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In our globalized world, it is absolutely possible to interact with a set of a billion different individuals via social media, commerce, et cetera. Of course th

In our globalized world, it is absolutely possible to interact with a set of a billion different individuals via social media, commerce, et cetera. Of course there are no physical gatherings of a billion people; that is a strawman. 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?

pdonis 4y ago
> In our globalized world, it is absolutely possible to interact with a set of a billion different individuals via social media 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.
- pphysch 4y ago
  > 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.
  - pdonis 4y ago
    Nothing you have said here contradicts anything I said. An organization that evolves through the voluntary interactions of people can still have such protocols and people can still follow them, even though nothing is ever imposed on anyone by force. People who refuse to follow the protocols simply find that other organization members will not interact with them.

pdonis 4y ago

> In our globalized world, it is absolutely possible to interact with a set of a billion different individuals via social media 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.

pphysch 4y ago
> 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.
- pdonis 4y ago
  Nothing you have said here contradicts anything I said. An organization that evolves through the voluntary interactions of people can still have such protocols and people can still follow them, even though nothing is ever imposed on anyone by force. People who refuse to follow the protocols simply find that other organization members will not interact with them.