anarchists: i hate that our lives are largely controlled by arbitrary authorities who use covert threats and overt violence to maintain their positions of power. it’s really bad and i would prefer if we could all just exist without having to exert systemic power over others like that.
dozens of chucklefucks crawling out of the woodwork: explain to me right this fucking second the exact details of how you personally will maintain the supply chain for insulin, or you hate disabled people and your ideology is actually fascism
Impeccable tags on this one, well done folks
These tags do nothing but avoid the question. You’re just complaining about people who bring up a point you don’t have an answer to.
girl this has been addressed by people like anarcblr and anarchapella like…several times at this point. But i’ll re-write it for you really clear, just this once, because I want them to be visible on this post.
Your Argument: Anarchy would interfere with the ability of diabetics to obtain insulin. Therefore, anarchists are either naive or outright malicious.
My Response:
1. Diabetics are already having a very hard time obtaining insulin–that is, even with current supply chains and infrastructure in place, 50% or more of diabetics worldwide don’t have adequate access. [source] So this is not a new problem that would be created by anarchy after/during some theoretical revolution, but one that already exists. This problem is made worse, rather than better (as those tags point out), by capitalism and the government, two things that anarchists famously oppose.
2. You’re starting from the idea of some kind of ‘anarchist revolution’, where anarchists go around instituting+enforcing new rules and (somehow) these negatively impact insulin availability. That’s just not accurate. Anarchism is not about imposing specific rules, but about removing barriers to you and your friends choosing your own rules. It’s about empowering you, as well as everyone else, to control your own self and nobody else.
This is a big part of why nobody will give you a “straight answer”, anarchism is not about creating plans for other people to carry out in the future. It is about encouraging people to create their own plans to address the present. Ergo, there isn’t the same emphasis on ‘waiting for the rev’ and ‘after the revolution’ that many statist communists have–instead, there’s a call to address conditions in a radical way right now, to reduce capital and govt’s hold on us now. I have friends who I talk to about this stuff all the time, trying to think of ways to meet medical needs with resources we’ve already got access to outside of capitalism.
3. People (some of them anarchists) are already working really hard to make insulin more available! The Open Insulin Foundation for example, who are “working to develop the first practical, small-scale, community-centered model for insulin production to make insulin accessible to all.” There’s also the Four Thieves Vinegar Collective, who aren’t working on insulin specifically, but do have some other medicines they’re developing in an open-source way. Not to mention–all the people who are already making insulin right now? and all their equipment, and all their supplies? Those aren’t going to magically disappear. If those people didn’t have to worry about paying their bills (if anarchists helped them meet their other needs, perhaps?) why shouldn’t they share that knowledge and experience in return?
tl;dr your point about medicine in anarchist communities is fundamentally based on some incorrect assumptions about how anarchism works. if you wanna talk more about community medicine and explore more solutions, totally message me! As an anarchist dependent on medications for a couple chronic conditions, it’s a subject I think about a lot.
It’s less a matter of “holy shit after The Revolution how will I get my meds? :(” and more a matter of “damn, right now i have to work so I can even afford to buy my meds, depending on a fragile supply chain with humanitarian crises at its base. Let’s figure out a way to get around all that so we can all live better lives!”
People ask others to have a plan as if real well thought out plans don’t fail constantly, including the one that is the basis for all “modern societies”
ALT
