Thinking about renewables: Part 1

In the peak oil and climate change spheres, their are plenty of absolutes about renewable energy thrown around, as is common in many areas of thought. Some of them are more useful and/or accurate than others. The main problem with this generalized approach to renewable energy is that renewable energy isn't any one thing, but more a collection of very different energy sources and collection methods. Something like what sci-fi is, Sci-fi/Fantasy isn't actually a single genre but a collection of a dozen or so overlapping genres (even the difference between Fantasy and Sci-Fi is muddy).  The most accurate absolute is that renewables cannot simultaneously solely support a middle class lifestyle (either the current European or American) and produce the energy needed to replace themselves.

 One absolute that is not so useful or accurate is this one from the Automatic Earth "Technologically harnessable renewable energy is largely a myth", even through in the original article its more accurate. They refer to higher technology for use in country wide electricity grids, like PV panels, however if you just said that statement without any qualifiers (like they did), then it is completely false. Windmills for grinding grain or waterwheels to run machines directly are technologically harnessed renewable energy, so is solar passive technology, they're just not currently considered 'high' technology (they were back in the medieval ages).

Now I have problems with that AE article, I support the Zero Carbon Australia side, but them I'm training to be an engineer in the sustainable field and so I'm almost certainly biased. I also think that for a variety of reasons we can expect electricity to be fairly common in the future (though much more common in urban areas than in rural areas), but that's another post since it would take some explaining the various corollaries and way's this could be done and the benefits. As it stands, that quote from them is only even vaguely accurate if you classify technologically harnessed renewable energy as used for grid electricity and using modern high technology (as in PV panels or large wind turbines) forms of extraction. But I'm going to take them on their word and use that phrase without those qualifiers, so technology as a blanket statement for any tools or human artifact, since if someone quoted that from the AE or saw that referenced and didn't check, they wouldn't see the qualifiers. Also standing on its own, it provides a good example of a very stupid absolute phrase.

So the first thing you could say about it is that technologically harness-able renewable energy exists, PV, wind turbines, hydro dams etc are pieces of technology that are harnessing renewable energy even if they themselves aren't sustainable on the long-term. however there's the fact that the Romans (and other ancient civilizations) had water wheels, which were artifacts of technology that harnessed renewable energy, windmills are thousands of years old and while solar (in a form other than food) is a recent addition, its feasible to make a very basic solar thermo-electric generators with ancient technology as well as solar cookers.

The meaning of renewable energy is also important, they used it to mean only electricity for the grid which as a blanket statement is absurd. Electricity doesn't need to be used in a grid, heat is another form of energy, so is chemical, kinetic, potential etc. At it's most basic renewable energy refers to sunlight and the various processes it powers, like the wind and hydrological cycle and a few others sources such as tidal and geothermal, which aren't sun powered. The harnessed forms of these energy flows isn't the renewable component, that's the continuation of the flows. But more importantly renewable energy technology isn't any one thing.

As I mentioned above renewable energy technology definition is similar to Sci-fi/Fantasy's, its a collection of dozens of different groups that sometimes only have tangential connections. PV panels and a focused solar thermo-electric generators do the same thing, turn sunlight into electricity, but otherwise they're incredibly different technologies with very different limits, manufacturing, support structures, capabilities and so on. Tidal operates on similar principles to hydro, yet it's not ultimately powered by the sun like hydro is (sunlight drives the hydrosphere, whereas tidal is powered by the orbit of the moon). Biomass produces chemical energy, either as food, ethanol, bio-gas, bio-diesel, wood and so on, which is unusual among renewables who normally provide heat or mechanical energy.

So obviously in terms of capabilities and limitations, they aren't the same. The manufacture of PV panels is completely different to the manufacture of thermo-electric generators (one requires very advanced materials while the other only basic metals) which is again different to the manufacture of solar hot water, or solar furnaces. And so on, basically renewables don't share that many traits with each other, even the typical low EROEI isn't shared by all, hydro's is about 40, though the Wikipedia page says it's 100 in the US. Also important is how these attributes interact with society and the response this draws from society. Renewable energy technology is a collection of various disparate technologies (low to high tech) that uses energy flows that are continually replenished by nature, beyond that very few hard and fast rules apply to all renewable technologies (subsets will have hard and fast rules amongst themselves). Qualifiers are needed when talking about renewables as a whole.

The absolute that PV panels can't support a modern consumer lifestyle and produce the energy to make itself is accurate and useful partly because it has a qualifier. If the lifestyle its supporting is changed, say to only using 1/4 of its current energy use, then the analysis is different. At that level of energy consumption the PV panel could could support the lifestyle and power its manufacture, though social complexity may be to low to produce them. However an important point needs to be addressed, silicon is not the only material that PV panels can be built out of. Other alternatives exist, like organic solar cells and dye-sensitized solar cells, and there complexity limits could be very different once those technologies are developed.

Weatherize before you solarize is the appropriate phrase, reduce energy consumption and renewables become far more viable and able to support themselves at a lower tech base than otherwise. One of the good points about the Zero Carbon plan is that it aims to reduce overall energy consumption by about 60%. Part of that reduction is exploiting the high efficiency of electricity in heating and transport, which is why the plan includes a 40% rise in electricity use. Various processes are very efficient when electricity is used, such as induction furnaces (compared to blast furnaces) or ground heat pumps for heating or cooling which are more efficient than other active heating/cooling systems (through passive housing is a better first option). 

So how well renewables work out depends largely on the context their used in, change the context (such as energy use) and how they work changes. Of course the current way we use renewables isn't viable and our societies will have to change because of that, however there is a specific way that happens. Human societies change over time in a process, not sudden leaps or drastic changes, the only times that happens is when some cataclysmic event happens, such as an eruption or 90% death toll due to diseases (Overshoot isn't cataclysmic and even the shortest timescales it will last decades). Some things change and events happen, then some more changes happen and eventually society has reinvented itself. Its a continuous process that when you glance over history looks to be stepwise, but when your living in it, it isn't stepwise but more often a continuous change. If we want to pass through Overshoot with the least amount of trauma and suffering, this needs to be taken account of and used. Demonizing steps in this process just because they aren't the final product is both stupid and in the long run counter-productive.

I'll use Zero Carbon as the starting point for an ideal process, no complications, no roadblocks and the plan works as almost as advertised. This is not how it would go, but this is to provide an example of what I mean in a simple way. So lets say that the various Zero Carbon plans; energy, transport, building, land use, industrial processes and coal export replacement are enacted and they work. Since only the energy plan has been released, we'll use their plan that all transport is electric or biofuel, energy use is 40% of what it is now, also lets assume population is stable (makes it simpler) and so on. So over ten years (or the more realistic 20-30 years) what has changed. Well the society is broadly the same, yet it only uses 40% of the energy, runs on renewables, new supporting technologies have been developed and if all goes well direct solar and wind technologies are being developed and the basic versions implemented (more solar hot water systems). Public transport has exploded in both coverage and usage, well being by measures of material/energy usage would be lower, growth would have stopped or even reversed and Dutch disease would no longer be a problem due to lowered exports and imports, social complexity would also be lower. Additionally the demographics of the economy would change as more people move from services and mining into manufacturing and agriculture.

