Erdani - a stateless society.

[Rounin Ryuuji]

From descriptions, I was imagining either exchangeable certificates or other forms of non-fiat currency existing. Commodity monies aren't all that uncommon historically. Some money may also be company scrip, or something produced by independent banks that are regarded well enough that people accept it as valuable.

[Xhin]

Very interesting thread. I've also been exploring statelessness in recent conworld endeavors. A few questions since I've also thought about these issues in detail (and I apologize if they've already been answered):

1. What exactly stops organized groups like networks (or their alliances) from using their leverage and the overall lack of enforcement on violence from using violence en masse to gain control of a location?

2. Similarly, it appears that judges are highly organized -- they've compiled precedent, they have specialized expertise that other people can be trained in, etc. Given their enormous power over the world, what exactly is stopping them from becoming a State in their own right? A kind of autocracy based around the judicial branch rather than the executive branch.

3. What keeps enforcers from becoming corrupt? Again we have an issue where they're organized in some way (from their connections to judges and arbitration cases) and commonly exercise force. While they themselves can be tried, who is going to bring them in? And what judge is going to try them, given their overall utility to the society. Any such secondary group of enforcers/judges are either in position to create a state themselves or would be summarily removed from the equation from the judges/enforcers that were trying to gain political power.

The main form of punishment, besides, is restitution (if you stole thing, of course you give it back) plus a monetary compensation.

4. What happens if you fail to pay restitution? Sure, enforcers could bring you back in for more hearings, but who exactly would be paying them to do that in that situation?

Let's take a case where a thief stole many high-value items you possess and then sold them and gambled away the proceeds. Their money can't be seized because it doesn't exist, and enforcers that try to haul them into court to pay whenever they get some more money wouldn't get paid from the thief (who's refusing to pay out), and definitely wouldn't get paid by you, because you don't want to lose more money then you'd be gaining back slowly over time from this kind of arrangement.

[Ares Land]

Thanks a lot for the interest!

I'll try and give some answers.

But I can't spend a lot of time looking for neutral judges - I need to get back to work/farming to feed my family.

So I can't go too far afield to find neutral judges, and all the nearby judges are either friends of the guy I'm butting heads with, or are friends of his friends.

But then, I never have very good luck in any reality; no worries.

That can definitely happen. Bullies will get away with it until such time as they get into the way of the wrong person, or annoy too many people, or ask for so much money it's worth the expense to go and find a neutral judge. States have analogous problems: local authorities can be corrupt or people might get stuck in abusive communities.

Let's say neighborhood R relies on the patronage of Tunip and neighborhood U relies on the patronage of Skyleenz. Can Tunip really be shamed into not invading U, or is he right to think such a move will shore up his flagging popularity?

If the economy of each neighborhood owes a lot to their respective patrons from the point of view of capitalist token exchange, shouldn't we expect the people to fall into warring camps based on their economic interests?

Networks will try and get individuals and businesses allegiance to switch to them rather than their rival, and will expand their territory, and of course such moves will shore up their popularity. People like being part of a strong network.
Tunip will try to grab neighbourhood U under his sphere of influence. It's expected that Skyleenz will keep a presence there -- or if not him, some other network. It's also understood he won't get a monopoly in the city. Of course he won't use violence to do so or at the very least keep it at a minimum.

It's not an honor system. If Tunip kicked out Skyleenz by force, what he'd get is a network war. Skyleenz will bring in their allies, Tunip's allies may or may not follow him and might even try and remove him as a troublemaker. More on network wars later.

(A next installment, and more answers later. Probably tomorrow.)

[Ares Land]

Networks; monopolies; network wars; conventions

Let's start from a very simple question: couldn't a network try (by whatever means) to seize power and reestablish a state?

One reason is that no network is powerful enough to do that. If they attempted it -- and historically it did happen -- an alliance of networks would form to counter them. Networks each have power bases -- in some case territorial, in some case social (religious groups) or economical (trade union, control over various common enterprises.) This is set up in such a way that no network has the necessary advantages for monopoly.

