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Comment by TaylorAlexander | Hacker News Reader

I won’t force you to support them. I WANT to support others because I feel good doing so. At normal jobs I’m just helping some billionaire get richer (my last job I worked indirectly for a billionaire). I would way rather work day in and day out to support regular people like me.

And since you brought it up, I find your attitude disturbing. “Why should I have to help other people” is kind of a gross question. You don’t want to help other people? Doesn’t that make you selfish? Again I’m not saying I will force you to help, but why are you against the idea of helping others anyway?

I see that you mention government. I didn’t mention government. I said society could provide for everyone. We can do that without the government.

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You did say "democratic arrangements" which you might be able to wriggle out of admitting means government. In either case, what is your plan for dealing with a dissenters to your view, especially if they wind up being in the minority? Remember to leave out force, threat of violence, and other coercions, lest you contradict yourself. Or strike "democratic arrangements" because it's a heavier hammer than you think it is.

People who don't want to interact with society or be helped by society can... not interact with society or be helped by society. They can go out in the woods somewhere or develop a religion that gives you excemptions.

You can also organize among your minority group and protest that your rights are being violated, or hire lawyers to sue.

Oh my god you act like I’ve never heard of libertarianism. A worker owned cooperative can be democratic without being a government. And I agree with authors like Murray Bookchin who advocate for a kind of anarchist communism where you have a “government” but not a state. I personally advocate for a state-free society and have no interest in rule by force. I wrote a story about a democratically arranged worker owned cooperative that feeds and houses all its members two and a half years ago: http://tlalexander.com/corporation/

I’m not concerned with people who don’t want to participate. They don’t have to and we don’t need their support. Such a system can be supported entirely by those who want to support it.

I’m sorry if I come off confrontational but your question seemed to be a “gotcha” that is honestly very simplistic. As an anarchist or “libertarian socialist” I’m quite aware of problems of the state. I will say that in many cases I think local governments may find it beneficial to support these systems, but I like the idea of this being done on a local level so individual cities can decide for themselves. In the same way that some governments operate trains, it is not the case that trains depend on government to be useful.

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