From TK's posting:
> to any kind of evolutionary theory of complex cooperative social
arrangement
> is the Freeloader Problem. Simply put, if the individual can get something
> out of the system without putting something in, it's in the individual's
> survival interest to do so. Lacking any restraint on freeloading,
therefore,
> a form of social organization that relies on altruism alone from its
members
> is doomed to fail. (Pinker discusses the rather cynical strategies of
> potlatch cultures and the like that have evolved for precisely this
reason.
> Adherents of "libertarian socialism," as as I can see, avoid the issue
> entirely.)

I'm not entirely sure why libertarian socialism gets singled out here,
unless it's to suggest that anarchism is specifically vulnerable to this
phenomena, and that anarchism, because it refuses authority and coercion,
has no way of addressing it. It probably seems to most anarchists however,
that the 'freeloader problem' is far more likely to arise in a competitive
society than a co-operative one; in a society that creates resentment and
alienation, rather than solidarity. Anarchists themselves are not
freeloaders, and this is important too, because no-one pretends that an
anarchist society could be built by anyone but anarchists, anymore than a
capitalist society could be directed by anyone but capitalists. Anyway, just
to straighten out your misunderstanding of what issues anarchists do or do
not address, you'd do worse than an evening by the fire with Kropotkin's
'Mutual Aid'. And from the same man's Ethics -

"What was it that morality, evolving in animal and human societies, was
striving for, if not for the opposition to the promptings of narrow egoism,
and bringing up humanity in the spirit of the development of altruism? The
very expressions 'egoism' and 'altruism' are incorrect, because there can be
no pure altruism without an admixture of personal pleasure - and
consequently, without egoism. It would therefore be more nearly correct to
say that ethics aims at the development of social habits and the weakening
of the narrowly personal habits. These last make the individual lose sight
of society through his regard for his own person, and therefore they even
fail to attain their object, i.e. the welfare of the individual, whereas the
development of habits of work in common, and of mutual aid in general, leads
to a series of beneficial consequences in the family as well as society."

But if this doesn't help, I'm happy to pull together a more extensive list
of references for you.

Cheers

b