Flippanarchy
Flippant Anarchism. A lighter take on social criticism with the aim of agitation.
Post humorous takes on capitalism and the states which prop it up. Memes, shitposting, screenshots of humorous good takes, discussions making fun of some reactionary online, it all works.
This community is anarchist-flavored. Reactionary takes won't be tolerated.
Don't take yourselves too seriously. Serious posts go to !anarchism@lemmy.dbzer0.com
Rules
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If you post images with text, endeavour to provide the alt-text
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If the image is a crosspost from an OP, Provide the source.
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Absolutely no right-wing jokes. This includes "Anarcho"-Capitalist concepts.
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Absolutely no redfash jokes. This includes anything that props up the capitalist ruling classes pretending to be communists.
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No bigotry whatsoever. See instance rules.
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This is an anarchist comm. You don't have to be an anarchist to post, but you should at least understand what anarchism actually is. We're not here to educate you.
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No shaming people for being anti-electoralism. This should be obvious from the above point but apparently we need to make it obvious to the turbolibs who can't control themselves. You have the rest of lemmy to moralize.
Join the matrix room for some real-time discussion.
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Let us define the architecture accurately. Federation and centralisation are structurally opposite models.
Centralisation requires a master node. All data flows up to it, and all execution commands flow down from it. If the master node is compromised or crashes, the entire network fails.
Federation is a peer-to-peer topology. Autonomous nodes opt-in to a shared protocol to exchange data, but execution authority remains strictly local. Think of the the Fediverse (Lemmy and Mastodon). When a Lemmy instance federates with the wider network, it does not surrender root access to a central server. It simply agrees to speak the same language. If the network pushes an update the local node disagrees with, the local admin severs the connection and defederates. The local node continues to function perfectly. Federation is coordinated decentralisation.
Regarding your questions on delegates:
1. You are conflating a representative with a delegate. In a hierarchical democracy, you elect a representative. You hand them a blank cheque to make decisions for you. That is executive power.
An anarchist delegate is not a politician; they are a network router. They operate on a strictly bound mandate. They do not go to a council to decide what their zone will do; they go to communicate what their zone has already decided to do. They possess zero executive authority.
2. The structural checksum against fabricated data. If a delegate goes to a regional council and fabricates data to push a personal agenda, it is the equivalent of a corrupted packet. What happens when they return to their local node with a treaty or a mandate they negotiated in bad faith? The local node simply rejects it. Recall is not a lengthy impeachment trial; it is a dropped connection. Because the delegate has no police force, no military, and no executive authority, they have absolutely no mechanism to force the local node to comply with a fabricated agreement. The physical leverage remains entirely at the base.
3. The incentive is system maintenance. You are operating under the capitalist assumption that humans only perform tasks for hierarchical power or financial profit.
Why do people take on the responsibility of a delegate? For the same reason a sysadmin takes the weekend on-call pager, or a flatmate takes out the bins. It is administrative overhead. It is a chore required to keep the shared infrastructure functioning.
In a properly architected horizontal system, these administrative roles rotate rapidly. When you strip a role of executive authority, wealth accumulation, and coercive power, the position becomes completely unappealing to sociopaths and opportunists. The lack of corrupting incentives is exactly what acts as the firewall. You are left with people simply performing routine system maintenance.
I'm assuming federation ≠ the "federal" in "federal government" (which is centralized in my understanding). Maybe that's a misnomer?
If delegates go to communicate what their zones have already decided to do, doesn't that introduce structural inefficiency? Because these delegates would then communicate with the other delegates, which would communicate their discussions with their local zones for confirmation on how to go forward, and then meet up again with other delegates for it to go forward, no? If that's right.
Speaking of it, how does law enforcement and defense operate under anarchism? And without enforcement what do you do w violations of aforementioned agreements?
You are right about the word "federal". It is a confusing overlap in language. When people say "federal government", they mean a massive central power that rules over smaller states. But when anarchists or network engineers say "federation", we just mean independent groups choosing to work together on equal footing. Think of an association of independent trade unions or a farmer's market, not a capital city dictating laws to the provinces. Nobody is in charge of anyone else, they simply agree to cooperate on shared goals.
Regarding the delegates, you have identified the trade-off. Yes, sending people back and forth to build consensus is slower than having a boss just issue a command. It is absolutely less efficient. But that inefficiency is intentional. A dictatorship or a corporate hierarchy is incredibly fast, but if the leader makes a catastrophic mistake, everyone suffers instantly. Horizontal organisation trades speed for safety. The back-and-forth ensures that no single bad actor or corrupted delegate can force a terrible decision onto a community that does not consent to it.
As for enforcement and violations, you have to stop thinking about justice as a system of prisons and police officers. If a person or a group violates a shared agreement, the response is not to send armed men to lock them in a cage. The response is exclusion. The community simply cuts them off. They lose access to the shared resources, the logistics, and the mutual aid of the group. In a society where survival depends on cooperation, being exiled from the cooperative network is a severe and effective deterrent.
For physical defence against violent external threats, communities rely on local, volunteer militias. Instead of a standing army waiting for orders from a president, each local area maintains its own ability to defend itself. If a massive threat appears, these local defence groups coordinate with each other voluntarily, much like how a body's immune system responds to an infection. It is decentralised self-defence, built from the ground up, ensuring the people holding the weapons are the exact same people who live in the community they are defending.