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Isn’t any system of governance in a given region (geographic, or virtual) involuntary? Unless you just mean “you can leave if you don’t like it,” but that’s true for all systems of governance.



> “you can leave if you don’t like it,” but that’s true for all systems of governance.

Is it? Can you just leave North Korea if you please?


Okay, fair enough. It's true for most systems of governance.


Not in practice. For example, not issuing an international passport effectively amounts to a travel ban, and many countries do it for all kinds of reasons (e.g. to combat conscription or child support evasion, or for "national security" reasons).

It's even worse if you look at history. For example, US routinely denied passports to "communist sympathizers" until 1960s (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kent_v._Dulles).


Yes, that is why many anarchists consider government a coercive system and seek alternatives to that coercion. Of course, coercion can't be eliminated, but we can acknowledge the right of legitimate self defense against that coercion.


Not an expert on the topic, but my understanding is that anarchy rejects governance in general - there wouldn't be any "elevated decision-making body". It's not as much "you can leave if you don't like it" as it's "if you're here then you can change things".

I'm not prepared to defend this but that's the view - if you have a system of governance it isn't anarchy so if the argument is "all systems of governance are at least partially involuntary" then that may be true but doesn't say anything related to anarchy


Anarchism rejects imposed hierarchy of authority. It does not reject governance in general.


Maybe we're just getting philosophical about word meanings here but how can you have governance that isn't imposed/hierarchical/authoritative? If whoever is making the rules says you can't do something and someone wants to, then the governance is the process that stops them. If someone is prevented from doing something, that implies a hierarchy capable of preventing the action, and that capability would have to be imposed by an authority.


When I say "governance" I mean in the broadest sense possible: the ways in which interactions between people are organized. If there's a better term for this I will happily use it!




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