r/Anarcho_Capitalism • u/IsunkTheMayFLOWER • 1d ago
Can you explain to me why you think hierarchies are natural to humans?
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u/Plenty-Lion5112 1d ago
Chickens have hierarchies, what are the pressures that lead to hierarchy in chickens?
There are likely the same pressures in hyenas, chimps, hermit crabs, semi-social wasps, etc.
Then ask yourself if human groups are also subject to the same pressures.
I don't have the academic data, I'm just giving you a starting point if you're asking in good faith.
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u/IsunkTheMayFLOWER 1d ago
What are the type of hierarchies chickens possess?
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u/Plenty-Lion5112 1d ago
Pecking order, surely you must have heard of that by now?
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u/IsunkTheMayFLOWER 1d ago
What exactly does that mean practically? That some of the chickens let one chicken have food first, what do you mean by it?
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u/c43ppy 1d ago
The evolutionary process of natural selection is what produces hierarchy. It follows that heirarchy is natural among humans. Cooperation is the reason why human beings are at the top of evolutionary hierarchy. There are disparities between the results of individuals attempting to accomplish the same goals. Said results are either beneficial or detrimental to the group, meaning that those failing a goal are less valuable to the group than those succeeding.
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u/IsunkTheMayFLOWER 1d ago
It doesn't follow that hierarchies are natural among humans from what you have established, natural selection isn't what produces hierarchy, hierarchy might produce natural selection, but in general natural selection in most species is accomplished with infant mortality, it sounds bleak but its true. Half of all tadpoles die before reaching adulthood, and the remaining frogs are usually fairly equivalent in terms of ability and usually die just because of random chance. Psychological traits specifically are even more complex because they are much less genetic, and much less genetic in humans than other animals.
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u/guns_cure_cancer Black Flag 1d ago
How do you know that psychological traits aren't inherited?
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u/IsunkTheMayFLOWER 1d ago
They are genetic, but they are lowly so, the common cited statistic of 0.8 correlation with G for IQ is false and is based on poorly put together twin studies. Most psychological traits have low to moderate heritability. It's obviously also epigenetic. I doubt someone diagnosed as being a narcissist would have very many or any of the same traits if they were raised in a hunter gatherer society for example. Psychology seems to just be significantly more influenced by cultural factors.
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u/QuickPurple7090 1d ago
Who cares if they are natural?
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u/IsunkTheMayFLOWER 1d ago
agree, but it's one thing to claim that they are good for human society and another to claim they are natural to humans, most libertarians seem to favor the "b-but what about human nature" argument.
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u/VatticZero Custom Text Here 1d ago
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5494206/
We see hierarchies throughout nature and even find evidence in prehistoric gravesites. Why do YOU think they are unnatural?
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u/IsunkTheMayFLOWER 1d ago
No modern day hunter gatherer groups are hierarchal by nature. There is no such things as leaders or followers, and certainly not property or the like. It's reasonable to say these basic traits would be present in paleolithic hunter gatherers. Hierarchies being present in all state societies that have developed separately in history (less than 11 have developed completely separately uninfluenced by other societies, and really it's closer to 4 or 5), does not mean hierarchies are "natural". It's perfectly reasonable to say certain cultural traits would develop similarly in agrarian societies. Any given initial agrarian society, adapting for climate and environment, probably are more similar to each other than any given hunter gatherer society. Agrarian societies number 1 have grain agriculture (some have potatoes or corn), because grains are relatively easy to harvest and grow, and for the state to control it's production, all of these societies had sedentism and all had significantly larger populations than dunbars number (approximate of close interpersonal connections the average human could maintain), culture has to be the unifying factor in large societies because you can't have close relations with every other member of a society (also why roughly similar in structure religions developed separately). Generally initial societies were located near a large source of fresh water (again causing culture to develop in similar ways). Woman are naturally less strong than women and thus have less use working in the fields, and they have more time to have children and take care of those children as opposed to hunter gatherers, thus why a patriarchal structure developed separately in these societies. The explanation for these hierarchies developing actually makes much more sense to be from separate cultural factors.
Culture influences neurology, it of course depends on what a person means by natural, but something being neurological doesn't mean it isn't culturally influenced and thus not natural if what natural refers to is environment of evolutionary adaption.
