Why Somalia is NOT Anarchy

[grandpa]

Quote by: Alive What is your anarchist method of changing attitudes and behavior?

The first step is to get people to start thinking about existing attitudes and behavior. Sometimes introspection has to be triggered by someone or something else.
There is no one specific way to do this, though I know you would much rather have me provide some blueprint for you.

Quote by: Alive No, that's not the most obvious conclusion. Organizations tend to be hierarchical because some people are better leaders than others, and because not everyone can be a leader, since it is a specialized job. Hierarchy is efficient.

Why isn't it the most obvious conclusion for you? Do people at the top of a hierarchy not tend to benefit disproportionately from those at the bottom? That's one of the clearest patterns in human history, I think. You have not shown it to be false, either, and I don't think you could. My claim is common knowledge.

As for the idea that hierarchy exists because some are better leaders than others, it's important to consider a simple question: Better leaders at what?
Generally, leaders are "better" when it comes to dominating decisionmaking and resources. They often make decisions that are purely idiotic, but they are typically greedy and power-hungry. And I know this because I've worked in hierarchies. A lot of leaders (if not most of them) are simply incompetent, but people respect their titles anyway.

Many of the rules exist simply to keep people needlessly in line and to restrict access to whatever good or service is being provided. In other words, as Herbert Read has said, efficient leaders are fascists.
I encourage employee ownership because it is necessarily less fascistic.

You assume that everyone cannot be a leader, but I don't think that's the point. Nor is efficiency the main point. The point is whether we want people to remain ignorant and out of the decisionmaking process. Even if people are incompetent, will they become more competent by staying where they are? Not really.
You get smarter by having a diverse range of experiences, not by being pigeonholed.
And again, leadership is itself often overwhelmingly incompetent and even dangerous.

Quote by: Alive Yes? And how, specifically, are you going to bring this about?

You are being more than a little presumptuous here. I alone am not going to bring a more intellectual culture about. But we (anarchists) work to bring issues to light that would otherwise be ignored. An intellectual culture should be interested in challenging even the most common aspects of our society and culture, and anarchism does that more than any other political philsophy I've seen.

Grandpa h.

[Alive]

Quote by: grandpa The first step is to get people to start thinking about existing attitudes and behavior. Sometimes introspection has to be triggered by someone or something else. There is no one specific way to do this, though I know you would much rather have me provide some blueprint for you.

What are some examples of your method? You're correct, if one person comes up to me and gives me a specific plan for improving the world and another comes up to me and says we have to "get people to start thinking about" whatever but doesn't tell me how to do this, I'm going to pay a lot more attention to the first one since he actually has a plan to accomplish his goal. You're of little use if you do not know how to do what you want to do.

Why isn't it the most obvious conclusion for you?

I explained why. Do you want me to state it again? Maybe number my points to make it absolutely clear:

1. Leadership is a specialized job.
2. Having too many leaders is therefore a waste; just like making everyone a doctor is a waste because medicine is also very specialized and so giving lawyers medical training is useless
3. Therefore, hierarchies are more efficient than democracies, in general

Of course, making everyone a leader is worse than making everyone a doctor because giving lawyers medical training does not make doctors less efficient, while giving non-leaders leadership position does make the previous leaders less efficient because now there are multiple people who can make contradictory decisions which brings conflict, which brings division. But hey, don't take my word for it! Try to start your own organization where everyone has an equal say and try to bring it up to the power of other organizations. If you do it, I'll give you this point. :)

Do people at the top of a hierarchy not tend to benefit disproportionately from those at the bottom?

Yes, because they tend to bring more than those at the bottom. If you invest more you get more. This is a good thing of course; if the bottom got as much as the top there would be no incentive to try to move up, which means the people at the top would not necessarily be of the highest quality, and highest quality people are most needed at the top.

My claim is common knowledge.

Haha. Nope. It's not.

As for the idea that hierarchy exists because some are better leaders than others, it's important to consider a simple question: Better leaders at what? Generally, leaders are "better" when it comes to dominating decisionmaking and resources. They often make decisions that are purely idiotic, but they are typically greedy and power-hungry.