This is important, since infrastructure changes are slow and expensive the best strategy is one that uses existing infrastructure and phases in technologies and new infrastructure slowly. Now the 10 year plan they have is probably unrealistic, at least with the level of effort that could be mustered for it. 20-30 years is more likely, even though it's taken longer for other similar energy revolutions in the past. The difference this time is that the Zero Carbon plan uses and expands existing infrastructure (electricity grid) rather than building its own. After all before coal could be used for transport you needed to build railways and coal ports, oil required its own infrastructure while the proposed renewables can simply be plugged into the grid which can then power transport (here I refer to public transport only, Cars are different) and such. Any improvements aside, the grid is already there and has been built, which saves a lot of time and resources. While their could easily be alternate forms of infrastructure, we don't know what they are and how to easily build them, that's something for the future.

Lets assume that the society is still unsustainable on the long run and further changes (after a gap of several decades) happen over 20-30 years (this could be because coal and gas have to be used to make up energy shortfalls from optimistic projections or some of the technology used cannot be made at that level of social complexity or internally). These changes could be to use more direct solar, in the Zero Carbon plan direct solar makes up a small amount of energy use, along with more direct use of wind and hydro/tidal for industry and home usage. So solar furnaces start being used, along with solar steam generators for sterilization or industrial heat production, small scale machine shops are powered by small rivers when possible or windmills, various factories (mills for grinding grain is traditional) are now directly powered by windmills and animals are being used again in certain areas for agricultural work and transport. This results in various things such as reduced production and again even lower imports and exports etc.

Now the society looks noticeably different from what we have now, but it doesn't look as different from the previous society and it evolved from our current society in  two steps. And so on down the line until a stable eco-technic society arrives and climax community is reached, by that point the society could only have the most tenuous similarities to ours but it got their by gradual changing and going through many different stages on the way. Our current strategy shouldn't be to create a perfectly stable and self-sufficient renewable energy base right away, if that option ever existed its well gone, but to create the conditions and start walking down the path that will get us there with the least suffering and difficulty. That may involve stuff along the way that seems counter productive to the end goal, such as expanding the electric grid to allow viable large scale use of renewables, or an expansion of farmland, but that facilitates one or more stages. We need an overall meta-strategy on the century scale (basically a goal and a vague idea of what needs to be done) that tactics over the decades can be slotted into to eventually reach the undefined endpoint.

Now the process outlined above is the best case scenario, its likely to be far more difficult, ragged and a lot of it will be propelled by various short and long term crises. But it points out a few topics that need to be discussed and looked at. Infrastructure change and the meta-costs of technologies, the differing scales societies operate on, supporting technologies and how renewables could develop over the long term. These topics are incredibly important to understand how societies could change and adapt in the face of Overshoot. The main point though is that societies change over time in an organic way, they do not suddenly leap into new forms fully formed. People adapt, change behaviours or implement different technologies as they go, eventually the changes add up and you can say that the society has changed from one form to another. It is a process that mostly happens on a larger scale than individual human lives, through everyone contributes to it.

More on those topics next week.

Understanding legitamacy and Cultural levers via memtics.

As the Archdruid has stated many times, the key obstacle to adaption in the face of Overshoot is not the technical issues, but the cultural, political and in short psychological issues that block adaption. For various reasons, the understanding of these issues is incomplete, the Archdruid mentions one of them here. Another is the inevitable simplification pundits and various radicals use to make their cause look better, whenever you here someone say something like "all (something, often government x) is illegitimate/irrational/ what have you" or something along the lines of "this is the cause of (something, say suffering)" even when that something is caused by multiple things. A common one is "all authority is illegitimate" or "Governments shouldn't regulate markets", or the same statement with the value sign flipped "Governments should regulate everything". This absolutism and simplistic thinking has not helped and is part of the reason many radicals and/or activists can often completely misunderstand governments and politics, see this View from Brittany for examples.

The effects of these cultural issues are quite apparent now. The collapse of perceived governmental legitimacy in America is precisely a cultural phenomena (though by technical definitions, such as those for insurgency/counterinsurgency theories/practitioners, its legitimacy is still strong), so is the stranglehold of current economic theory and the financial sector. In this post Damien talks about the fate of the bank of Saint George and its lessons. to quote "Our situation is, mutatis mutandis, similar to the ancien régime kings. Even though we are theoretically in position to severely restrict or control the activities of the banking industry, or of any other sector of the economy, we are, in fact prevented to do so by a corset of self-imposed rules."  Those self-imposed rules are cultural phenomena, they only exist because everyone has decided they do. Ask yourself this, why do pay taxes? submit to your government? Use money? or any other behaviour which only makes sense because their is a cultural backing to them. The idea of money is incredible fluid, it can be paper or plastic notes, giant carved stones, shell necklaces, or in parts of Africa they use phone credit as money. This is not to say that these rules can be ignored with impunity (most would result in jail time), its just that they aren't as hard as say the laws of physics.

To tackle this problem it's probably best to use several angles. The Archdruid has recently started from a religious angle here  and I'm going to use a different one, that of memetics. To be specific, I'll be using a guide from the SCP (Secure, Contain, Protect) Foundation, a fictional internet horror site, called Understanding Memetics for a basic understanding of memes. Memes are basically cultural information, however profound or base that information is, so catchphrases, single rituals, behaviours etc. When you have a lot of them in a coherent whole, you can call the result a memplex. Religions are memplexs, so is any system of knowledge, large behavioral sets or organizational cultures (including tribal or otherwise). Now as the guide mentions, memetics as a theory isn't taken very seriously, but here we can use them as a convenient vehicle for understanding certain cultural phenomena. Like legitimacy or how most power centers work.

So memes are bits of information that make you act, feel or react in certain ways. People are perfectly willing to trade strips of colourful paper or plastic for goods and services, accepting orders from an authority, feel certain emotions when hearing music or only willing to consider certain actions in the face of a crisis. Memplexs are complexes of information that encompass a huge range of emotions, actions and people. How they interact with a given person or society depends on a great many factors, their upbringing, existing memes, personality and such. The interaction also depends on how the meme is contextualized. I'll use an example from a previous post.

'For example, the author of this article (an Australian) was once giving a presentation to an Australian university class [post grad marketing]. To explain the difficulty in building a patriotic image for a brand in Australia, he draped an Australian flag over his shoulders and struck a pose as if looking at the sunset in an American aftershave commercial. Noting that the class looked unimpressed, he took the flag off his shoulders and enthusiastically polished his arse with it. The class started laughing. He then asked if anyone was offended. A chorus of nos went up. A lone voice said that, although he wasn't offended, he was disappointed. The lecturer, who had previously worked for the defence forces, gave the presentation a distinction. It the same thing had been done in America, expulsion from the university would have been a distinct possibility.' The difference between the reaction of Australians and Americans to someone using their flag in that way has to do with the memes that exist in the respective cultures. It's also a product of the differing contexts the national flag occupies in their respective memplexs. In the Australian one it has little attachment while in the American one it has a sacred place.

