I’ve recently been reading some anarchist texts (Emma Goldman, Kropotkin…), and I really like a lot of their ideas. Love the way Kropotkin writes too.

However (and to be clear, I’m sure I’ve barely scratched the surface), the past decade or two has had a profound effect on my opinion of people in general, and their ability (and/or desire) to organize and self-regulate at such a scale. As such, anarchism just does not seem like a viable solution in the modern world.

As we’ve seen, even with our relatively structured, centralized, government, so much of it was just so easily steamrolled by a handful of bad actors. Our “checks and balances” turned out to just be empty words.

If anything, the past couple of decades has made it abundantly clear to me that what we need is a strong federal government where nothing is based on good faith, or social norms, but actual rule of law. No, it shouldn’t be optional to release your financials. No, you should not be able to just ignore it when your chode son-in-law’s security clearance is denied like a dozen times. No, you don’t get to just do whatever the fuck you want because you were elected President.

How do we stop that without some kind of centralized government?

And yes, I understand the dangers here… But it could be done right. South Korea seems to know how to deal with coup attempts. Same with Brazil…