Jo Freeman

Tyranny of structureless is an excellent essay, [1] for the lucky 1 in 10,000 who haven't read it! [1] https://www.jofreeman.com/joreen/tyranny.htm

The main criticism of flat organizational structure is that management will develop as an emergent property anyway, but it will do so poorly. "The Tyranny of Structurelessness is the classic essay on the subject: https://www.jofreeman.com/joreen/tyranny.htm

Reminds me of the classic Tyranny of Structurelessness [0] and how power accumulates out of necessity, convenience, informal networks, and so on. [0] https://www.jofreeman.com/joreen/tyranny.htm

Thanks! Parts of that ep reminded me greatly of The Tyranny of Structurelessness (1971-1973): https://www.jofreeman.com/joreen/tyranny.htm (the notion that we tend to overly ascribe stability and reproducibility to a system reminds me of Vilfredo Pareto having convinced himself that 80-20 was the invariable power law)

> As the they say, “if you don’t have any managers you have politics”. This reminds me of the classic essay "The Tyranny of Structurelessness" https://www.jofreeman.com/joreen/tyranny.htm

This is great, however the phrasing of the question might lead to a "Tyranny of Structurelessness" [0] issue where they're not asking for a diversity statement, but are expecting the answer to contain a diversity statement. Time will tell. 0: https://www.jofreeman.com/joreen/tyranny.htm

I've of the best essays I've read explaining this kind of phenomenon is The Tyranny of Structurelessness (https://www.jofreeman.com/joreen/tyranny.htm). It's a critique from a feminist in the 70s account how the feminist movement's attempt to have no hierarchy created implicit hierarchies that were less accountable too the group than explicit hierarchies

I think the missing piece is your belief that "As sure as day follows night, they'll eventually get caught" Academic research is sort of a "Tyranny of Structurelessness"[1] system where people can't risk alienating themselves from the underlying power structures or it'll destroy their career. On top of that, there isn't a good mechanism to report fraudulent research. So when someone finds a paper that can't be replicated, the sensible thing to do is ignore it and move on. Causing a ruckus will get them labeled a troublemaker, and there isn't any guarantee it'll make a difference. And further, there are no material incentives for exposing a bad paper. It doesn't get the researcher another citation which is their currency. It just wastes time they could have spent working towards a new paper of their own. https://www.jofreeman.com/joreen/tyranny.htm

https://www.jofreeman.com/joreen/tyranny.htm "The Tyranny of Structurelessness" is a great read on this. TLDR: structure will always form, so it's best for formalize it from the beginning. That said, I've been interested in the idea of "adhocracies" for a while now, and it seems to me that it would be possible to form structureless groups that, once they have fulfilled their purpose, disband thus becoming immune from the sort of rot that would otherwise happen. And I'll also say: the same rot can happen in a group with a well-defined structure too. So it's not all cut and dry.

Flattening excessive hierarchical structures is the solution, but the devil is in that "excessive" qualification. It's best to eliminate narrow choke-points where a single person can make themselves a problem for the whole organization, and that may mean lopping to top of the pyramid off (a pyramid, unless truncated, narrows to a single point.) But if you try to flatten all hierarchy entirely, you create a new sort of problem; an informal hierarchy where the only rule is to be popular: https://www.jofreeman.com/joreen/tyranny.htm

I'll recommend to bystanders (I assume you're already familiar with it from your comment), the seminal "Tyranny of Structurelessness", which makes this point lucidly. https://www.jofreeman.com/joreen/tyranny.htm

> After following some "dark enlightenment" people on Twitter and libertarians with a subset of very far right viewpoints, it's becoming clear that lots of these people claim to want "freedom," but what they really want is freedom from the existing power hierarchies, and to create new ones in which they are on top again. The linked essay explicitly makes the point that in the absence of formalised structures, power will accrue into an implicit elite from either pre-existing social networks or the formation of in-groups of those who can network and who tick the boxes of qualities the group views as good. Libertarians want to remove the formal structure of government in favour of a new unelected and unaccountable elite arising from whichever group they feel part of. At least the ones that aren't just dupes do. https://www.jofreeman.com/joreen/tyranny.htm

This was a fantastic essay by a first-wave feminist about the "tyrrany of structurelessness". The idea is basically that if you abolish formal hierarchies, hieararhcies will be established but they'll be informal ones, outside any system of checks and balances. It was dealing with a smaller scale that an entire political system, but it stuck with me and I think it's relevant here: https://www.jofreeman.com/joreen/tyranny.htm

