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Originally Posted by Brutha  I can't see how it is an enlightened way of approaching the world to compete with each other.
So that basically what enlighted being do? Compete with each other? |
Well, there's a couple of ways to address that. First off, competing peacefully is certainly more enlighted than competing violently.
Second, competition need not be done in an unpleasant way. There are enlightened forms of competition all the time, as long as peoples ego's do not get involved. Every play a board game with a friend? Or run a marathon? Competition is not, in and of itself, un-enlightened. It's competing and believing the "winner" is "better" than the "loser" that's unenlightened.
Finally, markets are as much about co-operation as they are about competition. I know the competition gets emphasized a lot more, and it's certainly real, but co-operation is actually a more fundamental attribute of a free market. Think about your most recent financial transaction. This was almost certainly an act of co-operation, and in the bigger view, quite a lot of co-operation.
Suppose you bought some a pencil at the office supply store. The obvious co-operation is that you agreed to give the owner a little money and he agreed to give you a pencil. You both walk away satisfied. No one was forced to do anything. Essentially, you co-operated by letting the office supply store find pencils and get them where you could buy them, while they co-operated by letting you worry about how to make enough money so they could sell it to you. If you had to go and find your own pencil every time you needed one (or worse yet, make your own pencil!), you'd be a lot worse off.
Even something as simple as a pencil involves co-ordinating lumberjacks, chemists, machinists, janitors, truck drivers, miners, and in the end, hundreds of other people. Some method of figuring out how to co-ordinate all that activity, and to figure out which activities are the most important, is necessary even if the world where filled with 100% enlightened people.
That's the essence of an Anarchist society as I see it. Instead of short circuiting the negotiation required to make sure that everyone agrees to transactions, we do things the right way and hammer out agreements. Like adults. We accept that other people have different priorities, values and opinions from us, and we find ways to co-operate with them anyhow, instead of just overrulling them by getting a bunch of our friends together and voting.
If you posit a government without coercion, I'm all for that. I wouldn't call it a government, but hey, call it whatever as long as it doesn't force people to do things.
This is already too long. Are you understanding me any better here? I know there are a ton of questions and objections, and I can certainly discuss those if you're interested, but I want to feel like at the least we're working towards a better understanding of each others opinions.