Forming a state would require alliance building; forming a ruling junta. There are two difficulties on that level. The first is ideological: wide ideological distances make alliances difficult. It's hard for a traditionalist-capitalist entity such as the Karneshgha to ally with the Metal Union, a socialist group for the purposes of getting a monopoly: there'd be no agreement on what kind of state to form. Conversely, the Karneshgha may ally with the Metal Union for pragmatic purposes; another traditionalist-capitalist would object; the Alwe'ashe would want a part in the military junta or denounce an alliance with commies; Land Reform would denounce the Metal Union as class traitors.
Yet another difficulty: a network is divided in subbranches, provincial chapters, local network. At each level different alliances may be formed. A network may form an alliance at the national level and be betrayed at a lower level.
About the one stable alliance is one who includes all factions of all ideologies -- and we end up with the current system.

But, what if it happens anyway? And in fact, it did happen. There were attempts at power grabs. The result is civil war.
An ambitious network must take into account the cost of a civil war; and yet another obstacle.
If feels natural for us to have a state in place to run things; especially so for those of us in functioning democracies where we expect the state to function. As a consequence, we cooperate with it, albeit grudingly at times. The last Erdan state, by contrast, was highly dysfunctional. The population did not cooperate with it. The Erdans cooperate with the current system because they value certain conditions: being judged and rules according to people they choose directly; they would not cooperate with judges or police enforced from above.
That problem can be solved given enough force! But that incurs a cost.

From a cost-benefit analysis setting up a state would require: a) building a complex alliance. b) fighting a civil war c) fighting a guerrila with people who don't want you anyway. To be balanced with simply being an influential and stable network under the current system, which is a fairly good position. The cost-benefit analysis is to be repeated at all levels. The Karneshgha leader in Ash'ashuma may feel he can win the civil war; his captain in Gonsen province may feel differently.

Another reason is ideological, and I don't mean that in a bad way. Like I said, the Erdan feel, from experience that states are unworkable and oppressive. This opinion is shared by the network leaders. Any Earth politician transplanted magically at the head of a network would try building a state because that's what we expect. The Erdans have no expectation that states are better of functional.
Taking Earth, and specifically the Western world as an analogy: everybody knows, from experience, that one-party states are oppressive and dysfunctional. Political parties try to make gains over their opponents whenever possible, but generally don't try to build a one party state. (There are of course exceptions, just as there are in Erdani. But the attitude is so internalized that even our Nazis feel the need to insist they are not Nazis even while dressed in full SS parade uniforms.)

Currently the situation is such that no network could hope to gain a monopoly. Steps are taken to make sure it stays that way:

• Networks are not allowed to gain a monopoly in any geographical area.
• Key businesses must be shared between networks.
• Public goods: schools, the army, banks, exist as several concurrent institution, and all of these must be controlled as a network.
• Discipline within a network must be somewhat lax; central leadership in a network should not interfere excessively in the ruling of its sub-network.
• The leadership of a network must have near-unanimous support. In other words, network splits are allowed and encouraged.

How are the rules enforced? This is where a collective body is in place: the convention.

The convention meets at infrequent intervals, but from once every year to once every five. It comprises the heads of all significant networks. New networks should be invited if they're significant enough.
One of its function is to address dispute between networks, and breaches in discipline. Typically a network that bullies sub-networks too much would have to offer financial compensation. A network grabbing a monopoly on, say, oil, would be fined and asked to sell shares to a few other networks.
Decision is normally by consensus, or various forms of qualified majority (always more than half.)

Possible sanctions include:

• Banning the network from the convention for a set period of time. This means the punished networks misses out on all the good deals.
• Outlawing the network. (Local and/or provincial subnetworks are given opportunities: either independance or joining a friendly other network.)
• Forced retirement of the network leadership.
• Authorized assassination.

No one is forcing any network to attend. Networks leaders have tried to wriggle out of trouble by setting up an alternate convention or declaring the convention illegitimate. Over time their position proved not tenable.

On the assassination parts, it happened, historically, that conflicts were settled by network wars and assassination. These historical events have been grandfathered in as the clause that network wars can be pardoned as long as proper compensation is paid and no civilians are harmed (ie, the victims should be formal network members and if possible higher ups.)

