fruit, and vice versa.
Handling immorality Example: someone steals fish “What do we do about it?” - people taking responsibility themselves and not deferring to authority, whining to mommy/daddy government to take care of it for them.
What do we feel justified in doing? - no longer able to delegate the sticky and uncomfortable situations so we don’t have to deal with it. We are RESPONSIBLE
Questions we may ask:
- Why did he steal?
- What do we do to deter him?
- Do we “punish” him?
Example: Someone kills someone. Questions we may ask:
- How do we protect the community?
- Do we kill him? Or chain him?
- The key is that trying to create a government to handle these situations is stupid. No-one would want to do that on the island. * Government solution: put the fish thief in a cage and then steal fish from the fisherman to feed the prisoner.
Pollution SITUATION: What if someone is pooping in the stream water source? Government System: people go to government and try to get them to stop it.
Island: All the people in the community would work together to stop the pooper and keep the stream clean.
Objections
“This only works on a small scale” No, it works on a small scale easiest, but it can be scaled to the entire world. Because if it works for a group of 100, it can work for a group of 10 billion. But that 10 billion world community must be ordered from the individual and small community bottom-up, not top-down