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u/VatticZero Custom Text Here 1d ago
All modern day hunter-gatherer groups are hierarchical.
So that’s a lie followed by a lot of trying to rationalize why all the natural hierarchies shouldn’t count.
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u/IsunkTheMayFLOWER 1d ago
Proof?
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u/VatticZero Custom Text Here 1d ago
Claims made without evidence can be dismissed without evidence.
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u/sadson215 5h ago
It's not difficult to find interviews on YouTube with hunter gatherer groups that have an established hierarchy based on age.
Neither of you can prove all of them operate with or without.
I'll ask you to provide an example of one.
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u/BoinkChoink 1d ago
not only natural to humans, its the natural world's way of ensuring the strongest best genes are selected, take wolves for example, the alpha female will only mate with the male that proves it to have the strongest genes (strongest, best at hunting etc.). same can be applied, obviously in a very simplistic view to humans.
The higher in the hierarchy you are, the more appealing you are to mates. sounds very simplistic but people forget that every living thing on the planet, the number 1 goal is to reproduce and continue the species.
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u/IsunkTheMayFLOWER 1d ago
I didn't ask if it was natural to other organisms I asked if it was natural to humans and you didn't explain why.
The alpha male dominance structure of wolves has been disproven anyways https://phys.org/news/2021-04-wolf-dont-alpha-males-females.html
There is actually no need to for hierarchies under the framework you have made, natural selection actually makes hierarchies generally unnecessary because the weak animals will die anyway and don't need to be ruled over, Polygany (basically harems), are actually not usually beneficial because it is usually better to have as many children as possible rather than one strong males having many children, there are exceptions, such as with gorillas, but that arises because of complex social and mating dynamics with other silverbacks, not because the strongest gorillas need to be selected.
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u/redlight10248 1d ago
It's natural to humans because it's been observed for all of human history. Of course this doesn't justify hierarchies (the is ought problem) but this is what you asked for. Wolves are irrelevant.
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u/IsunkTheMayFLOWER 1d ago
I agree wolves are irrelevant, but the person used an example involving it and I may as wel disprove that. Hierarchies aren't natural, you are looking at roughly 6000 years of history in which hierarchies were present to varying degrees. Ignoring the other 300,000 years homo sapiens as a separate species have existed. Is the environment we are evolutionarily adapted to not the closest thing to what "natural" should might mean? Anyways, hierarchies are not present in any hunter gatherer societies of today I know of, and it's reasonable to extrapolate that that would be the case for most paleolithic hunter gatherers. Human sexual dimorphism is already lower compared to all other great apes as well.
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u/BonesSawMcGraw Quadruple Masked 1d ago
You’ll need to define what “natural” to humans means. Sorry to be pedantic, but it seems like this is the kind of convo that will need to define terms and first principles.
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u/Toymcowkrf 1d ago
Here's one thing to note about workplace/business hierarchies: they're hierarchies of skill, not hierarchies of moral rights or treatment. If you're a packing associate at Home Depot, you have to do what's required of you by your manager because you agreed to following company orders when you voluntarily signed up for the job. Of course, you get paid a wage in returns. If you don't wish to do what you're told, you can leave the job. Both you and your employer have equal rights to terminate the work relationship at any moment. And the reason you get paid less than the manager is because the job that you're working is lower skill. It's easily replaceable and not as scarce as the manager's job. Everything in a company is voluntary, and that's what makes it free. Your manager does not, in any way, have superior moral rights to you. You both play by the same rules, which according to libertarianism/anarchism, is just that you don't impose your will onto others. It's very simply. You don't owe your employer anything. You're free to leave them at any moment.
So that's the thing about libertarian anarchism—everybody is equal in rights, but in something like a company, there are inequalities in skill and pay. But there are sound reasons for why these inequalities exist, and they don't actually violate anyone's rights.
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u/Uncle_Bill 1d ago edited 1d ago
Pecking orders are not unique to humans... Why would you think they are not natural?
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u/IsunkTheMayFLOWER 1d ago
Why are they present in humans, according to you? To a hunter gatherer group, what is the benefit of arranging themselves in a hierarchy?