Tell me this. If leaders are so bad, then why are even voluntary organizations usually hierarchical? Who would voluntarily join an organization, even say a charity organization, if the leader is just going to steal their contribution? Of course leaders dominate decisionmaking! That's what it means to be a leader. That's the whole point. It goes back to the point I made about specialization. Doctors dominate medicine. Leaders dominate leadership. It's the way it's supposed to work in a specialized, efficient society.

(And I've been in some hierarchical organizations where no one WANTS to be the leader, because it is such hard work. Yet the organization still has to be hierarchical for the incredible efficiency benefits of such structure, so some nice person has to volunteer for the job. How do you fit this into your worldview?)

You assume that everyone cannot be a leader, but I don't think that's the point. Nor is efficiency the main point.

Maybe it isn't your main point. It's my main point. Efficient systems are the systems which are best at accomplishing their goals. If, say, the goal is to cure a deadly disease, have fun trying to give every health worker equal say in what happens; I'll let the educated leaders make the decisions, reap the efficiency bonuses, and actually cure the disease. Your ideas ignore the suffering ill people who will die because you care not about efficiency.

An intellectual culture should be interested in challenging even the most common aspects of our society and culture, and anarchism does that more than any other political philsophy I've seen.

Fine. But as I have told you before, make sure the aspects you are challenging actually deserve to be challenged, or you might find yourself far worse off than before.

[grandpa]

Quote by: Alive What are some examples of your method? You're correct, if one person comes up to me and gives me a specific plan for improving the world and another comes up to me and says we have to "get people to start thinking about" whatever but doesn't tell me how to do this, I'm going to pay a lot more attention to the first one since he actually has a plan to accomplish his goal. You're of little use if you do not know how to do what you want to do.

Okay, I'll provide some examples. I guess I should stop assuming people will research any of these things themselves.

Here is a link on the Spanish Revolution:

Infoshop.org - An Anarchist FAQ - I.8 Does revolutionary Spain show that libertarian socialism can work in practice?

"In Montblanc the collective dug up the old useless vines and planted new vineyards. The land, improved by modern cultivation with tractors, yielded much bigger and better crops. . . . Many Aragon collectives built new roads and repaired old ones, installed modern flour mills, and processed agricultural and animal waste into useful industrial products. Many of these improvements were first initiated by the collectives. Some villages, like Calanda, built parks and baths. Almost all collectives established libraries, schools, and cultural centres." [cited The Anarchist Collectives, p. 116] "Preoccupation with cultural and pedagogical innovations was an event without precedent in rural Spain. The Amposta collectivists organised classes for semi-literates, kindergartens, and even a school of arts and professions. The Seros schools were free to all neighbours, collectivists or not. Grau installed a school named after its most illustrious citizen, Joaquin Costa. The Calanda collective (pop. only 4,500) schooled 1,233 children. The best students were sent to the Lyceum in Caspe, with all expenses paid by the collective. The Alcoriza (pop. 4,000) school was attended by 600 children. Many of the schools were installed in abandoned convents. In Granadella (pop. 2,000), classes were conducted in the abandoned barracks of the Civil Guards. Graus organised a print library and a school of arts and professions, attended by 60 pupils. The same building housed a school of fine arts and high grade museum. In some villages a cinema was installed for the first time. The Penalba cinema was installed in a church. Viladecana built an experimental agricultural laboratory." ....In total, the 'regions most affected' by collectivisation 'were Catalonia and Aragon, were about 70 per cent of the workforce was involved. The total for the whole of Republican territory was nearly 800,000 on the land and a little more than a million in industry. In Barcelona workers' committees took over all the services, the oil monopoly, the shipping companies, heavy engineering firms such as Volcano, the Ford motor company, chemical companies, the textile industry and a host of smaller enterprises. . . Services such as water, gas and electricity were working under new management within hours of the storming of the Atarazanas barracks . . .a conversion of appropriate factories to war production meant that metallurgical concerns had started to produce armed cars by 22 July . . . The industrial workers of Catalonia were the most skilled in Spain . . . One of the most impressive feats of those early days was the resurrection of the public transport system at a time when the streets were still littered and barricaded.' Five days after the fighting had stopped, 700 tramcars rather than the usual 600, all painted in the colours of the CNT-FAI were operating in Barcelona." [Antony Beevor, The Spanish Civil War, pp. 91-2]

Here are some things on other innovations regarding cooperative enterprises:

ZNet |Parecon | Argentine Self Management
Yahoo! Groups
Yahoo! Groups
Yahoo! Groups
Yahoo! Groups

I didn't provide a blueprint for many reasons, including the obvious one that you haven't provided a specific scenario, so what could I talk about? Virtually no specifics had been provided, which left me to basically fight in the dark here.

