mayoboy
I can't believe that is true; it just doesn't make sense. I don't understand why people would run to slavery, just so they can complain about it later.

3 HORN.

That was a problem with the accounting practices that they were using. It was not the selling of the electricity to Caliofornia. They were using the same accounting practices for years. Calif only came around last year.

never been tried Ctenidae.

Bocomo, you seem to be suffering from gender confusion.

MayoBoy:

People are sheep because they're taught to be sheep. We're taught that certain people are leaders, they get to make the decisions, and we have to go through them to get anything done. We have no sense of our own power and agency as individuals, and as communities. Democracy doesn't stop at the ballot box, and it's not limited to the anointed ones.

GooberMcFly "Reading these comments, I realize just how little I know about the economy. I bow to you guys' superior intellect."

You live in the illusion you can actually learn something in the comments section. I'd bow to you naivety, but I'm too busy enjoying another good old (cliched) flame war.

Fortheloveof

If you don't like that analogy, then think of society as a bunch of two and three year olds. Given their druthers, they would do nothing but play and rely on others for their food and shelter.

Anarchism is the lack of a framework. Anarchism is no rules.

Even the most rudimentary social systems need a system of laws and a leader or executive committee.

The executives at Enron have (had) a fiduciary duty to the stockholders to maximize profits. In doing so, they have to factor into their strategy the effect of negative PR which might result from their activities. Obviously, if their activities were illegal (which remains to be seen), they would have violated the criminal laws and their fiduciary duties to the stockholders.

In short, if they were merely taking advantage of a market situation created by the California legislature, and broke no laws, they done good. If they broke other laws in doing so, they done bad. I reckon we'll find out eventually.

Actually, I'm a proponent of anarcho-capitalism, a system where everyone gets the government they deserve, but no more gevernment than they're willing to pay for.

ironbar
found your problem, that is not anarchy, that is chaos
anarchy is a lack of ruling class, not a lack of government all together.

Wow, shocking. Could you imagine if this type of thing happened in the gasoline business? Or worse, if people like this made it to the White House. *shudder*

Anarchism is one of those "isms" that is very attractive to the under-30 crowd who are still rebelling against parental control. Most of you will outgrow it.

Isn't the law "there are no laws" merely a law? Anarchism is impossible.

HappyDaddy
I bet they find "Ollie North" the Enron tea boy actually made all the wrong descisions. That and his accomplice Mavis the cleaner at Arthur Aanderson.

I love bribery.

Anarchism is the lack of a framework. Anarchism is no rules.

Literally, "anarchism" means "no leaders". It does not mean "no organization." That's chaos. "Anarchy" can mean either chaos or a non-hierarchical system; anarchism refers solely to the latter.

Even the most rudimentary social systems need a system of laws and a leader or executive committee.

A system of laws and rules can be developed collectively. This does not require some more-equal-than-you leader or an executive committee endowed with the sole right to make the rules and decide how they're enforced.

HappyDaddy,

Right on. Making money is not a crime. Especially when the market offers an opportunity.

Imagine: the hippies take control and create an ararchy-based nation. No government, no rules, nothing. Now let's say a group of level-headed folks decide to create a small, local government. Would that be illegal? Would there be "anarchy police" whose sole job was to keep the disorder? Methinks most anarchists haven't thought things through.

Sheepish
Right on. Making money is not a crime. Especially when the market offers an opportunity.

I trust that you havn't been stealing apples from the the farming fair, have you?

tv's_frank

obivously you are not reading what is posted, platinum dragon gave a link above. Check it out, you might learn.

"A system of laws and rules can be developed collectively. This does not require some more-equal-than-you leader or an executive committee endowed with the sole right to make the rules and decide how they're enforced."

Sounds like democracy. At least for those who are generally satisfied with how the votes turn out.

HappyDaddy, regarding the duty to the stockholders, you are making an interesting argument. I believe the only real laws that were broken were in regards to falsifying reports to stockholders, and perhaps some laws regarding offshore partnerships??

There were discussions in Texas over a year and a half ago that Texas energy was going to under go deregulation. "Oh whatever happened in California isn't going to happen here" Enron officals said. I live in Houston and some of those guys that worked for Enron were total a-holes! Good thing Enron went belly up! I drove down a small residental street the other day and counted 10 townhouses for sale. I feel sorry for the employees, but not the head honchos.