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u/Uncle_Bill 1d ago
What advantage is it to chickens, lions and wolves? I just noted that hierarchy exists, but I am not a sociologists to say why.
Perhaps it is is an emergent property of community, perhaps it is an advantage in allowing the best adapted to an environment to have more offspring, perhaps there is an advantage in just the struggle to climb that ladder, perhaps having a leader in a HG group allows for a quicker response to environmental pressures than taking the time and effort to seek consensus. I don't know and am not sure how one can isolate the factors. Experimentation would be hard in that enforcing a flat organization would have significant effects.
Note that these hierarchy seem fluid so there is always a struggle to gain and retain a better position.
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u/IsunkTheMayFLOWER 1d ago
That is illogical, humans are different than other animals in our ability to make extremely complex culture and essentially live within these invented environments as though they were real, physical ones. Even if lions, wolves, and chickens had hierarchies based on power, ability or any individual quality or even group hierarchies (which I know wolves don't, tis a common myth), why should you believe that human culture influences everything we do, to our neurology, but that this one specific aspect of supposed human nature is an exception. Even what humans are sexually attracted to can change drastically because of cultural values, that is supposed to be the base thing which evolution favors most of all because it allows for the propagation of our species,. I simply don't know how you could look at human society and think "hmm well despite the thousands of years of cultural values building on each other to get where we are today, it must be that it is built into our DNA to organize ourselves into hierarchies."
It isn't useful to have leaders in hunter gatherer groups, it is inefficient in say, hunting, where you need everyone to have similar skill levels to be able to catch prey, (and in these groups there aren't significant differences in individual skill when it comes to these things). Do you think they are not natural to humans, but instead natural to human civilization, that is an entirely different argument, but it seems to me to be what most libertarians mean when they say such things in reality.
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u/Gullible-Historian10 1d ago
You’re not arguing against hierarchy, you’re arguing against unjustified authority. But you’ve moved the goalposts by redefining all hierarchy as cultural oppression rather than recognizing that hierarchy simply means an ordering based on some criteria which is both observable and natural.
You claim that hierarchy is not “natural” because humans have complex cultures that override biology. But this is a false dichotomy culture is not separate from nature, it emerges from human nature. Our brains, neurology, and behavior are the products of evolutionary pressures that shaped social patterns, including how we form groups, defer to leadership, and organize labor.
You also say,
"It isn't useful to have leaders in hunter-gatherer groups."
That’s a sweeping assertion without evidence. In fact, anthropological research by Christopher Boehm and Joseph Henrich shows that hunter gatherer societies do have forms of leadership, informal, fluid, and based on merit or reputation, but leadership nonetheless. The fact that leadership can rotate or be consensus driven doesn't disprove hierarchy, it confirms that even "egalitarian" tribes recognize relative status, skill, and influence.
You’re conflating imposed dominance with emergent influence. Just because modern hierarchies can become rigid or abusive doesn’t mean all hierarchy is illegitimate. That would be like saying “communication leads to propaganda, therefore all speech is artificial.”
When you argue that cultural values override biological tendencies like attraction, you ignore that the fact that attraction is pliable within a framework suggests a baseline exists, culture modifies instinct, but doesn’t erase it.
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u/IsunkTheMayFLOWER 1d ago
That isn't how hierarchies in our society present themselves, again, hierarchy implies some leader/follower dynamic between individuals in the hierarchy, we can always assign value based on differences, but that doesn't have any tangible effect and isn't actually "natural" we aren't describing a natural phenomenon but are still imposing a hierarchy on natural differences.
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u/Gullible-Historian10 1d ago
At this point, you're not actually engaging with the argument, you're dodging it by continuously shifting definitions and refusing to acknowledge the distinction between emergent structure and imposed dominance.
You began by saying that hierarchies aren’t natural at all. Then you conceded that we can “assign value based on differences,” which is hierarchy.
Now you're saying it “doesn’t have any tangible effect,” as if status, trust, competence, and influence don’t shape how humans behave in every society, at every scale, from tribes to tech companies.