Quote by: Alive 1. Leadership is a specialized job. 2. Having too many leaders is therefore a waste; just like making everyone a doctor is a waste because medicine is also very specialized and so giving lawyers medical training is useless 3. Therefore, hierarchies are more efficient than democracies, in general

You make some typical assumptions.

1. Leadership actually does not need to be a special position for one person or a small group of people. That type of arrangement is almost guaranteed to be incompetent. I could provide personal examples if you want, but I'm probably not supposed to talk about my job. You haven't provided any evidence to support this claim, nor does logical deduction guarantee participatory decisionmaking is doomed for failure. There is ample evidence, however, that more fascist arrangements lead to disaster. Just pick up a history book.


2. Argumentatively this doesn't make sense. What would be wrong with everyone having significant medical knowledge? As far as I'm concerned, I think that should be one of the aim of every society. It also makes sense that people should maximize legal knowledge or any other type of knowledge specifically to avoid specialization.
I'm actually surpised anyone would argue otherwise, though I probably shouldn't be.
The question comes down to whether we want people to be brilliant or stupid automatons just carrying out orders.

3. Michael Albert put it thusly:
"Capitalism squanders the productive capacities of about 80 percent of the population by training them primarily to endure boredom and take orders, not to fulfill their greatest potentials. It wastes inordinate resources on producing sales that aren't beneficial, and on enforcing work assignments that are coerced, and therefore resisted."

The reasons to oppose capitalism and the state are also summed up here:
Why do we oppose capitalism and the state?

Quote by: Alive Of course, making everyone a leader is worse than making everyone a doctor because giving lawyers medical training does not make doctors less efficient, while giving non-leaders leadership position does make the previous leaders less efficient because now there are multiple people who can make contradictory decisions which brings conflict, which brings division. But hey, don't take my word for it! Try to start your own organization where everyone has an equal say and try to bring it up to the power of other organizations. If you do it, I'll give you this point. :)

I'm not saying we can "make" everyone be a leader. I just think most people naturally want to have a say in the world around them. You portray this as a very, very bad idea, but base it on little but assumptions. There are different kinds of leaders. One type is those who naturally take initiative, commonly known as innovators. Any number of people could be classified as such, and accurately. The second class of leaders are those with a title, officially placed into a position of influence, typically by some ceremony (an election process of some sort). Or maybe they were born into the role, as is the case with political/economic dynasties. You can call this efficient if you want, but it isn't always beneficial.

Consider healthcare. The basic aspects of privatized care imply that the sickest beneficiaries will have to pay ever more than they already do for treatment. Some obvious things have already been happening:

1. People with less money get less care, and sometimes are even kicked out of the hospitals (it's actually happened, often because of overhead costs--it's not some myth)

2. Doctors may actually hobnob with the drug industry, meaning they'll get paid so new drugs can be used in treatment, perhaps even untested or experimental drugs.
This too is almost certainly happening
John Shirley Message Board: doctors bribed (with "rebates") to prescribe dangerous pharm drugs

Christian Parenti put it well:

AlterNet: U.S. Healthcare: The Free Choice to Suck Far from being "supple," "quality-oriented" and "intellect" organizations delivering better service at ever lower prices, these behemoths are more accurately described as massive for-profit bureaucracies offering shoddy care at inflated prices. When compared to "socialized" healthcare systems, like those in Canada or Germany, Americans pay twice as much per-capita in medical costs, roughly $4,000 per person. The extra cash paid out by Americans goes for "overhead." Private U.S. insurance companies on average take 14 percent in administrative costs while public healthcare systems like Medicare or the Canadian health systems spend only around 2 percent of their income in this manner. But it's not even accurate to describe the extra surcharge paid by Americans as "overhead" -- that implies some productive use. In reality, much of the America surcharge pays for bloated CEO salaries and boosting the value of medical stocks.

