(In fact, I suspect it's designed for literally the opposite, ensuring control by the few, not preventing it!).
The state comes from living and working in larger groups than can bring managed socially.
You're just trading one hierarchy for another; an official and overt hierarchy traded for an unspoken social popularity hierarchy. Like students in highschool, officially everybody is on the same footing with each other. But in reality the pecking order exists and is rigidly enforced through 'personal reputation and shame and shunning and all that.' Nasty and manipulative people often rise to the top in this sort of environment.
The whole point about "unspoken social popularity" and tyranny of of structurelessness is based on a misunderstanding.
I think the point is that even in the absence of explicit hierarchy, you can still have coercion in the form of shaming/shunning/etc.
I'm fairly anarchist-leaning, but I definitely see the applications for authority and hierarchy, specifically in the contexts of justice and finite resource distribution.
Dunbar times two (~250 as seen here https://darrinchatter.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/blog-15...)
In the absence of a (strong) state, those sorts of groups will just become clans/tribes that act like a proto-state. Just look at the problems of governance in Afghanistan.
Right, this is the kind of thing that tends to emerge in the absence of a formal state. You get a proto-state supported by the local culture and traditions.
Also you originally referred to the "problems of governance in Afghanistan" which I took to mean the warlordism, violence, suppression of women and so on. I was pointing out that these problems are more tied to the specific cultural and religious history of that area. If by governance problems you were instead referring to the strictly administrative or bureaucratic challenges you might encounter trying to, for example, organize a collection of peaceful worker communes, then I misunderstood.
Might wanna reread what you wrote there.
If it's from a lack of a state, why would states being recent be an issue? Though I would phrase it as, "in the absence of a state."
All of my comments have been, I hope respectfully, pushing back on the implication that the modern nation-state is the natural form of government and that in its absence people will necessarily find themselves members of small, violently feuding patriarchal groups.
2. Say your society doesn't have such a custom (which is most existing societies). Now what? How do you mold society into such a consensus that nobody will think of violating it? Do you think that creating such a consensus is easier than creating a government to limit the power of the powerful?
2. I don't agree with you about most societies. Most people prefer their own social circles to have similar ability, intelligence, income, even physical attractiveness. That's the revealed preference for a society. We're not ants or bees that choose hierarchies when we don't have to. So by existing societies I assume you mean, the one global society that manifests differently everywhere but is really all the same and can't be escaped. Since people hate hierarchy it will not surprise you when I point out that this particular society only exists due to extreme violence and disinformation. So instead of thinking about molding a consensus, let's think instead about removing the violence and disinformation and then we can see what people really want. As for the easiest way of doing that, I don't know, but at least we don't need to go around saying that the current system is necessary.
2. Again, what you say is true in the small. But my city shows no such preference, and we're all trying to live together here. So, no, I don't mean "one global society", but I mean something much larger than my ultimate frisbee group.
> Since people hate hierarchy it will not surprise you when I point out that this particular society only exists due to extreme violence and disinformation.
Don't put words in my mouth (or reactions in my emotions), especially ones I don't agree with. This society exists due to much less violence and much less disinformation than the historical norm; I don't think it's fair to characterize it as "only existing due to violence and disinformation". That may be your characterization; it certainly isn't mine. Nor do I think that "people hate hierarchy" is a fair characterization.
In fact, I think you're mistaking your preferences for a universal. And I think you're taking what your ideology says about society as the truth, without honestly evaluating society.
Control is social. One person cannot literally control the food supply in the sense that they personally created all of it, guard it like a dragon, and distribute it. Many other people are involved at all steps. If the would-be dragon violates social norms on not being a hoarding jerk, they can be ejected. If your response is now something like "It's not literally one person but they will have guards and police, now what?", this starts getting into the discussion about violence.
> 2. Again, what you say is true in the small. But my city shows no such preference, and we're all trying to live together here. So, no, I don't mean "one global society", but I mean something much larger than my ultimate frisbee group.