These contexts change over time and in reaction to events. This can be a slow process, as this View from Brittany mentions, it can take centuries for a shift to happen. it took 380 years after Jesus was born for Christianity to be the sole official religion of Rome, a similar time frame for the Reformation and the ideology of Progress to come to become dominant. On the other hand, there are contexts that can change far more quickly than that, the lose of legitimacy for governments can happen within decades, sometimes sooner. Mind you this is because the changes are smaller, government in general doesn't become illegitimate, only a specific government, a far smaller change than the hegemonic ones that take centuries. This sort of change in the political sphere is outlined in this Archdruid report. You can even see it now in in America and parts of Europe, the context is being changed by events as they unfold and from that change the legitimacy of the current governments is slipping away. The appeal of Neo-Nazism in Greece is one offshoot of this change, the conspiracy theories that the recent Boston bombing was staged by the US government is another. It should be stressed that these changes are not simply the switching of value signs, but actual changes to the information processing or information content of those places. Remember, nothing destroys a political platform like ridicule.

The simpler and less connected to other memes a meme is, the easier it is to change its effects. While the advice given in the guide, "Imagine the fearsome entity is wearing a bright pink nightgown. Draw a mustache on the haunted painting. Pee on the stone altar. Wear the terrible sculpture like a hat.", isn't specifically useful in our current situation, the general thrust is correct. If the information is presented in a different way, the effect changes.Doesn't matter if it's a perception of the real world or part of a fictional one, the effects the same.

So remember; Wear it like a Haaaaat!!

On Hiearchies and Elites: Part 3

The quotes from the last two week:

From Wikipedia Anarchy
"The evolutionary psychologist Steven Pinker writes:

Adjudication by an armed authority appears to be the most effective violence-reduction technique ever invented. Though we debate whether tweaks in criminal policy, such as executing murderers versus locking them up for life, can reduce violence by a few percentage points, there can be no debate on the massive effects of having a criminal justice system as opposed to living in anarchy. The shockingly high homicide rates of pre-state societies, with 10 to 60 percent of the men dying at the hands of other men, provide one kind of evidence. Another is the emergence of a violent culture of honor in just about any corner of the world that is beyond the reach of law. ..The generalization that anarchy in the sense of a lack of government leads to anarchy in the sense of violent chaos may seem banal, but it is often over-looked in today's still-romantic climate.^[54]"

 From the Urban Dictionary on Anarchy

"Anarchy" arises from ancient Greek "An," meaning without and "Archos" meaning leader.
In modern political philosophy anarchy, or anarchism (the ideology which aims to create anarchy) is traced back, often, to Proudhon, and in particular his work "What is property?" - the origin of the still used anarchist slogan "Property is theft!"
Contrary to belief that "anarchy" is synonymous with "Disorder," anarchists generally advocate non-hierarchical, horizontal organization, typically through directly democratic structures. As such, there is a degree of common ground between anarchists and libertarian Marxists. Many anarchists are highly supportive of the practice of the Zapatistas in Chiapas.

In 1936, anarchists in the Spanish provinces of Catalonia and Aragon collectivized industry and agriculture, and established a working example of anarchy."

From the excellent blog View from Brittany; Impotence of Politics

"With the Neolithic revolution, our societies have grown far beyond what a single coalition could reasonably manage and have become fractal as a result. Modern societies are a hierarchy of nested coalitions all built upon the same model, from your average nuclear family to the G8. Inside those coalitions, everyone is jockeying for position and fighting for access to scarce resources. This the way all human groups work, even anarchies. In fact, it is far more brutal among anarchists – especially the Randite subtype – because by rejecting institutionalized power, they destroy the various social devices our species evolved to check the pack leader's dominance."

From Damien's (author of view from Brittany) response in the comments of Fascination for Death

"Ana,

I have glimpsed the world of the elites. I have had lunch with the man who has become the prime minister of France and my best friend gravitates around this milieu. I have the number of a senator on my cell phone... and I can tell you they are not Machiavellian, they are clueless.

They really think they can preserve the status-quo through green-washing and economic tinkering... and that it is the best thing for everybody. They don't think billions will die, because, you know, the system they game is so efficient that it simply can't happen.

As for violent revolution... both in France and the USA, today's elites have been born from such a violent revolution, so they really think they embody their values and that therefore, it can't happen to them. When lamppost day will come, they will be... indignant."

paraphrased From John Micheal Greer.
"no political system anywhere will ever be more honest than the people it governs"

Hierarchies are a fact of life and they are something that will exist in all (excluding some small and peripheral ) human societies for the foreseeable future, and as a consequence of this elites are going to exist, as they are both necessary and inevitable components of hierarchies. We may not like it and the world's current crop of elites certainly aren't going to survive overshoot, but the post-peak future will have elites. So we have to deal with them, acknowledge they exist, that they can cause problems but also that they bring benefits that we cannot easily do without. What is also useful is to actually understand them for what they are, human, and not construe them as some alien beings. That's an important point and follows from a more specific one relating to democracy.  

Unlike theocracy, monarchy, aristocratic republics and most other forms of government, democracy makes the ruling section, so most of the elites, inevitably share the same ideology as the common man. In ancient China, the cult of Confucius  wasn't common (less than 1%) among the population but the ruling class for the most part were Confucian. The ruling class could be of a separate ideology (in this case a religion, which is close enough) than almost everybody (roughly 99%) they ruled. In modern society the common ideology is that of progress in its various forms and the elites share this. That's where the JMG quote above comes from, the politicians are not ideologically or ethically separate from the populace under modern democracy. That's actually a key part of it's benefits.

This has many implications for almost the entire world (at least the parts that will experience the highest fall, the west and prosperous parts of Asia), especially because the ideology/religion of progress drastically limits the options available and hinders adaptation to peak oil. As JMG has stated many times, many of our problems lie in the motives, ideas and mental realm common in the world. If the decline is accepted, huge amounts of work can be done and the collapse mitigated to a much larger extent. As long as the ideology of progress stays, adaption can only be piecemeal and mitigation limited. So as long as the populace (and the elites) are hooked onto progress, problems will appear while modern democracy survives. Its really is that simple and its part of why JMG is discussing the religion of progress now.

However, as long as we have a democracy the elites (or at least the ones doing the ruling) can't (or won't) change their ideology unless the populace does. Considering that modern democracy is one of the more resilient and inclusive political systems possible for large scale societies , this grants quite a few bonuses and is in general nicer to live under, this is a problem however when the ideology needs to be changed rapidly. We have to work from the ground up and simply blaming the elites completely misstates the problem and frankly doesn't help. Approaches that focus on the general culture are needed, however it's too late in the game for a smooth change to occur so various disasters and the overall decline will do the job albeit in a halting, erratic fashion and cause much misfortune and pain along the way.

And to be clear, unlike what some people say, the origin of our current crisis is not completely self evident to most people. A lot of it comes from media sources not mentioning enough of the details or events, a simple lack of knowledge is one part and a significant reason is that the mental constructs/links necessary to understand the crisis aren't readily available to most people. To explain the different ways this can work out, I'll use two examples. When I was going into Darwin on a bus, on the seat behind me was an Aboriginal kid about 5 years old. Suddenly he excitedly yells at his mother "look at that big building" and enthusiastically points. So I turn around hoping to see the city and the only big building was a 3 story high apartment block and I'm immediately confused, because compared to the big buildings in Sydney and Melbourne, 3 stories is quite small. Then I realized that he'd probably never seen any/many building bigger than a single story since he lived far away from Darwin. He just never encountered what I would consider even a small sized building and so that apartment block was amazing to him. Related to this, I had a friend who when she first came to Australia stopped over in Darwin and she got the impression that all Australian capitals were like Darwin (for International readers, Darwin is not like any other Australian capital, except Canberra, its more like a very large country town). So when she got to Melbourne, she thought that Camberwell (a suburb) was the CBD. Simply not having the data and information to make sense of whats happening because people haven't encountered enough it is fairly common.