Good luck trying to tear this guy's argument apart.

As for contradictory decisions, those are bound to happen from time to time. Anarchism by no means fails to address this. You suggest participatory decisionmaking is doomed to failure, but even hiererchies have to accommodate themselves to external
pressures, because people naturally want to have influence. If lots of voices are excluded the situation can prove dire, indeed.

You also suggest a cooperative will not gain as much power as a hierarchy, but that's the whole point. Organizations should have limited power.

[grandpa]

Quote by: Alive Yes, because they tend to bring more than those at the bottom. If you invest more you get more. This is a good thing of course; if the bottom got as much as the top there would be no incentive to try to move up, which means the people at the top would not necessarily be of the highest quality, and highest quality people are most needed at the top.

You make the typical assumption that so many others make--that the rich do most of the work. That opinion is simply ridiculous, if not scandalous. You also make the bizarre assumption that badly paid workers have more motivation. I wonder exactly where you have worked. The main motivation in a dead end job is to leave it and go somewhere else if possible. And, assuming the people want to move up, they'll probably do it by becoming stooges or by carrying out every order, no matter how arbitrary or stupid. Or maybe some manager leaves because they are fed up with the job, thus leaving the position open to the most obedient stooge. If you can find some concrete examples where everyone at the top makes better decisions than those at the bottom, I'd be quite surprised. I can think of plenty of examples in my workplace of good ideas from workers simply being dismissed. That's incompetence and it's very common.
A lot of workers are simply afraid to make suggestions because they don't want to be fired for asking questions or making the job look bad, or maybe they don't want to bite the hand that feeds them. Well, the solution to that is to put the management decisions in everyone's hands, so the biting would be minimized. In the examples I've provided, people have clearly accomplished things based on these simple principles that otherwise wouldn't have occured. In Argentina the economy collapsed and people realized the obvious--business as usual simply would not work. So they started to take matters into their own hands rather than simply wait for someone else to boss them around. They didn't want to be superfluous people.

And what do you think multi-tasking shows? It's not entirely about cutting costs, it's also based on the accurate presumption that many people are adaptable enough to carry out different tasks given some base level of training.

Quote by: Alive Haha. Nope. It's not.

Really? There isn't a general consensus that the rich and powerful benefit most in a given country? As far as assumptions go, mine was pretty safe.

Quote by: Alive Tell me this.* If leaders are so bad, then why are even voluntary organizations usually hierarchical? Who would voluntarily join an organization, even say a charity organization, if the leader is just going to steal their contribution? Of course leaders dominate decisionmaking! That's what it means to be a leader. That's the whole point. It goes back to the point I made about specialization. Doctors dominate medicine. Leaders dominate leadership. It's the way it's supposed to work in a specialized, efficient society.

It's the way it's supposed to work, but hierarchical organizations are difficult to maintain, actually. There are always efforts to undermine them. That's why so many workplaces obsessively stress the importance of subordination and punishments. If those with power make people subconsciously feel like children, their positions of power will remain relatively ubchallenged. That's why hierarchy lasts. They also try to recharacterize the
contributions of workers by giving credit either to the leaders or to the organization as a whole and not to the individual workers. How frigging lame is that? That's saying something about the very nature of power, which is typically to depersonalize everyone involved. The situations I provided with healthcare are examples of this. They serve as examples of intentionally creating an inefficient society--in the name of efficiency!!

Quote by: Alive (And I've been in some hierarchical organizations where no one WANTS to be the leader, because it is such hard work. Yet the organization still has to be hierarchical for the incredible efficiency benefits of such structure, so some nice person has to volunteer for the job. How do you fit this into your worldview?)

I think your assumption is wrong.
I don't think hierarchy is essential to make solid leaders. People have to be given room to work, which is hard to do in an innovation-stifling, hierarchical situation.
If people simply carry out orders, of course you are going to have leaders and followers. But, again, the situation is not always efficient, at least in the broadest sense. Just consider the Argentinian example I provided, where leadership proved to be such a bitter failure that people must have felt immediate pressures to organize in an anarchic fashion. I think most workers are intelligent enough to take work into their own hands, especially when leadership is just as capable of error and misinformation as anyone else.

