[Keith]

Originally Posted by Scin

I've traveled all over the USA and all over the world, and I can tell you that while there are plenty of nice people in the world who wouldn't hurt a fly, there is also an unignorable quantity of vicious, insane, or downright psychopathic people who would kill or worse at the drop of a hat.

There are some. The interesting question is why? Is this an intrinsic fact of human nature? Or does it result from their environment - the society they live in? I would argue that it's caused (at least in part) by living in a centrally-controlled paternalistic society. It's the natural reaction to a giant-scaled "stop hitting your brother or I'll smack you!".

And yes, perhaps the biggest challenge to a successful Anarchy would be building a mature society out of a bunch of people who've been indoctrinated in "stop hitting your brother or I'll smack you".

Originally Posted by Scin

People who believe that all problems would vanish with the destruction of government make me laugh. PEOPLE are the cause of problems, not government. Government is merely a construct created by people.

An interesting tidbit about human reasoning: we tend to "cross mental polarities" - we compare the positives of the status quo to the negatives of making change.

I don't think for a moment that the world would become a perfect utopia if government were taken out of the picture. But would it be a better world than it is now if people were raised in an environment of personal responsibility? That's a question worth asking.

Certainly PEOPLE are the cause of the problems. But what makes people (particularly the problematic ones) like they are?

Originally Posted by medaille

I'm certainly not an expert on communism, but I am of the belief that Communism struggled in Russia because it was still a centrally controlled government, ie the decision making power was still in few hands. They same corrupt people controlled them that control us.

Yep. My supposition is that Communist Russia became a dictatorial centralised government because that's what the people (especially including those that formed government) were habituated to.

Originally Posted by medaille

Communism or socialism should be paired with a working democracy and at a much reduced scale for it to be effective.

I think it's a mistake to conflate "Communism or Socialism". Socialism is much broader than Communism with many possible variants, and its variants are potentially suitable to a much wider variety of situations. eg. I have heard people denounce universal healthcare as 'socialist' as though that automatically makes it a bad thing.

Originally Posted by medaille

In any situation, somehow you need to get to an active and knowledgable citizenry.

Very true. That's one reason I have greater hope for a successful society without centralised government with modern communications technologies.

Originally Posted by Scin

The "knowledgable" part is presently impossible given the sorry state of global education.

Yes, again "how do we get there from here" is the big stumbling block. Modern education just isn't self-driven by the learner and that's a huge flaw. The vast bulk of us have been trained to be lazy learners who expect to be spoon-fed answers. (This incidentally benefits the government at the expense of the people).

Originally Posted by Scin

I doubt communism will ever be viable. Also - and this is my biggest beef with communism - how do you motivate people to do their best if their effort is not directly tied to their reward?

Good question, but actually, it's flawed - effort is tied to reward. That reward just isn't monetary.

Studies show that once a person earns enough money to meet their basic needs, additional pay tends to lose its motivating power. (Job features such as interesting work and a pleasant working environment become much stronger motivators).

Fortunately, unlike the USSR, we have had the opportunity to witness and study a hard-working society whose rewards aren't monetary - the open source software community. (Note: not a perfect analogy to Communism by a long-shot, but a good study of non-monetary motivation).

Eric S Raymond's Homesteading the Noosphere about the open source gift economy goes into a lot more detail but in a (grossly oversimplistic) nutshell: Once basic needs are met, reputation becomes the coin of the realm.