Harrowing Hierarchies?

I think it started when I blogged about bosses months ago. He disagreed with what I had written and it kinda escalated from there.

[Link added by Sunni]

Yeah, that is harsh but there are so many things wrong with his piece. You noted several. Here is another:

Another common capitalist objection is that participation to most, if not all, of these hierarchies is voluntary, and thus cannot be immoral. But this is a complete non sequitur: the fact that a system is voluntary does not make it moral. To take a banal example, becoming a soldier is voluntary, but that doesn’t make the murders you commit as a soldier any more moral, or the orders from your commanders any more moral.

He calls the objection to hierarchies based on voluntary action a non-sequitur, and then follows with a non-sequitur. Voluntarily becoming a solider and submitting to the hierarchy is not immoral. Murder is. It does not matter if one commits murder as a lone jilted lover, or as a solider "taking orders".

In fact, the solider example is an excellent one to point out how silly his argument is. In an anarchist society, organized defense will still be necessary, at least from time to time. Those joining a militia may elect their officers for limited time periods, but they will obey them during battle. This is the way to effectively defend their homes.

He makes the same "mistake" that many in what you call The Family make. Namely, he believes that his values apply to all. And if you do not agree then you are somehow impure. Well #@$! him.

To quote Tocqueville "The man who asks of freedom anything other than itself is born to be a slave."

All I ask is freedom. That is that the rights of all be respected. Those rights are only Life, Liberty and Property.

Beyond that everything is acceptable. It does not mean that I am going to participate, that I approve, or that I will not try to talk someone out of some behavior. But if it is voluntary it is not something I, or anyone else, should attempt to stop by force.

And make no mistake, when someone refers to something a "immoral" then they are saying that it is right to use force to stop it. I will use force to stop a murder, I will not use force to stop a couple from having a bit of B&D fun. Neither should anyone else.

He goes on to be even sillier by saying:

Anarchists are the only people who pipe up and say “hey, maybe this whole idea of limitless progress at all costs isn’t so great- maybe the costs are greater than we’re ready to accept.”

This is simply untrue. He only needs to read Al Gore's books to discover this.

Over all, he is an idiot, it is safe to ignore him.

I can't remember, I really can't remember, the last time I heard/read/saw/intuited someone other than myself use the word "grok." Thank you. Thank you. Thank you!!!

Now, on to the lesser material. I've tried to read a couple of pieces of his in the past and they've made no sense to me and I gave up. I don't think it is because he's smarter than me, but if he is how would I know? I just think that he's not a good thinker. And on that note I will bother myself no more with the topic.

Grok.... COOL! :-)


- NonE

There's a lot of context-shifting in his post. The soldier example is one, here is another;

The capitalist who argues for the triumphant-against-adversity, morally justified businessman working in a perfectly competitive environment, the religious believer who argues for a view of religion as a peaceful, purpose-giving institution, or the libertarian who argues for a minimal government concerned with other people’s welfare, are all arguing from “ideal scenarios.” Yes, it would be better for all concerned if these scenarios were paradigmatic, but they are not. In fact, these scenarios are very rare, and generally out-norm. You cannot use a scenario that is out-norm for a given system to argue for that system itself as being desirable! This can only achieve the opposite of the effect intended, which is to say “if there are so few good agents like those you mention, then the system must be pretty bad indeed.” --Francois Tremblay ("Why Hierarchies are Immoral" paragraph 15)

Note the shift in context from what a given system is supposed to do to what other systems actually do. That is, he shifts from a context of evaluating theoretical concepts to historical data, and criticizes the theoretical concept on the basis of historical data which is not even relevant to the concept itself. That the data invoked is used for support of a broad generalization (some employers are mean to their employees, therefore all employers are immoral; some parents abuse their position of authority and some families are dysfunctional, therefore the family as such is immoral, etc.) that goes entirely beyond the scope of what such information can possibly provide.

Further, his insinuation that the employer/employee relationship is inherently unjust (further elaborated in the comments section) reads more like a critique of the concept of a market economy and of commerce generally. The idea that the laborer, the seller, is entitled to an employer, the buyer, is to say that the buyer is obliged to keep the seller in business. If it holds good here it must everywhere and if we grant it we must also grant that the seller is entitled to a buyer, and that force is justified in ensuring it is so. In comment 5 he runs roughshod over the concept of private property itself like a drunken sleigh driver. Is the job site/workplace not someone's private property? Does it not then follow that the owner(s) have the right to exclude anyone they so choose? What if I 'fire' one grocery store for providing inadequate goods? I know the rule of thumb for bodegas is that their produce must be rotten, but dag nabbit, that ain't good enough for me!