Network war exists as a theoretical possibility but has not occured in practice for the past 60 years -- forced retirement of network leaders is substituted instead.
Assassinations have happened, at unfrequent intervals. (All in all the system is not significantly more violent than one of our democracies, where assassinations do occasionally happen.)

Local conventions
The national convention has local counterparts as provincial, local, city and town conventions. These include the local networks and follow roughly the same rules. They meet much more regularly: the rule is that conflicts should be handled as locally as possible.

Still, couldn't a state be established?
The possibility exists. A network or a junta could get a monopoly, kick out its rivals and form a state. Just as any political regime, the Erdan system could decay and change into something else.
Again, making a real-world analogy, there are any number of ways a democracy could become a dictatorship.

Getting back to Erdani, it would take a long time, but it's entirely plausible that going back in, say, fifty years, we'd find a more familiar state arrangement.

Local monopolies
It's difficult to establish a monopoly at the national level -- what about at the local level? The barriers to a local network gaining monopoly are much lower.
This is in part the job of the local convention to handle conflict so that it doesn't happen. The higher echelons of a network are also responsible for the local branch not trying to get a monopoly. If a network tries to establish a local monopoly, its rivals will ask for help from their upper echelons; The upper echelons of the offending networks may intervene as well -- if they do not, this can be brought to the provincial and the national conventions, with fines applied.

It's understood a network can get a strong local base but leave space to rivals one way or another.
As a metaphor, a network can be said to "control" an area. In actuality, their power there is always limited.

The Amanelo clan controls Irawoshas in that it handles most of the security and justice service there; other clans such as the Alwe'ashe still operate there, though. Anything involving labor law is under the control of the Metal Union; labour disputes can be tried by the Amanelo or the Metal Union. There's a strong Rilril present so all four Rilril clans are present.
The Amanelo also, "control" the Northern Territories, an even bolder claim as they are not even present; they merely have friendly contacts with the other networks.
As it is the Amanelo are wealthy and powerful; if they tried to ban the Alwe'ashe from operating there they would get in trouble at the National Convention. If they tried to actually rule the Northern Territories, friendship with the local clans would cease and rivals would be very eager to take over that profitable relationship.

[Torco]

Which reminds me: I'm not sure capitalism can work without centralization. You need to maintain inflation at a small positive rate to avoid a depression every 8-10 years. Who mints coins here?

wait, inflation is supposed to avoid cyclical depressions? it's not doing a very good job, innit.

This is a very plausible, very old-feeling system. indeed according to recent anthropology (graeber and wrenwrow, for example) such arrangements of stable traditional, highly complex stateless societies have been rather common in the past, and in principle there's no reason why they shouldn't be able to exist right now (or in societies with technology and other conditions similar to ours). I think the harder challenge stateless societies face is not some transcendental law of sociology that entails states have to exist: there is no such a law, nor evidence to suspect it, says me: no, the difficulty is how does a stateless society stand up to a state society that wants to, well, state it up? states are powerful things, and they can effectively coordinate human resources to accomplish institutional goals (i.e. force people to do stuff). this is harder for stateless societies, and so in the long run, it seems, stateless societies are conquered either in one big slap or, more commonly, piecemeal.

Historically, this has been the way stateless societies went: the Mapuche, to pick an example close to me, were a stateless society that faced up to state societies more than once, and resisted well... until they didn't, and they share this with a number of other resistant native american populations (and with plenty of ancient eurasian peoples, such as the Gauls): they fell in the end, but they did keep the spaniards, and the peruvian quechuas before them, at bay for quite a while! their strategy was to form inclusive ethnic coalitions based on councils and the like to make it expensive for the spaniards, and likely for the quechuas before them, to carry out their "civilizatory" process through raids and other military operations, and to muster vast armies from the territories controlled by ethnically mapuche peoples in order to, well, do battle with the invaders. as to how those coalition leaders a) kept legitimacy long enough to carry out effective military ops, and b) made sure this or that clan, or rehue* to use the mapuche term, did not succumb to the temptation of allying with the invaders I cannot say... but they did do that for hundreds of years.

