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20 points

I don’t actually know all that much about it, but the anarchists that I know are all about communities and mutual support and stuff. So I guess they think government is bad and communities supporting each other is good.

Personally I wonder what they’d call it when a community gets really good at providing a particular type of support and they agree to pool their resources to efficiently provide said support to all members of the community.

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3 points
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Personally I wonder what they’d call it when a community gets really good at providing a particular type of support

Most of them would say, “close enough.”

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14 points

Yes yes and then they discover that managing that shared pool of resources is quite the job so they all decide on a few key people to take on the task with specific roles. I think we’re going somewhere with this!

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4 points

managing that shared pool of resources is quite the job

No, it really isn’t… people have done that for millenia.

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1 point

Not for the population numbers of modern nations, though. Managing a little town is one thing, millions of people is another.

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15 points

So? Rotating certain roles in society is part of anarchist theory and common practice in anarchist organizations. Besides anarchists aren’t opposed to assigning certain roles or managing resources. The point is how you do it i.e by actual democratic means.

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5 points

But nobody is appointed any role for life or until a higher boss says so, this is the key difference. Also the decisions on that role are not done in a vacuum, they can’t give orders and expect anyone to blindly follow it and never question. They have to be aligned with what the community wants, and if the person doesn’t act accordingly anyone can step in.

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1 point

Just how though? How does this get agreed upon without some threat of violence or top down hierarchy.

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6 points

You’re basically describing a coop.

The thing is that these resources could get withdrawn in case that community can’t won’t supply that support anymore.

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