1. Being more capable at something is not the same thing as having more privilege. Privilege is a social phenomenon, granted by all other persons to a person or group. 

"a special right, advantage, or immunity granted only to a particular person or group of people."

2. Not necessarily. The disabled person might have capabilities which make up for their disability, or the society in which they exist might provide accommodations for disabled people which reduce the inequality. Dis-privilege due to having a disability is a social phenomena, even if general disadvantage doesn't have to be. Privilege =|= advantage. 

3. For starters a "military sniper" wouldn't exist without the state. Nobody's main profession would be to snipe. A boxer is pretty useless against a gun. For those people who are physically weak or incapable of defending themselves, they'd have the ability to form social bonds in order to have equal access to defense. So yes, the capacity to induce violence would generally be equal at a macro-level if it is not equal at the individual level. 

It is only through tax-rents that the state is able to gain a unilateral monopoly on the legitimization of violence which makes its effective power so disproportionate. 

4. That something is against the law doesn't mean it isn't protected. Drug cartels are against the law, but they only flourish because of the actions of the state. Rape in prisons is protected (or at least made possible) by the state. The legitimization of rape against spouses was only legitimated by the state punishing wives who took actions into their own hands, it's only been recently that Western countries have changed their laws to include rape against spouses. Even in western countries, rape against men is not recognized as rape unless they are penetrated by an object or penis. 

That something is illegal doesn't mean it isn't protected by the actions of the state in its enforcement (or lack thereof) with respect to other crimes. 

5. Then stop saying "no world is perfect" as a response to criticisms of the current system. What is the point of it if not to make such a facile argument? 

6. First I never said people would behave the same. Of course they won't. That doesn't mean people's actions can't be limited without statutes. 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arbitration , https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_norm , https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ostracism

7.  In both instances I make a promise to do something in the future with what is originally mine (my body or labor-product.) In the first instance I promise to have sex. In the employment scenario I promise to give up my labor-product for a wage. 

Suppose I have control over my labor-product and decide,"Hey, I don't want the wage they promised me, I want to keep that which I produced and sell it myself." I have reneged on my promise, just as what would had happened if I reneged on my promise to have sex.  

Both my labor-product and my body are mine to give and keep, and consequently a violation of either is the same violation -- that of my self-autonomy. 

Hence to stipulate that a laborer can't change the terms of their labor-contract at any time is to imply that a person partaking in sex can't change the terms of their sex-contract at any time. Both depend on consistent consent.

8. I have not denied people have different capabilities. You know that well, I have said it multiple times. It's intellectually dishonest to continually assert this. 

9. Where did you form that conclusion from? As I said, there is some degree to which people mistakenly surround themselves with people who are not in their interests. There is also a point where people surround themselves with people who are not in their interests because they have no other choice, even if they recognize that fact. The latter scenario is what can be diminished to a certain degree by giving people more autonomy and control over their lives. Most people don't join a gang thinking it is especially good for them. Instead they join a gang because it is the least bad option among many. 

10. I am not arguing moral relativism, I am arguing moral subjectivism. While they are similar to some extent, they are indeed different. Moral relativism holds no morality to be better than any other, while moral subjectivism does not necessarily have to hold all moralities to be of equal value, but it recognizes the fact that there is no objective morality, merely many different subjective moralities (as many as there are people.) I subjectively create and modify my own morality and impose my will to enforce it. The capitalist subjectively creates and modifies his morality and imposes his will. He is only better capable at imposing his will because the state privileges him with monopoly access to various social functions/resources: banking/money, the movement of labor/tariffs, access to land/natural resources, and the patent system to name just a few. By eliminating these state-functions I can further my own interests (my morality) much more easily. I recognize the capitalist has his own morality to justify his position, but I reject it as binding me, because my morality (which I define in terms of my interests) is better for me. 

11. When I used "we" I was using it to refer to people who see exploitation as wrong and whom I would associate with. It is just the same as your collective use of "their." So if I am a collectivist for using a collective pronoun, so are you for using a collective pronoun. That an individualist properly uses the pronoun does not make him/her a collectivist. That is such a silly thought. I can recognize that I share qualities with other people without recognizing that I share all qualities with other people. Just as one might recognize that most men have penises, and would say "we" when referring to men and their penises when discussing the probability of penile cancer doesn't make one a collectivist (at least not in a political sense of the word.) It just means they are making a generalization out of expediency. 

