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The second definition of "anarchy" according to Google: > the organization of society on the basis of voluntary cooperation, without political institutions

The second definition of "anarchy" according to Google: > the organization of society on the basis of voluntary cooperation, without political institutions or hierarchical government; anarchism. Sounds like a perfect fit.

paxys 3y ago
There is a CEO on top who has the power to fire anyone. There are department heads and middle managers. There is an org hierarchy. There are performance targets and reviews. Nothing about it is "voluntary cooperation". This is how every large company runs.
- pyrale 3y ago
  On the other hand, this is FT's interpretation. Obviously they're going to have a slightly different take on what "anarchist" and "commune" means.
- mistrial9 3y ago
  no - fifty percent of managers control their employees through fear.. transparency and the magnitude of compensation and awards are different.. means of advancement are different.. overall "culture" is different..
- queuebert 3y ago
  Especially this given how selective they are in hiring. There are likely hundreds of people salivating at the chance to replace you.
- CooCooCaCha 3y ago
  I hate, so much, when people refer to jobs as voluntary cooperation. Maybe at the very top when you have more money than you’ll ever need, but for the vast majority of people jobs aren’t truly voluntary.
  - tasuki 3y ago
    You won't enjoy my comment then :) Yes, jobs are voluntary. The vast majority of people could choose not to have a job and not to entertain certain luxuries in life like having a roof over one's head or food on the table. Some even (voluntarily!) choose not to have a roof over their head because they don't like the idea of having a job.
    - lovich 3y ago
      Food is not a luxury. Defining things necessary for continued existence as luxuries is ridiculously reductive and is why defining jobs as “voluntary” in a world where access to those things is gated by having a job for most people is disingenuous. Taking job A over job B could be described as voluntary but saying that you could just be homeless and scrounge food, especially in locations where the local government makes this illegal, so working is voluntary is just wrong
      - tasuki 3y ago
        You are of course right that food is not a luxury, that was supposed to be slightly tongue in cheek. One can still choose to disobey the local government and be homeless. I'm not saying it's an easy choice, nor am I saying it's easy to be homeless. I'm just saying it's a choice.
    - CooCooCaCha 3y ago
      You’re right, I don’t like your comment. It always amazes me how heartless you libertarian types can be. Food and a roof are basics, not a luxury. The fact that a significant number of people in this world don’t have those things speaks more to our failure to provide. Do better.
      - tasuki 3y ago
        I'm actually not a libertarian. I guess I'm your standard European socialist: I'm all good taxing (us) rich and providing for the poor. It still is a choice whether one chooses to work, as evidenced by those who chose not to. Edit: the "luxuries" was slightly tongue in cheek and perhaps didn't land well. Anyway, you're free to move to the wilderness, hunt/grow your own food, build your own shelter, and do without the socio-economic system altogether.
citizen_friend 3y ago
Volunteer committees of execs is a standard management practice and not anarchy by any stretch of the imagination.
yohannparis 3y ago
Thank you! I had to look it up, I did not knew English had tow definitions for Anarchy, I did not understood the parent comment.
robertlagrant 3y ago
> Sounds like a perfect fit. Sounds like a company.
bena 3y ago
Yeah, that doesn't exist. Any gathering of people are going to have political institutions whether they are codified or not. Similarly, there's going to be someone or some group of people who the others look to for direction. And whether or not it is codified, those people will form a layer of hierarchy for your "non" government. Because people seem to think it's "politics" and "government" that are the problem. It's not. It's people. It's always been people. It will always be people. People are the problem. Failure to acknowledge that people can and will be shitty is going to doom your system before it starts.
- CharlieDigital 3y ago
  Hierarchical organization, like political affiliation, is a spectrum. I'd say that Jane Street would seem to be less hierarchical than others and thus more closely aligned to an anarchist collaborative. (It's all relative, I suppose. Bernie is a "leftist" in the US and would probably be a centrist in Scandinavia)
- kqr 3y ago
  > whether they are codified or not Was it an intentional rhetorical device to brush past the important distinction? Yes, there will always be more powerful cliques. This is Jo Freeman's The Tyranny of Structurelessness. But the point is specifically whether those cliques and hierarchies are encoded into formal committees or whether they remain fluid based on the desires of the group at any given moment. If we avoid codifying the hierarchies, we get better distribution of information and resources, people are held responsible to those who delegated tasks to them, and responsibility can be rotated more freely.
  - bena 3y ago
    You are describing an ideal, not what happens. What really happens is that important information and resources get hoarded because that lets you control things. The only people "held responsible" are those you can convince others to punish arbitrarily. You'll create an entire shadow government the majority of the group has no knowledge of. And showing how it worked within a group of 4 to 5 people is kind of useless. Lots of things work on small scales. The minute you scale to the point where you can't keep track of everyone, you're going to need an actual system in place to deal with everyone.
FrustratedMonky 3y ago
"without political institutions or hierarchical government;" Think when trying to translate a society to a corporation, then each of the terms must also be translated. For a 'society' there is a government. And politics is dealing with the government policies, how we come up with rules. But, if you want to translate to a corporation, you can't just say it doesn't have 'government and politics' because the corporation isn't dealing with the larger society. You need to also scale down the terms, The CEO and the Hierarchy of bosses, are the 'Government' and 'political institutions' are the departments like HR, Marketing, and between them there are 'politics'. There is no real 'anarchy' like individuals having freedom to 'just work on what they feel like'.
amadeuspagel 3y ago
Sure, every corporation is an anarchy then since no one is forced to work there, so it's all voluntary cooperation.
- theFco 3y ago
  but the other part of the definition is also important: "without political institutions or hierarchical government; anarchism". So the typical corporation is not exactly an anarchy according to the definition.

