💾 Archived View for library.inu.red › file › cole-b-thomerson-anarchist-law-english.gmi captured on 2023-01-29 at 08:21:40. Gemini links have been rewritten to link to archived content

-=-=-=-=-=-=-

Title: Anarchist Law
Author: Cole B. Thomerson
Date: 9/12/2021
Language: en
Topics: law, Human nature, anti-state, anarchism, anarchist, anarcho-communism

Cole B. Thomerson

Anarchist Law

Cole B. Thomerson

9/10/2021

Anarchist Law

Laws are generally considered the best way to control anti-social

behavior*, they

are made by good people and enforced by good people. This is very, very

wrong. The fact

you have to enforce a moral code bestowed upon the masses with violence,

nonsensical. Furthermore, And when the enforcer isn’t a good person,

(even though it’s

impossible to have a good enforcer of the state.) probably because it’s

power with no

consequences, you can’t do anything because they have the power and the

state is on

their side. “But, oh Cole!” You shout, “My husband is a police officer

and he’s a dashing

fellow!” Yeah but he also has an inherently corrupt position in society.

This can be as

little as a speeding ticket you were given when you know for a fact you

weren’t speeding,

but the enforcers need to hit that monthly quota, so who’s the state

gonna believe? Or it

can be as big as a police officer murdering an unarmed black man because

he was black.

Both of the aforementioned are consequences of the existence of the

state, who create

laws for their own benefit; the enforcers of the state, who are making

sure you’re

following the state’s orders.

But what exactly is a law? A law is a rule you have to follow and if you

fail to do so

you will be punished accordingly. Most people would say laws are usually

made because

of some moral standpoint. So it’s a moral standpoint with the added

caveat of if you fail

to comply you will also be punished. Now am I saying to just remove all

laws in the

current state of society? No, that would be dumb, and is also what a lot

“anarcho”-capitalists suggest: just remove the state and the free-market

will guide the

Anti-Social Behavior can be synonymous with what most people would call

crime. But if murder were legal, it would no longer be a crime, but

stil very frowned upon by the rest of society. There are also laws, such

as punishing a homeless person for stealing a potato from your local

grocery store to feed his family of six. While that is a crime, I

wouldn’t consider it anti-social behavior.

world! This notion is wrong, and is not what I will be arguing for. You

need to

restructure society as a whole, whether it be the flaws in the single

family home, the very

existence of money, which creates classes, the fact war and capitalism

both feed each

other, the problems with representative democracy, and this list goes on

and on; those

are also completely different essays. I believe laws are obsolete and

have no need in the

ideal society because they are not made from a moral standpoint, they do

not deter

anti-social behavior, they cause more harm than good, and any system

that has

punishment as its main incentive should be abolished.

Part 1: Punishment isn’t a good incentive.

You see punishment as the only way to deal with anti-social behavior

because it’s

effective, it’s quick, and it will cause internal, life changing change

within any truent’s

bad character. There are three reasons you would punish someone, which

of course all

have special philosophical school names: Retribution, Deterrence, and

Rehabilitation.

Retribution is saying, it’s morally okay to hurt someone because they

hurt someone, or

deserve it. An eye for an eye. Deterrence justifies hurting someone by

saying it will be

better in the long run, when no little anti-social behavior happens.

Rehabilitation says

it’s morally okay to hurt someone because it’s for their own good, they

will learn a lesson

from it.

The problem with everything I mentioned above is that people commit

anti-social

behavior because they believe it is in the best of their interests.

Retributionism is just

dumb and I don’t want to spend too much time on it. It doesn’t matter if

one deserves

anything or not, it is not effective and is explicitly not helpful, so I

don’t give a shit about

this argument. Deterrence is more nuanced than that; while it does sound

agreeable, it

is flawed because it assumes the incentive will change one’s actions, or

even their

thoughts. Let’s say you make shoplifting have the death penalty, but

that homeless man

needs a potato, so do you think he will choose death by starvation, or

possible death by

lethal injection. He will go with what is in his best interest. So you

can’t tackle after the

fact problems, you need to get deeper than that; you have to deal with

what causes

people to shoplift, instead of, “Oh what are we gonna do if someone

shoplifts?” Deal

with the why, instead of the what.

Now Rehabilitation is the most lame-ass excuse for the justification of

hurting

someone. With Retributivism, it’s blatantly sadistic, and doesn’t really

hide it. With

Deterrence, the person who believes in it, actually believes it works.

While someone who

justifies hurting someone with, “it’s for their own good.” is just

another way of saying, “I

don’t know how to deal with the actual problem so here’s a little

punishment.” OR, “I

hate this group of people and in order for the system to continue as it

has been violence

needs to be inflicted upon them, so I shall use rehabilitation as a

justification for my

cruelty”. This kind of justification is very common in parenting, and

it’s those who I am

the most sympathetic towards. Let’s say your child is playing on the

sidewalk of a very

busy street and they run out so you call them back and hit them. That’s

it. The problem

here is that you’re not giving an alternative on what they should be

doing, and if you are

giving them an alternative, a punishment isn’t necessary. You’re also

creating the norm

for your child that in order to be a good parent one must hit their kid,

thus creating a

cycle of abuse and oppression, which will also create resentment (The

nuclear family is

flawed! And can’t maintain itself!). “But I caught my child watching

pornography on the

computer!!!!!!! Do they not deserve their computer privileges taken

away?” You protest,

I will ask you why they did that and go from there. Deal with the why,

and not the what.

