Anarchy

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That's not bad. In practice you could do that by changing the society and the culture so that the ideals would be like that, and the competition would happen automatically. It's far from reaching that point today, I don't think it can either. But one could try.



Do you live in Africa? Politicians only with their own interests in mind, politicians always wrong, corrupt? What a defunctional democracy, it seems a bit exaggerated and unrealistic.

I don't live in Africa, but I do live in Quebec. On the corruption angle, it's comparable. [Sarcasm. Well, kind of.]

I did not say that the politicians were always wrong, though. I only said that they are no better than the majority. To be precise, I should say that I equally distrust the majority and the politicians.

Both countries are experiencing anarchy, as I have defined the term (from the quotation I provided).

Whether you believe them or not was not my point.

That is quite cynical. I have a more optimistic view of human beings.

The problem here is that the definition is much too broad and encompasses two very thing things: the negative absence of law/settled government, as in Syria, where the system more or less collapsed and was replaced by turmoil; and the positive absence of law/settled government, where it has been replaced by another kind of (self-)organisation. In usage, I know that "anarchy" is used to denote both acceptions, which are generally distinguishable by context. However, it leads to conceptual confusion, especially since the former meaning is used for its strong connotation, while the latter is a clearly defined concept. To avoid this, I find it is better to use "chaos" and "anarchism", which both retain the respective connotations, even though the latter is technically inaccurate.

Yes, but the word anarchy itself is broad. There are numerous, mutually contradictory, positions which claim to be anarchist.

True. However, all of them follow the second acception, not the first. It is not exceptionnal for one word to mean different things in politics. A liberal in the 19th is not the same thing as nowadays, especially in the United States.

In the 19th century, there were dozens of different socialist tendencies as well. It often happens with movements outside the political mainstream. In fact, the place where anarchists were closest to unity is also where they were actually meaningful, namely, Spain until the francist victory.

The problem is not distinction between various anarchisms, but between the political concept and the notion of disorder. We don't use any other political denomination this way (except the adjective "liberal", meaning "generous", but it is a loan word from latin independent from liberalism).

This is true and false at the same time
Libertarians always claim to be "the real liberals" or "classic liberals"....in reality ,IMHO,they are just confusing the means of classic liberalism(free market and a overempatisis on negative freedom) with the end of liberalism(freedom) by stripping all social context and history

Modern liberalism(Social liberalism\left-wing liberalism or whatever you want call it) is far more in line with what Jefferson,Adam Smith,J.S.Mill and most of 18-19th century liberal thinkers had in mind for a society than american libertarianism

It's in line and in the same spirit, yes, but it is not the same thing.

The problem with anarchy is that it may work for a short while, then a bunch of guys like me with weapons and willingness to use whatever means deemed needed to accomplish our goals will roll through like a bunch of vikings and take what we want.

Anarchy, Socialism and quite a few "less practical" arrangements are based on a never stated, yet always present premise which is in fact false. Namely "People will respect and honor the arrangement" when the premise should be worded "People will respect and honor the arrangement as long as it benefits them to do so".

It's the same for every system of governance to be honest, the only reason a centralized democratic state works as well as it does is because the majority holds dissenters at gunpoint.

I think this assumes a theory of human motivation that does not show up in experimental work.
It is pretty much a just so story.
Turns out people like to cooperate and have to be taught to be selfish bastards.
I think this is a result of the effects of culture on the evolution of the brain.

Anarchism, as I use the term, is not disorder. It is an absence of vertical authority structures.

For someone who supports the idea of anarchy, I could understand why they would not see present-day Syria as anarchist.

However, to me, Syria illustrates the problems with a lack of clear, vertical authority.

I don't see how Syria lacks vertical structure. The problem is that there are several of them actively competing for control of the same area.

As I said, anarchism isn't just about destroying anterior forms of authority and waiting to see what happens. It actively replaces vertical authority for a horizontal one. To my knowledge, it was only really tried in Spain during the Civil War, and it worked decently well, although only for a short time.

People enjoy cooperation so long as it benefits them or doesn't present any heavy negatives for them.

So sez the pseudo-science of rational-agent theory.
Us that has to work in the real world with empirical evidence find the opposite to be true.
Remember all those stupid wars we have? Folks killing and dying in nobodies interest but for some reason we won't quit having them. Rational-agent stuff is intellectual laziness.