If everyone where I worked had an assistant the quality of a muse AI the ad-hoc organization would become much much easier. That being said teams greater than 5 in my experience realistically develop a hierarchy. That whole lance of 5 led by a lance corporal has something to it.

Dr. Black wrote:

I was involved in a few community events for Linux, it runs quiet like you imagine. Usual there are a few (1–4) people who instigate the event. These people come from the group, but often the same people go for the initiative every time. These members, while equal members of the group, often the informal leaders of the group.

The cryptoparties and most hackathons work in just that fashion, too. Ad-hocratic actions require that a small number of people take initiative and get to work, and everyone else just sort of falls in around them. I have also heard them called do-ocracies (as in, those who "just do it" tend to be the ones who are listened to).

Dr. Black wrote:

This kind of organization works surprisingly often. It is imported to have people that instigate things and some reliable people in the group who help.

It is the latter that is difficult, but not as difficult as one might think.

There's a nice piece about this in Rimward... ANARCHISTS MISCONCEPTIONS AND REALITY Thanks to capitalist propaganda over the centuries, the definition of anarchism has been distorted and anarchists demonized. So let’s clear up some common misconceptions. First, though anarchism and anarchy are sometime used interchangeably, anarchism is not chaos. Anarchists do not defy organization; they seek horizontal methods of working together that minimize hierarchies and give everyone involved an equal say. They are not even opposed to rules, as long as such rules are collectively decided upon by those that follow them, as opposed to being decreed on others from above. Anarchists do not believe in might-is-right, survival-of-the-fittest, anything-goes social disorder. They believe that cooperation is a better survival strategy among sapients than competition. Detractors often like to say that anarchism looks nice in theory, but that it wouldn’t work in practice. After all, someone will shirk their collective duties,or step in and take charge, or resort to murder and rape with no rules to stop them. Putting aside for a moment the numerous practical methods anarchists wield to collectively deter anti-social behaviors, this is a question of ethics and social responsibility. Anarchists do not rely on threats of punishment in Hell or violence from government thugs to back up their moral behavior, they simply recognize that as social creatures, it is in our own selfish best interests to treat those with whom we deal with the same respect as we wish from them. This is not idealism, it is a pragmatic approach to how most people already live their daily lives.

I fully expect leaders naturally arise in anarchist groups. Most gaming groups are anarchistic in nature. You have 3-7 people who agree they want to play. Rarely does one hold institutionalized rank above the others from the getgo. The group convenes, they decide who is going to take on the responsibility of GM (oftentimes it's the most experienced person). The rest are players. Out of those players, some are more outgoing. Those tend to take the 'outgoing', high-energy roles, and while they may not be elected leader, they'll say where they want to go first and loudest, and if no one has an issue, that's where the party usually goes. Discounting the GM, the group is still anarchist because no one is bound to follow the 'leader'. The leader just provides the service of pitching ideas and providing energy. If people don't want it, they do things their own way. I expect that in any group of differentiated individuals, you'll find this natural specialization. The one guy knows the rules, and naturally takes the 'rules lawyer' role. The other guy is excited to play, so takes the 'leader' role. Another guy is super friendly, and so takes the 'keeping the group together' role, and so on.

One thing I've noticed about anarchist organizations: the people who end up as leaders tend to be extremely self-conscious about their positions. A good leader in anarchist terms is someone who's willing to lead but never demands that privilege should stem from their position.

I was in the Industrial Workers of the World many years ago (IWW, or 'The Wobblies'); its members are typically anarcho-syndicalist. As far as leaders, I've seen them run the gamut: completely humble all the way to a guy who thought he could get rid of God if he actually existed. (That guy just got kicked out for embezzlement.) The only thing you can predict is that all the varying kinds will be present, should the organization be large enough to encompass them.

Smokeskin wrote:

The main difference I see is that while hypercapitalist society has good mechanisms for avoiding bad teams, anarchists don't. A anarchist team could form based on popularity which is often something quite different than effectiveness.

How much experience do you have with real-world anarchists? Have you ever been in an anarchist organization or group? Anarchists are definitely, vastly more invested on multiple levels in making a concept work, and making it work for everyone. They think about the system they're implementing, its history and origins, its cause-and-effect, what it will do and what it will affect. While human beings are the same on both sides of this particular divide in many ways, and surely some mechanisms remain the same, motivations are still vastly different. Leadership is also spread around vastly more: there are rarely individuals invested with much authority unless there's a cult of personality ongoing, which will happen from time to time. That last, I can't deny and I've seen it myself.

[/quote]Bottom line is, top tier performance is probably the same, but below that anarchism develops a ton of problems.[/quote] As you say you're the only anarchist you know, more or less, please elaborate on this experience. (This is not an attack.)

My experience in a housing coop informs how I think about autonomists in EP. What would your job be like if the people above you could not leverage the threat of financial ruin to get their way? Leaders in an autonomist hab may be more like coordinators--their 'power' being simply that many of their neighbors trust their judgement or skill in a certain field, and defer to that judgement when necessary. These coordinators/leaders would likely be very passionate, and often frustrated--whereas a hypercorp CEO can dicate their ideas (for good or ill) at a whim (as long as it doesn't conflict with the objectives of their superiors), concerned community members in an anarchist hab might feel they spend more time pestering their neighbors for consensus and volunteers than actually doing the work of the habitat. I can easily imagine an anarchist hab riddled with infighting, petty vendettas, cults of personality, ideological sparring that accomplishes nothing, and massive inefficiency. This stuff is an annoyance when you're talking about dog poop piling up in the garden, but it's rather more serious when you're discussing how to deal with an Exsurgent outbreak. I can also imagine an incredibly smooth and responsive habitat--where the most skilled and/or motivated members agitate for productive outcomes, reject mob rule, and--most importantly--train their neighbors, so that skill and responsibility doesn't accrue in one passionate and active group. Given that most of the cooperative decision making and consensus building happens on the mesh, another analogy might be a play by post forum--people are expected to participate often (and productively). @rep networks help filter the proactive, skilled contributors from the petty dictators who just want to wax poetic about revolution. re: Tyrants--another option is to elect a committee or task force to handle a specific issue. Whether that's asking the most skilled vac worker in the hab to train a few volunteers for a simple repair job, or electing a 'general' to lead an armed task force during a crisis. I imagine a heated mesh conference between committee heads when the 'general' says they need all the feedstock available for building defense drones--and that the sewage recycler overhaul will just have to wait. After ten years of TITANs, PC spies, and Jovian battle ships, I suspect most of the grossly dysfunctional communities have, um, had their internal pressure brought to equilibrium with the vaccuum. Also--Ursula LeGuin's novel "Left Hand of Darkness" is a great exploration of an anarchist society that works pretty damn well, just not perfectly (for many of the reasons already discussed in this thread).