Quote by: Alive Maybe it isn't your main point. It's my main point. Efficient systems are the systems which are best at accomplishing their goals. If, say, the goal is to cure a deadly disease, have fun trying to give every health worker equal say in what happens; I'll let the educated leaders make the decisions, reap the efficiency bonuses, and actually cure the disease. Your ideas ignore the suffering ill people who will die because you care not about efficiency.

Here you mischaracterize my argument.
I wasn't saying that anarchism has to be inefficient (in fact, its principles have more often than not proven more efficient when applied), I was just saying that democracy should trump quantitative efficiency. If there proves to be a shortage of this or that widget, so be it, so long as the people are free and able to survive. This by no means requires people to have inadequate healthcare or poor education standards (which again, is evidenced pretty well by the anarchists in revolutionary Spain). Rather than make me out to be some kind of villain (which you were clearly doing), you should consider the likelihood that people would set priorioties in a functioning anarchist society, which means healthcare would undoubtedly take precedence over making a Nintendo Wii.
Things wouldn't be done in the name of quantitative efficiency, but because they simply should be done. I could have made that clearer. I suppose, but I made the error of assuming you would reach that conclusion.

Quote by: Alive But as I have told you before, make sure the aspects you are challenging actually deserve to be challenged, or you might find yourself far worse off than before.

Most of us have brains that place in a position to challenge all kinds of things. And I suggest we need to question all kind sof things if we want to make decent decisions.
When people apply critical thinking, I think they often find themselves better off for it.

Grandpa h.

[SoylentGreen]

Alive Of course, making everyone a leader is worse than making everyone a doctor because giving lawyers medical training does not make doctors less efficient, while giving non-leaders leadership position does make the previous leaders less efficient because now there are multiple people who can make contradictory decisions which brings conflict, which brings division.

Thats not proven to be true. Both the NZ Green Party and the Maori party run with co-leadership and are proving how effective they are with two leaders running equally.
The idea that there can be only one leader has no merit. It is based on the idea that it has always been that way and can;t change. But both of these political parties are proof of the inaccuracy of that idea.

[Alive]

Quote by: grandpa Okay, I'll provide some examples. I guess I should stop assuming people will research any of these things themselves.

Or perhaps we have researched but simply come to different conclusions.

1. Leadership actually does not need to be a special position for one person or a small group of people.

Never assumed as much; the point is that specialization is more efficient for ANY position, whether leader or else. I explained the efficiency benefits of specialization in previous posts. I will do so one more time below since you do not seem to be getting it.

2. Argumentatively this doesn't make sense. What would be wrong with everyone having significant medical knowledge?

Nothing would be wrong with everyone having medical knowledge. But training everyone to be a doctor is of extreme expense. Doctors spend decades in school to learn their craft; we would be an impoverished society if we made everyone go through that. The benefit of specialization is that some people can go to school to focus on being doctors and some can go to school to focus on being mechanics, and the doctors can treat the mechanic's illnesses while the mechanic can fix the doctor's car. This is much more efficient than sending the doctor to mechanic school and the mechanic to med school and having both do everything themselves. Please tell me if you disagree with anything in this paragraph so far because I think it is quite obviously true.

The analogy works for leadership as well; its a hard, highly-specialized job and therefore you need people to devote their entire lives to it while other people devote their working lives to their own fields, be it medicine mechanics or anything else.

I wish you would at least acknowledge the correctness of the specialization argument in theory. Then you can argue why it doesn't apply to all situations, and we can move forward in our discussion. But it is definitely a valid argument.

You also suggest a cooperative will not gain as much power as a hierarchy, but that's the whole point. Organizations should have limited power.

Limited in what sense? To continue with my earlier example, I want medical research organizations to be as powerful as possible in finding cures for diseases. So I guess it depends on what kind of organization we're talking about here.

[Alive]

Quote by: SoylentGreen The idea that there can be only one leader has no merit.

I never said as much. I said that it is stupidly inefficient to make EVERYONE a leader. You should have a group of good leaders to make decisions, not one and not everyone in the organization. This is the way the best organizations are usually run, whether corporations, scientific organizations, or political organizations.

It is based on the idea that it has always been that way and can;t change.

Absolutely wrong and even slightly insulting; I gave very specific and intelligent efficiency reasons why limiting the numbers of leaders makes sense. Please respond to these reasons, and not some made up reason I never wrote, if you want to have a reasonable discussion.

