Topic: Anarchism vs. Libertarianism: Hierarchies (Read 3281 times)

The difference between a socialist/anarchist and a libertarian/capitalist ultimately comes down to our differing view of human nature. We know that the universe is indifferent to our suffering, so our civilization ought to be sensitive to it.

As a student of science I hold that Homo Sapiens are neurologically hardwired for empathy and compassion, basically we want to be kind to one another by nature, and it is capitalism culture that poisons us against each other. Because pre-civilization life in Nature was extremely dangerous for primates, it is/was evolutionary advantageous for us to be bonded together extremely closely, a bond reinforced constantly by sexual pleasure from many different mates.

This argument is laid out far more articulately than I can here in Sex At Dawn:



Give it a read and contemplate what our lives could be, if we wanted. Spoiler: more and better orgasms for everyone, far less violent.

Modern industrial civilisation has developed within a certain system of convenient myths. The driving force of modern industrial civilisation has been individual material gain, which is accepted as legitimate, even praiseworthy, on the grounds that private vices yield public benefits in the classic formulation.

Although, of course even small businesses have a hierarchy of sorts.  It is just a lot smaller and closer.   There is generally someone/people who own the business.  There will always be people more experienced who will be able to steer a business better than those less experienced.   We all start out inexperienced and then gain knowledge and experience as we go along.  Well, not all of us...

I agree with you about the big hierarchies generally being for the worker bees and that work is becoming more specialised and the lower level stuff being mechanised which is further driving the decentralisation trend.   I've walked away from contracting for businesses myself and generally now do my own work and am looking to do more so in the future.  Not to mention the fact I can do it over the internet so I don't have to live close to work anymore.  Or even in the same country.

Regarding the paying better wages, I think inflation is the killer in this regard.  I think wages would generally go down, as all prices do in a deflationary environment, but people's gains in experience would offset this and that prices of products in general would go down faster.  I think in a free market it's likely that people would be in high demand.  Because at the end of the day, we are the smartest most capable "robots" out there.  No robot can match even the dumbest humans yet.  When robots can match us, we're all out of jobs anyway at that point, but I think that is a long way off and I think we will merge with machines before that happens.  But that's a whole other topic...

man i dont know why i get so wound up over politics, i dont really have much at stake
 in it anyways.
ill take a break from talking about politics/ religion.
damn alex jones getting me all worked up.

K glad we can I agree on something.
Sorry I got carried away.

Although that is completely irrelevant to the OP, I agree.

you know what else is great?
The slowly but surely worldwide collapse of welfare states and bitcoins as a means to take power away from their power of issuing currency.

That's great, just stop pushing your ideas on me.

corporations can exist without government.
They would just hire private contractors to defend their property instead of the government and would be open to more competition and risk.
And whiny people like you would buy their products just like you do now.
I'm just saying it'd be better if there was a government in place so there wouldn't be complete chaos and people could focus on being productive instead.
And no people are not going to do what you tell them unless you force them to with your dictatorship of the proletariat shit.

CEOs direct several aspects of businesses.  If you've been following the rest of this thread, it has been pointed out that the subsidies provided to corporations (which cannot exist without government) allow them to survive.  Without those subsidies, you are more likely to see smaller, more local business, meaning there is no longer a need for corporate positions.

But as I said, it's not rocket science; you're merely pointing out that they have a lot of work to do.  You're not making an argument against the idea that the normal Joe can be a CEO, even if we're assuming huge business can thrive; I'm arguing that people are fully capable of running businesses without the overhead.

Because you have no idea the kind of shit CEO's have to deal with.
They work 24/7 and almost have no life.
Why do you think CEO's are so hard to find.

Good; now explain why.

God this stuff is cringe worthy.

One could also find alot similarity between communism and anarchism. The working class kicking out the upper classes, and taking control of the industry themselves. and then live peace fully, with everyone being equals. One exception is that communists believe that it necessary to go trough a transition period with a strong state, educating people, and slowly but firmly removing the upper class.