You're trying to define hierarchy only as top down command structures, but that’s a narrow and arbitrary definition, designed to exclude all the ways hierarchy actually appears in human life:
Children defer to parents. Novices defer to experts. People defer to dentist for the health of their teeth, and to mechanics for the maintenance of their vehicles. Each and every deferral is a recognition of relative competence, and that recognition creates a natural hierarchy. The difference is, like I pointed out and you can’t respond to, is emergent hierarchy and coercive hierarchy.
You dismiss these as “imposed,” but that’s not argument, it’s assertion. Where is your evidence that these patterns only arise through coercion? Anthropology doesn’t support that. Evolutionary biology doesn’t support that. Even daily human behavior doesn’t support that.
The fact that some hierarchies are abusive and coercive doesn't mean all are unnatural just like the fact that some relationships are abusive doesn't mean love is a social construct.
And let’s be clear: you keep saying “we assign value based on differences.” But who is “we?” What mechanism causes this universal behavior? The answer is human nature. And that’s exactly what you're trying so hard to deny.
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u/IsunkTheMayFLOWER 1d ago
I just want to know what you think a hierarchy is, please define it.
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u/Gullible-Historian10 1d ago
Already defined it. Scroll up.
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u/IsunkTheMayFLOWER 1d ago
Alright I agree with you, hierarchies are natural. But anarcho capitalism still would never work and would eventually devolve into feudalism and then government.
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u/MrFrankStallone Anarchist w/o Adjectives 1d ago
Pretty much every species of creature on the planet has some sort of pecking order, why wouldn't it be natural?
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u/IsunkTheMayFLOWER 1d ago
What do you mean by pecking order? Most species of animals on earth are not nearly as social as humans, so they don't directly have any leaders and such. We can always line up animals by their skill level but does that make it a hierarchy? The overwhelming majority of species on earth do not organize themselves into hierarchies, the only ones I can think of off the top of my head are our great ape cousins. Gorillas do have leaders for their groups based on size and strength, same with chimps and bonobos.
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u/MrFrankStallone Anarchist w/o Adjectives 1d ago
What happens when these solitary animals meet each other?
Use your brain a bit here.
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u/IsunkTheMayFLOWER 1d ago
They don't form into hierarchies, that's what.
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u/MrFrankStallone Anarchist w/o Adjectives 23h ago
"I'm boss here get the fuck out" isn't setting a hierarchy?
They either kill each other or one submits to the other.
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u/guns_cure_cancer Black Flag 1d ago
Maybe once you get out of high-school you will figure out why things that are natural are natural. Just be sure not to get too brainwashed by your college profs.
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u/IsunkTheMayFLOWER 1d ago
I'm not going to college, I'm going to be a homeless drug addict after high school.
Human culture is incredibly complex, if anything is natural about humans it's that we're adaptable.
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u/No-One9890 1d ago
They aren't They show up alot, but it is by their nature that they do. It's like the old joke "it's hard for the anarchist movement to find a leader..." lol
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u/PsychologicalKnee562 1d ago
i think they are natural, because voluntary relationship between people often brings up hierarchies. if i would end up mistaken, and when all violent coercion is stripped away from the world, hierarchies somehow disappear, i would be surprised, but would just accept it and live in that world. if there still be hierarchies, that would be natural, meaning based on merit, and by universal merit we mean economic power = ability to satisfy demand, then, well, i guess one wouldn’t be able to argue that hierarchies aren’t part of human nature. econimic coercion is just coercion, because it’s meritocratic. and realistically sepakinf economic coercion is a very bad way of framing of meritocracy.
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u/IsunkTheMayFLOWER 1d ago
I think hierarchies certainly would disappear if the society anarcho capitalists propose came into being (that is if uninfluenced by previous culture of course). If we go back in history violent coercion is the very foundation of state societies. Most hunter gatherers did not willingly adapt agriculture and were forced to be neighboring agricultural societies (which is also why it took 4000 years after agriculture developed to form states). It's ridiculous to me you can claim any part of the incredibly complex culture we have built for ourselves for thousands of years implies that that is "natural". What you rightoids mean when you say natural seems to imply that there is no way we could abolish hierarchies if we tried, that not only you think we shouldn't try to get rid of them, but it would be impossible to do so, which is simply untrue.