The other example is how the whole overshoot concept clicked for me and my twin. Before I had a general idea that our civilization could collapse and there was some problem, I read some history and Jared Diamond's collapse. But it didn't seem like an inevitable crisis that would cause a 1-3 century decline, simply troubles that would appear until the population quickly stabilized and everything was sorted out, barring a disastrous mishandling that leads to collapse. So I had all the data, either readily or heard it in passing, but I hadn't put it together and lacked a few key points (this even includes direct references to peak oil, just from incredibly hopeful sources). Then my dad went to a lecture where it was mentioned that America was becoming a third world country, my twin googled it and found this Archdruid report. He then read it, then turned to me and basically said that the Archdruid knew what he was talking about and we should read what he was saying. He and I then spent the next month or so reading all the archives and from there accessed the rest of the peak oil sphere. I had almost all the data necessary, I just never made the links in my head and lacked a few of the key necessary ideas. A lot of it is simply not being exposed to the ideas/concepts of overshoot, once you have them its obvious, but until then it isn't. This is where the importance of stories and mythology (in the way JMG/Terry Pratchett means, that of ways of understanding the world) appears, since they basically allow the dots to be connected. A feeling that something isn't right is more likely and this feeling insufficient to understand what is happening.

Here's the thing, without that understanding, the actions that are currently being taken look reasonable. To peak oil aware they don't and its incredibly obvious that current strategies aren't working and something else has to be tried. But until that understanding filters into the populace, the new strategies that are needed will look to most people (and politicians)  stupid and unreasonable. From the perspective of progress, the current strategies are not stupid and are in fact essential and completely rational.

Now the elites are not the same as the common man, both due to the adaptability of humans and material/social differences. People adapt and change depending on the situation, its part of being human, and from this various social classes have different outlooks, ideas and desires. It important to stress that this isn't from some innate difference but from an innate similarity that all humans share. The elites think differently precisely because they are the same as everyone else but their environment (physical and social) is different, however this means that all the views in modern democratic society come from roughly the same roots and so they share many similarities and the same basic ideologies, meaning that any changes in the base ideology will look different at differing social scales.

Its in this light that anti-elitism needs to be understood. Most forms of it are okay, the elites are not superior due to any genes or divine graces, but most often luck, birth or drive coupled with skill/training. Elites should be limited as much as possible, we can do without their commonly parasitic and predatory behavior, deferring to your betters is a social habit that deserved to be thrown out (to an extent however deference to authority is often a good idea) and so on. There are forms of anti-elitism that are not okay, one because they completely miss the point or they are dangerous, the other is because of the word itself.

The word elite can simply mean the best of something. Elite soldiers is a common form of this, but their exist others, elite doctors, elite horses etc. The fact is some people are better than others at doing certain things and some people are smarter, stronger etc than others. The anti-elitism that seeks to get rid of these differences or eliminate elitism in the meaning of the best is not very productive. Also it still reinforces the idea that elites are innately better by associating superior abilities with being upper class. Its not exactly a constructive set of actions. Democracy requires the idea that every person can form an idea and is of equal worth, which is still compatible with the idea that some people are better than others at certain tasks. We may be equal, but we are not equivalent.

The other form of bad anti-elitism is much more dangerous, especially since it often descends into an espousal of violence and is good fodder for demagogues or violent revolutionaries (how well has that  worked out before). In the first post of this series I mentioned a debate between RE of Doomstead diner and Ashvin Pandurangi of The Automatic Earth, here and here respectively, about whether or not enacting a physical purge of the world's elites that are causing the current problems is a good idea. To quote from Ashvin "Surly [a colleague of Ashvin]and I both agree that, in the last instance, it comes down to a question of morality and personal values." Which shows that she and Surly share the same assumptions as RE, that is that it is primarily a problem of the elites, that killing lots of them would enact the changes necessary and so on. To quote RE "'save the human species and the planet from total annihilation at the hands of minority elites." This entire debate is structured around faulty assumptions, a bad understanding of how modern societies work and not understanding the underlying causes that are currently stopping constructive action. 

If the idea was (somehow despite it's impossibility) enacted there are two main sources of the organizations (the world is big) that would carry out the purge. Either the organizations are drawn from the peak oil sphere (or related) as an unelected and unanswerable elite who makes the decisions and then supplants the current elites around the world, since were going to have elites anyway (or face total and complete collapse) and these groups have no chance of being elected in a large enough way to replace the elites so they'd have to be self appointed. Needless to say this isn't a good idea, since it would create resistance and anger in the general populace (you'd be proving the conspiracy nuts right and causing great problems and disruptions to common, decent people), more removal of legitimacy than otherwise as well as requiring much violence. This resistance would inevitably derail the whole effort as the surviving elites use this resistance to fight back and then new up and coming elites use it to grab power or to defend their homes and people (as in they would be fighting both for immoral and moral reasons).  And then there's the problem of power corrupting, That sort of absolute power would certainly corrupt those in charge of it.

Or you could draw the organization from the common people either via democracy or appointment of an unelected, unanswerable elite and then they go on a  merry purge. Needless to say this also wouldn't work and most importantly wouldn't replace the ideology of the elites, meaning no fundamental change has happened while also causing massive chaos and uncertainties likely to make our responses to the crisis even worse. The end result would likely be similar to the above as resistance would still be encountered.

The core problem is not as RE states a minority elite, but the shared ideology/religion of the modern human world, that of progress. That is the problem and a physical solution cannot fully or even partially solve this. It isn't physical in the sense of people who can be shot, but mental in the realm of ideas, beliefs and motives (and can only be gotten rid of through genocide and wholesale destruction). All a physical purge would do is add more problems to the ones we already have, not a particularly constructive set of actions. It would also eliminate modern democracy and likely leave either mob rule or authoritarianism, both are as bad as each other, along with massive civil strife most likely including civil wars to outright total continental wide wars. That would be a tragedy, especially since modern representative democracy has solved a huge range of problems, such as democracy being historically limited to at most a city or civil wars between alternate rulers (the American civil war was about ideology/economics, not who ruled), innate to most other political systems. Using the elites as scapegoats simply focuses attention away from the actual causes and fuels the sort of class warfare that's best avoided. 

Now there are currently problems with the worlds elites, especially the financial subsection. The solution however is simple, head James Kunstler when he says the rule of law needs to be brought back into finance. If you want a more prestigious voice, then there is Machiavelli who in the prince said much the same thing, or don't let the nobles (his name for elites) get corrupt and strictly enforce your laws on them. It should be noted that abandoning the rule of law for the lower or middle classes would create corruption and crime among them just as abandoning it for the upper creates corruption and crime among the elites, those classes are human and therefore not perfect. Idealizing them is just as bad as calling the elites evil.