To clarify, by global society I meant the one society dominated by European-style nation-states where money can buy anything, or at least a good substitute. With enough money you can monopolize the food supply or anything else. Where is there a strong, what we might call legally-enforceable rule against being rich? If such a place existed and mattered, it would be bought out or made illegal.
The point I'm making is that all societies today above "the small" are manifestations of the global society I just mentioned, created in Europe hundreds of years ago and spread in multiple waves throughout the world. So if we're counting up societies that permit extreme wealth differences and those that don't, in the first group we have: today's global society and a handful of historical and invariably brutal kingdoms and empires; in the second group we have: all "small" societies today and the vast majority of human societies before encountering early modern European expansion. The societies permitting extreme wealth are weird aberrations in world history. We should not count every modern city as an independent data point about what kind of society people prefer.
For (1) and (2): as far as the number of people, the way to do it would be decentralized. A neural network is an example. Or your brain: a cell in your brain's right hemisphere may never interact with a cell in the left hemisphere, yet your brain works. A more real-world political example would be a collection of neighborhood councils and guilds in a city, as just one option.
> Don't put words in my mouth (or reactions in my emotions), especially ones I don't agree with.
That was a rhetorical statement, a more cutesy way of saying "A, therefore B." I'm sorry if it bothered you.
> This society exists due to much less violence and much less disinformation than the historical norm; I don't think it's fair to characterize it as "only existing due to violence and disinformation". That may be your characterization; it certainly isn't mine.
Today's society is mostly due to fossil fuel and a little bit due to technical advancement. The vast inequalities are what are due to violence and disinformation. Imagine a job where all your output is given to your boss and all you get is a cot to sleep on and simple food. What would it take for you to stay at that job? How do you think a unionization effort would go? Could you use the word "violence" to describe any of this? Now consider that as of 2020, 2153 billionaires had more wealth than 4.6 billion people: https://www.oxfam.org/en/press-releases/worlds-billionaires-....
> Nor do I think that "people hate hierarchy" is a fair characterization. > > In fact, I think you're mistaking your preferences for a universal. And I think you're taking what your ideology says about society as the truth, without honestly evaluating society.
It's important to distinguish consensual hierarchy from forced hierarchy. A group can agree to let someone lead in some area where they are skilled: we'll let you drive the car because you're a better driver. I don't think anyone likes forced hierarchy though: I will beat you if you don't let me drive. I don't think that's an ideological preference.
But do you think that many people prefer associating with people with much different skill, intelligence, education or income? For example, would you like to be on a programming team where you could clearly rank skill from worst to best? If so, I'd be interested in having you walk me through why you think that.
Yes, I agree, it's never just one person. And yes, there's probably going to be violence when someone threatens the food supply. But that's exactly one of the things that bugs me about anarchy. It seems to me that it is vulnerable to a group that is willing to use violence in greater intensity (or with greater organization) than the anarchy is able to employ in return.
And if you're going to say that anarchy can decide to do violence, yes, I agree. But it seems to me that centuries of experience have shown that those most effective at doing violence are very thoroughly organized, which seems to me to be kind of the opposite of anarchy.
> So if we're counting up societies that permit extreme wealth differences and those that don't, in the first group we have: today's global society and a handful of historical and invariably brutal kingdoms and empires; in the second group we have: all "small" societies today and the vast majority of human societies before encountering early modern European expansion.
I think that's a rather ahistorical perspective. Take, for example, China or India around 1000. Or Mali, whose emperor Mansa Musa is believed to have been the wealthiest individual in history. Or the Aztec or Inca empires. Or...
I'll give you that the Aztecs and Incas were brutal. I don't know about Mali. But if you're going to say that China and India were brutal, then you're going to have to say that most of history was brutal.
> But do you think that many people prefer associating with people with much different skill, intelligence, education or income? For example, would you like to be on a programming team where you could clearly rank skill from worst to best? If so, I'd be interested in having you walk me through why you think that.
I'm in an ultimate frisbee group where there's some fairly clear distinctions in skill level. It's not quite a strict hierarchy, because skill has multiple axes - someone could be slower but have a better handle. Still, there are definitely better players and worse players. But we just divide into approximately equal-strength teams, and go have fun.