* a rehue is a bunch of lofs, and lofs are like villages, but also clans, but also communities, but it also means like an altar or traditional totem-thing... you know, kind of like "the city" can mean the juridical person of the city government, or the roads and buildings, or the population of the city, or the geographical region.

[bradrn]

Torco’s post reminds me of the question I always wonder about stateless societies: how do they deal with externalities? Like pollution — in our world we get the relevant state to force the offender to stop, but I’ve never understood how this could work if no such state power exists. This is especially the case when people actively resist actions against the pollutant, as is the case with e.g. carbon dioxide.

[Rounin Ryuuji]

I imagine if such things aren't addressed (and our modern state-societies do not always address them well), some catastrophic consequence would force action to be taken eventually, or cause societal collapse, same as if a state-society failed to address them.

[Travis B.]

Torco’s post reminds me of the question I always wonder about stateless societies: how do they deal with externalities? Like pollution — in our world we get the relevant state to force the offender to stop, but I’ve never understood how this could work if no such state power exists. This is especially the case when people actively resist actions against the pollutant, as is the case with e.g. carbon dioxide.

This is a significant reason why I no longer consider myself an anarchist. Someone would act to keep enterprises from misbehaving, and such misbehaving involves externalities (and I am not one to think that socialism will by itself simply make people, and especially large organizations, behave). The obvious anarchist answer would be the workers' councils would keep them from doing so, something I have no problem with at all - but once workers' councils have the power to bind organizations' actions so as to prevent negative externalities, the only thing that makes them not a state is how one wishes to define "state", and I do not like trying to define away the state in this kind of way.

[Raphael]

And if an industrial facility is run by a workers' council, presumably comprised of people who want to work in that industrial facility, why would they want to be particularly strict about enforcing environmental standards on that facility?

[Travis B.]

And if an industrial facility is run by a workers' council, presumably comprised of people who want to work in that industrial facility, why would they want to be particularly strict about enforcing environmental standards on that facility?

The typical libertarian socialist society would have workers' councils on multiple levels - an enterprise would be run by workers' councils ultimately controlled by those who work there, but there would also be other workers' councils that would do things such as regulating said enterprises. The thing to me is the necessity of said regulation - enterprises must be made to serve the will of the greater people, or else there will be no way to avoid negative externalities, for the very reason you give. But a purely voluntary society would make such regulation impossible, and thus make avoiding such negative externalities impossible. Hence there must be no way to opt out of being regulated, and hence those doing the regulating in essence must have authority, something anarchists object to. Of course, the anarchist response to this is that because the regulators' will would be ultimately derived solely from the people it would not be "authority", but to me that is simply redefining things.

[keenir]

And if an industrial facility is run by a workers' council, presumably comprised of people who want to work in that industrial facility, why would they want to be particularly strict about enforcing environmental standards on that facility?

Assuming I've understood what I've read in this thread, the Eridan(i) solution, would be thus:

0th. Orders from higher-ups in each network, are handed down to the local networks who are at the facility site. Noncompliance and disobedience risk being fired from one's network.
(hopefully to be headhunted by another network, though I imagine there'd be the risk of gaining a reputation for hiring disobedient employees, and the fired-then-hired person would also have the reputation of why they were fired - whether its the true story or just what the rumor mills are saying)

1st. The facility wouldn't have its own network of any size (would it?)...rather, it would sit at the meeting point of several different networks (a conference room?)...a network that oversees regional water use, one for regional electrical use, one for construction and-or demolition, etc.

2nd. Each of the networks would want their views enforced - the water-controllers would want to avoid any industries or ingredients/wastes that would befoul the waterways and watersheds under their jurisdiction...so they'd have their conference room member reach an agreement with the conference room member from the electrical network, and ideally with the construction member, etc.

3rd. No doubt several of the networks would each claim to be working in the name of The Workers of the facility, whether or not the goals of each of those networks overlaps with one another; this would hopefully ideally improve the lot of the workers in the facility...though comprimising with one another and the other networks might make things sliiiightly less than ideal. (the workers get three two-hour-long breaks a day, and gourmet drinks throughout; but the break rooms and drink dispensers are on opposite ends of the building from each other, and neither is near the offices where the work gets done)

does that sound about right?