paxys 3y ago

There is a CEO on top who has the power to fire anyone. There are department heads and middle managers. There is an org hierarchy. There are performance targets and reviews. Nothing about it is "voluntary cooperation". This is how every large company runs.

pyrale 3y ago
On the other hand, this is FT's interpretation. Obviously they're going to have a slightly different take on what "anarchist" and "commune" means.
mistrial9 3y ago
no - fifty percent of managers control their employees through fear.. transparency and the magnitude of compensation and awards are different.. means of advancement are different.. overall "culture" is different..
queuebert 3y ago
Especially this given how selective they are in hiring. There are likely hundreds of people salivating at the chance to replace you.
CooCooCaCha 3y ago
I hate, so much, when people refer to jobs as voluntary cooperation. Maybe at the very top when you have more money than you’ll ever need, but for the vast majority of people jobs aren’t truly voluntary.
- tasuki 3y ago
  You won't enjoy my comment then :) Yes, jobs are voluntary. The vast majority of people could choose not to have a job and not to entertain certain luxuries in life like having a roof over one's head or food on the table. Some even (voluntarily!) choose not to have a roof over their head because they don't like the idea of having a job.
  - lovich 3y ago
    Food is not a luxury. Defining things necessary for continued existence as luxuries is ridiculously reductive and is why defining jobs as “voluntary” in a world where access to those things is gated by having a job for most people is disingenuous. Taking job A over job B could be described as voluntary but saying that you could just be homeless and scrounge food, especially in locations where the local government makes this illegal, so working is voluntary is just wrong
    - tasuki 3y ago
      You are of course right that food is not a luxury, that was supposed to be slightly tongue in cheek. One can still choose to disobey the local government and be homeless. I'm not saying it's an easy choice, nor am I saying it's easy to be homeless. I'm just saying it's a choice.
  - CooCooCaCha 3y ago
    You’re right, I don’t like your comment. It always amazes me how heartless you libertarian types can be. Food and a roof are basics, not a luxury. The fact that a significant number of people in this world don’t have those things speaks more to our failure to provide. Do better.
    - tasuki 3y ago
      I'm actually not a libertarian. I guess I'm your standard European socialist: I'm all good taxing (us) rich and providing for the poor. It still is a choice whether one chooses to work, as evidenced by those who chose not to. Edit: the "luxuries" was slightly tongue in cheek and perhaps didn't land well. Anyway, you're free to move to the wilderness, hunt/grow your own food, build your own shelter, and do without the socio-economic system altogether.

citizen_friend 3y ago

Volunteer committees of execs is a standard management practice and not anarchy by any stretch of the imagination.

yohannparis 3y ago

Thank you! I had to look it up, I did not knew English had tow definitions for Anarchy, I did not understood the parent comment.

robertlagrant 3y ago

> Sounds like a perfect fit. Sounds like a company.

bena 3y ago

Yeah, that doesn't exist. Any gathering of people are going to have political institutions whether they are codified or not. Similarly, there's going to be someone or some group of people who the others look to for direction. And whether or not it is codified, those people will form a layer of hierarchy for your "non" government. Because people seem to think it's "politics" and "government" that are the problem. It's not. It's people. It's always been people. It will always be people. People are the problem. Failure to acknowledge that people can and will be shitty is going to doom your system before it starts.

CharlieDigital 3y ago
Hierarchical organization, like political affiliation, is a spectrum. I'd say that Jane Street would seem to be less hierarchical than others and thus more closely aligned to an anarchist collaborative. (It's all relative, I suppose. Bernie is a "leftist" in the US and would probably be a centrist in Scandinavia)
kqr 3y ago
> whether they are codified or not Was it an intentional rhetorical device to brush past the important distinction? Yes, there will always be more powerful cliques. This is Jo Freeman's The Tyranny of Structurelessness. But the point is specifically whether those cliques and hierarchies are encoded into formal committees or whether they remain fluid based on the desires of the group at any given moment. If we avoid codifying the hierarchies, we get better distribution of information and resources, people are held responsible to those who delegated tasks to them, and responsibility can be rotated more freely.
- bena 3y ago
  You are describing an ideal, not what happens. What really happens is that important information and resources get hoarded because that lets you control things. The only people "held responsible" are those you can convince others to punish arbitrarily. You'll create an entire shadow government the majority of the group has no knowledge of. And showing how it worked within a group of 4 to 5 people is kind of useless. Lots of things work on small scales. The minute you scale to the point where you can't keep track of everyone, you're going to need an actual system in place to deal with everyone.

FrustratedMonky 3y ago

"without political institutions or hierarchical government;" Think when trying to translate a society to a corporation, then each of the terms must also be translated. For a 'society' there is a government. And politics is dealing with the government policies, how we come up with rules. But, if you want to translate to a corporation, you can't just say it doesn't have 'government and politics' because the corporation isn't dealing with the larger society. You need to also scale down the terms, The CEO and the Hierarchy of bosses, are the 'Government' and 'political institutions' are the departments like HR, Marketing, and between them there are 'politics'. There is no real 'anarchy' like individuals having freedom to 'just work on what they feel like'.

amadeuspagel 3y ago

Sure, every corporation is an anarchy then since no one is forced to work there, so it's all voluntary cooperation.

theFco 3y ago
but the other part of the definition is also important: "without political institutions or hierarchical government; anarchism". So the typical corporation is not exactly an anarchy according to the definition.