PlatinumDragon That kind of framework works well on small scales: the pure deomcracies of Athens and small towns in New Negland, for example. But once the population of a group becomes even moderately large, the possibilities of everyone meeting to discuss issues is preposterous. Sure, you could maybe pull it off once...but times change, and you need people to change the laws to match the times. Maybe once a year, get everyone together...but what if another human group starts attacking your border, but doesn't declare open war? Do you agree to wait until the next meeting to bring it up? Who would be arbiter in disputes at these meetings? You can't just expect a jam a few thousand people into a hall and expect laws and regulations to start popping out.

Fortheloveof Heh, I'll admit: I skipped ahead. I'll take a gander at it, thanks.

BigAl,

We are not talking about stealing here. This is business opportunity. If the people working at the fair want to sell me an apple for 2 cents when everybody else is paying a dollar, that is good business. In this case, everyone else was buying for 2 cents, and when California started buying for a dollar they said it was wrong. Guess what. Business is "Buyer Beware" California screwed up and then looked to the government to bail them out. I have no regrets for a state where the average electricity bill is less than a third of what I pay. Its about time they stepped up.

Um, sorry folks. Capitalism is as dead as communism. Capitalism is based on free markets where suppliers and buyers compete on nearly equal terms. Try competing with Microsoft or (what used to be) Enron.

The real wealth of the States lies in the small to medium enterprise which employs, I think, around 80% of the population. What we have in the States is corporatism: large, multi-national entities which easily move production across borders to cheap labor pools and sell their products in high-income consumer markets. That isn't capitalism, as least not as Smith envisioned it. No responsibility, no accountability. Just creating wealth for shareholders with little or no long term vision or risk management.

Bush doesn't support SME's. He supports, and is supported by, large conglomerates which don't WANT to answer to the market. When they speak about de-regulation, they aren't talking about creating a freer market, they are wanting to be able to control the market without government interference.

I would like to see more support for SME's, the real wealth producers and innovators, and more control of multi-nationals.

HarNausea, I know it's frustrating to be unable to compete in a free market, but you shouldn't expect everyone else to pay your way.

bla bla bla...

What? You're perfectly capable of supporting yourself? Oh, then why does the govt need to support you?

bla bla bla...

They dont? Ok, so your marxist crap is for the benefit of "the others". Typical aloof attitude of a socialist/liberal "most people aren't as smart and talented as I, therefore the successful people should have to support them"

Sweetiebug:
"I'm sure none of you give a shiat about this, but having worked for Enron, I know first hand that your statement above is bullshiat. True there were a bunch of people who knew what was happening, but there were more people that didnt know."

c'mon now. Outages in Cali was the major news story last summer, i'm supposed to believe the majority of Enron employees didn't know about their employer's involvement in that?
Working for a large corp. myself, i know that Enron would have sent a script out company wide to handle inquiries in the matter.

Imagine: the hippies take control and create an ararchy-based nation.

There are so many contradictions and misconceptions in this single sentence, I don't even know where to start.

Would that be illegal? Would there be "anarchy police" whose sole job was to keep the disorder?

Man, you haven't read a thing I've typed, have you?

Quoting myself from above:

implementation is still left to individuals and communities, and people may organize (or not) as works best for them.

If a group of people want to create a hierarchical framework to govern themselves, great stuff. If they try to impose their system of control on anyone else, that will be resisted.

Now, you assume that every organizational structure needs to have certain empowered leaders, and only certain people can make decisions, and such. This is really what you're saying when you state that "group of level-headed folks decide to create a small, local government."

I'll say this again, because it needs to be repeated until it sinks in:

Anarchism is not about chaos and complete disorganization; it's about decentralized decision-making and a lack of power concentration. Lord Acton's axiom about power and corruption is a large part of the theory behind anarchism. If you refuse to acknowledge this, your choice, but this conversation won't go much farther if you keep insisting that the only way for a society to organize is by handing a few people most of the decision-making power and resource control, and hoping like hell they decide not to abuse that power, because you only get one chance every few years to boot them and let someone else do it.

I'm just glad that my power bills went from $400 monthly to $70.

After working at an oil giant for 5 years, this was seen coming. Californians were too afraid of nuclear power, and the lack of new power plants in the last 10 years due to ludicrous environmental regulation really set the tone. When Wilson gave his parting shot of deregulation, some of the oil-bigwigs looked stunned. Then reported record profits at the end of the year.

Weren't many blackouts, though. And only one in LA that I was aware of. The only repeat-rollers were up north, in Frisco.

A system of laws and rules can be developed collectively.