Any true deconstruction of a hierarchy cannot take place from within it, but rather from the outside, both because such deconstruction would not be permitted to exist and because the ideology of a person in a hierarchy is implicitly or explicitly molded by the aims of that hierarchy. --"Why Hierarchies are Immoral" paragraph 16

Right alongside lucid analysis seems an almost Hegelian infiltration. Given the nature of not only the state, but of hierarchy itself, how is one to overcome it, but to be a Great Man selected by History itself to change things? Must, otherwise, a Nietzschean Homo Superior emerge who are/is beyond hierarchy to spell its inevitable historical doom?

If I were to broadly classify Mr. Tremblay's error, I would say it is this; in attempt to 'thicken' the dialectal approach to libertarian philosophy to its ultimate limit, he's taken it beyond its proper context; it becomes more than a critique/normative argument of politics and ends up washing rip tide over ontology, aesthetics, ethics, morality, sociology, organizational theory and...really anything it can get its blobular hands upon. In echoes of Frankenstein, Tremblay's Monster is sure to produce heartache, disaster and Boris Karloff pictures in its wake.

That or Jorge's right and he's an idiot, or just being sloppy...

Great, Sunni's a breeder. Glad you love controlling other human beings for your own enjoyment, Sunni, but that's not what I'm about. I'm against control in society and I want to fight against it.

.... is the key to his misunderstanding of supposed hierarchy within the realm of parent/child relationships. Take a look at point two of his definition: 2. The use of control must be directed, that is to say, from one specific person or group of people- the superiors- to another specific person or group of people- the inferiors.

To assume that one member of the parent/child relationship is always in the role of superior while the other is always the inferior is the weakest thread in Tremblay's line of thought.

When a baby cries because she's hungry, wet or tired, that action typically elicits a response from one, or both, parents. Is the baby directing her distress specifically to control the parent? Or when a child dashes out into the street in chase of a ball, is he consciously directing his rash behavior toward his parent to produce a reaction? How about when a parent places a plate of food in front of her child--- is she willfully doing this because she wants to entice a specific course from the child? What kind of superior behavior does a parent reading a book to a child conjure up? Why would the child be considered inferior just because he's being read to? As the child learns to read and reads a book to the parent, wouldn't that turn the tables and make the parent inferior, per Tremblay's definition?

In a parent/child relationship, a typical day consists of continual flip-flopping of action and response. Tremblay is putting forth an assumption that one entity in this particular party is superior to the other i.e. that the parent is lording superiority over the child. However, the reality is there's give and take, cause and effect, with the result being that one entity responds to the directive of the other on an ever changing plane. Because Tremblay calls out the parent as forever superior and the child forever inferior, as cast by his own definition, he's showing his own personal bias. This bias, in turn, reveals the inherent flaw in illustrating his definition of hierarchy with the parent/child relationship. And, if his illustrations do not fit well with the definition laid forth, could it also be that Tremblay's perceptions that led to his definition of hierarchy are not logical?

Sunni sed:

And that’s a fundamental element of property rights—the ability to control what’s mine. How can there be property rights without some measure of control over said property? If the concept of property is legitimate, then control over it must follow; and as a consequence, a simple hierarchy inevitably forms—the owner of something is entitled to things regarding that property that all nonowners are not.

Sunni, I've been hashing and over-easying this whole property rights thing for years. I've had several long drawn out discussions at Marc Steven's AdventuresinLegalLand.com forum on this subject for a few years as well. Marc chides me that I've written a book on the subject within his forum. I've come to the conclusion, contrary to what almost everyone else in the world thinks (just letting you know I'm a nut case right up front) that the idea of property rights is simultaneously one of the most important ideas ever, as well as being seriously deleterious to social functioning. I would suggest you read my article at Strike-the-Root.com "Do We Own Ourselves?" to get an idea of where I'm coming from. (I don't think I've ever put it more succinctly than there.) I kinda think it may make sense to you. But then, I'm usually wrong. ;)

I think the problem with those who hold to a strict view of property rights is that it engenders a sense of entitlement, and probably most of us here will agree that "entitlement" is perhaps one of the most destructive bits of human societal programming we have to contend with.

- NonE

This is becoming more and more the answer to a lot of questions like this.

