Hey,
This post reminds me of an epiphany I recently had about freedom. It was one of those inexplicable feelings of comprehension from which my Statism can never again return; a feeling of complete enlightenment without any reason. While considering the solution to the roads, I suddenly came up with about 20 entirely different possible situations and realised far from the common belief that Anarchism is one of many solutions, that Anarchism is many solutions in contrast to the one solution that is statism, and that any argument against Anarchism cannot be based on logic without exhausting every possible idea available. I know we all already understand this, and that DRO's are but one possible solution, but as I said, the feeling itself was inexplicable.
As for the responses details, I will attempt to provide the obvious solutions that would be taken by me in an Anarchistic society. The first statement seems to have no factual backing, and as always no one attempts to source any historical, economic or psychological reasoning as to why DRO's would be able to collude in such away. Aside from the numerous examples of why they wouldn't even reach a position to do so by Stef, I know that if they somehow did, all the DRO's would collapse immediately when their banks close their accounts to restrict their funding as per the agreements made between them and myself. No government could survive without a method to pay for its violence, and any government coming out of Anarchism (something never seen in history) would have a far harder time than one arising from a previous or outside monopoly on violence.
The comment is very similar to one I often hear, that people "like being governed" and would drift back to government. This is of course both incorrect, but also not a contradiction of anarchy. In an Anarchistic society, if you want, you can easily hire an organisation to govern your entire life, that's entirely possible. However, what people really want is not to be governed, but to rule other people, which is immoral, and an unlikely thing to drift toward as long as people don't want to be violently controlled by others. There has also never been a historical example of people selectively forming government, or of government growing from another organisation. All government is formed with the help of other states, or as developed from tribal times with the help of religion. The other criticism I often hear with this line of reasoning, is knee jerk complaints about private governing bodies being somehow wrong and untrustworthy. This took me a long time to overcome even after accepting Anarchy as moral neccesity, so do not expect any converts on your first go, but basically the argument is as follows; Government is a private organisation. It is a firm bound by no higher law (International law is usual anarchistic in nature), that differs from any other organisation not in its morality, but in its lack of competition. There is no argument that prescribes upon government some magical goodness because of its name, and once you comprehend that it will blow your mind that we have survived that long under the violent rule of an organisation that has no competition, when it is staring us right in the face that an organisation identical to these but with competition would no doubt play nicer out of fear or its rivals. No greater argument that humans naturally want to survive without rule is available than the fact we do in spite of this Corporation that is government ruling us.
I'd also contradict almost immediately, this posters definition of government. De facto rules are actually and incredibly human and beautifully anarchistic concept. It is an argument FOR anarchism, that British roads will all likely have left hand roads, that no DRO who prescribes murder as ok will survive; but that it takes collective will to implement and is almost impossible for such rules to be forced on us from above. This is not a cartel, this is a market! This is 100 hospitals providing identical treatments, restaurants all using knives and forks, mobile phone companies and computers all using identical protocols, this is not inter-corporate team work, this is cold, heartless, efficient and entirely beneficial competition for services based upon a central consumer demand, not upon a cartel demand. No cartel could survive such a situation without violence, because it wouldn't be profitable, and without government regulation of the market you'd have the one form of beneficial competition statists most love to stamp out on their quest to make the rich richer, alternatives! Even if an entire market has a successful cartel, you can just switch to an alternative. People do not rely on any product, they rely on its uses and without a product, they will find new products. If oil wants to cartel, with freedom we could actually find those so-called alternatives, not through force, but because it would be more efficient, if bed manufacturers want to cartel, with freedom we will develop new and better ways of sleeping, or even of not needing to sleep. It is only with government regulation that any Cartel restricts us to a market; DRO's can be replaced with a whole new system if by some magic they fail to work! That's the many ways of anarchism.
On to the second paragraph, and I realise I've written far too much, apologies. The poster invents a "gigantic DRO", but if we are all so scared of Gigantic DRO's (and we are), and we value not having a gigantic wheel more than we value not having to "reinvent the wheel 1000 times over", then where would these magical DRO's come from? And why wouldn't all other DRO's stamp them out, why wouldn't their banks cut their funding, why wouldn't their customers leave, and why wouldn't their employees quit. A company is not some magical beast, it is a group of people with limited resources and nothing to spare; it is a constant machine taking in only as much as it spends and needing constant support from customers. The final argument of this paragraph, I won't give much time to. I don't like "I don't like it" arguments. It's an argument with ignorance of any reasoning, it's the "why should I have to", "why should poor people have to", as if the effort required by the laws of physics being too much of a burden is an argument for violence. I don't care if someone doesn't want to let you into their property because you refuse to join a DRO and that humans are so cold in this imaginary future that they turn away their starving friends for not joining a DRO, that is no argument as to why we should use violence to force absolutely everyone to to be ruled by a far larger and more invasive organisation!
Cartel whims? I recall my insurance company had a whim once... and I left them for another organisation. Try doing that with government. As for DRO's being the only option, I doubt that very much. It won't be difficult at all to leave the DRO system, even in geographic location where they are common, thought I doubt they'll be the only form of moral and contractual resolution in the world, there may be far better solutions based upon satellites and magic for all I know, as I said, the possibilities in Anarchism are limitless, arguing the details is petty. I doubt my local shop keeper, a friend of mine would stop serving me, or that my community would suddenly consider it moral to steal my house or ignore my needs when I'm attacked, it's just anti-human rhetoric to say we're all evil without government, which is the basic theme of this post so far.
If people value the DRO cartel's man power, influence, money and prestige more than the advantages of using a smaller DRO, then what's the point? Nothing will stop a Cartel doing that if that's what their customers want. I've never been convinced by the "poor tiny company" argument, it doesn't matter what happens to individual failed firms if the customers want it. Again, Cartels even if they existed, would not have de facto law making ability, that would have caused their banks to cut off funding and their customers to have moved to other DRO's or newer solutions long ago. The solution presented doesn't feel nice, that's the entire point, it addresses the fact that human kind isn't utopian and will need resolution and insurance. Human greed will as always be the beneficial part of the system that keeps it in check, thank god for human greed! That's the cold reality as it benefits us all.
Thanks,
James