is one of the most common responses I get when I talk to people (usually liberals) about horizontal power structures. It comes down to some version of "Well, that sounds nice, but what about the bad actors?" I think the logic that follows from that fact is backwards. The standard response to this issue is to build vertical power structures. To appoint a ruling class that can supposedly "manage" the bad actors. But this ignores the obvious: vertical power structures are magnets for narcissists. They don’t neutralize those people. They empower them. They give them legitimacy and insulation from consequences. They concentrate power precisely where it’s most dangerous. Horizontal societies have always had ways of handling antisocial behavior. (Highly recommend Hierarchy in the Forest: The Evolution of Egalitarian Behavior by Christopher Boehm. He studied hundreds of forager societies, overall done amazing work.) Exile, public shaming, revocable leadership, and distributed decision-making all worked and often worked better than what we do now. Pre-civilized societies didn’t let power-hungry individuals take over. They stopped them. We used to know how to deal with bad actors. The idea of a "power vacuum" only makes sense if you believe power must be held at the top. If you diffuse power horizontally, there is no vacuum to fill. There’s just shared responsibility. That may feel unfamiliar, but it’s not impossible. We’ve done it before. Most of human history was built on it. The real question isn't whether bad actors exist. It's how we choose to deal with them. Do we build systems that make it harder for them to dominate others, or ones that practically roll out the red carpet? I think this opens up a more useful conversation.
What if we started seriously discussing tactics for dealing with domination-seeking behavior?
What mechanisms help us identify and isolate that kind of behavior without reproducing the same old coercive structures?
How do we build systems that are resilient to sabotage without falling into authoritarian logic?
I’d love to hear your guys’ thoughts.
I think it's rather simple, honestly. I like the ideas of anarchism, it sounds good in theory, but has already proven to be impossible
Humans started without governments or societies. We were anarchist already, and moved on to having societies and governments not just because of bad actors but many, many, many, many reasons. Whatever system out there that works the best is likely a monstrous hybrid system of many schools of thought, and likely needs to be fluid and changeable to work
For the last 300,000 years humans have existed, we spent 290000 living according to our nature in anarchy. For the last 10,000 years we've been trying and failing at non-anarchy, causing mass death from war, starvation, and disease.
There's a bit more to it than that. For the last 10,000 years we've had comparative abundance, constant technological advances, a population explosion, and globalization.
Yeah and to act like we weren't bashing each other's heads in with clubs for access to the better fruit trees during those 290,000 years is nonsense. It was just less organized. But scarcity was a thing and the concept of morals and ethics weren't a thing - so head bashing to steal land and the raping of women and the taking of slaves were probably the norm.
That form of anarchy today with the advent of small arms would be basically the same if we were to remove all the militaries from the world. And whoever stole the best fruit trees would amass a bigger group to go steal more fruit trees and you can see where this is going.
Militias and other forms of organized violence are really hard to reconcile as an anarchist. Even from an academic view - how does anyone defend against an antagonistic, coercive power imbalance? They can't just be exiled because they'll kill you for whatever resources they want and then you'll be the one exiled from your lands/life.