There is another way, which is that you have a set of rules for how you divvy up the resources and people comply with this. You don't need much of a hierarchy for this -- very flat organisations can work very well. Sooner or later you will need some rules for what to do when somebody breaks the rules. You don't want simple misunderstandings and 'due to factors beyond my control' to get the same treatment as those breaks caused by willful misconduct and culpable negligence. But 'who gets to put whom in jail' is not based on your authority in the hierarchy. If 'the people who run this organisation get away with murder' you have a problem. Or you are the Mafia ....
A great many political movements are only about the status of the people in the movement. They are fueled by envy and grievance in the movement more than resentment at the bottom. One reason they do not deliver constructive change is because they are focused on giving the people they are supposedly doing this for what they think that these people ought to want, instead of what they actually do want. A lot of times, what the people do want is 'not to have a large hierarchy of busy-bodies lording it over us and claiming that this is _necessary_ rather than a choice that benefits the busy-bodies'.
If you build a hierarchy that concentrates power in the hierarchy, it will be abused by those at the top unless you have really serious mechanisms to prevent that. Our track record for designing such mechanisms is not good. It is not a problem that is dependent on demagogues -- it is just that they are more likely to want to abuse power in the ways that people who use the term 'demagogue' particularly do not like.
Re: "With authority ranking, we defer to people in a hierarchy."
The authority -- for example, an executive, a board, or a judge -- usually must outwardly conform to public criteria or procedures. If criteria and procedures are complex, and weights subjective, the resultant allocation might appear opaque, idiosyncratic, mysterious, or murky.
An adoption agency and a family-court judge must allocate parental rights according to "the best interest of the child."
A university admissions officer must score and rank applicants according to various criteria and institutional pressures.
A regional board for allocation of kidneys for transplantation must adhere to a complex points system (algorithm), balancing urgency of medical need, quality of match, queue time, and social equity.
The government might use a lottery for military conscription. The eligible pool would be constituted by public criteria (age, health, family status, education or employment status).
A lottery might also be used for admission to magnet schools.
"First come, first serve" and queues are often used as allocative mechanisms.
My point is that "authority ranking" masks a thicket (and a tangle) of criteria and procedures, which reckon with (a) public intuitions about distributive justice and (b) practical realities; for example, resource constraints, trade-offs, efficiency concerns, implicit incentives, and bargaining power.
A question arises: To what extent are authority rankings gamed? I imagine that it's hard to game the kidney points system, but easy to game selective university admissions. Why so? I surmise that kidney allocation is extremely consequential for candidates, whereas university admissions are overblown insofar as talented students have options.
The statement about 'communal sharing' as the practice at the family dinner table suggests a very strange life experience. That is typically an authority ranking setting. In America, among the children, equality matching may allow for equal slices of cake for dessert.
Observing this issue suggests to me that the remainder of the article requires revisitation; for example, the recounting of resentments may also be ideosyncratic. Perhaps in many cultures people do not have such resentments; and rather than feeling repressed for millenia, they have been fairly satisified.
I suggest revisiting all the key assumptions, particularly those which are western, individualistic, and egalitarian. I don't disagree that markets scale and provide for diversity of skills, needs, etc; and also that people often resent them, despite these advantages. However, revisiting the entire article is likely the best approach to finding underlying truths.
I think it’s important to consider the way elections interact with the market pricing and authority models. We are more likely to accept authority if we have a say in choosing that authority. It legitimizes the power. Even if it’s not the authority we voted for, we will accept it if we had the chance to vote. If we trust someone else to divide the scarce resources, which is what politics is, then the feeling of fairness is vital.
At large sizes where you can have massive "specialization and trade" even authority ranking fails when the number of specializations (items) increases with many individual options and alternatives. That leaves market pricing.
The trick is figuring out, debating the changing circumstances where market pricing and where authority (taxation and regulation) lead to better results.
There is another way, which is that you have a set of rules for how you divvy up the resources and people comply with this. You don't need much of a hierarchy for this -- very flat organisations can work very well. Sooner or later you will need some rules for what to do when somebody breaks the rules. You don't want simple misunderstandings and 'due to factors beyond my control' to get the same treatment as those breaks caused by willful misconduct and culpable negligence. But 'who gets to put whom in jail' is not based on your authority in the hierarchy. If 'the people who run this organisation get away with murder' you have a problem. Or you are the Mafia ....
A great many political movements are only about the status of the people in the movement. They are fueled by envy and grievance in the movement more than resentment at the bottom. One reason they do not deliver constructive change is because they are focused on giving the people they are supposedly doing this for what they think that these people ought to want, instead of what they actually do want. A lot of times, what the people do want is 'not to have a large hierarchy of busy-bodies lording it over us and claiming that this is _necessary_ rather than a choice that benefits the busy-bodies'.
If you build a hierarchy that concentrates power in the hierarchy, it will be abused by those at the top unless you have really serious mechanisms to prevent that. Our track record for designing such mechanisms is not good. It is not a problem that is dependent on demagogues -- it is just that they are more likely to want to abuse power in the ways that people who use the term 'demagogue' particularly do not like.
Re: "With authority ranking, we defer to people in a hierarchy."
The authority -- for example, an executive, a board, or a judge -- usually must outwardly conform to public criteria or procedures. If criteria and procedures are complex, and weights subjective, the resultant allocation might appear opaque, idiosyncratic, mysterious, or murky.
An adoption agency and a family-court judge must allocate parental rights according to "the best interest of the child."
A university admissions officer must score and rank applicants according to various criteria and institutional pressures.
A regional board for allocation of kidneys for transplantation must adhere to a complex points system (algorithm), balancing urgency of medical need, quality of match, queue time, and social equity.
The government might use a lottery for military conscription. The eligible pool would be constituted by public criteria (age, health, family status, education or employment status).
A lottery might also be used for admission to magnet schools.
"First come, first serve" and queues are often used as allocative mechanisms.
My point is that "authority ranking" masks a thicket (and a tangle) of criteria and procedures, which reckon with (a) public intuitions about distributive justice and (b) practical realities; for example, resource constraints, trade-offs, efficiency concerns, implicit incentives, and bargaining power.
A question arises: To what extent are authority rankings gamed? I imagine that it's hard to game the kidney points system, but easy to game selective university admissions. Why so? I surmise that kidney allocation is extremely consequential for candidates, whereas university admissions are overblown insofar as talented students have options.
The statement about 'communal sharing' as the practice at the family dinner table suggests a very strange life experience. That is typically an authority ranking setting. In America, among the children, equality matching may allow for equal slices of cake for dessert.
Observing this issue suggests to me that the remainder of the article requires revisitation; for example, the recounting of resentments may also be ideosyncratic. Perhaps in many cultures people do not have such resentments; and rather than feeling repressed for millenia, they have been fairly satisified.
I suggest revisiting all the key assumptions, particularly those which are western, individualistic, and egalitarian. I don't disagree that markets scale and provide for diversity of skills, needs, etc; and also that people often resent them, despite these advantages. However, revisiting the entire article is likely the best approach to finding underlying truths.
I think it’s important to consider the way elections interact with the market pricing and authority models. We are more likely to accept authority if we have a say in choosing that authority. It legitimizes the power. Even if it’s not the authority we voted for, we will accept it if we had the chance to vote. If we trust someone else to divide the scarce resources, which is what politics is, then the feeling of fairness is vital.
At large sizes where you can have massive "specialization and trade" even authority ranking fails when the number of specializations (items) increases with many individual options and alternatives. That leaves market pricing.
The trick is figuring out, debating the changing circumstances where market pricing and where authority (taxation and regulation) lead to better results.