Who will collectively enforce these laws, collectively?
Rules are useless if unenforced, kinda like how this Enron mess happened, these fatcat execs felt the rules didn't apply to them.

There should be a "duh" tag...

PlatinumDragon

What about the people who won't/don't want to/can't work? You're under the impression that everyone wants to contribute when in fact most want to get by with giving as little as possible. Your idea sound great on paper but won't work in the real world.

Platinum Dragon "If a group of people want to create a hierarchical framework to govern themselves, great stuff. If they try to impose their system of control on anyone else, that will be resisted."

What you are describing is already in place. A group of people created a government, and those that feel imposed upon often resist (watch COPS and behold your fellow anarchists). So is America the anarchist society you envisioned?

PlatinumDragon (Forgive me...I tend to skip around in the threads a bit, so I may have missed some of your arguments.) All your posts seem fine and dandy, but how do you expect anything to get DONE? If we have some hypothetical "spokescouncil" that really doesn't have any mroe power than everyone else...how do they enforce the laws? You think people will automatically police themselves? Besides, the Big Trend in human history seems to be LARGER groups...I doubt that people will spontaneously dissolve into quasi-city-states. What if a few groups of people want to explore space? Build a better airplane? Heck, even MANAGE a large-scale communications infrastructure? Or are we supposed to just give up all those too? Small groups don't have the resources/ability for projects such as those. Are we just going to give up technology, give up modernization? Screw new antibodies...nobody would be able to afford to develop any. Screw talking to your aging grandmother 100 miles away....nobody has the resources to get you there, or even call her (all that copper wire and fiber was chewed through by rats, and nobody has the resources to lay new ones.) To quote an awesome TV show: "Why don't you go bang rocks together, caveman?"

It was broke when I got here....

PlatinumDragon, I think your ideas are interesting and you and one other, whom I can't recall and don't have time to look up, are presenting your point well. My point is that you seem to be willing to present your ideas and not do a lot of flaming (unless I missed the flames).

One of the many problems I see is the control of natural resources. If one "enclave" happens to live on a great fishing lake and there "work" is to fish all day then I think it might breed a little resentment among the next enclave that mines for coal.

How would this work?

Okay, I will now respond to your latest post: Let's say the world has (somehow) been transformed into an anarchist state as you have described. People govern themselves however they want to. Group A has a population of about 1,000 and decided to have this "spokecouncil" type of rule. Fine and dandy, they're happy. Group B, with a population of 100,000, decided to have a form of government where one person has absolute and total control over everything. I mean, it is anarchy, right, and this IS a hierarchal structure, though a very narrow one. Anyway, Group B discovers that Group A has lots of gold, and some nifty farmlands near a river. Group B's leader decided to destroy Group A and take that gold and farmland. Group A was able to defend themselves, but only for a short time, being so small. Group A no longer exists, and Group B is now bigger.


That, my friend, is probably how civilization began.

That kind of framework works well on small scales: the pure deomcracies of Athens and small towns in New Negland, for example. But once the population of a group becomes even moderately large, the possibilities of everyone meeting to discuss issues is preposterous.

Which is why I noted that such massive bodies would be temporary and rare. Such a huge "national" decision-making body would simply be unnecessary 99.999% of the time.

Sure, you could maybe pull it off once...but times change, and you need people to change the laws to match the times.

*sigh*

You haven't read a thing I typed about how often these bodies would form (you pretty much said it - once or twice in a long period of time), who would make the laws (you, me, the neighbours, and the others in the organization/community/however we organized ourselves), and how far those laws would stretch (ourselves and those who choose to work with us). The concept of a nation, with borders and administrative bodies deciding how things work within those wide borders for millions, doesn't exist in anarchism, precisely becuase it wouldn't work that way.

Do you agree to wait until the next meeting to bring it up?

No, you'd get together right away to figure out what to do. Yeesh, use your head here.

Who would be arbiter in disputes at these meetings?

Under certain systems, one person is chosen to be "facilitator" to make sure people aren't yelling at each other and no one gets heard. The task is temporary, can be given to someone else if the facilitator starts acting more like a commander, and extends solely to starting discussion and making sure anyone who wishes to speak gets heard. There are other ways to work out disputes; spokes, the "fishbowl" (two people from each viewpoint sit in the middle of everyone else and discuss the issue), breaking up into smaller groups that go their own way if an impasse is reached... you act like no one has ever done this before or something.

You can't just expect a jam a few thousand people into a hall and expect laws and regulations to start popping out.