[SoylentGreen]

Alive I wish you would at least acknowledge the correctness of the specialization argument in theory

Ok I can agree with that, but not with that the analogy of leadership.
If as you suggest it is so specalised then why are leaders only given a few years at the job before they must step down as in the president.
You would not ask a doctor or mechanic to give up his job after only a few years so why a leader.

Limited in what sense? To continue with my earlier example, I want medical research organizations to be as powerful as possible in finding cures for diseases. So I guess it depends on what kind of organization we're talking about here

And again why your analogy doesn't hold.
While you would want a medical research organizations to be as powerful as possible in finding cures for diseases, would you also want the research organisation to have the power to impose that cure on you especially if you were fully convinced that there was a viable alternative that you would prefer to use.

[Alive]

Quote by: SoylentGreen Ok I can agree with that, but not with that the analogy of leadership. If as you suggest it is so specalised then why are leaders only given a few years at the job before they must step down as in the president.

We have periodic elections in democracies; these are not particularly "efficient" but perhaps they have other benefits (I happen to be against them for other reasons). This does not contradict, however, the idea of a trained leadership class, which is not composed primarily of the president but more so of his appointees and his non-appointee bureaucracy who do in fact train for long periods to be able to become leaders in their particular field. Regardless, you are correct, and there are reasons only political organizations, which are not known for their efficiency or effectiveness, are run democratically, whereas other more effective organizations at least attempt to make sure their leaders have adequate training before giving them the job.

You would not ask a doctor or mechanic to give up his job after only a few years so why a leader.

Agreed, you shouldn't ask a leader to do so either provided he is leading well.

While you would want a medical research organizations to be as powerful as possible in finding cures for diseases, would you also want the research organisation to have the power to impose that cure on you especially if you were fully convinced that there was a viable alternative that you would prefer to use.

That is not the goal of research organizations, so I don't see what your hypothetical situation has to do with reality.

[grandpa]

Quote by: Alive Nothing would be wrong with everyone having medical knowledge. But training everyone to be a doctor is of extreme expense. Doctors spend decades in school to learn their craft; we would be an impoverished society if we made everyone go through that. The benefit of specialization is that some people can go to school to focus on being doctors and some can go to school to focus on being mechanics, and the doctors can treat the mechanic's illnesses while the mechanic can fix the doctor's car. This is much more efficient than sending the doctor to mechanic school and the mechanic to med school and having both do everything themselves. Please tell me if you disagree with anything in this paragraph so far because I think it is quite obviously true.

I haven't argued against doctors spending a lot of time accumulating knowledge and skills. If anything, people should spend more time in general studying things.
I also didn't say we should make everyone become a doctor, but that--to borrow your words--we would be an impoverished society if we sold ourselves short on the human ability to do multiple jobs. As I've indicated before, the medical
community is as corruptible as anything else in our society, so why not make greater general scientific and medical knowledge one of the chief aims of education?
That's one way to reduce corruption.
Most doctors work hard and sincerely care for people, but that by no means suggests we should be ever more dependent on certain specialists or that a doctor shouldn't know how to fix his/her own car. That everyone should be able to do everything themselves is a decent goal. I don't expect it's absolutely possible, but it's certainly a decent aim.

In any case, when overspecializing acts as a wall between people, problems occur. That's true whether we're talking about medicine, mechanical engineering or education in general. In our society, knowledge still has artificial restrictions to it, chiefly for economic reasons. The repercussions are obvious. People will be systematically ignorant. This is true with pretty much everything.
Consider, for example, how my Google news search for the word "overspecialization" had restricted results.
(overspecialization - Google News)

They ask the viewer to pay a small fee just to see the article. That is itself specialization, a restriction to the flow of information that could otherwise be free. They looked like decent articles, too, so interesting takes on overspecialization went unread.
It's clearly not efficient in every case for everyone.

I'll give a personal example to try to drive this point home.
I could decide, like a lot of people, to restrict access to music I've made.
I could say "from now on people will have to pay [X amount] for this song or that." But that would actually be a disservice to any people who now have the option of hearing the music for free online. The question should be: Why should we make certain sounds, ideas or tasks special to certain people only?