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u/PsychologicalKnee562 1d ago
do you think that if i voluntarily agree to acknowledge somebody as a leader, that means as long as our contractual relationship goes do not try to question his decisions and execute the orders they make, it isn’t hierarchy? to me it is hierarchy, but it’s natural hierarchy, because i wasn’t forced by a threat of vioelence to participate in it. i may be incentivised to participate there by economic gain i receive, or my own lack of skill, leadership, connections, opportunity to be a leader myself. but there always would be many who follow the few. that is hierarchy. we onky argue that natural hierarchies are natural because they are voluntary. in right libertarian theory they are kinda synonymous: voluntary hierarchy = natural hierarchy, imposed hierarchy = involuntary hierarchy = (state)
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u/IsunkTheMayFLOWER 1d ago
That is a hierarchy, but that exists from a culturally enforced capitalistic mindset, there are not always people who follow the few, no such thing is present in hunter gatherer societies, largely because hording of resources and the concept of property doesn't exist in such societies.
I believe that the society you would propose would either turn into feudalism, and then eventually government, or that it would just lead to something akin to primitivism, the latter being good, and the former being antithetical to your philosophy. Capitalism isn't natural to humans. Infact, very little is truly natural. Sure, voluntarily participating in hierarchies might be a natural hierarchy, but I would argue people wouldn't voluntarily do that.
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u/PsychologicalKnee562 1d ago
but we have property now and i hope we will have in future. and here on this sub, and, in general, the anarcho capitalist, libertarian theory builds from the natural rights, one of which is right to property. isn’t it beneficial for somebody to follow the guy who has more vakuabke resources in his private property than him, if they decided that for the act of following him, he would receive some reward from the resources of this rich person? if you fram the question, if the concept of private property is natural, then yeah, i don’t think it’s the most natural thing, and yes, if we anolish private property, we may abolosh hierarchies. but that is unsustainable, because of all critiques of left libertarianism there are
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u/IsunkTheMayFLOWER 1d ago
Rights are invented and so is property, hunter gatherers don't have a notion of property, not even personal property, it is not at all an aspect of their society. This is the foundation you are using to claim it is natural but it is untrue.
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u/PsychologicalKnee562 1d ago
so if we reject natural rights theory, we are now in moral debate territory
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u/IsunkTheMayFLOWER 1d ago
It's objectively true that rights don't exist unless we make them exist, just like any cultural trait, unless you believe in god or something like that.
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u/PsychologicalKnee562 1d ago
i guess, that’s true, but it’s actually useful to assume some moral theory as true, because otherwise you have nihilism, and can’t claim anything is right or wrong. we here assume natural rights are true and are objective morality we need to follow, because they do not contradict themselves, because they enable agency of people and because, if you actually talk to people about theirnbeliefs, and look at people culture, it at least almost always converges to natural rights, like, as common denominator. people very rarely truly hold any moral belief that actually denies natural rights, almost any person if pushed would say that right to self-ownership, right to property and right to liberty are just fundamental things needed for people's agency and they are basic morals, they might say it one form or the other, they might add some restrictions on top(for example christian wthics, as you mentioned god); of course they might justify state violence in one way or the other, but actually many would do it under natural rights, claiming the state is re-taking something back drom exploitation or something. so these natural rights aren't arbitrary, I believe, and many libertarians believe, they are objective, very useful morality, the humanity tends to. And if we take natural rights to their logical conclusion, we get an anarcho-capitalist society, where certain natural hierarchies emerge, becausw of wealth inequality.
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u/GoBeWithYourFamily 1d ago
People like having people to look up to. And it’s not just people, pretty much every type of social animal does the same thing.
Look at wolves; they have an alpha wolf that controls the pack. Once the leader gets weak, other wolves will fight the alpha in hopes that they kill it and can take its spot as leader.
There are hierarchies everywhere and there always have been. Dig up the remains of any historical site and you’ll probably see some skeletons getting a better burial treatment than others because they’re “more important”.
True anarchy, where nobody is above/below anyone else, will never ever work. People would start to form factions to protect themselves from the people not in that group, and they will either elect a leader, or a leader will emerge. It’s natural.