There are many approaches to social and political systems, some of them are better than others, though often that is largely subjective. Me, I like Machiavelli's approach as it is free from moralizing and based on what actually happens as well as human nature, rather than an abstract idea of those things. Its no wonder he's had such a high level of influence. Considering that he founded quite a few of the founding ideas of modern democracies; division of power, checks and balance, 'impure' forms of government (Dictator, republic, democracy) and so on in political thought, his basic approach most likely offers a great deal. Even Marx hasn't had that much influence on large scale and working human societies. Its certainly better than the untempered idealism (though in his own way Machiavelli was an idealist), scapegoating and utopian thinking that is far more commonly found.

On Hiearchies and Elites: Part 2

The quotes from last week:

From Wikipedia Anarchy
"The evolutionary psychologist Steven Pinker writes:

Adjudication by an armed authority appears to be the most effective violence-reduction technique ever invented. Though we debate whether tweaks in criminal policy, such as executing murderers versus locking them up for life, can reduce violence by a few percentage points, there can be no debate on the massive effects of having a criminal justice system as opposed to living in anarchy. The shockingly high homicide rates of pre-state societies, with 10 to 60 percent of the men dying at the hands of other men, provide one kind of evidence. Another is the emergence of a violent culture of honor in just about any corner of the world that is beyond the reach of law. The generalization that anarchy in the sense of a lack of government leads to anarchy in the sense of violent chaos may seem banal, but it is often over-looked in today's still-romantic climate.^[54]"

 From the Urban Dictionary on Anarchy

"Anarchy" arises from ancient Greek "An," meaning without and "Archos" meaning leader.
In modern political philosophy anarchy, or anarchism (the ideology which aims to create anarchy) is traced back, often, to Proudhon, and in particular his work "What is property?" - the origin of the still used anarchist slogan "Property is theft!"
Contrary to belief that "anarchy" is synonymous with "Disorder," anarchists generally advocate non-hierarchical, horizontal organization, typically through directly democratic structures. As such, there is a degree of common ground between anarchists and libertarian Marxists. Many anarchists are highly supportive of the practice of the Zapatistas in Chiapas.

In 1936, anarchists in the Spanish provinces of Catalonia and Aragon collectivized industry and agriculture, and established a working example of anarchy."

From the excellent blog View from Brittany; Impotence of Politics

"With the Neolithic revolution, our societies have grown far beyond what a single coalition could reasonably manage and have become fractal as a result. Modern societies are a hierarchy of nested coalitions all built upon the same model, from your average nuclear family to the G8. Inside those coalitions, everyone is jockeying for position and fighting for access to scarce resources. This the way all human groups work, even anarchies. In fact, it is far more brutal among anarchists – especially the Randite subtype – because by rejecting institutionalized power, they destroy the various social devices our species evolved to check the pack leader's dominance."

From Damien's (author of view from Brittany) response in the comments of Fascination for Death

"Ana,

I have glimpsed the world of the elites. I have had lunch with the man who has become the prime minister of France and my best friend gravitates around this milieu. I have the number of a senator on my cell phone... and I can tell you they are not Machiavellian, they are clueless.

They really think they can preserve the status-quo through green-washing and economic tinkering... and that it is the best thing for everybody. They don't think billions will die, because, you know, the system they game is so efficient that it simply can't happen.

As for violent revolution... both in France and the USA, today's elites have been born from such a violent revolution, so they really think they embody their values and that therefore, it can't happen to them. When lamppost day will come, they will be... indignant."

paraphrased From John Micheal Greer.
"no political system anywhere will ever be more honest than the people it governs"

Since this will also touch on morality, rights and such, some points about them, and 'philosophical' theories in general need to be addressed. Anarchistic theory is correct in that anarchism would provide the most positive freedom of any political system, however while that may make it sound like an excellent idea this is actually a fatal flaw. As it excludes many negative freedoms, or freedoms from things, such as violence. When talked about in abstract terms, concepts and ideas of this kind (free speech, freedom, justice, equality, peace etc) don't have to really conflict both with their internal sides (if any) and with each other, when they're brought closer to real life they inevitably do. Here's an example I remember someone writing about, he went around Australia debating (specifically the Bill of rights debate) and before every debate he asked the audience "do you believe in free speech?". Everyone always said yes, then he asked "would you allow ads for smoking outside of schools" and everyone would say no, which conflicts with free speech. In the first quote at the top the conflict is between security and freedom, which is one of the more common ones.

Free market fundamentalists and neoliberal economic theory also has a similar flaw, built around deregulation (read increased freedom for business and the rich). This increased freedom causes problems of inequality (which is an important value) and this then cycles through the political sphere to cause reduced freedom and prosperity for other people. The first quote from Damien is also along similar lines, by increasing freedom via destruction of institutions/social checks (such as altruism), you increase inequality and this then reduces the freedom of everyone below the pack leader (and destroy whole economies in the process as institutions are critical to economic success). Idealistic constructs and Ideas often have this flaw of ignoring the inevitable conflict between different ideals/values and thus fail to deal with them once the inevitable conflicts occur, Plato's republic is a good example. The example above of the smoking ads may seem banal, but if a society can't apply its ideals (in some form) in the day to day life of its citizens, then what is the point of them. Anarchism and Neoliberalism are in a way equivalent theories in different realms, respectively social/political theory and economic theory.

In the View from Brittany: From Russia with narcissism, Damien mentions what he calls the Sadian (as in Marquis de Sade, whom the word sadism is based off) interpretation of liberty. In this liberty is near absolute, so anyone can behave as they wish and this includes rape, murder, pedophilia etc. To quote de Sade "Laws can be so soft, and so few, that all men, whatever their character, can submit to them”, and Damien "And if you open The 120 days, you'll quickly realize that whatever their character includes Jeffrey Dahmer's". Focus on anyone value to the exemption of all others inevitable to ideas such as sadian liberty when carried to their logical extreme. After all the freedom to go around stabbing people still counts as a freedom and lying about someones products to hurt sales (slander) is freedom of speech, yet they are generally forbidden or restricted, even though that violates freedom of action and freedom of speech respectively, as they respectively violate the negative freedoms of freedom from being stabbed or slandered. Follow any ideal to its logical extreme and you get plenty of examples like the ones above. If you don't acknowledge this, then many theoretical systems that work(ed) horrendously in practice sound great in theory, especially when they ignore human nature as many inevitably do.

One of the central ideas of anarchism is that when their isn't any hierarchy and/or authorities, people will still act in a moral, rational and mutually beneficial manner. However there exists solid disproof in the modern world. The internet, where antisocial behaviour is rife when it isn't moderated. The Archdruid moderates his site for a reason, so do most sites now days. Trolls and equivalent behaviour are problems for any society, one which humans have evolved rather effective means of solving. The justice system, moderation, laws, informal rules and such which are backed up by an accepted authority when needed and the common idea that their are limits to behaviour.

Terrible ambivalence is an Archdruid report specifically about a debate between Monbiot and Kingsnorth but there is a sentence at the end which sums up a great many things "So many of us want things all one way or the other, all good or all evil, without the terrible ambivalence that pulses through all things human as inescapably as blood." Humans are never solely one way, we can be rational or emotional, cooperative or competitive, good or evil, strong or weak and values are no exception. Freedom is never absolute or even good, see the paragraph above, peace is similar and so on. Any social system has to be able to deal with these conflicts, anarchism on the level of a whole society can't achieve that. Instead it leads to extremes and this is partially why there have been no long term 'true' anarchies but only short lived ones. Most tribal societies have some level of hierarchy (even if its just by age) and it varies from almost nil to almost a state level. It generally depends on their social complexity and as that increases, they become more state like, its a spectrum.

