The Anarchism Thread; or, "Catch this (Red?) flower!"

Compiled from another thread, placed here at the suggestion of Ulrika Zugzwang, comments on anarchism to further discuss.

Yes, I've tried to remove the off-topic or personal comments. No, I don't believe my own potential biases have caused me to "edit" unfairly. If you disagree, post a "corrected" version.

And finally, no I'm not trying to sneak an ideological agenda through a back door splashed in Red paint. Like Ulrika and a number of others in SL, I actually enjoy discussing politics. And I sometimes think about what politics means in a virtual community like SL. Dangerous? Sure. Open dialogue conducted under conditions of mutual respect is one of most dangerous concepts ever invented.

Long post, but this was the essence of the Anarchist Discussion:

Shadow Weaver:
Leaders or factions seeking control of governmental and economic ramifications established false trust in thier supporters and summarly destroyed the economic systems of those countrys after being elected to office.
Although altruisticly the ideas and theorys they had were quite conceivable and well thought out.
Human nature and the greed factor of such took over when actually implimenting those policys.


Vudu Suavage:
"Amish country" I think is more apt: a town-sized population owns land, offers goods, maintains relationships, and generally interacts day-to-day in the community, while a much larger "tourist" population (the 80% Basic Accounts) comes and goes, inflating the economy without otherwise influencing it much.

That said, I think we get along fine with the informal guild-style economics we have going now, with LL intervening should money sinks/supply get unbalanced. At most we might benefit from a Chamber of Commerce....


Ferren Xia:
Anarchy is an unstable political form (like a radioactive isotope) that quickly decays into one of the others....

As there is no meaningful infrastructure in the game, there hasn't been a need to have "municipal" type government, or private associations that would provide the same services. We don't really need roads, electric or communication lines, or sewers. It would be a much different game if we did!


Prokofy Neva:
what are you *for*? Some enlightened council of tekkies who are more intelligent than the rest who will know what's best for them as they wryly put out "Nobody" for president and then handily make sure that "Nobody" is the name of their own alt? No thanks. That's Bolshevism. Let's not prettify it....

Should the community be kept away? Would that be undemocratic? But the community doesn't pay for the servers, hire the technicians, pay the technicians. It's just that simple.


Reitsuki Kojima:
You're right about anarchy being unstable. But the worst part about anarchy is it tends to decay into an even worse form of government. A totalitarian dictatorship or something along those lines. This depends on how far society is allowed to decay. For all a lot of high-minded pseudo 'thinkers' in the college age crowd hold up "anarchy" as their ideal form of government, those who live in an anarchistic society rarely do it of their own choosing. Anarchy is not condusive to a functioning, stable, productive society. Anarchy, as well, is thankfully usualy fairly brief... It mostly exists in periods of revolution or upheval. It's not so much a decaying form of government, as it is an intermediarey form of government.

Government would have to get pretty bad before I would embrace anarchy as a viable alternative, and even then it would be with the desperate hope that it would be brief and a better government would arise from the ashes.


Prokofy Neva:
Anarchy is often deliberately incited and allowed to run its course by inciters with hidden agendas who want to install an authoritarian or totalitarian system....Chomsky is actually horridly conservative and not at all an anarchist....They harbour utopianist and pastoralist visions of freedom and equality--with Internet hookup and all the latest conveniences of course--and they actually think that anarchy is maybe something a bit unstable but which isn't going to lead to anything worse and therefore might best be preserved in some fashion....I'm thinking that the anarchy that threatens the Linden's control -- whatever its effect on the player base -- will eventually tip the scales on this and force them to take added measures.


Ghoti Nyak:
In real life I understand the reasons governments must exist. I vote, pay my taxes, participate in civil society, etc. I do not advocate anarchy as a viable form of government in today's REAL world. In a nutshell, there's too many RL 'griefers' for it to be a viable option. I also see no reason to extend the grief RESULTING from politics into a virtual space beyond the barest required minimum. As a system for 'running' things, I advocate online Anarchy as far as it keeps the bullshit associated with RL politics out of the VR world.

To me, the least half-baked idea is that we should be left alone to do as we wish within the confines of the TOS.

Some of us are here to build, code, design, and have fun. Some of us are here to club around, hang out with friends, and have fun. Some of us are here to play at running malls and casinos and rental properties to make a 'profit', and have fun. The key factor we all have in common bringing us to this virtual world is to have fun. If you're not having fun, its time to find something else to do.