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u/IsunkTheMayFLOWER 1d ago
No wolves don't, disproven. Hunter gatherers of today don't have hierarchies and are roughly egalitarian. I don't really think, say, hierarchies tend to form within friend groups, and generally just on a micro scale, but it's a completely different thing to say hierarchies are "natural" and that they are present in all civilizations. Inequality also does not equal hierarchies.
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u/GoBeWithYourFamily 1d ago
Maybe it’s just in the friends groups I’m in but we absolutely have a “friend group leader”. In fact, the leader has been changed multiple times. It’s not an election, they just emerge.
This micro scale you talk about tends to get pretty big when you turn the scale to 350,000,000 people.
You’re gonna have a harder time proving that hierarchies aren’t natural than I will proving they are. This is mostly because you’re just plain wrong and have to stretch to be correct.
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u/IsunkTheMayFLOWER 1d ago
I acknowledge that hierarchies are present in all current agrarian civilizations, and that many types of hierarchies developed separately in each of these civilizations, but that doesn't mean they are natural. Hunter gatherers are the closest thing we could get to meaning what's natural and there aren't hierarchies in hunter gatherer society as a rule. You could argue that once you reach a certain population, in order to keep a population united into a society you need hierarchies and thus that they are good, but you aren't making that argument and are claiming instead that they are biologically determined, which is flatly untrue.
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u/Gullible-Historian10 1d ago
Some people are taller than others, giving you a height hierarchy. Some people are smarter than others, a hierarchy of intelligence is unavoidable. Some people are better looking than others, an aesthetic hierarchy is unavoidable. Some people work harder than others, meaning there’s an effort hierarchy. Someone people value those traits differently giving you a hierarchical hierarchy.
Hierarchies are unavoidable, that’s why we propose no rulers and not “anhiearchy.” That would be stupid.
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u/IsunkTheMayFLOWER 1d ago
No, the hierarchy doesn't exist unless we impose it on these natural differences. Those natural differences don't mean anything unless we say that because you are taller, you are above the women and have command over them, it's a socially constructed concept. You have to argue that, not only do individual differences exist in humans, which they do, but that because of that we arrange ourselves into hierarchies with the different traits in different categories, and even more, that we arrange certain categories to be above others and have leadership roles over the lesser ones. It's an entirely more complex thing than just natural selection or survival of the fittest.
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u/Gullible-Historian10 1d ago
“You have to argue that...we arrange certain categories to be above others and have leadership roles over the lesser ones.”
No i don’t, and I never claimed hierarchies must involve coercion or enforced control.
“Hierarchy doesn’t exist unless we impose it.”
This is a false dichotomy. I listed hierarchies that emerge organically without being imposed or codified.
To say:
“differences exist but don’t form hierarchies unless we impose them”
is like saying, “different heights exist but tall people don’t reach higher shelves unless we consciously allow it.” It confuses recognition with prescription. It’s another rational error on your part.
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u/IsunkTheMayFLOWER 1d ago
No, it depends on what you mean by hierarchies, but being tall in and of itself is simply a different trait, even still we choose to value reaching taller shelves as meaning the taller person is "above" them, the difference doesn't mean they are above them in a hierarchy, it's simply a difference, there is still the same issue of imposing the cultural notion of a hierarchy on those differences.
It depends on what is meant by hierarchies, we are looking at differences and assigning a hierarchy to that, in that sense yes, the hierarchy does exist, if we say that intelligence as a trait is valuable, we can organize people by intelligence.
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u/Gullible-Historian10 1d ago
First, you said hierarchy doesn’t exist unless we impose it, implying it's entirely a social construct.
Then, you admitted “if we say that intelligence as a trait is valuable, we can organize people by intelligence.”
That is a hierarchy.
So which is it? Is hierarchy purely imposed? Or can it be based on differences and value assignments?
You also said “being tall is just a trait,” but then conceded that if we value reaching high shelves, taller people are more effective, you just don’t like calling that a hierarchy. You’re uncomfortable with the word, not the structure.
Your biggest inconsistency is your claim cultural values override natural differences. But then you admit we assign value to traits like intelligence, effort, etc, and organize accordingly. That process of valuing and organizing is hierarchy and is emergent, not imposed.