[rotting bones]

wait, inflation is supposed to avoid cyclical depressions? it's not doing a very good job, innit.

1. Necessary, but not sufficient. Being stabbed can kill you, but avoiding stabbings doesn't make you immortal.

2. The government has lost control of inflation in the US.

...

This is a very plausible, very old-feeling system. indeed according to recent anthropology (graeber and wrenwrow, for example) such arrangements of stable traditional, highly complex stateless societies have been rather common in the past, and in principle there's no reason why they shouldn't be able to exist right now (or in societies with technology and other conditions similar to ours).

None of my objections were meant to be unanswerable. As the resident Marxist, ask yourself if all superstructures scale to advanced modes of production. A lot depends on the economic and technological circumstances of the city.

By the way, stable societies don't necessarily provide fulfilling lives for individuals. I suspect this place is more advanced than your examples considering it has socialist mutual aid societies. What antisocial facts of life is this socialism a reaction to?

[rotting bones]

network war

Awesome! I've been waiting for you to say that. Do they have cyberwarfare?

[keenir]

By the way, stable societies don't necessarily provide fulfilling lives for individuals. I suspect this place is more advanced than your examples considering it has socialist mutual aid societies. What antisocial facts of life is this socialism a reaction to?

I think one of the earliest posts in this thread stated that the networks of modern Erdani society are the result of a horrible/horrific government that oppressed and repressed and was mean to everyone all over the place (at a time when there was access to nuclear energy at the least)...and when the bad Government died, there was a bit of strife before things stabilized with the networks.

I may be misremembering parts of it.

[rotting bones]

I think one of the earliest posts in this thread stated that the networks of modern Erdani society are the result of a horrible/horrific government that oppressed and repressed and was mean to everyone all over the place (at a time when there was access to nuclear energy at the least)...and when the bad Government died, there was a bit of strife before things stabilized with the networks.

I may be misremembering parts of it.

Yes, and this could involve advanced technology.

[keenir]

I think one of the earliest posts in this thread stated that the networks of modern Erdani society are the result of a horrible/horrific government that oppressed and repressed and was mean to everyone all over the place (at a time when there was access to nuclear energy at the least)...and when the bad Government died, there was a bit of strife before things stabilized with the networks.

I may be misremembering parts of it.

Yes, and this could involve advanced technology.

Just so theres full clarity and no misunderstanding...by "this could involve advanced technology", what do you refer to - what could involve advanced technology, in your statement?

[Ares Land]

(various good points on states conquering non-state societies)

One interesting point, though, is that indigenous states did not do too well either. The Spaniards took over native states in Mexico in about a decade: people were used to sending tribute up to the Mexica king; they did not care that much if the tribute went to the Spanish viceroy instead.
By contrast I don't think the Mexican state really controls Chiapas to this day.

Torco’s post reminds me of the question I always wonder about stateless societies: how do they deal with externalities?

Not that bad really. All of these have customary rules to handle these. Many stateless societies are pastoralists, where commons such as grazing areas and watering points are essential; custom provides for these.

Judaism provides lots of good example on how a stateless society may function; historically Jewish communities were often effectively stateless societies. Jewish laws provides for an interesting sort of negative externality as hillul hachem: an act that hurts the repution of Judaism and the Jewish people as a whole.

The problem might be new and unexpected externalities, such as pollution or global warming. I'll write up something on how Erdani could handle that.

By the way, stable societies don't necessarily provide fulfilling lives for individuals. I suspect this place is more advanced than your examples considering it has socialist mutual aid societies. What antisocial facts of life is this socialism a reaction to?

As in our worlds, wealth accumulation and the negative effects of wealth accumulation.

I think one of the earliest posts in this thread stated that the networks of modern Erdani society are the result of a horrible/horrific government that oppressed and repressed and was mean to everyone all over the place (at a time when there was access to nuclear energy at the least)...and when the bad Government died, there was a bit of strife before things stabilized with the networks.

The Second Erdani Empire was a fascist state, pretty much. The networks descended for those groups that opposed it. Some were conservatives or reactionaries, others were socialists.