> > Don't put words in my mouth (or reactions in my emotions), especially ones I don't agree with.
> That was a rhetorical statement, a more cutesy way of saying "A, therefore B." I'm sorry if it bothered you.
Well, others here do it sometimes with malice, or at least with manipulative intent, so I've become rather sensitive to it. Sorry if I jumped on you.
The trick is to stop the problem before violence is a possibility, for example rotate who is in control of the food supply, or ensure a distributed food surplus so that any interruptions can be dealt with in time. It's important though to also imagine a society where people can count on having their basic needs met and everyone is integrated into the social network, in which case wanting to order people around would be thought of as perverse, and someone taking over some vital resource for personal gain wouldn't be a problem you'd need to constantly prepare for.
> But it seems to me that centuries of experience have shown that those most effective at doing violence are very thoroughly organized, which seems to me to be kind of the opposite of anarchy.
I think this is a historical accident. We can name many centralized organizations today, companies and countries, with completely inept leadership. Conversely we can look at the history of trade unions, or the Republicans in the Spanish civil war, for flatter organizations that did well. Arguably the overthrow of the Tsarist government by the Bolsheviks is another example, in the sense that they accomplished their literal goal of taking over, not in the sense that the authoritarian rule that followed was good (it wasn't).
It may very well be that when push comes to shove centralized organizations outperform organizations with more decentralized leadership in certain crucial ways but I don't think we've had a good test yet to say either way. Nor, I hope we agree, should we say that just because a particular system is better at violence that it's a better system in general.
> I think that's a rather ahistorical perspective.
It's hard to say because it's the relatively recent flood of fossil fuels that have allowed for extreme wealth and thus extreme wealth differences. But today's society might be the first where only money matters. Even in historic actual empires, social rules could constrain the emperor and wealth generally. If nothing else anyone rich enough to rival the emperor or god-king might be killed.
The history of kings and rulers is full of horrifying anecdotes such as being buried with servants or mutilating political opponents. Crucially this brutality is associated with the rulers and not the everyday people. Were some better than others, sure, but I think that we'd find every king or emperor with a non-trivial reign routinely used means to maintain their rule that both we and their contemporary subjects would consider terrible.
> I'm in an ultimate frisbee group where there's some fairly clear distinctions in skill level. It's not quite a strict hierarchy, because skill has multiple axes - someone could be slower but have a better handle. Still, there are definitely better players and worse players. But we just divide into approximately equal-strength teams, and go have fun.
Thank you for sharing. I'll point out though that even though you're happy with the situation, the skill discrepancies are something that you are working around and not seeking out. Maybe it would be easier if everyone was roughly the same and people could group off in any old random way.
> Well, others here do it sometimes with malice, or at least with manipulative intent, so I've become rather sensitive to it. Sorry if I jumped on you.
No problem, in fact I'm trying to work on speaking more plainly so I appreciate the call-out.
>* Do not treat others in ways that you would not like to be treated (negative or prohibitive form)
Funny, that's a "highest law" similar to the Wiccan Rede(1) and a sensible life goal as well.
It is a simple principle that works in pretty much every situation I have encountered.
To live a moral life (ie do the right thing) you can do whatever you want, but don't initiate harm.
Great, you've considered the case of N ~= 100. Don't need a state to manage that.
How about N ~= 1,000,000,000?
Anarchism (and any fully decentralized protocol) "works" for small N because the average node can keep all the other nodes of the society in memory. If you need something, you know exactly whom to ask. And if you do something wrong, everyone will remember and hold you accountable. This plainly doesn't work with millions of nodes. Same principle why Bitcoin will never take off without hacking on traditional centralized finance mechanisms like Lightning; at some N, the resources required for individual nodes to maintain an accurate representation of the entire network becomes impractical (either impossible or just way too slow).
How many gatherings of a billion people have you attended?
Nobody actually has direct relationships with a billion people. That's why there is no need to "solve" the "problem" of how to centrally coordinate a network with a billion nodes. The coordination happens spontaneously as people voluntarily interact with the people they directly know. In economics, this mechanism is called a "free market".
