I think that anarchism is the perfect goal: that is to say, striving for a lack of coercive hierarchy while keeping other equities in mind is a very good way to avoid authoritarianism while making radical changes to society, even if you never achieve “true” anarchy.

Personally, I’m a syndicalist, because in my opinion, it provides the clearest, most actionable way towards anarchism in an industrial society.

Wikipedia does a, fairly, good job of introducing the topic here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarchism

Personally, I can understand the allure of not having a ‘ruler’. Whether that be a dictator-like king, an overly critical parent or some such other person who wishes to tell me what I can and cannot do.

Here in the United States, the goal is to have a representative democracy. At times, throughout US history, it has felt that this goal has been dashed by a small percentage of the ultra-wealthy and powerful. Not only has it felt this way, but it has been all too common in the past several decades. We see this happening all around us all the time and it can become disheartening.

On the other hand, I believe that the overwhelming majority of persons in the US want to push this goal further and further and not give up hope.

One of the tactics of the ultra-wealthy/powerful is to do everything possible to dissuade young persons from voting. They know that this strategy will keep them in power. Another tactic that they’ve used is to undermine and nearly destroy the public education system. Obviously, if they can keep the young public as ignorant as possible, then they won’t know how voting impacts their own lives.

There are so many other tactics, used by the aforementioned, in order to kill the promise of representative democracy.

If you ask ten people about their opinions on anarchism (or any other form of political or economic thought), I’d say you get ten different answers - at least. That’s my experience.

Democracy is a good step in the right direction, but what does that mean? Even North Korea claims to be a democratic republic, China bears the term “Republic” in its name, Iran has a parliament, but these countries are dictatorships where people have nothing to say, and where power and capital are as concentrated as in the worst forms of neo-liberal capitalism.

I firmly believe that we need the best ideas from different philosophies as none of them is able to solve real issues, no matter how great thinkers their creators often were. On my list: a little bit agorism, a bit Austrian school of economics (not exclusively, but especially its theory on money, e.g., by Carl Menger and Ludwig Mises), a bit behavorial economics. We can learn from Silvio Gesell, Bernard Lietaer, and so many others such as those who did research in very small niche areas like Elinor Ostrom. It depends what problems we want solve.

It may go in the direction of some form of anarchism I would say, but not in its pure form.

Edit: I should say that I am not part of the Beehaw team, so this is not an “official” statement. I should have made that clear, sorry.

broadly sympathetic, but i’ve never heard a compelling anarchist alternative to a few things that don’t just sound like that thing with a different name (usually prisons and/or police), so a statist i remain