Operating an electrical plant and conducting large scale agriculture does not require government or corporations. The face of such operations change a great deal in anarchy. A rough, quick scenario: Instead of about 500 employees with a 40 our week each at today's electrical plant, an anarchist idea would be to saturate the electrical plant with a lot more workers working a lot less hours. 500 people with 40 hour work weeks is 20,000 hours. Change from a vertical world to a horizontal one, you can get 5000 people to work 4 hour work weeks, or one 8 hour day every two weeks. The reason they would do it in an anarcho-communism is because the community opens up access to everything else they provide for that one person contributing 4 hours per week at the electrical plant. Check out how many people live in your city. My city has about 22,000. I'm sure there are at least 5000 people surrounding each electrical plant who would think that's a good deal. If this did not work, it could be moved to market socialism, but that would suck so bad everyone would probably rush to the plant and offer their 4 hours per week.
There are a lot of jobs which would disappear in the transition to anarchy. Executives, billing clerks, collections people, entire credit card agencies, mortgage companies, rent regimes, and on and on. All of those people could either die, become primitivists and live in tee-pees in the middle of nowhere, try to make their entire living in market socialism or join a commune and choose which industry they want to learn and participate in.
Anarcho-communism would not apply to everything. It is a way for everyone to gather and provide what everybody wants/needs without putting a price on it. Everyone wants/needs it, so everyone creates it. Imagining it leads me to conclusions that it will be hospitals/medicine, agriculture, raw materials, some construction, some machining, and utilities. Tool machining would be something done within the communes while the machinist could also deal in market socialism selling tools to non-communal jewelers, luthiers, pool installers, and whoever else they want to deal with.
The communal electrical plant could put a price on the juice sent to the jewlers, luthiers and other non-communal market operations, while the workers at the plant are all equal and can require that the funds be spread out equally with each person's hours worked making the only differences in pay.
In a heavily market/industrial area, the electrical plant could have the more condensed 500 employees, all equal, putting a price on all the juice, and getting paid evenly.
Regarding oil & gas: I read the other day that the energy crisis is bologna. I wish I had the energy to type it out right now. I'm also not really remembering enough details about it at this time. I'll get brushed up on it. I can get more into it later.
What we have now in the capitalist system is TONS more energy consumption than we would in anarchism. We currently have all people on the road at least twice a day, traveling 30 to 70 miles per day, in order to go to a corporation and burn up more energy overproducing to meet the demands of greedy executives. These people only do that to pay their rent and mortgages. We could create a 90% reduction in their necessity to be on the road in anarcho-communism. Plus, many people's necessity to be on the road would also be reduced by bringing their responsibilities much closer to home instead of having to go 40 miles toward the city to their job, sitting in traffic both ways. Sitting idle in traffic burns gas too, pointlessly. Let's get rid of rush hour, and reduce traffic related deaths too. Plus, stop making kids go to college AND work to pay rent simultaneously. That's a bunch of pointless driving that serves no one but the ruling class also.
It doesn't really matter how complex my car is. Executives and politicians did not create it. I already went over all that regarding a BMW motorcycle.
Hell no I don't use credit. I am in no debt whatsoever, but I also do not "have" anything. I don't consider living off of loans having, so I just don't "have". Everything I have is probably under $1000 except my car. I go out, make money, buy stuff, quit working until I need more money.
I've known all about the Libertarian party platform for years. You know they want to abolish Federal Reserve currency, right? Not that I'm against it, just wondering if you knew. Anyway, the Libertarian Party wants to keep the one thing in place that all Anarchists want to get rid of... wage slavery, which is will always exist as long as corporations own everything. The Libertarian Party has a whole lot of things right, but there are fundamentals there which keep us headed down the path to extreme corporate tyranny like never before. My life would not change one bit with them in power.
Political parties are always infected by the virus known as lobbyists. You cannot possibly accurately represent 285,000,000 people by condensing us to representation in Washington DC. Political parties just means taking turns passing every law you want to pass. The Libertarian party could get in there and remove a bunch of crap, but the Democrats and Republicans will come and re-install every bit of it a few years later. All people need to become congress. Let your imagination run wild on the idea of all people having a seat in congress. Forget the presidency. That office is useless.
Luckily, we are superior to ants, so we should act like it. We don't need a government or a corporate heirarcy or restrictions from the means of survival to tell us to not eat the lame or the old.
On 2003-05-22 19:45:00, Tampa survivor wrote:
"BTW, to our anachro communist....
Do you drive?
Do you use electricity?
Have heat in your home?
Oil gas or electric?
Eat anything other than what YOU or others you KNOW can produce?
How about use credit?
Your car is filled with highly complex, difficult to make parts. Thousands of different ones. Think about trying to make one.
Those electrons pushing photons into your face while you read this are produced by a huge monopolistic conglomerate, owned by shareholders. You can put a stinky diesel generator in. Costs about 30 times as much to make a KW hour yourself. Thats why nobody does it. Put in solar? Ha, better unplug the A/C. Makes the power company seem a bit nicer, eh?
Food. Hell, try to can something. Grow all you are able of what will grow in your area. Can it. Eat it all winter. See if by February you wish Chunky soup was still around in Annarchy Land.
Idealistically speaking I am Objectivist. Read Ayn Rand's "Atlas Shrugged", or "The Fountainhead". In the political world, I am a libertarian. Read and learn about what that means. I bet you find somethings of interest.
http://libertarian.org/
Realistically, people don't WANT to be equal. I see your valid point about government communism. But somebody in that co-op will do a slightly better job at something than another, and get rewarded for it. Or want to be. Leads to dissent.
Eventually coercion results, and that has been the problem with all hive mentallity economic experiments.
Worker ants in a nest are truly equal in ability and desire; they are also cold enough to eat the lame or old ones. Not my kinda life.
Bill"
[ This Message was edited by: JDavid on 2003-05-23 02:19 ]