Would you rather live in a dictatorship or an anarchy?

Question

Explain why. I wants to hear what you thinks is the best and worst option. The options is a totalitarian dictatorship and a hardcore anarchy.

Dictatorship = When only a person or a small group of people have all of the power in a country. They're usually not voted at, but just takes the power without being choose. In addition people aren't allowed to be openly disagree or protest because of no freedom speech. People who don't obey the dictators either gets imprisoned, tortured, deported or executed in many dictatorships.

Anarchy = There's no government, leaders or any authority figures. There's no things like military or police either in a hardcore anarchy. There's no laws and it's an advantage for criminals.

#Anarchy #Dictatorship #Dilemma

BlueCoyote · Accepted Answer

Anarchy. Of course it depends how you define "anarchy" but the way I see it, it would be the original ("true") form of anarchy as proposed by Bakunin and Kropotkin. This type of anarchy has nothing to do with a post-apocalyptic world à la Mad Max. It's more comparable to anarchs-syndicalism. The idea is that most people would live in relatively small communes of 20-100 people rather than in big cities. They would produce many of their daily necessities themselves, such as fruits and vegetables, which they would grow in their gardens. The communes would be organized in a direct-democratic way where every person gets a vote (maybe even children). A leader might exist but only temporarily and only with the official support of a 51%-majority. Within the communes, there would be no private property though there would be personal property. So for example you are allowed to own your own clothes, books, jewelry, iPhone and so forth. You are not allowed to own things that are used by the entire community. For example garden shovels or food is private property. Nobody would be able to simply take all these things for himself. Things like shovels would have to be shared (I can use it when you don't need it and vice versa) and food would be distributed so that everyone gets a fair and healthy amount.

I don't believe such a society would need a police force to combat crime. The small nature of the individual communities would automatically create more social control and more social pressure to behave appropriately. And if a crime occurred, the culprit would probably be easier to locate.

I am not saying that such a society would be perfect or that I would necessarily want to live in such a society. However, it would certainly be preferable over an oppressive dictatorship.

sineater8 · Accepted Answer

I think the point is moot because when you get down to the basics they are both the same form of government, anarchy is at its core a lawless sociality and in the absence of law and order the rule of strength and power is maximized, which is the same as a dictatorship, the only difference is that an anarchic government has multiple individuals struggling to get absolute power and a dictatorship already has established there dominance. You could even consider anarchy as a pre-dictatorship, the political free for all from which one supreme political power emerges after eliminating or suppressing all others.

Believe it or not there are good dictatorships throughout history, and many political theories suggest that a dictatorship is the best form of government, however just like communism many of these theories do not take into consideration the human element. A dictatorship is only as good as its dictator, if he is fair, and tolerant and focuses his government toward progression and is quick to act against corruption and resistance he can create a successful nation, but like all humans, many succumb to the fears of power, they cannot tolerate political opposition of any kind, they slowly turn to self-enrichment and corruption to further their own goals thus perpetuating even more opposition till eventually they go full nutty.

Quintessence · Accepted Answer

Grant me that the person in power holds it not for its own sake, but out of genuine interest in advancing the human race, then dictatorship, hands down.
Scientific advancement would make a lot more headway, with more resources being devoted to advances in technology, medicine, and general understanding of ourselves and our universe. (The resource and labour allocation and distribution required for these kinds of endeavors requires intensive organization, and would not be possible in an anarchical society, where power and control would be unequally distributed among numerous communities, who would constantly be at odds with each other--thereby skyrocketing the rates of social injustice and violent crime.)
So, crime rates would be a lot lower; justice would be swift, and you'd have less murderers, rapists, and pedophiles running rampant or being supported by tax-payers' money in prison.
Employment rates would be lower too. There's a place for everybody in a totalitarian society.
And, the leader is responsible DIRECTLY to the people. Instead of the public having to contend with an entire system of authority figures and having to weed out who among them is corrupt or working against their interests, they know where to take their discontent.
And hey, if it doesn't work out, it's a lot easier to abolish an evil totalitarian government than a dysfunctional democratic republic or to build a functioning system of government out of a state of pure anarchy.

In many senses, dictatorships have the POTENTIAL to be better than even the most idealistic of democracies. They rarely have been, historically, but arguably they're still better than complete chaos, if only for being more productive.

