ip: Chaos Theory

[James A. Donald]

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At 01:08 PM 12/8/2000 -0800, auto110413 at hushmail.com wrote:
 > Mr. Murphy complains that Gaza does not meet this "requirements" for
 > being an anarchy - I would then respectully ask "what does???".. If
 > Gaza is not anarchy, has there EVER been an anarchy in all of
 > recorded history? The "State," as a structure of social
 > organization, exists even in communities of animals that are of
 > substantial sub-human intelligence (e.g., wolf packs,  lion prides,
 > dophins, ants, most primates and most other social, intelligent
 > animals all exhibit some form of "pecking order" that can loosely be
 > interpreted to be power structures that self-organized out of
 > "random chaos"

A state is a monopoly of legitimate force.  What makes a state a state is 
that the policeman can whack me, and I cannot whack the policeman.  This 
destroys and undermines law, it does not sustain law.

Only a few animals have such severe inequality of force, mostly less 
intelligent ones, (chickens, social insects), and humans have not had a 
pecking order this severe and extreme throughout most of our evolution.

What makes Gaza not an anarchy is that it has policemen, and these 
policemen answer to a single central authority.  It is not absence of laws 
that makes places anarchic, but absence of rulers.

 > I hope you also understand that from the perspective of a business man, 
perhaps the most important role that governments provide is not necessarily 
"an organized system of corrupt thugs to whom we pay protection money in
the form of taxes" (to paragraph Mr. Murphy's arguments); instead, 
government most importantly provides business with an institution upon 
which businesses may pass on risk (if necessary).

The businessman has no power.  The ruler has power.  So any risk will be 
passed in the other direction.

 > If Mr. Murphy believes that it is possible to run a business absent
 > government (i.e., in an anarchy), I suggest he quit the pot-smoking
 > grad school scene,  get a REAL job (preferabbly in Northern
 > California) and see firsthand how the world REALLY works.. (perhaps
 > AFTER he spends several months in Russia,
  so he can compare and constrast..)

We are using the world anarchy to mean a system with no ruler, and seek an 
anarchy with laws and without rulers.  When you describe Russia and Gaza as 
anarchies, you are using the term to describe absence of laws, rather than 
absence of rulers.

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          James A. Donald
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