The problem we have now is not that we have a hierarchies when we shouldn't, but that we have too many hierarchical layers and need to reduce them, along with simplifying our societies along other lines. There is a large gap between the almost global system we have now and a fully localized system, going all the way down to the village level is unlikely to happen to whole countries (certain areas might though). Put it like this, we currently have a hierarchical value of say 20, while we will end up with say between 5-15. The fact is that human societies have hierarchies for a reason, they provide benefits, allow complexification as a problem solving tool and allow societies to function in numbers well above what human mental hardware can do on its own.

There is a concept known as the monkey sphere (also the Dunbar number) which tells you roughly how big a group a primate can live in based of its brain. For humans its around 100-300 and with family ties it can be extended to 700, after which massive problems appear. The Fayu had an extreme form of these troubles happen to them when they reduced their numbers via violence (mostly revenge killings) from 2000 to 400 within 1 to 2 generations. The great achievement of the original centralizing of power is abolishing that limit and having large societies in which cycles of revenge killings don't kill 80% or so of the population. Yes you have all the problems with impersonal dealings, lots of strangers and some degree of alienation, but you don't have people murdering each other constantly and people can live without fear of constant violence. It's a trade off that has been made many times and chances are will continue to be made.

Just to be clear, I am not against relocalization, reducing the complexity of our society or getting rid of some of the levels of hierarchies , I'm for those. That is what's going to happen, but it isn't going to progress all the way and anarchism is certainly not a viable option. When the Archdruid was talking about local school boards, an important element of that system was the hierarchies of local, state then federal school boards. That hierarchy was integral to the system and while increasing the hierarchies and complexity hasn't worked, reducing them below certain levels would be just as counter-productive.

After the Roman collapse what rose was not anarchism, but feudalism which is (roughly speaking) a strict hierarchy built on the controlled and highly regulated use of violence in order to have at least the semblance of the rule of law and the security it provides. Even through it theoretically offered the best chance for anarchy to arise, after all if anarchist societies work better and its what humans naturally do, then a large scale disruption of hierarchies should allow anarchism to flourish, but that hasn't happened in most of the times our species has been through the process of overshoot, in the times it has (such as the South  American apocalypse) it was when the destruction was all but complete and quickly followed by the survivors adopting tribalism which is distinctly non-anarchic though not necessarily hierarchical.

There's a common quote “Any society that would give up a little liberty to gain a little security will deserve neither and lose both.” and it derives from a Benjamin Franklin quote "They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety."  The dropping of essential in front of liberty and temporary in front of safety changes the meaning by a fairly significant amount. It now refers to all liberties instead of the key ones, so minor or harmful liberties can be defended under that label now, like smoking even when it harms other people. Smoking is a non-essential liberty and restricting the liberty to use it has been a good choice and in a way reinforced the more essential liberty of not being poisoned. This is how ideals are used in everyday life and compromise is necessary. But it also means that giving up a non-essential/harmful liberty (such as sadian liberty or full freedom of speech) for security is now considered bad and ineffective, which can be absurd as their are times when this is necessary and workable.  However, giving up non-essential liberties in exchange for permanent peace and security is something our species has reliable done when possible and its worked out pretty well, though only to certain extents as there is significant grey ground about what is the best amount/what essential freedoms are. The grey area is around what Ben Franklin's society had, you could argue for slightly less security and more liberty or more security for less liberty. It's basically a tradeoff in which humans have pegged the optimum (other sentient species could chose another point) at around his societies level.

If the choice has been between security or a theoretically high level of freedom, people have consistently chosen the security. And as history and tribal societies show, this security is normally gained by having hierarchies. The only time anarchism has appeared after a collapse is when the collapse has been almost total, and the situation hasn't changed anywhere near enough for that pattern to change. From the first quote "The generalization that anarchy in the sense of a lack of government leads to anarchy in the sense of violent chaos may seem banal, but it is often over-looked in today's still-romantic climate." That is as true now as it has ever been.

Related to hierarchies are elites and that's for next week.

On Hiearchies and Elites: Part 1

For understandable reasons anti-elitism (specifically the form of elites are evil and dragging the world down) and anarchism (also anarcho-primitivism, what JMG calls neo-primitivists) exist in the peak oil sphere. Dimitri Orlov, one of the heavyweights in the peak oil sphere, openly supports anarchism and sort of shades into primitivism, see this sequence of his. This video displays elements of neo-primitivism in it and there are various other items around. The Automatic Earth featured one side of a debate, here is Ashvin Pandurangi's (Automatic Earth) side and here is RE's (from Doomstead diner) side, about whether a purge should be initiated against the world's elites. To frame this discussion I'll list some quotes that you can find around the web. I'll also repost them in the other parts of this series.

From Wikipedia Anarchy
"The evolutionary psychologist Steven Pinker writes:

Adjudication by an armed authority appears to be the most effective violence-reduction technique ever invented. Though we debate whether tweaks in criminal policy, such as executing murderers versus locking them up for life, can reduce violence by a few percentage points, there can be no debate on the massive effects of having a criminal justice system as opposed to living in anarchy. The shockingly high homicide rates of pre-state societies, with 10 to 60 percent of the men dying at the hands of other men, provide one kind of evidence. Another is the emergence of a violent culture of honor in just about any corner of the world that is beyond the reach of law. ..The generalization that anarchy in the sense of a lack of government leads to anarchy in the sense of violent chaos may seem banal, but it is often over-looked in today's still-romantic climate.^[54]"

 From the Urban Dictionary on Anarchy

"Anarchy" arises from ancient Greek "An," meaning without and "Archos" meaning leader.
In modern political philosophy anarchy, or anarchism (the ideology which aims to create anarchy) is traced back, often, to Proudhon, and in particular his work "What is property?" - the origin of the still used anarchist slogan "Property is theft!"
Contrary to belief that "anarchy" is synonymous with "Disorder," anarchists generally advocate non-hierarchical, horizontal organization, typically through directly democratic structures. As such, there is a degree of common ground between anarchists and libertarian Marxists. Many anarchists are highly supportive of the practice of the Zapatistas in Chiapas.

In 1936, anarchists in the Spanish provinces of Catalonia and Aragon collectivized industry and agriculture, and established a working example of anarchy."

From the excellent blog View from Brittany; Impotence of Politics

"With the Neolithic revolution, our societies have grown far beyond what a single coalition could reasonably manage and have become fractal as a result. Modern societies are a hierarchy of nested coalitions all built upon the same model, from your average nuclear family to the G8. Inside those coalitions, everyone is jockeying for position and fighting for access to scarce resources. This the way all human groups work, even anarchies. In fact, it is far more brutal among anarchists – especially the Randite subtype – because by rejecting institutionalized power, they destroy the various social devices our species evolved to check the pack leader's dominance."

From Damien's (author of view from Brittany) response in the comments of Fascination for Death

"Ana,

I have glimpsed the world of the elites. I have had lunch with the man who has become the prime minister of France and my best friend gravitates around this milieu. I have the number of a senator on my cell phone... and I can tell you they are not Machiavellian, they are clueless.

