i like this. i think for now as a workaround: one could lock the topic and leave a comment asking the OP to crosspost it elsewhere, with grace for posts which have high engagement (as ladfrombrad suggested).

i don't agree that crossposting works to 'move' posts. as far as i know: the OP is not notified when their topic is crossposted by someone else, and in that case they also won't be 'subscribed' to comment notifications.

🎵 cathy don't go to the supermarket today. cause there's a very strange man at the checkout stand, ::: spoiler and there's a laser scanner where you put your hand. obligatory /s :::

they're referring to anarchist federalism, which scales in principle from neighbourhoods and work groups up to nations.

And if decisions are at rhe lowest possible levels then it seems like thats a hierarchy, which is more horizontal rather than not being a hierarchy.'

And i dont know what you meam by “the position” or “temporal” or “at the start” and that it “changes everything”.

horizontalism does not create a hierarchy, because a hierarchy (from Greek, for 'rule of priests') is a structure which creates superiors and subordinates.

say there's a community — a geographical neighbourhood, a nongeographical group with shared interests, a workgroup… — that holds meetings on their own self-management and needs. when their needs concern more than themselves, then they delegate someone to communicate their concern to a larger ('higher') group — a city, a region, an industry — on a mandate: that they are temporary (till the concern is resolved, till the end of a project, or for an arbitrary time decided by the group); that they represent the group consensus; and that they can be recalled for any reason, more specifically in the event that they aren't fulfilling their obligations to the group they represent.

proposals go up a chain, and revisions/changes are sent back down the chain. this cycle continues until the smallest ('lowest') groups are in agreement, with that agreement communicated by the delegates up to the largest relevant group. with a population like the US, these rounds of consensing can be done in the span of a month: https://participatoryeconomy.org/project/computer-simulations-of-participatory-planning/.

this structure can take infinite forms, but those structures remain fundamentally similar and therefore compatible.

there are examples like anarchist Spain, the Zapatistas, and — aspirationally — Rojava, mostly in in the Rojavan restorative justice system. to be fair to Rojava: they have been under siege for a decade.

for some thought experiments: Can This Book Save Us From Dystopia? (43m), The Future of Socialism (15m).

when the GP says 'this changes everything', they mean that the temporary and recallable nature of holding a special role in society flips the current paradigm: where politicians can promise whatever they want and then fail to deliver, because other (economically-)viable candidates are few and they already have their position. there's nothing in the current system that gives constituents the ability to immediately remove a representative who isn't representing the people who elected them, or who uses their position to further personal agenda.

a system where the people directly involved in their work and their lives are also participants in their own work and their own life creates people who are invested in the world around them.

good post. since i'm here, i want to expand on a few things:

But effectively, it boils down to the difference between authority as in power over people, and authority as in knowledge.

i recommend using expertise to refer to authority as in knowledge — like you did later in your comment, as Andrewism does — to avoid confusion.

They don’t have the unilateral ability to fire someone (nor does any individual)

no criticism, just expanding:

i think it's important that someone who is given by a role or responsibility should have a mandate: the role should be specific, and it should be temporary (for an arbitrary amount of time, or till the end of a project) or recallable by a vote.

Graeber notes in something i'll link below: 'If something has to be done, then it’s okay to say all right, for the next three hours she’s in charge. There’s nothing wrong with that if everybody agrees to it. Or you improvise.'

Crowdsourced decision making is meant to be for the bigger aspects, stuff like what the end goal of a project should be. Smaller, extremely specialized aspects should get handled by those best equipped for it, that’s not a hierarchy.

in Kurdistan, this is the difference between technical decisions and the political ('moral') decisions1. it's the difference between 'when should we have our next meeting?' and 'should we be nonviolent?'.

• technical decisions are low-impact; operational or logistical.
• political decisions are high-impact, with broad social implications.

the political decisions are consensus decisions, of at least 1/3 of the group. these are vetoäble by anyone affected who wasn't present for the vote.

the technical decisions are 2/3 or 3/4 majority votes, of the minimum affected people.

tho, as Graeber notes:

And then of course, obviously the question is who gets to decide what’s a moral question and what’s the technical one? So somebody might say, “Well, the question of [when to meet] bears on disabled people, and that’s a moral question.” So that becomes a little bit of a political football. There’s always things to debate and points of tension.

only partially related, but this discusssion reminded me of an essay on the myth that management == efficiency: David Harvey, anarchism, and tightly-coupled systems

you are probably fine without learning Swedish in a meaningful manner, but if you are planning to become a citizen it is not unreasonable a requirement.

i had a rant all prepared for this comment, along the lines of 'yeah but they're not doing anything to make learning the language or integrating any easier; they're just adding further alientation and precarity into their lives'… but i realise all those words would be wasted because that's the point.

the rightwing government doesn't want people to integrate. they want to give every migrant such an acute case of Ulysses syndrome that they burn out and fail.

i have heard from people there that they just completely broke down after receiving their citizenship. they spent the years on a residency permit in unfurnished apartments with no lasting or heavy investments in society. they didn't get medical or psychological treatment when they needed it, and they didn't participate politically and stayed in their lane, living in effective peonage to their employers and trying to be model migrants and manage their energy levels so as not to draw any attention to themselves. they were too afraid to make any longlasting commitments in case it would all just be taken away from them on three-month's notice. such a weight lifted from their shoulders that all the stress came barreling out and they crashed hard. this news — that their citizenship can be taken away on vagueties of 'national security' (most of the people i know there are activists), or because of 'crimes' committed long ago in their home countries, or that the rules could apply retroäctively — have brought back their stress right when they were just recovering and finally felt safe digging into their new permanent life.

it doesn't matter that these policies are 'targeted' at 'terrorists' and gangs. these changes affect everyone who migrates to Sweden for any reason. the government's habit of wildly changing the rules every 6 months isn't helping.

