this post was submitted on 23 Apr 2026
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Chattel slavery sure, but slavery in general predates the existence of nation states by centuries. That is beside the point. While lynching has become associated with chattel slavery, it refers to any extrajudicial vigilante execution. The term "Lynching" was coined during the American revolution after extrajudicial corporal punishment or killing of British Loyalists. It was later used quite a bit against Chinese and Mexicans in the American West. Current racial associations arose after the Civil War. (Justifiably so. I'm certainly not arguing that African Americans didn't get the worst of it.)
Fair enough, if the original assertion above is along the lines of "groups thinking for themselves also leads to mob violence like lynching", no real disagreement. But it sounds like you're saying "and that's why hierarchical systems are necessary", or "better", or something.
I just don't find it very compelling to point out mob violence, when comparing it with the brutality enacted against our scapegoats today done with the full might of the state. Which is what your original comment seemed to do, yeah?
We have genocides, we have a teeming for-profit prison system, we have generations of families and people broken beyond repair from targeted attacks on their communities.
But small groups also do the immoral mob violence thing. And it can get really fucked up, yep. Okay? To me, pointing it out just serves to highlight how hierarchical systems are so much better at systematizing that human tendency toward scapegoating and violence.
I'm not going to pretend I don't think some sort of hierarchical system is most effective for minimizing instances of mob rule. I think it's fair to say it is an inevitability that sometimes the majority will want something that is very bad for a minority or an individual.
I have a hard time thinking of a non-hierarchical method of preventing the tyranny of the majority. For example, what happens when a To Kill A Mockingbird type situation happens where someone is falsely accused of a heinous crime and the public wants blood? There won't always be an Atticus Finch in reality to persuade people to choose logic over emotion.
Andrewism recently wrote a article addressing your concern
Interesting! I'll check it out. Thanks
I'm pretty uneasy about those kinds of questions myself. I think caring about ideals of justice and fairness inherently carries some amount of "...so your rules should be like my rules" along with it, and how could it not? Self-determination allows choosing rules and behaviors I think are bad, including horrifically bad.
Nonetheless. Me imposing my judgment and values on what people should do, shares enough of the problems with some faraway monolithic state doing so, that I probably just shouldn't.
And again, hypothetical harms from self determination vs known really horrific crimes at extreme scales, many done for fairly shallow and otherwise heinous goals, to boot. I understand unease, I don't understand defending present systems against even just the idea of trying some better ways.
It sounds like we disagree about that.
If everyone was like you and me, anarchy would work perfectly fine as a social system. I don't want to control anyone and I don't care how anyone lives their life as long as it doesn't directly harm me. But rules aren't developed for reasonable people, but because of unreasonable people. Ultimately I'm more afraid of unreasonable people with no restrictions than I am of the present system.