I've thought about it and I believe laws are a substitute for a healthy society.
Laws, enforced by some kind of authority, are necessary as long as we live in an unhealthy society. But we shouldn't rely on them, we should strive to heal society instead.
For example, laws against child abuse are only essential in a society in which:
- punishment, even physical punishment, is culturally acceptable and even encouraged;
- in which gerontocracy (the authority of the old over the young) is upheld as something natural and sacred;
- and which shuns and discourages all models of child-rearing and family organization that defy the nuclear family (in which a child is raised by their parents only, and not by the community, therefore allowing parents to essentially treat their children as personal property rather than as human members of society).
If we focused on creating a healthier society, those laws against child abuse would become obsolete, as even in cases in which some form of abuse may happen, wider society would be equipped to deal with it. And the child would participate in that effort.
@ AnCaps now:
capitalism wasn't designed to create a healthy and stable society. Even if we're very generous, capitalism puts "the best at the top" (...) and creates hierarchies and inequality—in fact it relies on material inequality to function, as the Phillips Curve and the state of the world demonstrate. There is no way it's moral or rational for billionaires and homeless people to exist in the same country but they do and that's intentional.
How does that relate to the rest of the post?
Well, laws are necessary to reduce harm and injustice as long as a society is unhealthy. Capitalism creates and relies on an unhealthy society. Therefore, as long as we have capitalism, it needs to be regulated and we need laws and a state—that's for everyone's sake. If you are genuinely an anti-authoritarian, and you genuinely don't want to cause harm and injustice, you must oppose capitalism as well as laws and the state.
Otherwise what you're advocating for isn't anarchism, it is privatized authoritarianism.