On top of that, the best way for humans to cope with disasters is for them to try to specialize in everything. The examples I provided earlier indicate that many people can do tasks they were previously restricted from and actually make it work. People just need to realize their potential, what William Godwin called "perfectability."

Quote by: Alive The analogy works for leadership as well; its a hard, highly-specialized job and therefore you need people to devote their entire lives to it while other people devote their working lives to their own fields, be it medicine mechanics or anything else.

If more people devoted themselves to important tasks it would render strong leadership roles less relevant. Certain people wouldn't have to spend so much time on things. But this is discouraged in an economy where people find themselves doing work that is quite meaningless in order to survive (a very common situation, obviously). Again, the consequences of dependence are direct and obvious, and it's not "efficient" for everyone. A lot of people aspire for meaningful work but can't get it due to artificial restrictions.

Quote by: Alive Limited in what sense? To continue with my earlier example, I want medical research organizations to be as powerful as possible in finding cures for diseases. So I guess it depends on what kind of organization we're talking about here.

Organizations in general should be limited so they don't become chimeras.

So, following your lead, medical research should not be exclusive, because it is clearly corruptible. Consider the American Cancer Society, which many smaller organizations accuse of not focusing enough on cancer-related environmental issues. Certainly, the ACS would be wise to consider these groups, at least if it wants to better address cancer.

Here is an interesting link on the issue of the ACS:
The American Cancer Society: The World's Wealthiest "Nonprofit" Institution

Grandpa h.

[grandpa]

Quote by: Alive Regardless, you are correct, and there are reasons only political organizations, which are not known for their efficiency or effectiveness, are run democratically, whereas other more effective organizations at least attempt to make sure their leaders have adequate training before giving them the job.

Actually, as I've indicated in previous examples, non-state organizations can be run both more democratically and more adequately.
Direct democracy needn't mean general ignorance and incompetence, whereas hierarchy essentially requires it in order to thrive.

Quote by: Alive That is not the goal of research organizations, so I don't see what your hypothetical situation has to do with reality.

Actually, as I've shown, research organizations, and organizations in general are corruptible. That's why it's practical to analyze them as critically as possible, even if it's currently not the most popular pastime.

Grandpa h.

[Alive]

Look, grandpa, I'm not arguing about the specific degree of specialization a society should have. I think our society is actually overspecialized, but that's for another thread. I'm only arguing that a certain amount of specialization can vastly increase the efficiency of a system. Overspecialization has problems too, but that's not pertinent to my argument right now.

You seem only willing to argue in extremes. I say why extreme underspecialization is absurd, and you counter by pointing out the absurdity of extreme overspecialization. That is not a counterargument, it just means we should look for something somewhere in between. If you agree with that, we have made progress in our discussion, something I don't think we've done yet. Do you agree with that?

That everyone should be able to do everything themselves is a decent goal.

So we should send everyone to med school, and law school, and plumbing school, and argriculture school, and engineering school, and then hope they have enough time left to actually do the work that needs to be done? :) You really believe that?

In our society, knowledge still has artificial restrictions to it, chiefly for economic reasons.

With the advent of the internet (not to mention libraries, etc.) the main restriction to knowledge is time. Time = money of course, so if you consider that an "artificial economic reason" I won't disagree, except for the "artificial" part.

There is so much knowledge in the world, so many skills! It is simply physically impossible to learn all of it in the space of a lifetime. That is why specialization exists. So we can benefit from knowledge we do not know ourselves. This is a good thing. Please don't tell me I need to know everything about how my computer works before I can post on volconvo; this forum would have no members.

They ask the viewer to pay a small fee just to see the article. That is itself specialization, a restriction to the flow of information that could otherwise be free.

Realize, however, that this is not an artificial restriction. Writing that article took time; writers need to eat too!

If more people devoted themselves to important tasks it would render strong leadership roles less relevant. Certain people wouldn't have to spend so much time on things.

Explain in more detail please?

But this is discouraged in an economy where people find themselves doing work that is quite meaningless in order to survive (a very common situation, obviously).

No, not obviously. Work that is truly meaningless will not produce profit in a free economy, and therefore will be eliminated. Only productive work (i.e, work that helps yourself or other people) will occur in a free economy.