It is possible:


What you're insinuating is that the bosses of any given business have knowledge of their position that no other man could ever have (except for other to-be bosses); that's what is meant when you say it's "not possible".  Now, nobody knows how to do everything, but that doesn't imply that people are incapable of learning the very specifics of what is required to perform the higher-end jobs; there is no physical limit between what a worker can do and what a manager can do, or what a corporate officer can do.  You don't need to know everything to run a business, unless we're implying the head of any given business has no idea what his workers are doing, or even if they're doing it right; obviously, he does know everything, or he would be an ineffective manager.

If someone works at the same business for 40 years, and he's still at the bottom ring, with no knowledge of management, does this not imply that he is not being taught management, rather than his being able to be a manager?  After all, if we're assuming people can't know everything, then he must be in that position because he is incapable of knowing how to manage.  If I know anything about human beings, it's that something as terribly simple as management (it's certainly not rocket science) is easy enough to learn.  The question, then, is whether the hierarchy is voluntary or involuntary; but it's certainly not a product of a worker being too stupid to lead.

That's not possible.
There's specialization everywhere. No one can know everything.
And if you don't know everything you have to rely on others sometimes.
Then you get hierarchies.

Yes; everything government does to subsidize big business would no longer be possible, making it more efficient for local business to flourish, than for one huge business to have a store in every city, some on every other street (like McDonalds.)  In this way, the hierarchies go away on their own; since local business does not need to pay the overhead of corporations, they keep more of their profits, and thus are able to pay their own employees better wages.

Not to mention, with low-level work being replaced steadily by machines, it seems we're on our way, as a species, to every job being highly skilled work that only humans are capable of.  It seems more important than ever, then, for any economy to thrive, that people not be trained to be mindless workers, but just the opposite, thinking and participating.  The hierarchy seems to push this idea, where you have the few who think and the many who work; perhaps this is the natural push for people to take more control of their work, which would make those hierarchies smaller, since the low-level work only becomes more and more scarce.

It's no coincidence that so many big businesses need government assistance and ultimately need to be bailed out.   I think in a voluntaryist society you would probably not see such levels of centralisation because they tend towards big inefficient bureaucracies.  And the free market tends to punish inefficiency. 

Sorry for the confusion; I got my terms mixed up, I edited the thread title to reflect this.


Incorrect; there are always at least two ways to solve a social problem.  The first is through force, as you mention.  The second is to naturally remove the incentive to partake in the problem, which is what you'll have to get used to if it's a voluntaryist society you seek.  This is true for all social problems; we can force people to not have abortions, or we can construct a society in which you'd actually have the time, money and energy to raise a child; though abortions would never truly go away, it might then be crazy to think of denying a person to live in such a world, as opposed to the right now, where most people who abort have none of the requirements I mentioned above.

In the case of hierarchies, the alternative would be for there to be no reason for people to want to form hierarchies; although it is in my belief that simple hierarchies can be good, massive hierarchies where just a few people employ several thousand other people and rake in massive amounts of profits, is not necessarily a good thing, as this leads to a concentration of power.  What state socialists often forget is that, though they want to spread the wealth around, they like to do this with the bigger concentration of power, which leads to the wealth getting sucked into the black hole of government and their efforts are all for nothing.

If hierarchies are beneficial to society, we must look at government and ask ourselves if this is true.  But again, as hawkeye stated, hierarchies can also be voluntary; because I've never lived in a voluntary society, I cannot make a real verdict as to whether hierarchies are ultimately good or bad.  As herzmaster pointed out, the point is that massive hierarchies cease to be possible, meaning capitalism as we know it today (corporatism/cronyism) would no longer be possible.


And in the scenario where everyone knows what they're doing?

Because people rather put someone in charge who knows wtf he's doing, rather than your stinking lazy hippy ass.