Before we keep going, I want to point out something that keeps happening in this thread.

Several times now when a structural problem gets raised, the response shifts away from the actual mechanism and toward theory, examples, or suggestions that I just need to read more. That’s not really answering the question.

For example earlier you argued that anarchist societies fail because centralized states destroy them:

“The times horizontally structured societies were tried… they were always targeted and destroyed by external states with centralized exploitative power structures.”

But when I pointed out that repeated defeat by centralized systems suggests centralized coordination might provide advantages in logistics and defense, the response became:

“They didn't lose due to some flaw in their choice of societal structure, they lost because of their specific circumstances.”

That’s moving the goalposts. Those cases can’t simultaneously be evidence that anarchism works and irrelevant when someone analyzes why they failed.

The same thing happened with scarcity. Earlier the explanation was:

“Mutual aid creates interdependent connections that reinforce good-will and cooperation.”

When I raised resource conflicts, the answer became:

“Places with abundance could transfer that excess to the places that need it.”

But that isn’t actually addressing the issue. That is the logistics problem. Saying resources can be moved doesn’t explain how a system coordinates that movement across large territories without creating large coordination structures.

The Switzerland example also ends up reinforcing the same point. You said:

“If every citizen was militarily capable (such as in Switzerland)… it would be difficult for a strongman to take power.”

But Switzerland’s militia system works inside a highly organized federal state with centralized logistics, infrastructure planning, and national command structures. The armed population doesn’t replace those institutions — it operates alongside them.

And if the argument is that widespread armament prevents power concentration, the United States should be the clearest counterexample. It has one of the most heavily armed civilian populations in the world, yet power has still concentrated in many of the exact ways you claim militias would prevent — corporate capture of politics, entrenched political elites, expanding bureaucracies, and increasing economic centralization.

So the issue clearly isn’t just whether people are armed. It’s how large systems coordinate power.

At this point there’s also the repeated suggestion that I simply need to read more to understand the issue:

“Without you personally wanting to do more research… you will likely always remain skeptical.”

Disagreement isn’t evidence that someone hasn’t read enough. Looking at the same cases — Catalonia, Rojava, the Black Army — and drawing a different conclusion is not ignorance. It’s interpretation.

What I’ve consistently asked about, and what still hasn’t been directly addressed, is the operational mechanism when cooperation fails.

So I’ll ask it again directly:

If two communities strongly disagree about something critical — water rights, land use, energy infrastructure, whatever — and neither side is willing to back down, who actually enforces the resolution?

Because if nobody enforces it, then the stronger group simply imposes its will. And if a federation, council, or militia enforces it, then you’ve created a governing authority performing the same coordination and enforcement roles states historically evolved to perform.

That’s the piece I still haven’t seen a clear explanation for.

If there is a clear answer to that question that doesn’t eventually recreate some kind of durable authority structure performing those roles, I’m genuinely interested in hearing it.

But if the answer just circles back to “the councils,” “the federation,” or “mutual aid,” without explaining how conflicts are actually resolved when communities refuse the outcome, then we’re just going in circles. At that point there isn’t much left to debate here, because the core mechanism that the whole system depends on still hasn’t been explained.