[JohnLong]

I agree we should avoid the adversarial approach here. It encourages our ego's to get wrapped up in our positions and our beliefs, which makes increasing our understanding that much more difficult.

Let me try and explain why this matters to me, and how I can or can't see things changing.

The bottom line to me is that the state based solution HAS to be based on not allowing people to simply leave everyone else alone, and not allowing any other organization to compete. I just can't see how that is any sort of enlightened way of approaching the world. We may not be able to see exactly what an alternative might be, but it seems clear to me that there are serious moral problems with the way states work. If we know what we have is wrong, we look for other alternatives. We may not know what they exactly are in advance, but we can move in that direction immediately, and figure out the details later.

We move in that direction by increasing the awareness of the population in general. We help individuals in corporations, government positions, jobs, small businesses, churches, political parties, etc. think at a higher level, imaging the future and what it could be rather than just the immediate needs, the next quarters results, and the next paycheck. How to do that is a much bigger topic ; it is the central topic and focus of Steve's entire site.

Where do we end up? Who knows, exactly? There are theories from all over the place, from the more conventional Anarchists (there's an oxymoron!) who believe property and government must both be done away with, to the newer market anarchy theories, to everything in between. We'll get a better feeling as we get further along. We can discuss it now, but we CAN'T let our inability to imagine how the world might change stop us from trying.

I've got some of my own imaginings, if you're interested. But first I wanted to try and change how we're looking at this, at least a little.