If the world adopted anarchy, and small self-governing communities became the norm, what stops community A from attacking weaker/wealthier community B?
What stops resource-rich places surrounded by arid land from overcrowding? What stops some charismatic person from leading a society into a more statist structure, thus allowing it to grow larger than it naturally would be?
In other words, how is global peace to be kept and what stops tribalism from breaking out?
Let's take them one at a time, because each of these questions asks something distinct which is often lumped together due to the history of lumping them together.
As of yesterday, Ukraine is fighting a defensive war against Russia, the Donetsk People's Republic and the Lughansk People's Republic. Putin moved troops into the latters' regions, and then came at the problem sideways by moving troops in through Belarus, to take cities including Kyiv and Pripyat, the home of the Chernobyl power plant. As I look at the map of Ukraine, the Borderlands, tracking announcements and independent footage from the war, I find myself quieted.
The last post has left my brain working, and it is painting a fictional world to describe as bizarre an anarchy I can think to describe: one in which almost nothing changes. The United States was born close to anarchy, with the Articles of Confederation only barely constraining the relationships and business inter-state and between the states and foreign powers. The Constitution, of course, changed that, but the United States nonetheless remains the best template for finding a human solution to centralized power we have yet seen. But for this world to make sense, it needs to be placed in context. In a year not too far in the future, amidst a second Civil War brought on by States refusing to comply with Federal mandates and acts, eventually demanding federal officers attempt to occupy the rebelling states. Without the regional unity of the previous rebellion, some states are easier to occupy than others; major cities which oppose the body politick of the rest of the state are often enough to control the flow of goods. But a quartet of States, whose Constitutions closer resemble the original intentions of the war-torn founding fathers, decide to declare an independent neutrality; Arizona, Nevada, Wyoming and Utah.
Most of us make use of distributed and federated software every day, the code for which is freely available. For most of these projects, one person figureheads and makes decisions for the planning and execution of the project, whereas everyone else contributes to the amount they are able within the scope and skillset with which they are best able to contribute. Their leadership has no impact on your freedom; you are still free to use, modify, fork, and even not use the software should you find yourself disagreeing with this figurehead. You can call that figurehead a ruler, a bastard dictator for life, but the only space over which he holds diktat is the development and advancement of his own software project. If Alex Gleason came to your house, held a gun to your head and said, “Use my fork of Pleroma!” then I think you might have an argument that rulers and leaders are functionally the same thing. But he doesn't. He's just vegan, by the way.
One of the least interesting conversations I find one can have, are discussions about whether or not anarchism is a misnomer, or whether this one act or that other act somehow disproves it as anarchism. These arguments of semantics are so disheartening; it's no wonder we can't have stateless liberty when people cannot picture a voluntary life that looks relatively similar to what they have now, with the distinct absence of violent and unjust incarceratory coercion from those with power or authority.
Another matter I have given far less respect than it deserves is urbit. I spend as much time there as I do on the fediverse, but I've done comparatively little exploration in it. My planet, ~linnum-fidrut, has slowly become a place in which I write in streams of consciousness as well as keep up with some of my nerdiest friends; of all the bleeding-edge decentralized social media I try to consume, it is the one that seems to have the most fire behind it. Not to sell the fediverse short; it has its own little innovation boom just starting to happen and I suspect it will catch up soon.
I hope this finds you well. It's hard to ignore the chaos in the world, but that's partly why writing seemed like such a good idea; it can serve as a distraction, a means to spend the time that isn't work, maintenance, or rest. And in writing, topics that are otherwise harder to discuss in short-form, such as agalmics or personal intelligence systems, can be given the time and attention they deserve. Thankfully, they can be federated as well.