12. Right, because the nation-state has existed for how long? There was civilization before nation-states. There will be civilization after nation-states. 

13. Cool. 

14. Please expand on your "understanding" then. So far you haven't substantiated any of your assertions with evidence. If you're interested in me providing evidence of certain assertions I make, I'd happily provide them. 

15. Only in so much as any ideal is unrealistic. That doesn't make ideals useless though. You wouldn't say geometry has no real-world application because a perfect circle is "unrealistic"/can never exist. 

16. I never said they were "entirely" socially-constructed. This has been a trend of yours. Creating false-dichotomies and then assuming that because I reject the absolute statements you make that I believe the opposite absolute. There are degrees to which gender norms are biologically determinable, but since individual humans are complex animals biology manifests differently based on the environmental (including social) context. 

17. That has much more to do with their autonomy (or lack thereof) as a worker than their autonomy as a pregnant woman (I disagree with feminists here.) One could advocate having leave for a variety of reasons (woman or not.) In fact, in many countries men ask for parental leave after a baby is born. 

18. The feminists who say this are wrong, in my opinion. Heck I don't necessarily agree with most feminists about the patriarchy in today's world. Feminists aren't a hive-mind anyway. 

19. Then we don't disagree other than the proportions in which these different factors work in our current society. I'd also like to add that what constitutes success is defined by individuals. 

20. You need to define "intelligence", "bravery", etc and "success" in universal terms for this to be true. Which is an anti-individualist position. I can guarantee you that a Amazonian tribe has better chances of surviving in the Amazon than you do, even if you score higher on an IQ test. Another example is if we were to define success in terms of evolutionary success. There is no reason to believe that in certain ecological niches that these qualities would perpetuate your gene-pool. So I contest the idea that there is a universal metric of success and universal qualities which achieve it. 

21. In the specific setting of the workplace, I believe the capitalist only provides the capital. That is his role. Without the capital nobody would care to associate with him. Tell me, what else does the capitalist provide in this scenario? The capitalist isn't typically the person who sells the goods or services, isn't the person who makes them, isn't the person directly making management decisions, etc. He/she/they are the person(s) providing the money with the aim to gain profits through the work, innovation, and management of others. In other circumstances beyond the workplace? Sure, maybe the capitalist provides something other than capital.

By the way, capital =|= [money], capital = [money, fixed capital, natural resources, etc]

22. Why not? One doesn't need to be the best to adequately manage a firm.This isn't a binary scale between "best = success" and "anything less = failure." Plus plenty of companies last so long because they get special subsidies and privileges, hence the role of the state and its bailouts. Your statement might be true if all markets were perfectly competitive though, but then there would no longer be a super-normal profit-incentive (in a perfectly competitive market; price = marginal cost in the long run) and therefore capitalists would have less dominance (see: market-share of farming cooperatives as an example.) In other words, capitalism would dissolve into Tuckerite market-socialism. 

23. The shape of a normal distribution. 

24. In some circumstances. There are plenty of instances where starting anew is beneficial. Reform can work, but only to an extent. In order to have capitalist liberal democracies we had to destroy (or modify beyond recognition) the feudalism and absolutist institutions which preceded them, through concepts like: the separation of church and state, the elimination of any monarchy power, etc. The same holds true when talking about socialism with respect to liberal democracy. Fundamental characteristics of liberal society like: property, the state, humanism, etc need to be disentangled and modified, if not abolished outright, just as we abolished (in the United States) state churches in our liberal revolution/evolution. 

25. No, it's more like saying because cars aren't perfect we should develop a new, better mechanism of transportation that doesn't have the bad features of cars. Your analogy would work if I said, "We should abandon liberal democracy and go back to feudalism." I am saying, "we should better develop the fundamental enlightenment ideas of liberal democracy, abandon those which aren't that good, and live in a better system of social organization." 

26. lol :D, that is a concession of not having a point without actually admitting it, if I ever saw one. 

27. This would be a fair exchange if all of the coercion around them didn't lead to this dependency of the worker on the capitalist. If the woman (or man) were dependent on the man (or woman) because of coercion around them and they could have been in a better position without said coercion, then yes that would be exploitative. 

28. Sure he started in his garage, and without the capital he would've remained in his garage. He used his social connections (which not all people have) to persuade capitalists to give him capital in order to expand beyond his garage. The future of his business depended on the interests of the capitalist, which might (or might not) be contrary to his own in certain circumstances. 

