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[Dunamisdeos]

There is nothing stopping even a perfect system from disintegrating.

We could create a system with zero flaws today, implement it painlessly, and some wahoo 100 years from now can convince everyone to tear it down.

[Egan_BW]

Producing people willing to tear it down would be a flaw.

[Eschar]

If that system can make absolutely sure that nobody pops up who wants to destroy it, I have some unpleasant questions about its attitude towards privacy.

[Egan_BW]

Or things are just so good that nobody would ever rationally consider changing it, and nobody is ever irrational either.
We didn't say that perfection was easy.

[kaijyuu]

There's the old temptation of making your system so overpowering no one could overthrow it.

That way likes authoritarianism. And never reaches the point of invulnerability.

[Egan_BW]

Or possible.

[MaxTheFox]

The problem with anarchy is that modern society is too large and complex... when your communities have only 1000 people at most like hunter-gatherers it's easy, but how about cities and nations of millions of people? Killing all those people for an ideal society isn't worth it.

If we can just automate all the industry and stuff, we could retire as a species to a more luxurious version of our natural state. Perfect transhumanist / anprim hybrid state.

The natural state is lost for good... There will always be people looking to tear that state down. Now, I most likely wouldn't be one of those people but I'd be very skeptical about such a society if one suddenly appeared or something...

[scriver]

Producing people willing to tear it down would be a flaw.

Or things are just so good that nobody would ever rationally consider changing it, and nobody is ever irrational either.
We didn't say that perfection was easy.

"Everything is for the best in the best of all possible worlds"

[MaxTheFox]

Producing people willing to tear it down would be a flaw.

Or things are just so good that nobody would ever rationally consider changing it, and nobody is ever irrational either.
We didn't say that perfection was easy.

"Everything is for the best in the best of all possible worlds"

Given what is happening right now, we definitely don't live in the best possible world...

[Reelya]

The problem with anarchy is that modern society is too large and complex... when your communities have only 1000 people at most like hunter-gatherers it's easy, but how about cities and nations of millions of people? Killing all those people for an ideal society isn't worth it.

You seem to bring up these kinds of things a lot making sweeping generalizations and assumptions.

Look at Spain in the 1930s, there were in fact entire cities run by anarchists according to anarchist political principles. If you don't understand how that can be true, then maybe you haven't actually read anything about the actual subject? Have a look over the details and structure of the largest and most successful anarchist organazation in the world. They were running half the country during the Spanish Civil War, so the history part is especially relevant.

If you read over that and say "but ... that's not even anarchism!" then maybe you should consider the fact that you're wrong, since these are the by-definition self-identified anarchists, and generally considered by anarchists around the world to be the go-to example of how political anarchism works.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confederaci%C3%B3n_Nacional_del_Trabajo

[MaxTheFox]

The problem with anarchy is that modern society is too large and complex... when your communities have only 1000 people at most like hunter-gatherers it's easy, but how about cities and nations of millions of people? Killing all those people for an ideal society isn't worth it.

You seem to bring up these kinds of things a lot making sweeping generalizations and assumptions.

Look at Spain in the 1930s, there were in fact entire cities run by anarchists according to anarchist political principles. If you don't understand how that can be true, then maybe you haven't actually read anything about the actual subject? Have a look over the details and structure of the largest and most successful anarchist organazation in the world. They were running half the country during the Spanish Civil War, so the history part is especially relevant.

If you read over that and say "but ... that's not even anarchism!" then maybe you should consider the fact that you're wrong, since these are the by-definition self-identified anarchists, and generally considered by anarchists around the world to be the go-to example of how political anarchism works.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confederaci%C3%B3n_Nacional_del_Trabajo

I doubt they would have survived for long even if they defeated the Nationalists somehow... Either falling to internal counterrevolution or invasion by neighboring countries...

[delphonso]

Sorry Max but that argument can be used against any government system.

[Reelya]

As an example, look at Semco, a company in Brazil that restructured itself, and a lot of what they do is a model of 'industrial democracy' very similar to Anarcho-Syndicalist ideas, or communist ideas about worker's self management of factories. The interesting fact however is that they stumbled on this by accident (convergent evolution basically).

That model took the value of the company from $4 million to $212 million in revenue.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ricardo_Semler

There's a book called Maverick written by Ricardo Semler about how he restructured the company, it's a good read to understand how this kind of thing would look in practice. Read through this:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maverick_(book)
and you might scoff that this list of ideas "would never work", then realize they're not just ideas, they're exactly how a large and successful company operates.

Point being, this isn't just theory. These ideas work, and they work a lot better than the top-down approach. The reason you don't see more of this is pure greed. Top-heavy companies are actually really inefficient, except a "leech" class has established themselves as being in control and they spin fairy tales about how if you give the worker's too much say in management then the sky will fall. That's pure fiction designed to cement that small managerial leech class as being in control / siphoning off a disproportionate amount of the money. We have examples where they largely eliminated the managerial class, and things actually tend to get more efficient (the turn-around on processing orders went from 6 weeks to a few days in Semco when they flattened all the layers of management down to just one layer of worker-elected leaders).

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