Agatha Palmerstone:
In RL, the only legitimate reason for government is to act as a monopoly on the use of force. As has been pointed out, anarchy can degenerate into a primitive crime society, at least according to Hobbesian social theory. Government acts in theory as a wall between violence and the people.
Of course, the Government always degenerates into an organized crime gang itself. The criminals eventually gain various degrees of control over the force that mediates them. One problem is that they now, as a "legitimate", super-organized mafia, have access to certain economic controls that they never would as a collection of disorganized gangs. They eventually learn to work together to "farm" the population for their labor.

In SL, where the "laws of reality" have been shaped in such a way that totalitarian or predatory violence is mostly impossible (and probably could be made completely impossible by LL eventually), there is no legitimate reason for Government at all.

Coming back to the economy, this is the one area of human existence (and we are still human behind the avs) where it has been most clearly and definitively demonstrated, both in theory and experience, that intervention and meddling pretty much only do harm.

The only part of the economy that even LL should touch at all, is the monetary system, and that only because it is inevitable - given the way land works, and because of new people entering the system.


Anshe Chung:
How does secession work in virtual reality?


Ulrika Zugzwang:
Anarchy does not exist in SL. It never has and it never will. In SL you are governed by a corporatist oligarchy (rule by a few in a corporate structure) known as the Lindens. They change rules without player consent, enforce rules inconsistently with no chance for appeal, and set all monetary and real estate policy with little hope of reform.


Ghoti Nyak:
As far as player-on-player governance, I currently reside in a state of anarchy. Those who choose to do so reside in whatever form of player-run governance they choose to join.

Yes, all this takes place within the confines of the Linden like-a-government. Think of it more like the natural laws (Linden Law, i.e. the TOS) versus the rules of humans (player-run governance).

No player holds rules over me. In SL, I live in a state of anarchy.


Shadow Weaver:
in the context that Ghoti offers it up..Ghoti got cha...as I tend to belive somewhat the same thing.
LL=Natural Law...AKA like RL Mother Nature.
RL We dont fuck with Lightning as we know it will Kill us.
IN SL we dont fuck with a linden as well same...hehe..dont shoot me Phillip please.
PRG(player run government)= Man Made Law
I follow no PRG thus I live in a state of Anarchy as Ghoti mentioned.


Seth Kanahoe:
This is a credible definition of anarchy as it applies to an online virtual world.

Within the confines of a collective, contractual agreement, administered by an overarching organization without agendas beyond maximizing community profit (LL), we are free to do what we want, with the intent of pursuing happiness, fulfillment, "fun". That organization (LL) has no real authority or sovereignty over you or me (we can always quit), but exists as a tool to maximize our living styles and standards. (The real issue is whether the interests of the overarching "tool" - LL - matches those of the "community" - you and me. But that's a judgement subject to constant review and debate.)

Could be an issue of definition here. Anarchy is not "no order," or "no government". Anarchy is not analogous to Hobbes' or Rousseau's "primitive states of being." (Crime in the wilderness, or whatever.) Anarchy is that form of political order that allows you to do the most for yourself within the limits of what is needed to allow everyone else the same right.

Which means that most of us are anarchists, here in Second Life, myself included. Personally, when I speak of "economic directions", I'm talking about ways of maximizing profit and pleasure without allowing an organization to have real authority or sovereignty over me.


Ulrika Zugzwang:
I've never heard living under an oligarchy described as anarchy before.... From Wikipedia's Anarchy page:

Anarchy (New Latin anarchia) is a term that has a number of different but related usages. Specific meanings include

* Absence of any form of political authority and/or social hierarchy
* Political disorder and confusion
* Absence of any cohesive principle, such as a common standard or purpose.

In the first meaning of "absence of political authority", an anarchy can refer to a theoretical or actual society based on the principles of one or more strains of the political theory anarchism, which advocates that all forms of government and hierarchical authority be abolished.


Ghoti Nyak, quoting further from Wickipedia:
Anarchism is a term which encompasses a variety of political philosophies, social movements, and political ideologies that advocate the abolition of all forms of imposed or involuntary authority including social hierarchy and coercive power. Proponents of anarchism argue that relations based upon voluntary cooperation and mutual aid will lead to a society characterised by the ability of each actor to have a say in outcomes proportionate to the degree they are affected by them, a society consisting of free individuals.