You simplified my previous definition in order to build a straw man, which again is a typical mode of intellectual dishonesty which you took advantage of in our conversations. This is the definition of capitalist that I provided. 

 Capitalist = = "person who uses the privilege of capital to exploit the labor of others."

Merely exchanging one's capital for labor does not make a capitalist. If I don't make a profit off the exchange, then there is no exploitation. 

29. Nope, I never mentioned Steve Jobs. I spoke of capitalists. You were the one who brought up Steve Jobs. I told you that when Steve Jobs acted as an entrepreneur he was not acting as a capitalist but a worker, working on the behalf of capitalists. 

Just as I can be a producer and consumer in different contexts, so can I be a worker and a capitalist in different contexts. This is true of Steve Jobs too. He started as a worker, and produced value as a worker. When he acted as a capitalist the only thing he provided was capital, which is crucial to value-production, sure, but is in the hands of as few as possible mostly because of societal norms and state laws which bound them. 

30. Except I am not. One can believe that the individual is the fundamental moral agent and the basis from which all social institutions gain their legitimacy, while still believing that the individual worker should control his/her/their labor-product (or an equivalent.) The prior is individualism, the latter is socialism. This was (and is) the consistent and common view of all individualist anarchists. They are individualists because they believe in the primacy of the individual and they are socialists because they wish to solve what they denote as "the labor problem." 

31. Certainly you would agree that a society can be without hierarchy and natural resources can be held in common, right? If not, then what do you say of prehistoric hunter-gatherer societies? They did not have social hierarchies, and most things were held in common. Sure, they are not civilizations, but anarcho-communism is intelligible in at least that very context of primitive society, regardless of whether or not it can exist in a modern industrial society. I am personally not an anarcho-communist, and I think it would be unstable (revert into small-state communism or mutualism), but I can understand the concept fine without considering it to be an oxymoron. 

32. Being knowledgeable about the discourse that already exists, rather than reinventing the wheel is actually very important when discussing these topics. It is hubris to think otherwise. Sure you can add innovations and think critically about these works, but understanding what other people have said and believe rather than guessing or assuming (which is something you've done often in our conversations) is important. Just reading a label, and saying "yes that is an oxymoron" based on your internal prejudices of what is meant is very unintelligent. 

33. Citing other people's ideas rather than writing my own book on an internet forum does not make me a puppet. In fact, even if I were writing a book, I'd be doing a lot of citations for the very reason of not reinventing the wheel and being able to get to the point of my new (if any) additions to the discussion. This is a common thing to do whether we are talking about physics, philosophy, mathematics, etc. 

34. This is the definition that is relevant to our discussion. I see no reason why we'd use a different definition when speaking about social systems. 

35. Name a social hierarchy without violence then. Disproof by counter-example is one of the easiest proofs to make. 

36. When you simplify my arguments, sure it sounds silly and dumb. But that is the point of a strawman isn't it? 

37. This only poses a problem if you ignore the ability of people to associate into groups independent of being forced to. A pacifist can have others fight on his or her behalf (even if he doesn't wish them to.) There are also herd effects of reducing violence that benefit the pacifist independent of whether or not he personally fights. 

38. I never said it can be absolutely equalized at the local level, but it can be relatively equalized because it has been equalized in the past. For example, in the 10th century, securing the means to induce violence was dependent on 1. wealth and 2. physical capability. That is how knights had such disproportionate power, and it was the basis of the feudal system. It is no coincidence that once weapons became cheap, and more people were able to use them that feudalism was disposed of. 

It's why generally pro-monarchy philosophers like Thomas Hobbes believed that in the state of nature people had a generally equal capacity to induce violence. He knew this wasn't absolutely true, but it was true enough for his purposes of deriving what he believed to be a systematic political philosophy. 

Hobbes wished to solve this "problem" by declaring a single sovereign to which people were in awe of. The liberal philosophers which succeeded him switched this sovereign from being an individual person to being the collection of all persons in a society. The anarchist wishes for the sovereign to be the individual and doesn't see the equal capacity to do violence as a problem, because it internalizes the costs of violence to the individual. 