Please define "meaningful work" if you disagree with my use of it.

So, following your lead, medical research should not be exclusive, because it is clearly corruptible.

Who is talking about exclusive? I only mean that medical research should be efficient. That's my argument.

Consider the American Cancer Society, which many smaller organizations accuse of not focusing enough on cancer-related environmental issues. Certainly, the ACS would be wise to consider these groups, at least if it wants to better address cancer.

And what exactly does this have to do with our disagreements?

[Alive]

Quote by: grandpa Actually, as I've indicated in previous examples, non-state organizations can be run both more democratically and more adequately.

Wrong, for all the reasons I've already discussed. But like I've asked before, why don't you start a great democratic organization to solve all these problems better than all the hierarchical organizations trying to solve them now? There's a reason so many organizations are hierarchical, and the reason is that it works.. You seem so ideologically focused that you can't understand how things work in practice.

Actually, as I've shown, research organizations, and organizations in general are corruptible. That's why it's practical to analyze them as critically as possible, even if it's currently not the most popular pastime.

What does this even mean?! Of course organizations are corruptible, so what? How is that a response to my point? An efficient research organization that has a research goal in mind is better than an inefficient research organization, do you disagree?

[grandpa]

Quote by: Alive Look, grandpa, I'm not arguing about the specific degree of specialization a society should have. I think our society is actually overspecialized, but that's for another thread. I'm only arguing that a certain amount of specialization can vastly increase the efficiency of a system. Overspecialization has problems too, but that's not pertinent to my argument right now.

Actually, it is relevant. In a world with lots of people, it's important to question how much specialization is necessary and how open the system is.

Quote by: Alive You seem only willing to argue in extremes. I say why extreme underspecialization is absurd, and you counter by pointing out the absurdity of extreme overspecialization. That is not a counterargument, it just means we should look for something somewhere in between. If you agree with that, we have made progress in our discussion, something I don't think we've done yet. Do you agree with that?

Exactly, but I should not I haven't necessarily argued for extreme underspecialization. I primarily noted it's a practical aim for people to be be independent. A wide range of interests should be encouraged, and it makes sens eto do this so we don't end up with a superfluous population.

Quote by: Alive So we should send everyone to med school, and law school, and plumbing school, and argriculture school, and engineering school, and then hope they have enough time left to actually do the work that needs to be done? :) You really believe that?

You are very much simplifying my position, assuming again that I'm trying to establish some perfect blueprint for the world. Things don't work quite like that. Again, we shouldn't send everyone to do everything, but encourage a world in which people want to be self-sufficient. If people are capable of doing some of the things you've listed above, then by all means why shouldn't they?

Quote by: Alive With the advent of the internet (not to mention libraries, etc.) the main restriction to knowledge is time. Time = money of course, so if you consider that an "artificial economic reason" I won't disagree, except for the "artificial" part.

Really? You don't think invented restrictions are artificial?

Quote by: Alive There is so much knowledge in the world, so many skills! It is simply physically impossible to learn all of it in the space of a lifetime. That is why specialization exists. So we can benefit from knowledge we do not know ourselves. This is a good thing. Please don't tell me I need to know everything about how my computer works before I can post on volconvo; this forum would have no members.

Of course one can not learn all in the space of a lifetime, but why not try? You don't need to know how everything works, but you'd certrainly reduce your ignorance by trying to figure everything out.

Quote by: Alive Realize, however, that this is not an artificial restriction. Writing that article took time; writers need to eat too!

It is indeed an artificial restriction.

American Heritage Dictionary - ar·ti·fi·cial (är'tə-fĭsh'əl) adj. Made by humans; produced rather than natural. Brought about or caused by sociopolitical or other human-generated forces or influences: set up artificial barriers against women and minorities; an artificial economic boom.

Quote by: Alive Explain in more detail please?

Simply put, if there was greater general medical knowledge and more people in the field of medicine, it would likely free up more of a given doctor's time.

Quote by: Alive No, not obviously. Work that is truly meaningless will not produce profit in a free economy, and therefore will be eliminated. Only productive work (i.e, work that helps yourself or other people) will occur in a free economy.

This is idealism, pure and simple. I've done essentially meaningless paid work--things that no one really had to do or possibly that no one should