Tabbie · Accepted Answer

Anarchy for sure. People are assuming everyone would be running round raping and murdering but that's just not the case; it's a tiny minority of people who are like that (or at least, as it is the majority of sexual assaults go unreported and/or unprosecuted as it is :( ). As BlueCoyote said, people would form themselves into small, self governing communities and it would be a much fairer and more effective way of carrying out social control and distributing resources equally. Under authoritarian systems you get Banality of Evil situations; a whole system of people complicit in hideous cruelty, even carrying it out themselves with no sense of responsibility because they were merely 'following orders' or 'doing their jobs'. It's much harder to condemn someone to suffer or die if you know them personally and have a truly equal say with them in your community. Plus we'd be able to advance much faster as a wider society because instead of working for the profit of a select few and in competition with one another we'd be working cooperatively for the common good of everyone.

WildStarMagic · Accepted Answer

Anarchy, because my understanding is that if no one is ruling or in power then everyone is (or at least they'd be on somewhat equal footing) and if there's no rules then, yeah, there'll probably be a lot of theft and murder but over time it'd probably decrease because people will become bored and in a way if gangs were created there would still be rules created within the gangs and that would then mean that the main violence would be conflict between the groups rather than within.

Though I'm probably optimistic about this but I'd assume that the anarchy would bring a bit more of a peaceful place if the groups were big but if they were small then I can see why people wouldn't like it.
Then again it would basically be like we would be going back to our natural instincts as animals generally rather than just as being humans.

CubsterShura · Accepted Answer

Both sound horrible but if I HAD to choose, then I'd choose dictatorship. Best case scenario, the dictator is actually nice and has no intention to exploit his powers unnecessarily.

Again, both are horrible. Dictatorship sounds comparatively a little teeny tiny bit less horrible.

madhatters4 · Answer

this is hard. people seem to think that the freedom of anarchy would come with severe issues Or that it wouldn't simply give rise to some other authority without the legitimacy of rule we see in valid governments

i mean if we think terrorism, racism, homophobia, etc, etc is bad now imagine it without the restraining arms of governments that tend to keep much of those awful institutions in check (and that's only one element of our life that government does a pretty good job of policing/regulating)

i despise dictatorships but i think anarchy would be worse

PoliceLivesMatter · Answer

I would rather live in anarchy. I'd be able to fight and protect myself just fine. Most people would do just that and not bother anyone else. Anarchy is how the jungle is like. There's no rules or regulations. It's every man for himself, your tribe versus mine. Strong people don't mind anarchy because they can handle things themselves. Most things that is.

Frosteh · Answer

Authoritarian systems like communism or fascism killed tens of millions of people in just recent history alone.

Anarchy or basically liberty creates incredibly productive societies, places like America when it was first settled by the europeans was largely leaderless/rule-less and along with the industrial revolution it created one of the most prosperous times imaginable. While the soviet union was collapsing and millions of people starved, the freedom in America made even the average person quite wealthy.

Anarchy has a bad stereotype attached to it, and one of the key things to remember is that in an anarchistic society you can still get all of the services that a government/state typically would provide.

There was fire houses and roads, medical care, mail delivery and all that good stuff. In fact there's a growing movement now of libertarians who are people who want to go back to a much more limited government in order to escape the tyranny of ever increasing authoritarianism.

AriesMan · Answer

You have government and order under a dictatorship, perhaps some security and safety if the dictatorship is an effective one and you can manage to work your way up in the government or in the military.

With Anarchy, there is no security, there is safety, you are on your own to defend anything of value that you own and any family you have. This is an absolutely HORRIBLE way to live when chaos reigns supreme and people are free to commit any acts of crime that destroy the elements of civilized living. With Anarchy, the most powerful and brutal person will ultimately rise to power to bring order to this chaos. The chaos in an Anarchy will not last forever and ultimately you will be living in a dictatorship, perhaps the dictatorship of some crime boss.

So ultimately, there is only one choice, dictatorship...

Anon85 · Answer

Well on the one hand, a dictatorship could be evil and completely strip you of any dignity or rights, but on the other hand you could get lucky and live pretty decently. Either way your children are screwed though.

As for anarchy, even without an official government certain communities could band together and create a rudimentary one, building a wall to keep outsiders - well - outside and protecting each other from violent criminals.

There's a big problem with the question though - there's no such thing as true anarchy. As soon as a group of two or more people say something like murder is unacceptable between them than they've set up a governing rule of law

NearlyNapping · Answer

Anarchy for sure. I mean real anarchy, not the fake self described "anarchists" like antifa. Those guys aren't anarchists.