A classic essay on this phenomenon: "The Tyranny of Structurelessness" https://www.jofreeman.com/joreen/tyranny.htm

I would recommend reading [0] before being so quick to tear everything down. You're replacing the devil you know with the devil you don't know, so I think it's worth making a point of learning more about that one. [0] https://www.jofreeman.com/joreen/tyranny.htm

I like to think of it in terms of power vacuums. A power vacuum will be filled. Do we chose to fill it with thoughtful intent, or do we allow it to fill itself with whomever or whatever it pleases? One of my favorite pieces: https://www.jofreeman.com/joreen/tyranny.htm

I would love to hear more than rumor about it, but what I've heard suggested a lot of "tyranny of structurelessness" [1] problems. If the former power structures go away, then people fall back on informal tools, including charm, popularity, favor-trading, and abusive behavior, and a de facto power structure emerges. Since this doesn't really include mechanisms for accountability, it can devolve into lord-of-the-flies scenarios. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Tyranny_of_Structurelessness and https://www.jofreeman.com/joreen/tyranny.htm

Re: the flat management structure, this essay is worth a read if you haven't seen it. The Tyranny of Structurelessness https://www.jofreeman.com/joreen/tyranny.htm

This seems like an opportune moment to remind people about the Tyranny of Structurelessness article. If you haven't come across it before, it's definitely worth a read. http://www.jofreeman.com/joreen/tyranny.htm

Also discovered by feminist organizations in decades past. A good read: There is no such thing as a structureless group. Any group of people of whatever nature that comes together for any length of time for any purpose will inevitably structure itself in some fashion. --Jo Freeman, "The Tyranny of Structurelessness" http://www.jofreeman.com/joreen/tyranny.htm

Are you talking about the wikipedia article or http://www.jofreeman.com/joreen/tyranny.htm I have been in those same activist groups. Right now I work for an "engineering run" organization. Maybe my emphasis should have been on _a little_. Every organization collapses towards high-school. Those that don't are the most successful. Just as the majority of Olympic athletes are freak'n amazing, the contest is rarely not who excels but who doesn't falter.

> there is still a hierarchy of important people that will always emerge. It's just much harder to see now. Indeed; and in fact it is now obligatory to mention the excellent Essay of ancient wisdom on the subject: The Tyranny of Structurelessness http://www.jofreeman.com/joreen/tyranny.htm

The actual essay is well-worth a read: http://www.jofreeman.com/joreen/tyranny.htm

(I'm not going to subscribe to read this so I'm just assuming...) Is this a good time to bring up the Tyrany Of Structurelessness? http://www.jofreeman.com/joreen/tyranny.htm The observation is: if you pretend that you don't have a hierarchy, then your de facto hierarchies will be harder to see, harder to criticize, harder to improve. This is reflected in the standard failure modes of agile process ( http://gilesbowkett.blogspot.com/2014/09/why-scrum-should-basically-ju… ) so, tell me - who actually makes decisions at Facebook?

Humans have a natural tendency towards social hierarchies. If you don't provide structure people will instinctively create it; so attempting to entirely remove structure from an organization is idealistic and inevitably fails. This usually leads to hidden power structures and counter-productive popularity dynamics. A great classic read about this topic is essay "The Tyranny of Structurelessness" by Jo Freeman: https://www.jofreeman.com/joreen/tyranny.htm The simplest way to encode a structure is with a basic hierarchal structure where power gets delegated and directions flow down from a single individual at the top, and information gets filtered and flows up to enable decision making. This is one of the most simplest and common structures you see across society. It is a structure great at quick, efficient decision making, but has numerous flaws that make it suboptimal in many cases. Notably, the single-directional flows means it's particularly bad at self-regulating, and therefore it's susceptible to corruption without a significant outside influence. However you can leverage systems and technology to engineer and enable novel and durable alternative structures and power dynamics. On a societal level, democracy is a hugely successful example of a system like this. Elections create a loop from the bottom to enable accountability for the person at the top, helping solve a number of failure states. You also have techniques like creating multiple structures that operate in…

