I had a conversation with a friend of mine yesterday. As usual with this particular friend of mine, our chat provoked a blog post. One of the prominent themes of my college experience has been that my level of knowledge about the workings of our human institutions has increased equivalently with my lack of faith in the centralization of government.
It’s mostly a question of institutional response to situations of novelty and uncertainty. I have come to believe that, in the same way a planned economy cannot regulate the distribution of a societies resources as effectively as a market, a central government can never respond to novelty as well as a distributed decisionmaking network.
My work on self organization has lead me to believe that we never needed a leviathan to impose social order, rather, order emerges natural from the regular interaction of individuals.
So I was explaining this to my friend, remarking that anarchy, a system of no leaders, would be a much more orderly society than is usually predicted.
She objected, inquiring what would prevent someone from simply taking a leadership role and subjugating the others. My immediate response was that in an anarchy that person would be told to fuck off. At that moment I realized that anarchy isn’t a society without leaders, it’s one without followers.
If every individual in a society can be competent and confident in their own decisions, the need for central government is eliminated. As technology reduces the barriers to direct connection between individuals, it is increasingly possible to form self regulating communities to perform functions once requiring rigid, unresponsive governmental systems. These communities can, and, in my opinion, will become the norm. Especially in this current environment of budget cuts, waste, cronyism, and public distrust.
Anyway I’m excited.