this post was submitted on 03 Sep 2025
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My take on Bioshock is people became mutants and started killing each other because there were no laws or regulations aside from "you can't stop others from profiting." It was legal for them to become mutants. It was legal for them to weaponize and arm themselves before the inevitable revolution / civil war of Rapture. The closest thing to a law enforcer was the big daddy and he does NOTHING about the hordes of cannibalistic telepathic monsters. You know why? Because there are no laws against what they're doing, the daddy was only made to protect the little sisters who produce profit for Fontaine.
Bioshock is steampunk scifi but it's also anarchy in it's truest form. People built whatever they liked, and they destroyed whatever they liked, and when violently mutating psychoactive drugs were introduced the latter succeeded over the former.
That's not anarchism you're describing, maybe you're thinking of "anarcho"capitalism?
Anarchy:
No order, no laws, no rulers.
Obviously the existence of Ryan and the city council defeats that ideal, but that was only true before the fall.
The issue is that finitebanjo has conflated the two different meanings of Anarchy. Donpiano is talking about contemporary anarchism, a mode of governance without authority structures. One that argues that hierarchies and centralized power is the root of most of humanities ails. Governance is still performed, but it's on an individual level between peers where each member of the group is an active part in decision making.
Finitebanjo is talking about anarchy, the state of lawlessness that arises when the state fails to perform its governing duties. Most associated with riots and looting. The problem is when they call it "anarchism in it's truest form", they're conflating the state of lawlessness when the state abandons an area with a system of governance. It is not the same thing.
Contemporary Anarchism doesn't actually exist even in fiction, though, unless there is only one person because otherwise there will always be disputes between the people until a centralized power structure forms.
I thank you for trying to mediate but both me and my opponents know exactly what I am saying.
A democratic power structure is decentralized.
Thank you for adding nothing to yet another exchange.
Ah yes, such trivialities like the answer to your conundrum are meaningless to someone as proudly ignorant on a topic as yourself. My bad.
Indeed, you're bad, I'm glad you finally took the hint, troll.
Anarchism is full of rules and laws, though. Arguably, one aspect of anarchism is replacing rulers with rules as far as possible, but that's possibly a contentious phrasing.
And when your rules conflict with your neighbor's rules? I guess they'll just have to murder you. Just like Rapture.
I don't think you're engaging in good faith here, not sure why. For what it's worth, in your example, the negotiation of rules with the goal of consensus finding and avoidance of unjust exertion of power plays a major role in anarchist practices. Anomic states of existence and anarchic ones are far apart. The former leads to kings and conquest, the latter to tedious discussions about minutiae of daily existence.
There are reasons why anarchist groups are hard to infiltrate by cops
What's good faith about me describing a horde of lawless cannibal spleen collectors and you coming in here and argueing "um actually the orphan spleen harvesting has a complex and fair system of distribution so actually its a good thing superior to regulated capitalism".
No they're saying the spleen harvesters are NOT anarchists at all.