Individual freedom and opposition to the state are the unvarying principles of anarchism; less agreed upon are such matters as the role of violence in changing society, the preferred type of economic system, hierarchy and social status, the interpretation of egalitarian ideals, and the degree of organization, manner of incentive and the division of labour. Because the types of anarchism vary so largely, anarchism cannot be considered an ideology in the ordinary sense. Rather it is a set of ideas from which ideologies are drawn. On its own anarchism does not provide a world view beyond the idea that imposed authority is undesirable and unnecessary.


Ulrika Zugzwang:
I submit that your reasoning away of the overarching Linden federal oligarchy is a product of cognitive dissonance. For example, you draw black-and-white distinctions between player-run government and Linden-run government; ignore that there are many players who also are Lindens; and redefine governance itself as a "natural law".

Could one not say that we all live in a state of anarchy in the real world too, because we choose to interpret federal, state, and local laws as "natural law". At that point isn't it more metaphysical than real? Are you not living in a democratic republic in RL (assuming you're from the U.S.) and living in an oligarchy in SL, while holding on to a tenuous fantasy that you are unchained?


Seth Kanahoe:
Anarchy has nothing to do with chaos, disorder, the abolition of all authority, or the abolition of government....

Read August Spies, the American anarchist who wrote: "Anarchism does not mean bloodshed; it does not mean robbery, arson, or chaos. These monstrosities are, on the contrary, the characteristics features of capitalism and other ideologies that pervert the necessary ideas of authority and sovereignty. Anarchism means peace and tranquility under the authority of mutual respect between individuals, formalized in a benign government."

Read about the Paris Commune, where anarchists established a political order and a ruling organization based on the idea of collectivizing individual sovereignty under principles (more order) first outlined by Proudhon and Bakunin.

Read Emma Goldman, who stated: "Of all social theories Anarchism alone steadfastly proclaims that society exists for man, not man for society. The sole, legitimate purpose of society is to serve the needs and advance the aspirations of the individual. To do so may require rule and order, but only by doing so can society justify its existence and be an aid to progress and culture."

Heh, read the works of anarchists Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, Mikhail Bakunin, and Peter Kropotkin. You could even read Thomas Jefferson, Henry David Thoreau, and Walt Whitman, to whom Proudhon, Bakunin, and Kropotkin acknowledged various ideological debts....

The ideology states, clearly and simply, that anarchism is that form of political order in which authority, sovereignty, and government exists to serve the good of the individual, to the extent that the good of individual does not conflict with the good of other individuals. The confusion arises from the fact that there are many different proposals for achieving Goldman's "legitimate society" - from libertarianism on one end, to Gramscian communism on the other.

Those posts by Ghoti were the first sensible things I've read about anarchism in the SL forums. The problem for Second Life lies in taking paradigms and stretching them to fit the relatively new circumstances of a virtual world.


Prokofy Neva:
There's nothing respectable about latter-day anarchism breaking windows and pouring paint and destroying property and tying the judicial system in knots for days dealing with "civil disobedience" arrests. Whatever the political grandfathers and grandmothers who are a pretty dubious lot when you get down to it.

Ghoti was sensible about the actual virtual world of SL and its multiplicity and diversity that mitigates making it fit into this or that ready-made worn ideological trope such as the shopworn trops you're trotting out. You took her normal, common-sense statement and then tried to turn it into some political tract from 1917.


Shadow Weaver:
No one cant say that Ulrika as noted previously, its subjective reasoning to understand the differences...RL Mother Natures Law is that of elements such as mentioned previously. However, federal governments are more so man made laws regulations and controls that are enacted against our RL lively hood.

Now in the Virtual aspect LL Is Mother Nature as they are the ones that Created Second Life. Thus the TOS and thier sub laws can be construed as a simli of Mother Nature's Laws.
However a Player Run Government would equate to a federal government.

I know your next statment will be well Linden Labs gives us money. Well The element Gold that humans treasure so invaluably is found in Nature can that subjectively not be construed as the same equation.

To think in Virtual you have to think Abstract and not be so engaged in the RL fundamentals of understanding.


Your further thoughts?

Succinctly? We have not yet evolved past our physiology, let alone to the point where we are willing to embrace any form of truly unilateral government. Until 'might makes right' is well and truly overthrown in all its various and hideous forms, the matter is really quite stalled.

I roared with laughter seeing how our In-House Perlustrator edited everybody else's colourful bits way down -- and then left in all this own breathless hype. I'll say it again. You're suffering from a mind-meme that makes you think there's something positive about Kropotkin, who embraced violence. Shame on you.

Let's dissect this "choice pearl" you've served up.



Yes, and black is white, truth is falsehood, and We Love Big Brother, too.

