Flippanarchy

the short answer, is that you just don’t know what you’re talking about

Not in “Anarchy is best”, I mean, in general, about most things, most of the time.

It’s not an insult, it’s true for all of us.

I’m a pretty good programmer but I’d make a real shitty brain surgeon. I’m bad at farming. I don’t know anything about cars, etc…

I understand you're coming at this from a "it's impossible to be a jack of all trades" approach, but I'm not saying you need to be. I'm decent at programming as well, and I don't know shit about medicine.

But that doesn't stop me from recognizing and saying "Hey, the hospital has had a 50% jump in visitors, and an accompanying series of delays in service. Hey doctors, what do you need to get things improved? Do you need more staff, more supplies, more room, etc?"

I can still understand the material needs of a given field of work even if I don't understand the mechanics of that field of work.

So collectively, as a group, we can’t vote on these things.

Not only can you not constantly ask a society to collectively vote on every decision (simply because you would just spend your entire day voting on a million things and never actually doing anything), but you can’t vote because you don’t know enough about most of the topics to make any kind of actual decision

This is a strawman. I have not stated that every single decision should be voted on by the entire community. I didn't even mention voting in the first place, that was a separate user.

But this is why I asked (still unanswered) questions about how society is structured in this question of yours.

In a gift economy, there is no negotiation. If community A asks community B for some resource, and community B can spare it, then community B gives that resource.

In a syndicalist implementation, if you need lumber and there is a logging syndicate in the next town over, you ask that syndicate for lumber. Maybe they say they're backlogged and you need to wait, maybe they say they need you to add to their manpower.

In mutual aid, somebody asks the community for help with food on their table. If you have food to spare, you give what you can spare.

There is a lot of nuance that can go on within anarchism, nuance that even I don't have expertise on. But you seem to have little to no understanding of any of it. Hence why I suggested reading that book "Anarchy Works".

It would also help your understanding if you did some reading on real life implementations from the past, such as Revolutionary Catalonia, the Zapatisas, the Seattle 1919 general strike. "Anarchy Works" goes into more real life implementations that just these three, again making it a worthwhile read.

If you want something more self contained and focused, the science fiction book "The Dispossessed" by Ursula K. Le Guin is a great option. It evaluates these questions you have without getting too bogged down in details about other related concepts.

I can’t vote on which material we use to build a road with because I don’t know anything about building roads. Those that do might not agree. They can try to explain to me which material is best out of their options but I’m still making a very uneducated guess because I can’t learn about road engineering in a single afternoon.

If the community doesn't feel it has the right level of understanding to make such a decision, then the decision can be postponed until people have had more time to look into it and have a better informed opinion. You don't necessarily have to learn in a single afternoon.

But building the road requires materials and the economists say no because that material would be better off if we gave it to our neighbors who need it for a bridge because in spring they grow really good apples and we’ll want to ask them for apples and they’ll be more likely to give us more apples in spring if we help them today

What you are describing sounds like a pretty big decision for the community. And that's the exact type of decision that the community should make as a group.

And you are treating this way too black and white. It is in fact possible for communities to come to compromise. Let's say our community has 10 tons of gravel on hand. About a third of the community wants to spend it on local roads, another third of the community thinks it best to give it to the next town over for their bridge, a tenth thinks it best to hold onto for the winter, and the remainder is undecided or somewhere in-between.

The community can compromise, such a compromise could for example be:

• 5 tons saved on hand for emergencies
• 2.5 tons given to the next town over so they can make concrete for their bridge
• 2.5 tons for local roads

Going back to the jack of all trades thing, I don't have a fucking clue pouring and shaping concrete. I understand even less about the chemistry that goes into it. But I can understand that gravel is a component of the recipe, and therefore the wider value of the gravel. I see concrete in my daily life, so I can understand the wider value of concrete. Yet I am not a civil engineer of any kind, I am a programmer.

And the accountants say we shouldn’t waste what little materials we have on building roads or helping our neighbors and that we should save it because winter is harsh and we might need those materials for general repairs

Accountants implies money, and again, most forms of anarchism don't include anything that looks like money. So the very idea of accountants is rather silly in this context. And you seem to be treating the deciding group as a monolith. If a subset of the group, especially a large subset disagrees they are free to work on their own to collect material for the bridge in the town over.

So in the end your representatives have to make the choice for you and you wake up to find out that they all talked it over and they’re going to tear down these 4 houses and put a road there because it’s good for the city and better for the accountants and also the doctors decided sugary drinks are bad for you so you can’t have them anymore and the safety people think it would be good to put up cameras on every corner

That’s government

I understand that it is hard to see outside of the current system of states and capitalism. Feudalism was just the same. Monarchy was the same.

If the American revolution had failed, and the U.S. were under British rule, you might be here saying "Well how are we going to unite as a country if not for a king? We would just have to appoint some leader and there you go we are back to monarchy"

A different world is possible.