Sometimes We Have To Count Our Blessings... Other Times?
One of the biggest regrets in the evolution of my thinking is a concept that I call, Living in Ancapistan in Your Head (LAYH). Mind you, I don’t know if I could’ve fleshed it out as well as I believe I have had I not been a sufferer. When I realized exactly what it meant and started to talk about it, I knew I was on to something by the reaction of people on social media. They were not pleased and immediately took to mocking it. Read further to find out why.
You can recognize someone suffering LAYH by their arguments, or lack thereof. If you ask someone how to solve the problem of police killing innocent, or non-violent “criminals,” and their answer is to abolish the police, AND NO OTHER ANSWER, they’re suffering LAYH. My explanation is that their belief in a set of ideological principles - in this case anarchism - has become their identity. Hence, if they allow themselves to present a solution to a problem that exists in the real world, their in-group - other “anarchists” - will judge them for their solution not being based in an anarchist framework. Or in all cases, reality. This fear of losing one’s ideological identity is historically based in religion where the term apostate is leveled upon those who leave the “faith.”
I explained what LAYH is because as early as two years ago I would’ve scoffed at the concept of federalism having any positive effect on our lives. Yet, here we are in a vastly changed world. As I typed the previous sentence, there were people reading it in the United States who have seen little to no change. Why?
When I was in NYC the first week of October, 2021, I felt as if I was seeing the beginnings of a dystopian nightmare. Yet, when I left the borough of Manhattan and went to Queens there was a dramatic change. No store I went into in Queens forced me to wear a mask or asked for proof of vaccination. Even within the same city people were treating this nightmare differently. And this can be seen throughout the USA.
Federalism works when people want it to. There’s no better example than seeing friends flee Leftist hellholes to Florida and Texas. Going back to the concept of LAYH, you can see “good anarchists” screaming online that Abbott and DeSantis aren’t “libertarian heroes” and to stop calling them that when literally no one is. Ideological possession is just that.
A phrase I’ve grown fond of now that I realize that I too was/am a sufferer of LAYH is “don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good.” Thomas Sowell is a wise man and I don’t quote him here as an appeal to authority but only because he’s experienced this reality longer than I have, and I believe here he’s spot on:
There are no solutions. There are only trade-offs.
And, if you don’t believe it’s better to live in some places than others, move to San Francisco.
We also need to disabuse ourselves of using phrases like "Well, I don't agree on everything, but...", "While I don't condone, endorse...", etc. We didn't lose our autonomy in one fell swoop, we aren't going to regain it in one fell swoop.
Meh… I think you glossed over things there a little too liberally. Yes, some places are better to live than others but as you described by your look at two different suburbs in NY, it’s more the attitude of the people living there than the laws of that particular location. We don’t have laws preventing employers from mandating masks in schools in Utah but we have roughly the same rate of people or more not wearing masks in this state. It’s not the laws that predicate the region but the attitudes of the people. It’s not AIYH that keeps most people from killing, hurting or stealing from one another. It’s also not laws. They may be all that’s stopping you from doing those things but that would make you the exception upon which you don’t judge others. People don’t do that stuff because anarchy works and people want to get along. You can say, “you don’t know that because you live in a world of laws.” Here’s how I know I know that. There are laws against speeding but since speeding doesn’t hurt people generally by itself 95% of drivers drive over the speed limit as long as they can’t see a police car around them. People pick and choose which laws they will obey based on morality- not fear of legal repercussions. If legal systems were effective at anything, it would mostly be the effect in which they contribute to idleness and a lack of personal responsibility. They keep getting ripped from feeding the homeless, collecting rainwater, buying raw milk from local farmers. They keep otherwise good people from doing things the powers that be pay special attention to enforcing and things they know most people don’t really want to do and are more comfortable with not doing if they believe the govt will somehow take care of it with their tax dollars.