garth

Presumably an outsourced version of Guantanamo Bay: pay foreign countries to hold them indefinitely. Eventually the media cycle moves on and everyone forgets about them.

Have not hitchhiked, but have picked up a few hitchhikers. If you spend enough time in the mountains you’ll eventually bump into people who need a lift to a trailhead or back to town. One young guy was juggling part-time gigs at multiple lodges and guide services, and hadn’t saved enough for a car yet. Another couple was touring from eastern Europe and decided to try traveling around the US without a car. They were all nice people.

If we learned anything from 2025 it’s that checks and balances only work when a critical mass of people agree to them. One of the US’s major political parties has abandoned rule of law and sent ICE on a modern day witch hunt against immigrants and perceived enemies. If you don’t like it, time to move. An anarchist would say this situation is a great example of why we shouldn’t outsource governance to entities that have power over us.

As I understand it, anarchism is less about eliminating laws and more about eliminating hierarchy. It’s bottom-up governance that requires lots of participation from everyone involved. You and your peers can establish laws for your neighborhood/town/etc., but everyone affected by that law needs to directly participate in its writing and there must be broad consensus before it is enacted. Law enforcement must be communal; you cannot outsource it to a police force, lest the police become oppressive.

When I think of anarchism I sometimes think of colonial New England: small towns that are largely autonomous, where communal decisions are made at town hall meetings and the locals manage themselves. It’s not a perfect analogy since there were higher levels of government, but day-to-day governance was very grass-roots.