They really think they can preserve the status-quo through green-washing and economic tinkering... and that it is the best thing for everybody. They don't think billions will die, because, you know, the system they game is so efficient that it simply can't happen.

As for violent revolution... both in France and the USA, today's elites have been born from such a violent revolution, so they really think they embody their values and that therefore, it can't happen to them. When lamppost day will come, they will be... indignant."

paraphrased From John Micheal Greer.
"no political system anywhere will ever be more honest than the people it governs"

Just to be upfront and in case you haven't guessed yet based on my choice of quotes, I'm in favor of; states, rule of law, functional hierarchies, having a society bigger that a single village, secularism and quite a few other things, as  superior forms of living and choices for the future. And yes I am aware of Overshoots effects and find this to be perfectly compatible with that worldview. Also, just because it is bugging me, sustainability doesn't mean being equitable, moral or just. You can have a perfectly sustainable society which is unjust (say it brutally oppresses religious or ethnic minorities), is ruled solely by the strong or it has big class divisions (in terms of wealth). Equality and justice are certainly good to have, but they don't mean you are more or less sustainable (except in specific areas). Basically, they are separate fights and an alliance on certain areas would be a good idea, like sharing the loss of wealth to promote domestic stability and the ability to transition.

We might as well start with Orlov and his use of Kropotkin, since he is one of the bigger voices in the peak oil sphere. Orlov calls Kropotkin a scientist, which he certainly was, and talks about how his observations on the natural world and various human groups lead him to determine that anarchism was the best form of social organization and that cooperation is both natural and more evolutionary advantageous than competition. His observations were most likely correct (these being that the anarchic groups delivered superior results), however his conclusions are not and I'll recount someones explanation for why.

Years ago (maybe a decade, can't remember which is why I can't link or name the article) I read an article in new scientist  that talked about the use of evolutionary theory to justify social systems. It started with the Victorian's who exclusively focused on the Red in tooth and claw aspect of nature and competition, then used that to justify both the existing class system and Britain's exploitation of the world, their observations were accurate, organisms successfully compete against each other. Here's an example of competition, some scientists (this was also in new scientist) were examining the fungal communication system of plants (sort of like a plant's internet) and they simulated an insect attack. One species would instead of enhancing its defenses start growing faster to exploit the attack and gain more resources, hence successful competition.

After the Victorians another set of scientists from around the time of communism (so Kropotkin is included) did in one sense the exact opposite while in another acting exactly the same. They exclusively focused on cooperation in nature and then used their findings to justify various social schemes such as communism or anarchism. Like the Victorian's their observations were correct, cooperation is both common and successful in nature. An example is human ears not being able to swivel, which probably means that early human tribesmen relied on each others hearing to detect danger, which is a good example of cooperation, among the more well known ones such as ant colonies etc.

However, both groups in their conclusions are wrong, for the simple reason that evolution is context dependent and they basically ignored each others work and a wider more meta understanding of evolution. Neither competition or cooperation is supreme in evolution, sometimes one is used exclusively but more often an organism will both compete and cooperate. Kropotkin was correct that competition and brute force weren't the sole drivers of evolution, but he was wrong in ignoring their importance. Neither competition or cooperation is the sole driver of evolution. Also as the article mention, evolution in the natural world is a horrible way to justify social systems or invent new ones. The main reason is that everyone who has tried has ended up ignoring data that contradicts their preferred theory (something fairly common in general). An example of this is saying either prostitution or homosexuality is wrong because no animals engage in those behaviors  and then ignoring that those behaviors are observed in the natural world, penguins engage in both for example.

Whether a trait or behavior is useful depends entirely upon the context and organism in question. Eyes are useless in caves and simply waste scarce resources while adding a major vulnerability, fur attracts parasites and is expensive, mating behavior (especially dangerous mating behavior) only works when there are mates around and so on. Competition and cooperation are exactly the same, which is best depends on the context and this can be seen just as easily in human societies as in the natural world. Human females are assertive and not drab (compared to the males), an incredible rarity in the animal world, which hints at intra-band competition in the past, but when paying bride prices or payments for damage down, an entire tribe/extended family can join in and cooperate. This also means that the social habits of say ants, deer, birds, horses etc, are not readily applicable to human societies because the contexts and organisms are incredibly different. Humans are sapient, have a very weak form of alpha males (one male doesn't even take most of the females in tribal life), are highly adaptive, very capable tool users and the females are assertive and colorful (think in terms of clothes). Those differences matter, especially when you consider the population densities and structures we can expect even after overshoot.

The way to examine in an evolutionary way the best human structures is to look at human societies, mainly through the large variety of tribes left because they are the oldest surviving human societies. This is what Jared Diamond does in his latest book The World before Yesterday, he examines tribal societies and contrasts them with each other and state societies. It's quite a good book and the conclusions he draws are very important. Here's a quote from Orlov's new book  "Their human populations are then able to come out of the vegetative condition to which settled, civilized existence has consigned them and revert to their original, nomadic state". The problem with that is nomadic behaviour under what Jared Diamond classifies as non-state societies is a function of population density, not of some innate human trait. Non-state people can only travel about two neighboring groups away before it becomes to dangerous and they are likely to be killed, so I'd have trouble traveling the next suburb down under that system. States on the other hand detach nomadic behavior from population density with such quaint concepts as law and order, the rule of law, a monopoly force and so on.

Missing from the book is the intermediary forms that would have been common in ancient/medieval times and don't really exist anymore (starting to come back in some weak/failing states). They offered some of the advantages of modern hierarchical societies but not to the same extent. Here's an example, if medieval writers wanted to say some king was a great law giver, one of the things they would say is that a virgin could walk across the entire kingdom without being raped. Under normal times a virgin (or almost any sort of female) walking across the kingdom without escort would almost certainly be raped and/or murdered. But you could go on pilgrimages and villages often had houses set aside for pilgrims, something impossible under a tribal system. Note: China was no different, I remember one of the mongol rulers (possible Genghis Khan) having the platitude above in his description. 

What comes out of Jared Diamonds book is a lot of things that can be used to improve our current societies, child rearing could certainly use an upgrade and beneficial additions to the justice system exist. However he also identifies traits of state societies that are beneficial, such as a low homicide rate, a lower death toll from war and definitive peaces. From his book, the !Kung before modern law and order started having an effective homicide rate 3 times that of the USA's, the first quote above mentions something similar and it is a trait of tribal societies to have a high proportional homicide rate. The average death toll for war in tribal societies is 1% of the population a year when averaged over a century, while in the state societies he examined the highest (including WW1 and WW2) state had an average rate of .36%, or a third of the average for tribal civilizations. Related is the end of chronic warfare since total war is the exception in state societies but the norm in tribal societies, it is often nearly continuous as well. Contrary to a lot of rhetoric, state societies are more peaceful than tribal societies, both in terms of war and murder. The ability to travel through an area full of strangers safely is another bonus that even in weak states is provided in some capacity (think pilgrimages, or the ability to hire local guides/escorts), today it is almost absolute in working nation states.