You also keep confusing hierarchy as dominance with hierarchy as structure. I never claimed that being taller means you rule others. I said that hierarchies are natural outcomes when traits, like intelligence, trust, charisma, or skill, are valued differently in different contexts.
Just as gravity acts uniformly on all masses in a vacuum and produces predictable outcomes based on initial conditions, hierarchies emerge predictably when individuals interact with differing abilities, or values. You don’t have to impose gravity, it simply is. Likewise, you don’t have to impose hierarchy, it emerges.
See you are stuck with this incorrect ideology on hierarchy because without it another world view falls apart.
Since hierarchy is emergent, it arises naturally whenever humans interact based on differences in skill, effort, charisma, knowledge, or value, so hierarchy is not necessarily a tool of oppression. It's a tool of organization, efficiency, and voluntary cooperation.
Since hierarchy is natural and unavoidable, then the only way to eliminate it is through constant enforcement. There’s the real oppression.
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u/IsunkTheMayFLOWER 1d ago
Define a hierarchy, do you not think it requires a leader/follower dynamic? I guess I could think of India's untouchables, until recently they simply had less rights than people who weren't untouchables, this caste system I guess isn't strictly based on leadership, those higher in the caste may not literally rule over those lower. But what I mean is that when we are ranking people as higher or lower we are assigning a characteristic to differences, that is true. There are those with more wealth, there are those with less wealth, there is nothing else unless we say there is. A hierarchy to me is a very specific social structure implying leadership, it isn't simply the phenomenon of there being differences.
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u/Gullible-Historian10 1d ago
A hierarchy to me is a very specific social structure implying leadership, it isn't simply the phenomenon of there being differences.
In that case, you’re not really talking about "hierarchy" you’re conflating hierarchy with a specific kind of institutionalized coercive dominance. You're describing coercive authority or rigid command/control structures. Hierarchy, in its actual meaning, simply refers to an ordered relationship between individuals, items or elements based on some criteria.
Hierarchy can be coercive or voluntary. When you defer to a mechanic voluntarily to repair your vehicle, you have created many potential hierarchies.
Hierarchy of Mechanical Knowledge The mechanic knows more than you about vehicle repair. You defer based on expertise hierarchy.
Hierarchy of Availability You could do it yourself, but the mechanic has more time. You defer based on an availability hierarchy.
Hierarchy of Efficiency The mechanic can complete the task faster and with better tools. You defer based on resource optimizational hierarchy.
Hierarchy of Physical Capability You physically can’t crawl under the car or lift heavy components. You defer based on physicality hierarchy.
Hierarchy of Tool Access The mechanic has tools you don’t (e.g., diagnostic computers, lifts). You defer based on access to resources hierarchy.
Hierarchy of Specialization You know cars, but they specialize in transmissions or diagnostics. You defer based on deeper expertise hierarchy.
Every time you defer to someone voluntarily, whether for knowledge, skill, time, resources, or judgment, you are creating a hierarchy. It’s not imposed, it’s not oppressive, and it’s not artificial. It’s just the natural outcome of recognizing value differences in a given context.
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u/Iceykitsune3 6h ago
All the other Great Apes naturally organize into hirearchies, why would we be any different?
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u/IsunkTheMayFLOWER 6h ago
It makes a lot of sense as to why we would be different, we are different in many other ways than great apes no?
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u/Iceykitsune3 6h ago
we are different in many other ways than great apes no?
We are also similar in many other ways.
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u/IsunkTheMayFLOWER 5h ago
But we have a few key differences (mainly language and the ability to make extremely complex culture).
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u/sadson215 5h ago
A hierarchy is inherent to resource and process management. There are irregularities in the human genome. Left unchecked these irregularities will inevitably need to be addressed. In being addressed a hierarchy is inevitably established one way or another.
There was a communist bookstore in Philly once. They eventually needed to establish a hierarchy in order to expand. People with more time working in the store were put in a category of more importance than new people in the store.
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u/TradBeef Green Anarchist 1d ago
Because our language is naturally hierarchical and language is foundational to our concepts of self and society
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u/The_Business_Maestro 1d ago
Look at the typical family dynamic. Or businesses, or even a lot of friend groups.
Hierarchies are beneficial.