We can share our definitions, and discuss our methods, but the moment someone proposes that a particular definition or method "must be eradicated," everyone present would be wise to place their hand on their sidearm and prepare to repel pirates... or smooth talking sociopaths, whichever the case may be.

The subject of hierarchies is a complex one, and there are not always easy answers. I hate getting into these moral discussions, because many folks default to simplistic answers and won't listen to complex arguments. Are hierarchies immoral? Coercive ones among adults are, certainly. Voluntary hierarchies and the issue of children are much more complex. I think that folks should approach them very carefully, but they are not automatically immoral.

The employer-employee relationship is especially troubling in the present situation because folks' options are limited in the current regulatory climate we live in. The cure there is to end the regulations that limit a person's ability to start their own businesses, and they can tell employers to take a hike if they are mistreated.

As far as children go Sunni, I know that you strongly believe in maximizing your children's freedom, far more than any other parent that I know. But it is true that young children are not able to recognize danger, and it is the parent's responsibility to protect them from it until they are able to recognize the risks and decide whether or not to assume the risks themselves.

The world is not black and white, no matter how much some people seem to think that it is. There are many shades of gray, and simplistic answers lead to judgmentalism.

"it’s clear that hierarchies are all-pervasive in our modern societies. How do we come to such a state of affairs?... My guess would be that some were initially caused by the necessities of pre-technological tribal life and have survived because they gave power to some favoured group, who became interested in maintaining that power."

This misses the point, and there's no need for guessing - like it or not (yes, kick and scream all you like), we're all biologically hardwired to look for status, and so heirarchies form naturally. Whether it be dogs, chimps or bloggers, status and heirarchy issues are 'part of the package'.

The original author's own rude reply to a post on this site is evidence of his own need for status, and his response to a perceived threat to his own imagined position in the blogging pecking order (ugh)

First off, I agreed with Kent's assessment that what you do on your own time, on your own property, is none of your boss's business. I also agree that your boss has the formal right to fire you for any reason he chooses. But you're not obligated to tell him the truth about what you do on your own time, or who you associate with, or anything else that's none of his business. I've lied on every one of those friggin' personality tests I ever took to get a job. If my boss wants to pry into my ass, he'll have to do it without my help.

More fundamentally, though: I said the boss has a *formal* right to fire you. But the proper question is not, as framed by debates between right-wing style libertarians and big government liberals, whether the government should be able to permit your boss to impose demeaning conditions of employment. The proper question to ask is, what kind of allegedly "free market" allows it? Why are we so dependent on wage labor in the first place, and so desperate to take a job on any terms, that we accept such demeaning conditions?

I would argue that government has played a massive role in recent centuries in reducing the bargaining power of labor, by shifting ownership of the means of production from working people to the rich (Enclosures and other land robberies), enforcing artificial property rights and scarcity that make capital expensive and difficult for ordinary people to obtain, enforcing regulations and licensing that erect barriers to small-scale production using spare capacity in the capital goods that ordinary people own anyway, etc.

As for whether hierarchies like those inside the corporation are evil as such, I'd have to say yes. They should not be forcibly suppressed or forbidden. And even in a free society, they might be chosen when their evils are outweighed by other evils, or by their increased efficiency benefits in some limited cases. But they're still evil as such. The reason they're evil is what Charles Johnson and Matt Mackenzie, in their work on Thick Libertarianism, call "entailment thickness." Most libertarians don't adopt libertarianism because they were first converted to the nonaggression principle, and then deduced the rest of the program from that principle. They come to libertarianism, and are exposed to and persuaded by the nonaggression principle, because they are first drawn to the philosophy by its resonance with general cultural values they already hold. And I would argue that even voluntary hierarchy and authority should be repugnant to libertarians, for the very cultural reasons and personal values that drew them to libertarianism.

Hierarchy promotes a culture of obedience and command, of submission to authority, that cannot be compartmentalized in the workplace. A person who spends half his working hours internalizing that culture of deference in the workplace, and seeing his material security and survival as dependent on submitting to and pleasing someone else, substituting the authority figure's priorities and judgments for their own, etc., is extremely unlikely to possess the character traits required for resisting the claims of authority outside the workplace.

It was for this reason that the founding generation so feared standing armies. Not just that they would be used against the civilian population. But that they would be a "school for slaves," that they would cultivate an internal culture of authoritarianism that was inimical to the values of the surrounding societies.