Yes, and this could involve advanced technology.

Awesome! I've been waiting for you to say that. Do they have cyberwarfare?

As for technology, think 1940s. Computers are cutting edge technology and cumbersome things. Nuclear power or weapons aren't available but right around the corner.


As for businesses and companies, they're separate, legal entities. They might be owned by a network outright (uncommon, but it happens); most of the time they're privately owned but a sizeable number are worker-owned.

[rotting bones]

It's not obvious that anarchy can be scaled to, say, financing for electronics manufacturing. But maybe, with enough assassinations, things will work out. Stable societies don't necessarily provide stable lives for individuals either.

This could make for amusing stories about assassins struggling to meet their quotas and blaming the erosion of traditional values.

[rotting bones]

As for technology, think 1940s. Computers are cutting edge technology and cumbersome things.

They may be hulking monstrosities, but are they used in business or connected to networks? The UNIVAC dates to 1951, so I don't want to presume.

[Torco]

None of my objections were meant to be unanswerable. As the resident Marxist, ask yourself if all superstructures scale to advanced modes of production. A lot depends on the economic and technological circumstances of the city.

that's the thing, they don't, but you evidently *can* have different modes of production for any given level of development of the means of production. or to say it in unmarxist terms, any tech level admits for many systems of social organization of the application of that tech. This is definitely proven by the fact that, well, china, cuba, the soviet union, yugoslavia, all these places exist or existed for like *a while*. the quesiton of whether stateless can work under 20th century or so technology is... well... it's been answered before, by the catalonians amongst others... they collapsed under a coordinated military operation by the fascist spanish government, not from being inviable as a social system.

I think anticommunist propaganda has falsely convinced us that there is such a thing as social systems that "don't work" by themselves, i.e. that if you build them they fall down on their own, and that almost all systems except for capitalism are of this class: I've come to think this is not true, that people can choose to live differently, to organize themselves in many different ways and that a lot of those end up finding some way to work: people are creative problem-solvers after all... it's just the CIA -or some equivalent body- is likely to deploy their not inconsiderable resources in subverting whatever social order is not either capitalism or fascism by a fascist that's allied with the US or something. like, really, the collapse of most social systems that are not capitalism has not been some spontaneous fulfillment of a nuclear-decay like self-caused process.

This brings up an interesting question... if you split timelines at, say, feudal-medieval tech level, and then you make a stateless society at that point and then it progresses technologically... would their advanced tech take a similar path as ours? probably not, right? this is a big thing unto itself, but it seems unlikely stateless societies would tend to develop the same sorts of factories communists and capitalists ended up basing their production on, they wouldn't also have these vast agroindustrial complexes, or perhaps they would? possibly they'd have put more focus on other industries than consumer goods. but yeah, these guys, as per the description of ares, are more or less modern in their tech level: cars and trains, quantum theory, probably something along the lines of world war 2? maybe they're anarchist catalonia that didn't get conquered by the fascists?

One interesting point, though, is that indigenous states did not do too well either. The Spaniards took over native states in Mexico in about a decade: people were used to sending tribute up to the Mexica king; they did not care that much if the tribute went to the Spanish viceroy instead.
By contrast I don't think the Mexican state really controls Chiapas to this day.

absolutely! which is why I say that there's no law of sociology that says stateless societies don't work... but they do seem to loose confrontation with technologically near-peer state adversaries, militarily speaking. though yeah, not always, la gloriosa patria zapatista yet controls some territory in mexico... then again, the mexican government is, I would say, especially weak, and many other groups routinely challenge it for territorial control of mexican ground.

I agree on the externalities front: indeed, capitalist state societies tend to deal *worse* with environmental conditions than more 'primitive' societies, because people don't actually want to destroy the planet if you ask them: they have to be forced to, through various coercitive means.

It's not obvious that anarchy can be scaled to, say, financing for electronics manufacturing.

capitalists can, it's not clear why market stateless societies couldn't. <i wouldn't call the erdani 'anarchist', then again, I wouldn't call libertarians anarcho anything either>. then again, no DARPA no fund things, so perhaps they'd take longer.