this post was submitted on 14 Nov 2024
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Anarchism
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You're missing the point of the example. I'm not pushing techno-libertarian utopianism here. I'm not even talking about what the internet does, I'm talking about what it is: A globe-spanning megaproject that connects (nearly?) every country, and is used by a full 2/3rds of existing humans. And it was made without a supreme central authority forcing everyone to cooperate in its creation and maintenance. ARPANET was created by the US, but no one forced the Russians or the Chinese to adopt the IP protocol on their computers and connect to their neighbors.
This is important because a super common anti-anarchist talking point is that people won't cooperate (at least not at scale) unless an overarching authority forces them to. The existence of the internet demolishes that argument. It would be fundamentally impossible if that talking point were true.
Also no one forced people to adapt railway gauge or PSTN standards.
I can't agree. It's the lower authorities submitting to the higher authority. That happens. A small group of authorities is close to one. In fact none are monolithic.
Nah. The US hasn't been able to force Russia to stop their invasion of Ukraine, nor stop them from playing fuck-fuck games all over the rest of the world. And China is almost certainly stronger than Russia is. They both joined the internet because they wanted to, not because they were forced.
Oh, they'll just choose to cooperate and act like a single central authority? Without a preexisting central authority forcing them to? 🤔
I'm begging your pardon, but when the Internet came to Russia, US was sending humanitarian aid there. Literally giving out chicken legs in Moscow.
Also differences in power are not two discrete states. A parent can't force their child to marry a specific person, but they can force them to live in a certain area, using, say, financial help as leverage.
So? They'll form a cluster.
One can say top-level Soviet bureaucrats were not yes-men to the general secretary either. They made decisions collegially.