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by specialist 3637 days ago
While it can work, "consensus" usually means ad hoc, no accountability, no followthru.

This essay was illuminating:

Tyranny of Structurelessness

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Tyranny_of_Structurelessne...

2 comments

Yes, <3 that.

"Contrary to what we would like to believe, there is no such thing as a structureless group."

The same essay was linked to me a previous time I made a similar public complaint :)

While I've always thought that essay made good points, it's somewhat dangerous to overinterpret the thoughts of a Stalinist on groups without structure. Her solution is (obviously) to just have hierarchical structure, but this leaves you with the same problems as structureless, there's now just a channel by which people who play the game well can pretend to be accountable. Stalin himself proves that hierarchical groups aren't more accountable, even if they nominally have mechanisms to be so.