Honestly, Seth, I haven't seen such a jejeune and silly load of crap in a long time. And that is a cerebral, not "gall-bladder" response. I"m sure many people reading that tripe have the same reaction. {yes, "jejeune" is our It Pays To Increase Your Word Power" word of the day]

Anarchy does indeed mean bloodshed. Try living in one of the countries where anarchy reigns and you'll see what I mean. I bet you have never been in a street covering a demonstration and been shoved and pushed by mobs and even injured. You just have no idea.

The idea that capitalism has something called "monstrosities" in it, unlike, say, communism with its mass murderers (and don't go all King Leopold on me, let's try to stay in the last century, hmmm?) and millions upon millions of victims, so dwarfing the number of victims that capitalism, too, engenders...well, I don't know where to begin with you, Seth. You need some real remedial work here on history and current events.

To try to turn everything on its ear and say that capitalism is the violent thing, when anarchy of the sort endorsing murder and mayem is the violent tihng, well, that's not a sleight of hand in our world, that's a crime.

I'm going to see if you run your course, and realize you are just hooked up to that same little plastic go-nowhere red toy phone that the FIC are hooked up to. I'm sure other people will come along and read that paragraph and be horrified too. They better be. Because celebrating that kind of incitement and justification of terror is a horror.

To relate this to SL (which was the directive, remember?) I don't think we can say that we have "nice" terrorism and "nice" anarchy" and a "nice behign government" in SL. You might think that Ghoti's notion of the anarchy of fun and Philip's laughing notion of himself as the head of the federal government is all Ok, and harmless.

But this is a prototype world. Somebody will press cut and paste on it at some point. So then you need to think about griefing and W-HAT and fraud and collusion and many other mechanisms like this, even though it's only a game.

The "terrrorism" we have now in the game (griefing) is sanctioned in the name of liberty and what I've called fuck-you hedonism. It opens the door for it to come in. The flocking to the gated island sims whos how much people loathe that and don't at all follow your arguments that it is all benign.

Prokofy Neva:
Anarchy does indeed mean bloodshed....To try to turn everything on its ear and say that capitalism is the violent thing, when anarchy of the sort endorsing murder and mayem is the violent tihng, well, that's not a sleight of hand in our world, that's a crime.

To relate this to SL.... I don't think we can say that we have "nice" terrorism and "nice" anarchy" and a "nice behign government" in SL. You might think that Ghoti's notion of the anarchy of fun and Philip's laughing notion of himself as the head of the federal government is all Ok, and harmless.

But this is a prototype world....So then you need to think about griefing and W-HAT and fraud and collusion and many other mechanisms like this, even though it's only a game.

There ya go, Prokofy. All nice and sane-itized. You're welcome!

I don't need an editor. But you need a confessor

If you mean the common sense of "lawlessness", yes, but not in the sense you are using it.

In the scope of a political system, as you are using it, anarchy is simply the absense of a government body. It doesn't presume violence, and from an old roommate once explained to me, there are many forms of anarchy and only some endorse violence.

Should note that the "anarchy does indeed mean bloodshed" quote, and all following it from my post above is from Prokofy Neva's previous post. It was my attempt to summarize Prokofy's thoughts, minus the invective and hyperbole.

I agree with your roommate, Hiro.

Again, I will point to the reference in the wiki for types of anarchism.

I wonder how long it will take before invective gets this thread closed too.

-Ghoti

Ack, you and your college and your college roomies! Bleh. When you breathlessly drop a whole bunch of names with "Kropotkin" and "Tolstoy" and "Thoreau" all in the same line, indiscrimately, you let me know that you don't care about the problem of violence and terrorism contained within anarchy. It's all good, for you. Well sorry, non pasarant!

And when you put out one of those infantile statements like "capitalism is violence" and try to make it appear as if capitalism as a system is "the real problem" whereas anarchy is "beneficial," I'm going to weigh in to show that you're engaging in the usual Red Queen stuff, saying a thing means what it does because you say so. It's just the usual twisting of the hard left, trying to boomerang the emotional and intellectual categories and associations people have about them -- often visceral, as hard-left ideologies and practices induce revulsion at the very real violence and terrorism used by these sectarians, including anarchist sectarians -- and then trying to sanitize it and serve it back up as actually a "deeper problem" of capitalism.

This is what I mean by a "Bolshevik method" lol. I'm not for sanitizing violence, and putting violent, terrorist anarchists in a long line-up that in fact includes not even anarchists, but just some thinkers advocating social change like Thoreau. Could we distinguish among them, please?