Noticeably lacking is any radical changes or insights from Jared Diamonds study, he advocates no large scale societal changes or completely new way of doing things. Compared to Kropotkin or the Victorians its quite simple, humble and barely says anything about changing society at the large structural level, his insights are far more important and relevant than that. The thing is, state societies evolved just like tribal societies did and are what humans have been observed to do under the conditions we can expect to become more common (as much of the world can be expected to have a fairly high population density). They are just as natural to us as tribal life is.  

Orlov mentions another element of Kropotkin's analysis which matches his own experiences. "His examples of communist production were the numerous communist communities that were all the rage in the United States at the time, where the numbers showed that they produced far better results with less effort and in less time than individuals or family farms.", Orlov mentions his experience with companies that anarchism works better. Now in these observations both Orlov and Kropotkin are most likely correct, at least for modern society and this needs an explanation. The groups mentioned are embedded inside a hierarchical, state system and thus receive indirect subsidies from the overall societal system mentioned above (law and order, ability to peacefully relate to unrelated strangers etc). The applied anarchism they advocate only makes sense as an embedded system inside a hierarchical system, since at the whole system level it fails to work due to being unable to provide many of the benefits it itself requires. Context is very important for these ideas and observations. It should probably be mentioned at this point that the modern nation-state is not the only form of hierarchical structure possible, though it is likely that at least the state part will remain for much of the world.

Now cooperation in most cases internally to human societies is better than competition (cooperation is however used as a form of competition between groups). There are important exceptions however, in the Discourses of Livy Machiavelli says that one of the main reasons the early Roman republic stayed free (compared to Greek cities the Roman republic rarely had anything approaching a tyrant) was because the Patricians (upper class) and Plebs (lower class) were constantly competing and that anacyclosis was best stopped by having all three forms of governments competing. It did not prevent it partly due to the inevitable breakdown of the patrician pleb divide (it was hereditary rather than based of actual wealth), also the stresses of empire building destroyed the republic and then bread and circuses did the rest. During his time these ideas were completely rejected, those aspects of Rome were seen as weaknesses (even by Livy, a Roman historian), but from this Machiavelli founded the idea of checks and balances, along with the separation of powers (executive, legislative and judicial) in political thought. Before, political theory held that unity was the best and any internal struggles were bad, such as the constant struggle between the patricians and the plebs.The experiment of trying those ideas (along with quite a few more) out has helped birth modern representative democracy, which has worked out incredibly well compared to other government systems. Competition is the order of the day in politics, and having competing ideologies helps to. Cooperation on the other hand more often leads to group thought and a failure to consider other options, not something which is particularly useful.

Here's the Churchill quote "Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time."

Just to be clear. When JMG is talking about democracy, specifically Robert's rule of orders and the one that grew out of English tradition, he is referring mostly to direct democracy. Direct democracy can only really function on a small scale (at most a small city by our standards, about 50,000 people) and representative democracy is the modified form which can operate on a bigger scale. Machiavelli's concepts work on the representative democracy scale which was also born the from English tradition (about the 16th century) of direct democracy. At the time every one said they hated Machiavelli while copying everything he said in the prince, while the republican minded took on his ideas in the Discourse of Livy and fused them with a few other important things. Thus starting modern representative democracy right there. The American founding fathers were also greatly influence (John Adams mostly), so his ideas were listened to by very practical nation builders.

Due to this modern representative democracy isn't an accurate term, since it's actually a mixed government. This is important to keep in mind when reading older discussions on democracy. "I do not say that democracy has been more pernicious on the whole, and in the long run, than monarchy or aristocracy. Democracy has never been and never can be so durable as aristocracy or monarchy; but while it lasts, it is more bloody than either. … Remember, democracy never lasts long." by John Adams. He's talking about a pure democracy without the checks of a aristocracy or a dictator. Modern representative democracies have those checks as they are a mixed government and not a pure democracy. Australia as the aristocracy in the form of the senate, while America has the senate and the president as the dictator. It's one of the main reasons it works better than any historic form of democracy, for example the tyrants which do appear in a functioning modern democracies are incredible weak compared to the ones that Athens or other Greek cities had. 

So the question then for fostering cooperation (when appropriate) remains, is it best done by a lack of hierarchy or within a hierarchy. The answer is again, it depends. There are certainly examples of cooperation happening under anarchic conditions, people pulling together during disasters is a good example. However for a larger or long term response having a hierarchical organization is advantageous, otherwise problems appear. A good example of hierarchy fostering cooperation when anarchy only breeds competition is available, and for a society as well as individuals it is quite an important feature, that of warfare.

Tribal warfare is very competitive, even when cooperation would help. Tribal archers don't fire in volleys (except for one or two exceptions), even through it would greatly enhance their effectiveness, ambushes are hard to pull of because every warrior wants the prestige of attacking first as well as lacking the discipline needed. No strategies and tactics can be used because no obeys them and often fights just dissolve into slug fests or name calling. Hierarchical armies on the other hand are incredible cooperative, fire is coordinated, tactics and strategies are used and formations maintained. They idea of warfare being a team effort is entirely a product of hierarchies, without it competition is the norm even through it disadvantages the entire group.

Cooperation can be fostered by hierarchies, not always, but hierarchies do not always foster competition as quite a few radicals say they do. The same is true for anarchies. Remember the average casualties for tribes is 1% of the population a year, far more than state societies in part due to the cooperation of state armies (less massacres than in tribal warfare), so the inefficiency of tribal warfare doesn't keep overall casualties down, it could even cause them to increase because each battle has little consequence (one or two dead is typical). This also means that while future governments will be smaller and certainly won't be able to fight world wars, the casualties from warfare needn't be different, in fact they will most likely be higher, partly due to increased frequency and the pressures of different warfare types.

This also extends onto the meta aspects of warfare and the politics/policies that surround it. If discipline isn't maintained in troops, then chances are when they get the chance they'll kill a large portion of any enemy settlement they can, whether or not their leaders want them to. In tribal societies there is no discipline so they simply kill every settlement they can, while in state societies the majority (not all) of settlements are spared and settlements can surrender, something which doesn't happen in tribal war. Jared Diamond mentions this happening against the will of the leader in the tribal war he examines. Then there is the peace-keeping aspect of having some sort of armed forces and how that's used.

The Romans generally used massive retaliation, attempting to completely annihilate an enemy (see the destruction of Carthage), which since everyone knew about acted as a relatively effective deterrent. The other approach is flexible response, deal enough pain to force your enemy to negotiate, which doesn't act as a deterrent and could then cause more wars to be fought. Then there is the difference in how many wars are fought in a given area, so break up the European countries into smaller states and all else being equal they will fight more wars than if the states stay the same size, and likely each state will be fighting more wars as well (more neighbors to potentially go to war with). This would also likely reduce the distance most civilians are from a war-zone and if no state can easily conquer another, even more wars will be fought because no dire consequences exist to fighting them.

Remember, the point of aircraft carriers and nukes is not as it is commonly perceived to fight wars, but more often to stop them occurring. Showing the flag operations are almost entirely meant to calm local tensions down and avert a war or conflict. They are more often weapons of peace than war, even when by keeping that peace they allow injustices to continue (peace is not always good). Ignore these aspects of militaries, like a fair few radicals do, and you cannot understand how states relate to each over. Blustering and posturing can often fulfill a states goals just as well as an actual war, especially when the memories of war are lying around.

That's it for the specific criticism of Orlov and Kropotkin, now onto anarchy is more general terms.