Submitted 3 weeks ago by Allah@piefed.world to [deleted]
Eg: Law, Economics, bureaucracy
It’s not about hiararchy itself, it’s about check of power. When there is only obediance from below and nobody outside the chain of command can hold the top tiers accountable, now that’s when you know the system will be exploited.
It’s unjust hierarchy that’s bad.
Parent/child, teacher/student, expert/novice, etc are fine of course.
parent/child relationships can get pretty fucked up lol
I have a trauma bond with my mom because of her going back and forth between love and emotional abuse
Not all hierarchies are bad. For instance, in a judicial system, there need to be different tiers of courts as otherwise, if courts had universal authority and made conflicting decisions, it would complicate the law more so than it is already.
Similarly, in a large society that needs unity, if people make all decisions, the results would be catastrophic as most people don’t have the time or energy to focus on every mundane decision. In such a case, elected representatives becomes mandatory, creating a hierarchy.
Yet another example is cases where fast decision-making is required (e.g., to respond to an emergency). In such a case, there needs to be a central authority who holds others responsible and coordinates response.
Ultimately, if you consider a hierarchy where accountability is possible i.e. one party may have more power over the second than the second over first but the second still has some power over the first, then it makes accountability possible in hierarchies. Hierarchies are only wrong when the power gap increases, a small power gap is alright provided it doesn’t widen with time.
You could make the argument that a chain of accountability is better (X->Y->Z->X), but even such chains may include hierarchies (i.e. X itself is a hierarchy). Similarly, authority diffused among different people also suffers from potential shifting of blame. Truly neutral relations between different parties are impossible and ultimately, a power difference exists between any two parties, though it may be minute, and this power gap must be acknowledged.
In conclusion, there are a lot of disadvantages of hierarchies but there are some domains where hierarchies are good. There is no system of distribution of power that is without flaws.
Hierarchies are brilliant and necessary in almost all things. The problem we have with them is that people just want to be at the top, and the type of person most likely to make it there aren’t the kinds of people we want there.
In my experience, the people most invested in hierarchy have fears of loosing status not an assumption of gaining more. Poor white racists understand they’re poor, that’s why their afraid of any social program that may help black Americans, even when poor white people would benefit too.
they’re not “temporarily embarrassed millionaires”, they’re jealous dragons guarding a shitty treasure.
And it’s not just the poor. Middle class people often view a slide into working class as a life-or-death threat. amidst all the talk of “economic anxiety” around the 2016 election, average Trump supporters earned 20-30K more than Hillary voters.
There is noiddle class, and being working class effectively is a life sentence
So, when humans are involved they are inherently bad due to the reality of human nature. Got it.
I can tell youre being facetious but youre right on the money. We’re our own worst enemies
Bad in all aspects? People wouldn’t form hierarchies all the time if there were only downsides to it. It’s pretty much the clearest and easiest way to organize.
Perhaps the lower strata of the hierarchy experience nothing but downsides, whereas the top likely experiences minimal to none. This might be where narratives come into play to make the lower tiers believe the hierarchy is good for all.
It’s an easy way to stay organized, and being organized makes the whole operation, whatever it is that you’re trying to do, run better. It can be “good for all” when used properly as a tool like in a representative democracy, and not as the entire system.
I think the devil is in the details.
How accountable are the top? What incentives do they have when they make decisions?
What alternatives exist that is better without becoming byzantine in their implementation?
Are hierarchies inherently bad…
Allah asked, rhetorically.
Try asking this question in an anarchist comm
Imagine trying to coordinate something like food distribution on a national scale without some degree of hierarchy.
The issue with hierarchies being bad are typically because there are bad actors in them. It’s more of a people problem than an inherent one.
There’s always someone in charge. The leadership may be fluid, with one person leading the hunt, another running food preparation, and another in charge of keeping watch, but there’s always someone in charge.
Hierarchy is useful for organisation of a military and siege economy when faced with an external threat. Whether it is “good” or “bad” depends on how it is used and why. Hierarchy in general is damaging to the relationships of persons who exist within it and generally lead to abuse of power. I would like to see hierarchy done away with but this is only possible when external threats to one’s life and economy are eliminated.
Hierarchies are good when you want to distribute decision making across a large number of actors. Some actors can integrate the decisions of others around them and repeat them back so that other nearby actors have a better understanding of the larger scale situation without paying attention to it themselves. Similarly actors with long distance relationships can coordinate decisions for a large number of actors across very large groups.
This leads to a natural form of heirarchy with some actors being more central/abstract/supportive for a particular task or goal with other actors being more peripheral/direct or immediate/active.
Heirarchies work when the central, detectched actors serve to spread the decisions and needs of the peripheral, immediately involved actors.
Heirarchies fail when the central actors use their increased access to obtain resources, power, additional access, divide other actors to make themselves more important, etc.
Hierarchies are good to have if
Hierarchies can be good if there is real movement up and down a hierarchy according to skill level - a good army for instance does not succumb to nepotism when assigning posts, but Judges only on merit.
Hierarchies and other constraints are useful in politics to ensure that decisions are reached quickly. The Netherlands, which has dozens of small parties and a very level playing field between all of the parties. Had multiple elections within a short time frame and was unable to choose a PM in their last (or penultimate) election.
Where is anti-hierarchy useful, or “flat-hierarchy”?
Well, basically in all the places you already see it: Small or Medium sized businesses comprised only of very educated professionals, who are therefore better at managing themselves rather than being managed by someone from outside of their field. (E.g engineering designers, graphic designers)
Allotment associations
University departments/colleges. Secondary school departments.
The twin nested hierarchies of genetic and morphological relatedness are neither good nor bad. They just are.
lime@feddit.nu 3 weeks ago
filesystems
dotslashme@infosec.pub 3 weeks ago
I imagined my whole OS disk as a mongodb document after reading that comment. Pretty sure my brain puked somehow.
Saapas@piefed.zip 3 weeks ago
Egalitarian filesystem, all the files are on the desktop
porcoesphino@mander.xyz 3 weeks ago
Much of mathematics, science and computing
Limerance@piefed.social 3 weeks ago
A database like file system could work fine without hierarchy.