Anarchy, as in no government or highly limited government is the ideal. Highly limited government could take the form of community based cooperation and agreements. As long as everyone is a "member" willingly, and is in agreement, then it qualifies as anarchy.

You can look at the existence of laws as an admission of failure. In a perfect ideal world, there would be no need for laws.

Since we don't live in a perfect world, it becomes a matter of what level the rules are created and applied. The more local the better. The more distant, the worse. I'd rather sit down face to face with my neighbors and make decisions, than have some complete stranger in a far away place, who knows little or nothing about our way of life, make the decisions for us.

The problem with anarchy is getting there. There is no clean route from here to there.

Видар · Answer

I voted for dictatorship, but...
It depends.
I always respect hierarchy. World without hierarchy and authority would be chaotic and too dangerous to live in.
But there's a bad side of dictatorship: if dictator create laws that are making damage to our bodies or our soles. It's hard to escape dictatorship country.
Then I would more like to live in anarchist society where I would unite with other moral people with whom we could create hierarchy and order. We would make parallel society and communes where we would live in and protect 'em from the chaos of anarchy.

levantine99 · Answer

there is no freedom in anarchy. women would be public meat shared by everyone. the other would just come in your house rape your wife and daughters and now laws or government would be there to stop him. plus every psychopath butcher with a machete would grab the leading position and play governor. there can't be true anarchy as long as humans haven't tamed their lower instincts... .

Canuck37 · Answer

I choose dictatorship, primarily because it would provide more safety and stability than an anarchy would.

To put it another way: in a dictatorship, you could be dead if the dictator does not like your opinions; in an anarchy, you could be dead if anyone does not like your opinions.

I still think a dictatorship is an awful form of government, however.

DriverSolus · Answer

I am the reason that anarchy is a bad idea. The only reason I don't just kill annoying people is because of law and order. Also there have been numerous benevolent tyrants throughout history. Genesis khan is an interesting example. As long as a country or people, that he was looking to conquer, submitted they found his rule to be beneficial in many ways.

MarthaRose · Answer

It really depends. There is no better choice it's more of. Is it a good dictator? (Not likely) Where am I when we have anarchy? Am I in downtown Detroit or in the middle of Siberia?

Unit1 · Answer

Anarchy all the way! The governments have failed and they keep failing. We don't need some degenerates commanding us and telling us what is lawful and what is not.

Yayeet · Answer

Both are terrible but in an anarchy there's no safety at all, while in a dictatorship, as long as you do as the dictator says, you're good (sort of).
There's no advancements in anarchy, there's nothing but chaos, while in a dictatorship there's still advancements.

Ambassador_from_Mars · Answer

Must I choose between the shitty stuff?
Anyway, I'd choose dictatorship if the ruler is someone sensible, unlike Kim.
Otherwise, anarchy. But not hardcore anarchy.
I'll just choose the type where my chances of survival and chance to grab power are the best.

ShortCircuit · Answer

I'd definitely rather live in an anarchy. In fact, I might even prefer an anarchy or something close to it, over the United States' current Democratic Republic.

On the most basic level, I prioritize freedom over safety.

Other_Tommy_Wiseau · Answer

It's a lot easier to assassinate Hitler than to convince millions of morons that they aren't smart enough to govern themselves

PrincessBunBuns · Answer

Anarchy makes it easier to escape, in a way. If I was the only one alive then anarchy, but as long as my family is alive I want them to be safe. Imagine a world where your government has utterly failed you, no matter the circumstance.

Eswarby · Answer

Neither. I'd rather live in a society, and society ceases to exist in both scenarios.

BellumEtPacem · Answer

Dictatorship. Not all dictators in history have been bad. Julius Caesar made himself dictator. He was liked by the people. Cincinnatus is a perfect example of a good dictator. There have been bad dictators as well. Hitler and Stalin stick out the most for me. I still think a dictatorship is superior to a anarchy due to the amount of crime, death, and chaos that an anarchy usually contains Anarchy means no laws. Nothing is illegal. Chaos and death will be everywhere.

savalisk · Answer

Dictatorship doesn't have to mean bad things like the cancelation of free speech or being punished for disagreeing with what your government does.
I would take order and harmony over blind, destructive anarchy.

Would you rather live in a dictatorship or an anarchy?

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