And a punishment won’t fix their inner behavior. There was an experiment

involving the punishment of lab rats where you condition them with a

routine where

they press a lever and they get rewarded. Then you take away the reward.

The rat will

press the lever 100 times. 100 times is now the number to quantify

interest. Now,

instead of rewarding, or doing nothing when the rat presses the lever,

you will punish it

with a shock. For a while the rat avoids the lever in fear of the shock.

After a while, the

association between the shock and the lever wears off and the rat tries

again. Just as you

would avoid the police when doing something illegal. How many times does

the rat

press the lever? 100, again. And what is also notable about this time,

is the rat starts off

slowly, with caution, and gets faster as it realizes nothing will

happen. This goes to show

that punishment doesn’t change anything internally; the rat still wants

the reward but

doesn’t want to get hurt, so it will act on its want when it thinks

nothing is watching.

When you’re doing something illegal, you will avoid the police. Going

back to the

previous example, your child will still look at pornography, just is

much, much more

secretive about it.

Punishment is not a good incentive because it does not get to the core

of the

problem regardless of if you justify the punishment with, “Oh but he

deserves it”, “Oh

but he won’t do it again”, or “It’s good for him”. People commit

anti-social behavior

because they believe it is in their best interest to, so change what

they believe is in their

best self interest, than punishing them for having said self interest.

Deal with the why,

instead of the what.

Part 2: laws are not made for the benefit of all.

We are also led to believe laws are there for a reason, and if they

weren't

humanity would suffer. I just have one question: would you say the laws

Trump tried to,

or successfully passed are made on moral judgments? The border wall? The

Muslim

ban? The War on Drugs? The War on Terror? Everything revolving around

social

justice? These are not made to stop anti-social behavior, but made to

uphold and keep

white supremacy.

“But murder! Is that not a law found on morality?” You exclaim with all

passion.

Yeah, murder is generally considered to be morally wrong, a law is not

going to change

that. A law punishes that, and we know why that doesn’t work, don’t we?

And that is

why murder is such a good example of how to explain to statists that you

can actually

help people and not be sadistic reactionaries.

Someone murders someone, a tragedy, I admit. Punishing them, including

the

death penalty and prisons, are not going help. You ask why they murdered

the other and

go from there. You hire actual psychologists to help the anti-socialites

and try to make

them better people for the end goal of them being able to reenter

society. If it is

IMPOSSIBLE to help someone, which is extraordinarily rare, then can you

blame them

for being a horrible person? No. If this occurs, you will HUMANELY

quarantine them

from the rest of society. It goes back to the question: is evil born or

created? Both of

which don’t require punishment; in fact, both of which require help,

actual help. The

former, you can’t be mad at, because they can’t help it, and the latter

you can’t be mad

at, because you can help it. Deal with the why, instead of the what.

You can be arrested for “stealing” food others have thrown away.

You can be arrested for sleeping on a public park bench.

You can also be arrested for protesting the injustices mentioned above.

And you better bet your ass these are enforced. But not if you have

power. If you

murder a woman, but have the money to hire an fancy dancy expensive

lawyer, then you

don’t get punished. If you admit to sexually assaulting a women, while

being recorded,

you can become president of the United States.

Part 3: laws cause more harm than good.

There is no way you could say putting more police in neighborhoods with

higher black population because they have a higher drug crime rate is a

good idea. And

you will realize that’s a bad idea once you think about it for more than

six seconds. This

specific example happens all the fucking time and is a self-justifying

cirlce of oppression

and violence. Yeah, no shit the statistics say that, it’s because you

have already put more

police in that area, but because there’s black people, the only thing

that’s changed is now

since there are more police which will increase the number of crimes

people have been

arrested for, the graphs will be very skewed and will increase policing

in those

neighborhoods, which will make the crime numbers up which will make the

graphs

skewed which will make more police, etc., etc..

“Oh, but that’s just a policing problem! If we just have citizen

oversight-” I cut

you off there, because you’re being annoying. In New York City when

people tried

establishing citizen oversight committees, the police striked. “Okay

okay, hear me out,

body cams… eh?” Yeah that’s a great idea! Except for the fact you can

just… turn them

off… Dang, good idea while it lasted. “But going back to my main point,

it’s a policing

problem, if we fix everything-” Again, stop being annoying. You can’t

fix the role laws

and police have in society. They are made by and for white people to

uphold white

supremacy. “Oh yeah? If there’s no laws or police, how are you going to

make sure

anti-social behavior is dealt with?” You ask cunningly with a hint of

mock.

Voluntary Community Self Defence, or a Community Protection Agency, or

any

kind of decentralized, voluntary, temporary position citizens have in

protecting the

community, who can also be recalled at any time. The goal of this is to

not have a group

of people who have all the power, and a group who gets powered on, to

make the

protectors and the masses equal. The goal is to increase accountability.

And most

importantly, to deal with the why, and not the how.