Sure you can. Happens in Washington, D.C. all the time, only those decisions and laws affect 250 million people, whether they're good, workable, or not. Heck, not everyone has to participate in workplace/community decision-making if they're too busy, tired, hermits, whatever - the point is, they have the choice of participating as they see fit, and are encouraged to speak up if they have a problem or concern, rather than hoping someone else will listen to them and do it for them.

Personal responsibility is, surprisingly, a large part of successful decentralized society.

And now we see the fundamental problem with de-regulation. Just like we saw the problem with no regulation a century ago. Do that and companies will get shady and stomp over anyone to make more money.

My proposal? Deregulate to allow companies the freedom to operate cleanly, BUT.... have heavy-handed punishments for those who abuse their freedom. Price-fixing is caught? Revoke their corporate charter in that state. Simple as that.

And while I'd love to see Lay go to jail, you know he'll go to one of those minimum security outfits where he can still wear his damn suits and everything, while a kid who was smoking a little weed and not hurting anybody will end up in a "federal pound-me-in-the-ass prison."

I second the sentiment that anarcho-communism may sound just dandy and look great on paper, but it would be disastrous in real life.

"Personal responsibility is, surprisingly, a large part of successful decentralized society."

Which is precisely why it would fail. Miserably. IT sounds like a great plan, but you might have to wait a few million years for human nature to be in your favor.


You still haven't addressed the issue of large scale engineering/social projects.

Arachno-Communism? I don't get it. What do spiders have to do with communism?

PlatinumDragon You seem to be concentrating on the national level very much, implying that they are responsible for making all the laws. yes, they make the laws that affect 250 million people, but they don't make ALL the laws. State goverments make laws applicable to the state. Local and city governments makes laws that have much more of an impact on your daily life than stuff coming out of Washington. Your city's zoning laws are responsible for where you put your new house. Your city's curfew makes your kids go to bed early. And, not surprisingly, you have the easiest access to local governments. If you want something changed in a city, it is difficult, but certainly not impossible. You want something changed at the state level, it's more difficult, but once again, not an impossible task. Federal-level changes are nearly impossible, but it's SUPPOSED to be that way....we don't want people changing the laws that govern 250 million all willy-nilly, now do we?

for the large scale needs, you either send out colonists and start new communities, or you can use computers. Set up decussion boards like this one. Set a vote date, the votes are totalled on that day by the computer.

Go re-read the original article. Enron pretended to move energy that they DID NOT MOVE to make money illegally. It's a classic case of the Emporer's New Clothes. Or in this case The Governer's New Electricity.

Making money by gaining an advantage is definitely the goal of Capitalism. Unethical greedy thievary is not.

Lying, Stealing, Cheating, and generally farking over all of your own employees just to get rich is EVIL. Did you see Kenneth Lay's wife on Barbara Walters? "We lost our vacation house in Aspen, our corporate jet, most of our money... blah blah blah" What a spoiled biatch. She is exactly the type of person that demonstrates the altered reality that these people live in. Let her serve her kids Mac and Cheese and Campbells soup for a while to get a taste of most people's lives for a change.

Kenneth Lay and his henchlings should all go to prison. Knowingly stealing from people like Enron did in California is still stealing, even though they didn't use a gun.

And to REBRANE who said they should be tried for murder, I agree. If my grandmother died of heat stroke because Enron made the price of electricity unaffordable only so that they could make a few million dollars more, I would offer to throw the switch myself. Farking Ken Lays wife missing her jet. Pound her in the ass prison too.

Making money by hurting people is EVIL.

Making money by outworking, outhustling, and outsmarting the competition is just fine.

Note the difference please.

I lost a mint on stupid Worldcom. farking capitalism.

I would like to see the following:

1. Kenneth Lay--cut up into small parts, sold off in bits and pieces to third-world countries
2. Kenneth Lay--having to buy back his body parts at inflated prices
3. Kenneth Lay--undergoing high-voltage fusion curretage to adhere all his farked body parts together again
4. Kenneth Lay--sold to a used flying carpet salesman in Istanbul, then shipped to an elite Afghan rug dealer in France (who surrendered, BTW), trod upon by angry citizens who paid so much more than they ever received benefit in return...

THIS SPELLS OUT TRUE VOLTAGE/WATTAGE LAUNDRY SERVICES..

you may now reach me in my bunker under my own wind-powered generator...

i meant that you would keep the communities small by sending out the colonist.