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Comment by nabdv | Hacker News Reader

Well there is no human institution on earth that runs without a domination and obedience based hierarchy. The internet has caused a bit of confusion because it initially didnt resemeble a hierarchy but hierarchical structures tend to emerge in complex systems or such systems tend to just collapse.

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Internet is the first tool in history which allows to run complex systems without hierarchy - the hierarchy is a necessary optimization resulting from the physical limitations of information and control flows, and the internet removes those limitations.

>hierarchical structures tend to emerge in complex systems

one can say that many observed complex systems emerge as the way to facilitate/implement/support the hierarchy.

That is absolutely not true, regardless of what the hiers of Hobbes would like you to believe. Co-ops, mutual aid societies, some of the Kibbutzen, and various anarchistic communes have operated in non-hierarchical ways

You can debate the effectiveness of these arrangements; it’s clearly true that hierarchical orgs are the norm, and they have a tendency to expand via force. But to say that there is “no human institution on earth” that doesn’t use hierarchies and dominance is just not true.

It’s a matter of scale. The examples you provide are microscopic.

Irrelevant. They said “no institution on earth” not “no meaningful institution”. The original statement is provably wrong, the latter is debatable given the larger co-ops, the Rojava, and one’s definition of “microscopic”.

And they will never survive against traditional hierarchical organizations that come bearing force. Like, say, any government on the planet. They are only allowed to exist within a frameworks of domination. They would never survive at scale and against an organized opponent.

While it's obviously true that even representative governments have been fairly eager to crush anarchist regions whenever they crop up, you are being way too broad in describing the past and the potential future.

History is littered with "never"s that eventually happened. Monarchies, aristocracy, slavery, feudalism, serfdom, empire, mercantilism, all would "never" be replaced ... until they were. Even three centuries ago the idea that we'd be discussing how representative democracies might react to the existence of an anarchistic commune would be an absurd conversation, just not in the way that you might think it is. Not too long ago to be a republican was to be unbelievably radical[0], now it's the majority position for the post-industrial world.

Furthermore, arguably there are plenty of cases of less hierarchical organizations beating out more hierarchical ones. This commonly crops up in military conflicts with decentralized decision making trouncing strict hierarchical militaries, usually in the form of guerilla warfare. I would also argue that the (so far) triumph of representative democracy and capitalism over feudalism and monarchy as a triumph of the less hierarchical over the more hierarchical.

Does that mean that anarchism will come? Heavens no. I would not deign to try and predict such chaotic things as revolutions and forms of government. The transition from monarchy to republic was chaotic and often unplanned, even by the very men and women who mounted the barricades to topple the old forms of government. But I would absolutely not be so confident to say "always" and "never", those statements are far too certain about an unpredictable process.

0 - In the early days of the French Revolution even Robespierre was opposed to toppling the monarchy and replacing it with a republic, and he was never exactly a moderate at any point in his life. The overton window on republicanism has moved a lot in a few centuries.

> mercantilism, all would "never" be replaced

I think that one is still wholly dominant. Personal initiative will always win.

Mercantilism is certainly dead as a door nail. I can point to all the specific policies recommended by the mercantilists, but I think the most important thing is that mercantilism was about hoarding gold bullion. That is absolutely not the basic economic goal of many (if any) nations right now.

Fact is this comment sounds like something Curtis Yarvin would say.

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