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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 some

by bena 2y 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 2y 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 2y 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 2y 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.
sage76 2y ago
Yeah agreed. In fact, orgs that try to pretend like they have no hierarchy frequently have worse culture and higher employee turnover. See: Valve.

by bena 2y ago

CharlieDigital 2y 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 2y 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 2y 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.

sage76 2y ago

Yeah agreed. In fact, orgs that try to pretend like they have no hierarchy frequently have worse culture and higher employee turnover. See: Valve.