This isn't just some RL polysci wrangle. It's more important than that! It's about what philosophies and premises and mind-memes get to shape the pioneering worlds of the metaverse -- and that's going to have a lot of effects on a lot of people if you decide in advance that "capitalism is violence" and "lies are truth" and then basic principles like land ownership or private property or othe rights of the individual are thrown over in favor of celebrating some violent and possibly even criminal social systems -- tricked out in the usual redemptive and utopian philosophies.

You couldn't explore out there to any more worlds, says Philip, if I understand it, you couldn't get to any more external or internal worlds in outer space or inner space (the atom)...so you invented the world around the spaceship instead of making the spaceship go to the world.

So in that inventing process (at some point they do a switcheroo and change it from inventing to exploring...then from exploring to ....Usefulness for Mankind lol)...I'm not for celebrating any of the horridly violent and mass-killing experiments of the 19-21st centuries, thank you very much. I'm very keen to make sure that the worlds getting invented or explored, however you call it, don't track in the bloody footprints of the fascist and communist "experiments in exploration" of the 19-20th centuries.

Trying to situate liberal market capitalism and its behaviours in the 19-20th centuries, whatever condemnation they deserve, as somehow morally equivalent to the mass murders of fascism and communism is just the kind of thing that will get you tracking in blood.

Ghoti and others: rather than worry about invective and personal attacks, examine that paragraph about capitalism he's trotting out. What's your attitude toward it?

I don't necessarily 'worry' about them. Just pointing out that every time a thread starts in here, it always turns nasty. I'm as guilty as the next person. Momma always said, there's two things you don't talk about in polite company; religion and politics.

Can you quote the paragraph please? There's ALOT of paragraphs in this thread, I don't particularly want to wade through them all again to find exactly which one you mean (and I may misidentify the paragraph you mean to indicate).

-Ghoti

Please be sure to keep Political discussions on-topic as they relate to Second Life. Thank you.

Jeska, I just want to clear up a possible misunderstanding. Are you saying that any discussion in this forum must relate back directly to Second Life? As in, any discussion on anarchism must directly relate to how anarchism might be relevant to SL?

Or are you trying to deflect certain kinds of behavior in this thread?

Or?

A sincere question, btw.

That's exactly what she is saying.

From the forum introductory thread:



-Ghoti

A fair point, Ghoti, and I appreciate it. However, part of any discussion on SL-related politics must be based on common definitions and understandings of RL political characteristics, as they may relate to SL.

I, for example, don't believe that any form of anarchism that I've read about is practical in RL, but I think it might be in SL. So a baseline for discussion would be anarchism as it has developed in RL.

Seth, read what Pathfinder wrote as the Rules of the Road for this thread. If you want to go do your Spartacist/Chomsky/Anarcho/Maoist stuff, that's in the Off-topic RL thread.

Jeska means keep it tied to SL.

Ghoti, here is Seth's magic paragraph:



What we conclude from this is that Seth celebrates anarchy, at least some school of thought in some RL anarchy sect. He thinks it's just that "anarchy has gotten a bad name". He thinks the center-of-gravity of anarchy, perceived and known the world over -- that it does cause chaos, disorder, disruption of legitimate authority, etc. -- is not the truth, that it has a bad rap, and can be rehabilitated.

Baloney, I say.

He then goes on to quote somebody he apparently admires, August Spies, a famous anarcho-syndicalist, if you're going to be charitable, asssociated most with inciting the famous Haymarket riot in Chicago on May 3, 1886 . August Spies, were he alive today, might step lightly around the corpses of the millions including a certain 3,000 thanks to the grandchildren of Kropotkin's "propaganda of the deed," and says it really isn't anarchism that is ugly and bloody, it's capitalism.

Spies can be found at sites like spartacus.net with these kinds of slogans:

http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/USAspies.htm

"Spies developed a reputation for his violent speeches. In October 1885 he told a meeting of the Central Labor Union that: "We urgently call upon the wage-class to arm itself in order to be able to put forth against the exploiters such an argument which alone can be effective - violence." [my emphasis]

PBS has this to say about Spies:



Ugh.

I was hoping Seth wouldn't turn out to be a latter-day Worker's World sectant or Spartacist League type that you usually outgrow in college, I was hoping he'd not be that silly. You hope more intelligent types show up for a game like this.

Why would any of this sectarian thought, whatever it's relevance for the growth of the American labour movement, have anything to do with SL?

