Imagine the mainstream to be whatever a reasonably informed person that don't think anarchism could work thinks.
I ask this casually, I don't expect you to back all claims with citations or anything. I'm interested in learning what you think. I don't have the knowledge for it to turn into a debate.
I guess you hear a lot of the same arguments/questions, do you have a FAQ or something? (sometimes I think there should exist some wiki with FAQs about all political views, these discussions tend to cycle into the same)
I usually point out that the world we've built isn't necessary and that things like "GDP" going up are actually indications of greater degrees of human exploitation rather than 'progress'
If private actors pollute public water to the point where it's no longer safe to drink, and people need to buy filters or import it, GDP goes up as a market has been created. Has society been improved by that?
A far as diverging from the mainstream, personally I offer critical support to AES states in their struggle to navigate these contradictions as this isn't a simple knot to untangle, and keeping alive bickering from almost a hundred years ago is silly.