It's not just the oppressive nature of human hierarchies that we must acknowledge, it's also their scaling limits. Our systems have become top-heavy and ill-equipped to deal with complexity
Everything is a network and therefore guided by network principles, including structure, value, signaling (aka settlements), etc... Simple, complicated and complex systems all share the same properties. Well functioning networks tend to reduce risk and exhibit more "stability" while at the same time being generative; so that the whole is sustainable. Therefore hierarchy is more a relative as opposed to absolute construct. There are tradeoffs across all layers north-south and boundaries east-west of the network or system of networks depending on supply and demand.
Dominance hierarchies are moderately sophisticated human systems, they originate by simple means: Men being assholes 🎯😂
Max, your Substack title, I should have written it, great!
And pleased to discover your unique and generative writings.
About the Soviet planners inability to tie their own shoelaces, yes, if the Shoe Fits, Wear it and if it doesn’t?
"We pretend to work, and they pretend to pay." Soviet joke
And do you know “Liberty, Dicta & Force” by Louis E. Carabini, see his ch. 8
“Complexity, Adaption, and Order: Visualizing the Invisible Hand,”
https://mises.org/library/liberty-dicta-force
“All the problems of the man who fears for his humanity come down to the same question: how to remain free?” Stefan Zweig
Everything is a network and therefore guided by network principles, including structure, value, signaling (aka settlements), etc... Simple, complicated and complex systems all share the same properties. Well functioning networks tend to reduce risk and exhibit more "stability" while at the same time being generative; so that the whole is sustainable. Therefore hierarchy is more a relative as opposed to absolute construct. There are tradeoffs across all layers north-south and boundaries east-west of the network or system of networks depending on supply and demand.
"'knowledge' contrived in the vapors of abstraction."
Nice line!