Well, any sort of cyber-Spies type could appear and rabble-rouse the disconted. They could incite "the landless" or "newbies" or "what about the people with no talent" or conversely, some minor artisan class, i.e. maker of sexay outfits and club organizers, and get them to support various fights, struggles, and movements in the game, up to and including mass actions like riotous malicious officer recall actions against all land baron groups. Nobody likes to talk about stuff like that. The TOS in TSO I believe used to have clauses against incitement and organizing boycotts like that. I don't know if SL does.

Like most games, the tekkinistas who manage them don't think much about the "soft side" of society and how it gets made in a community. They think of technical bugs, or bad script proliferating and executing. But they don't think about bad ideas, like anarchal justification of violence and destruction. A handful of people might use this idea of harassing land group owners in this fashion. They're unlikely to get any systematic compliance or followers because people not only don't want governments, they don't want social movements that get in their face with causes.

In fact, the ease with which mind-memes travel and replicate on the Internet makes the job of an August Spies so much more easier in sparking a Haymarket union strike that can lead to the deaths of people when police put it down -- not "real" deaths but "virtual" deaths.

It is beyond belief that this thread isn't closed for being exactly what is specifically forbidden to be discussed in this forum. The history of the anarchist movement in the real world is clearly not relevant to Second Life. No amount of tortured reasoning can make it be relevant to Second Life. Perhaps if a few people would report it to the moderator as off topic....

It may be, instead, a case of people not understanding the relevancy and not wanting to take the time to understand.

Or you may be right. I may be wasting my time. We'll see.

The Horror.

What you couldn't get away with doing in RL -- people are free, people have common sense, people won't let you -- you'll try to pull of in the Internet bazaar of bizarre ideas.

No thanks.

Not In My Name.

Once again, you are begging the question. Please refrain from restating your initial argument (in this case, "anarchy is violence" before addressing counter-arguments and rebuttals to your initial argument.

Failure to do so will result in across-the-board "Prok, you need to stop begging the question".

"Anarchism" means "The Law Of The Jungle".

It would work pretty good, if it weren't for human nature.

Buster

It's surprising how true that is for so many different things.

Agreed so far...



Put another way, any system that does violence to the authority and sovereignty of the individual will generate hostility.

Historically, I understand the times in which that was written though. Regardless, as I understand it, Spies advocated violence as a means to his end, so in my eyes he is no better than the repressive governments he fought against. Personally, I like capitalism. I do not have the same problems with it that some might have.

In any case, the above are not features of SL capitalism. If anything, SL capitalism gives a savey lone proprietor more of an opportunity to compete with the big dogs than can be done in RL.



Agree with the end.

-Ghoti (needs more coffee)

You can't have a true anarchy in a virtual world as long as it's hosted on servers that can be arbitrarily manipulated or disconnected by a central authority. Even if the world is made open-source, all that does is expand the membership of the oligarchy to those with the wealth and time to host the world or portions thereof.

You can have an anarchy-like state if the hosting entity doesn't enforce any rules beyond basic game physics. It's been tried. The results thus far are repressive places taken over and ruled with an iron fist by conglomerates of the most ruthless and brutal. It is reminescent of the industrial feudalism of the 19th century, a system so corrupt and repressive it made the violence of the Bolsheviks not just understandable, but inevitable.

So some degree of "governence" is necessary in the virtual realm, not to protect from anarchy, but to protect from the running dogs that inevitably seek to set up their own tyrannical monopolies in the absence of central authority to muzzle them.

You can't have a true anarchy in RL either.

The history of government pre-dates written history, but we can guess. The first government was a protection racket whereby opportunists protected crop growers from hunter-gatherers in return for a share of the crop. Little has changed.

In absense of one kind of protection racket (government) other protection rackets would emerge.

Only those who have been robbed by education of the ability to think could believe anarchy is workable.

Buster

Intellect without education is an engine without fuel.

But no, I don't believe anarchy is workable in real life either. There are viable social structures with no formal leadership or governance, but the ones that have persisted are those with strong geographical isolation from aggressive neighbors.

If every person were free of want, and all the various mental disorders that provoke unmotivated violence were cured, and people accepted responsibility for all the consequences of their actions on this fragile earth, maybe at that point we could dismantle government and live in harmony with one another. Until that day comes, if it ever does, we need a big brother to grab the bullies by the scruff of the neck and rub their faces in the dirt.

But the discussion gets in trouble when it veers out of virtuality and into real life. That's why I prefaced my remarks as I did.