Yeah, I reckon you're right.
It's far easier to get people to work for the common good if 'the common good' extends to a group of people you personally know, which I guess is limited to maybe a couple of hundred.
( Mr. Tea 'ulmmm'/'mmneurgh', Thu 31 Jan 2013, 16:50, archived)

If I were in charge,
I'd just have the police raze your hippy communes, and crack your skulls open. I'm pretty sure I'd have the backing of the public.
( monster munch person, man, woman... camera... TV?, Thu 31 Jan 2013, 16:59, archived)

sadly this is probably true.

( Moon Girl Technologies horrendous beanbag, Thu 31 Jan 2013, 17:02, archived)

I think she's wrong, and I'm very sympathetic to anarchism.
I think it appeals to primitive right wing thinking by limiting your sense of society to tribal proportions (i.e. the sense of common good applies only to me, my family and my friends at the expense/indifference of everyone else).
( brb Monkhouse Stampede, Thu 31 Jan 2013, 17:01, archived)

better than the no sense of common good at all,
as promoted by individualistic consumerism. But it wouldn't necessarily stop there. "Tribes" (if you want to use that word) can still form even larger groups, and if tribe membership is dynamic (rather than purely hereditary as it was in the past) there should be plenty of inter-tribe empathy.
( Moon Girl Technologies horrendous beanbag, Thu 31 Jan 2013, 17:12, archived)

But there would still be competition for resources, power, prestige and that.
I'm as utopian as the next cunt, but I don't think true anarchy can be arranged, it has to evolve from utility, if you see what I mean.
( brb Monkhouse Stampede, Thu 31 Jan 2013, 21:27, archived)