But for sake of argument, let's move N down to 10,000 (a small city or large crowd). How do you manage that without hierarchical organization and government?
So you have a billion Facebook friends?
> commerce, et cetera.
So you go to a billion different grocery stores? A billion different drugstores? A billion different restaurants?
The fact that, ultimately, there might be a billion or more people involved in the processes that bring you your food, household items, etc., or visiting the same social media sites that you do, does not mean you interact with all of those people directly. Nobody does. All of that activity is coordinated spontaneously, driven by individual voluntary interactions involving much smaller numbers of people.
In fact, talking about the social media case, centralization of power, as in the case of Facebook, has arguably done more harm than good.
> let's move N down to 10,000 (a small city or large crowd). How do you manage that without hierarchical organization and government?
You will most likely have hierarchical organization in these cases. But hierarchical organization is not the same thing as government. Hierarchical organizations evolve all the time through the voluntary interactions of people. Governments impose their rules on people by force. Those are very different things.
The functional health of an organization is directly determined by how closely its constituents are following a loose language of agreed-upon behaviors -- protocols. If you pretend such protocols don't exist, or explicitly refuse to enforce them, your organization will simply disintegrate.
This can work for large N because people fill roles. If you travel today to some other place and want to buy bread, you don't need to know the name of a bread seller in that place. You look for a store that looks like it sells food and ask if they have bread. If they don't, they will probably be able to direct you to a store that does.
If you do something wrong, this can either be tracked by something you're required to keep on your person such as an ID or a tattoo, or by some commonly accessible records.
Since this is a tech site, you can think of it like interactions between objects in object-oriented programming. A billion objects can interact with each other in all sorts of ways without requiring some central manager.
Somewhere, sometime, an true anarchist will complain about that.
I don't think most anarchists would complain about senior bakers, or senior/elder/educated people generally, sharing advice, if that's what you mean, as long as all relationships remain voluntary.
See the stateless democracy in Rojava, which is perfectly compatible with anarchism:
https://iasgazette.com/2021/01/14/democracy-of-the-stateless...
The day that CENTCOM leaves Syria is the day that the mythical anarchist paradise of Rojava ceases to exist.
You don't need laws or hierarchy for this, just social conventions and in fact we already have them and they work. Queues hold all the time and you can mostly walk around without stomping on dog shit.
> drive an unmuffled car when I'm trying to sleep, or dump just a tiny amount of lead into my drinking water?
The first is a minor annoyance that exists also under our current hierarchy, the second can be safely consired harm, as it's scientifically proven.
Its resolved for me. And no doubt for you - think of a family gathering - you didn't need the police (or the state) there to manage things for you. All you need to do is apply the golden rule (from wiki):
* Treat others as you would like others to treat you (positive or directive form)
* Do not treat others in ways that you would not like to be treated (negative or prohibitive form)
The negative form is better. So, no one has a right to cause harm to another. (Of course they can cause harm, but its not right.) A group of people that think the same thing, also do not have the right to cause harm to others (where 'cause' = 'initiate'.)
This isn't to say that if harm is caused to you, you don't have the right to respond - you have the right to defend yourself.
Now consider - despite the general impression - how many times has another individual harmed you? Now, contrast that with how many times has the government initiated violence against you (forcible payment of tax, jay walking, drinking beer in public, or whatever, parking fines, licenses, etc). When force is there as a threat, even if it is not being overtly used, it is still the use of force. If I don't do something I want to do, that doesn't harm another, because of the threat of force (fines, imprisonment, etc) that is violence being inflicted on me.
So, the governance structure will have you believe that without policemen etc the world would descend into chaos. But government itself is the worst abuser! It initiates harm and violence everywhere, all day, every day. And it has convinced individuals to do this for it (policemen, soldiers, doctors, teachers) by calling it 'right' in its courts (regardless of the golden rule). The governance structure says it IS ok to initiate harm (if it says so) for money (that it prints).
Its a trick - and it has resulted in misguided order-followers who do wrong all day (but call it right), for the benefit of an elite group.
Such is life. If people followed their conscience and heart, we wouldn't be in this mess.