Does it follow that I reject all authority? Far from me such a thought. In the matter of boots, I refer to the authority of the bootmaker; concerning houses, canals, or railroads, I consult that of the architect or engineer. For such or such special knowledge I apply to such or such a savant. But I allow neither the bootmaker nor the architect nor the savant to impose his authority upon me. I listen to them freely and with all the respect merited by their intelligence, their character, their knowledge, reserving always my incontestable right of criticism censure. I do not content myself with consulting authority in any special branch; I consult several; I compare their opinions, and choose that which seems to me the soundest. But I recognize no infallible authority, even in special questions; consequently, whatever respect I may have for the honesty and the sincerity of such or such an individual, I have no absolute faith in any person. Such a faith would be fatal to my reason, to my liberty, and even to the success of my undertakings; it would immediately transform me into a stupid slave, an instrument of the will and interests of others.

— Mikhail Bakunin, God and the state, Chapter 2

Expertise merely refers to one’s knowledge or skill in a particular field, but my understanding of CPR or ability to bake shortbread cookies does not make me an authority over you. Other than the conflation of force and authority, this is one of the most common confusions people have about anarchism, made worse by the fact that there are some anarchists who still use authority to refer to both command and expertise just because Bakunin did. Personally, I find that creates needless confusion. If you’re using the word authority to describe everything from slavery to knowing how to build a bridge, then why use the word at all? Just use the word expertise when you’re talking about expertise. Listening to medical advice isn’t a hierarchy. Having expertise doesn’t give me the right to command you unless I hold a position in a hierarchical power structure that grants me that authority. As Bakunin himself said:

...we ask nothing better than to see men endowed with great knowledge, great experience, great minds, and, above all, great hearts, exert over us a natural and legitimate influence, freely accepted and never imposed in the name of any official authority whatsoever, celestial or terrestrial.

— Andrewism, How Anarchy Works » Dissecting Authority (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lrTzjaXskUU)

I highly recommend reading in full that section from Andrewism. It's no more than 5 minutes to read.

I don’t like unions strongarming companies

'i don't like it when the people who produce value for the capitalists have a say in their working conditions'

'i don't like it when corporations are forced to comply with the rule of law'

'i don't like it when neoliberals have to comply with local labour market practises in foreign markets'

'i don't like it when other people pull the boot out of my mouth'

I didn’t even say anything bigoted!

ok: https://beehaw.org/modlog?page=1&userId=9724172

It’s crazy and it’s tragic.

take a drink every time a narc parent uses the words 'weird' or 'crazy' to describe being treated like the horrible person that they are.

… and how exactly will Trudeau's resignation help?

Can you please explain what you are basing this critique on?

reviews i've read, and my own bygone notes and experience with The Dictator's Handbook and The Logic of Political Survival. my critique is leveraged at both of them, because my memories of them are intertwined, and the former is based heavily on the latter.

The Logic of Political Survival is based in game theory (rational choice model), which falls apart when you consider that people don't/can't always process all information and don't/can't always minmax their choices. the supporting data for selectorate theory is biased; correcting for this bias heavily diminishes the findings.

on the theory's usefulness as a tool for analysis: Gallagher and Hanson wrote two papers (1,2) about it. tl;dr: it's not a great predictor; it doesn't explain illiberal systems or peripheral politics; and it doesn't account for plurality.

What I find interesting in Selectorate Theory is that it links power and economics in a quantifiable way.

i can appreciate that; i also have a STEM background. if you're modelling a core liberal democracy, i think it does well enough. however, i think it's oversimplified, which is a common problem i find with quantified theories of social phenomena. it also probably falls apart if you want to predict the effects of a system reform/upheaval, or beyond.

that's why i refer to the philosophers and social scientists. their theories aren't calculus, but they provide the framework for understanding the origins and also what rough shape the outcome can take, without being too prescriptive.

I think that it’s a very useful tool that seems to be completely ignored in left/socialist circles.

it's probably ignored because there are many other theorists with more nuanced analyses of power: Marx, Gramsci, Marcuse, Foucault…

The Dictator's Handbook doesn't offer much in that regard. it assumes homo economicus and bases conclusions on flawed studies. selectorate theory has thus far failed as a tool for analysing — or making predictions about — states in the periphery.

i can relate to this. i can hear the electricity coursing thru the walls. lately it's been so loud that it keeps me up at night. no one else hears it, but i do.

i had to flip the breaker to the bedroom to quiet it down enough to sleep.

if you're not sure yet if you might be an anarchist, consider Are You An Anarchist? The Answer May Surprise You!.

there's a bot that will do this for you over on lemmy.world. i think you'd like it better over there.

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