Sure. It's not a problem that people who want a casual chat with friends or interest groups use a platform for casual chatting. I say that even though I prefer the earlier world where everything was indexed and people liked to overshare on Facebook. The problem is when you use Discord (or Slack, or IRC - yes, IRC is just as bad in this context) to run a community that's outward-facing. For example, when a large OSS project, or a foundation, decides to use Discord as its main support/hanging out channel. Participating in such group requires so big an investment of time and attention that it instantly shuts off anyone who has a day job or other interests and responsibilities. Again, this is not about causal chats - your "offtopic" forum thread probably is better off being a Discord channel. The problem is when contributing to, or receiving support from, such community requires being active on a chat group. Remember "The Tyranny of Structurelessness"[0]? That seminal article from 1970s that, for some reason, just doesn't want to die? It was posted here just three days ago[1]. It actually talks about this. What it calls "elites" that naturally grow as an informal hierarchy in a group without a strong formal hierarchy - Discord, et al. are pretty much designed to create those. The people who are able and willing to keep up with the chat flow, following it all day every day, are the ones that become those "elite", and end up running the community. -- [0] -…

The Tyranny of Structureless that Graydon recommends is well worth a read [0]. It's changed my mind on the question of the anonymity of the bad actors in the repeated dramas in Rust. What struck me as odd about JT's resignation was that they were nominally in the group that was in charge of everything. They were even primarily responsible for drafting the new organizational structure. Why, then, did they feel the need to resign when they had so much influence? Having read Tyranny I think I understand. JT resigned because the recent episode revealed just how little influence they actually had and how little the supposed structure of the project mattered. What structure was there was a smokescreen for the actual informal power structures in the project. Fasterthanli.me called out these informal networks and promised to stop participating in them in order to try to minimize their legitimacy [1], but I don't think that is going to be enough. The problem is the anonymity of the elite that is actually governing the project—we don't know who they are, so we don't know the informal structure through which decisions are actually made. Those who do know insist on keeping quiet, which does prevent an internet mob but also preserves those informal structures from scrutiny and dismantling. We need the people in the know to come clean not so that we can unleash an internet mob but to lay bare the actual power dynamics. Until that's done it won't matter how much the formal structure…

ALittleLight gives a good general answer here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29533866 Building and departing on that somewhat: Do study what has worked, and what hasn't. Keep in mind that success may be based on chance, and negative examples also teach. Keep in mind that there are many ways in which political movements fail (and a few that help them succeed). The study of failed utopian projects is highly illuminating. My view is that creating a self-perpetuating "intentional community" is a possible approach. For these to work, the community itself must be practically viable, and address basic levels of human needs: shelter (obviously), food, work, society, etc. In my view the college town is amongst the more successful of these in the past century or two, though that itself may be based on conditions no longer broadly present. I strongly recommend Jo Freeman's "Tyranny of Structurelessness". https://www.jofreeman.com/joreen/tyranny.htm I'd strongly recommend going to the communities most affected by the problem at hand and getting their perspective. I don't believe that those oppressed by a system always fully understand the nature of that system or the solution. I do feel that they can offer highly useful insights, and that if you hope to enlist their support they will want to be participants and not mere passengers. The general problem is one called "politics". It turns out there's a literature on this stretching back millennia. Old dead men…

> But the stateless form of man is that of small networks of aligned people, and therein lies the check and balance. I don't think that will work, either. A company like Intel couldn't exist based on small networks. It requires massive scale. Back in the 70's the car manufacturers British Leyland was handed over to the unions. They abolished management and made decisions collectively. In the end, they realised that that kind of system couldn't work, and brought in management. Checks and balances may work to some extent. Power structures usually emerge. There's always going to be an elite class. A great essay called "The Tyranny of Structurelessness" was written by Jo Freeman, a feminist no less. https://www.jofreeman.com/joreen/tyranny.htm I urge everyone to read it. It will really shape your perspective. It seems to me that pure anarchist societies are inherently fragile and that power structures will inevitably emerge.

a classic essay discussing the real ground truth problems of decentralized anything is by Jo Freeman, called the tyranny of structurelessness [0]. though most of the punches land toward the end, it is a fascinating and short read, in which she dissects, with the sober disappointment of a former optimistic evangelist, exactly why structureless ("decentralized" before that term became vogue) movements are never what they claim to be, and indeed cannot be. why? because structureless coordination of groups above a handful members doesn't scale beyond the achievement of the simplest kinds of goals, such as consciousness-raising (or, in crypto-promoter terms, spreading "adoption"). any group objective requiring specialization of labor, coordination of resources and responsibility inevitably succumbs to the insidious creep of informal, but officially disavaowed structural networks of insiders. it is especially pernicious for newcomers, who have been heavily messaged about "decentralization" or "structurelessness" and engage themselves with the groups identity without any awareness of these cryptic back channel networks that actually govern its operation. only after they are committed do they slowly find out there really is a hierarchy and a command structure. i highly recommend a quick read for anyone considering the merits of a given groups' claims of being decentralized. [0] https://www.jofreeman.com/joreen/tyranny.htm