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.
A lot of what your comment assumes is that global-scale coordination is a given, like of course collectives have to be connected across continents and sharing copper. But I don’t think that assumption actually holds. Here’s my absolutely radical extremist view: Why should every society be plugged into a global system? That’s the legacy of empire and capitalism talking, this idea that everything and everyone needs to be connected, streamlined, “efficient.”
You’re right that power accumulates where efficiency is the priority, because efficiency always asks what the fastest way to do this is, not who gets hurt in the process. That’s how we end up with hierarchies. Thats how you end up with extractive infrastructures that centralize control over basic resources. But maybe the issue isn’t how to horizontally recreate global coordination. Maybe it’s that global coordination isn’t inherently good, especially when it’s built on unsustainable logistics and deep inequality. If two regions drift ideologically because they aren’t connected by undersea cables, I don’t see that as a crisis. That’s autonomy. And if one group starts consolidating power and turning coercive, that’s a problem. However it’s not solved by having centralized oversight in the first place. That’s how we got here.
So in my eyes, the real answer is: don’t recreate the world we have, and shrink the scope of interdependence. I believe in the need to relocalize needs. Build federated structures where it makes sense, if it makes sense. And to stop assuming the “efficiency” that comes with hierarchy is something to preserve.
My gut reaction to the idea of unplugging is that it’s unwise. It’s too easy for groups on one side of the planet to unintentionally affect groups on the other side. I think there will always be a need for a reasonable level of global communication and cooperation.
I don’t disagree that anarchist ideals about localization make sense as a reaction to our modern, global, hierarchical world. I’m not arguing to preserve the efficiencies of centralization but pointing out that their gravity makes opposition by other means impossible. Here’s the issue that I never see resolved:
Then how does it get solved? History shows a thousand instances of empires expanding through piece meal conquering of fragmented autonomous polities. Look at the European conquest of Mesoamerica, how the Roman’s picked apart most of the world, the colonization of Ireland, the fate of the Iroquois Confederacy, etc… The aggressor doesn’t even need a material or martial advantage, as in Macedonia’s subjugation of the loose federation of Greek city states.
Generally, the expansion only stops from an internal shift (dynasty change, leader death, coup, etc…), hitting a geographical limit, or when the aggressor runs into someone too large to bully.
I’ll point out as well that this doesn’t even need to be a nefarious, expansionist scheme. Changes in climate can apply a survival pressure to take what you need from neighbors. Take for example, sea level rise reducing arable land for the Vikings, one of the causes for their invasion and settling in Britain.