39. All natural resources, the creation of money, the movement of labor, and the patent system. 

40. Private property is more than a single right. Some of the rights he might benefit from, others he might not. Furthermore, the degree to which he benefits might be exceeded by the degree to which the capitalist gains a position of authority which externalizes the costs on to him, and therefore even if he benefits locally (assuming he has property) the capitalist uses his own position of benefiting more (by having more private property) to more easily impose his will in contractual agreements. 

Furthermore, it's not even true that everyone benefits from the appropriation of private property even locally. It was not true when the Native Americans' common property was stolen by colonists. It wasn't true when the common peasant lost their access to the common fields because their lord or a capitalist decided to enclose the property which they used to sustain themselves. It is not true today, when a renter is evicted by an absentee landlord or a laborer loses any bargaining power over his wages.

But private property isn't the only privilege the state grants anyway. It grants subsidies and regulations which help rent-seekers through regulatory capture. 

41. Yes, but who do I have a better chance of bolstering my position against? My neighbor Harry or the fucking federal government and its police/military? In which circumstance can I get more of my interests reconciled in any dispute resolution? Hence, the crucial adjective "unilateral" before the noun "violence." 

The reason why I bring it up is because in one group I have a greater say and more autonomy than I have in the other group. 

42. "Stating the obvious" is merely an excuse for being intellectually lazy and holding your sacred positions religiously. 

43. They were self-appointed representatives of the people, and so the religiously held myth goes. I have strong doubts that thirty people represented a population of almost four million. 

And they certainly didn't represent anybody born after the fact. Furthermore, where was the representation for women, black people, Native Americans, etc? Were the slave-holding southerners who counted black people among their population representing their slaves? And you want to lecture me about what is collectivism and individualism while holding representative democracy as legitimate. 

44. He gave some facts, and some opinions. You can dispute the truth-values of the facts, and discuss the viability of his opinions yes. 

45. Sure, but the state doesn't necessarily represent a consensus. It represents a majority at best, and more often than not a very small minority. Disputes over what is or is not appropriate still exist, and different laws in local contexts still exist. Anarchism is merely taking the ideas of (con)federalism, pluralism, individualism, and self-government seriously, rather than using them as religious reasons to support one particular state over another. 

46. Oh I don't deny it has a purpose. I deny its purpose is what you say it is. The state is there to extract tax-rents so that it can subsidize the costs of those whom control it. In so much as it does anything else, it is for this ultimate purpose. 

A very good description of what classical socialism is. I don´t really agree that it can´t co-exist with capitalism unless you refer to a model where democracy is replaced with something else and only one ideology governs society?

Because we don´t have a capitalistic or a socialistic or a liberal or a conservative system in society; we have a democratic system in many countries that incorporates influences from all types of ideologies (and religions). Just because we don´t have a socialistic society, it doesn´t mean socialistic influences are nonexistent.

Could a socialistic society form under a democratic system? No, humanity as a species is far to complicated to agree on one ideology for the entire society and I am also pretty sure that we are a hierarchic species that strive to create flocks on both a smaller scale (workplace, sports teams) and on a large scale (governments, municipalities) with clear leaders and a hierarchic structure. Socialism would have a hard time deconstruting our very nature that has formed society.

A few things:

1. Most socialists reject that what passes as democracy in liberal democracies is all that democratic. 

2. There are fundamental protections in liberal societies against democracy which are indeed ideological. 

3. In most of human history people didn't organize into hierarchies. It was only with the first agricultural revolution that hierarchies developed and after they peaked (in slave societies) they started to devolve into more and more egalitarian societies over the long term: slave societies -> feudal societies -> short period of absolutism -> liberal democracies. 

Humans aren't bees. We are able to modify the social organizations we live in because we have the ability to learn and adapt as individuals. 

1. Ofcourse all democracies have issues just like any societal structure, but they are still democratic in that those that have the right to vote decide who should lead the countries. But that has little to nothing to do with whether or not a socialist society could even be democratic.

2. What are those protections? We have some limits like having a voting age or in most cases using a representative democracy, but what protections are you referring to?

3. It was when we developed more advanced cultures and grew in number that hierachies were necessary for us to form an effective society. In our early development we had a more collaborative structure but often times leaders existed aswell, and I do believe it has been very benefitial from an evolutionary perspective. We are indeed very adaptive. a large reason for our success as a species, but we are still animals with underlying behavior that form the society we live in.

1. The problem is that representative democracies depend on the premise that representatives are representing their constituents. But how true is this premise? When I go to the voting booth I am not appointing somebody I know will represent my views and interests, but rather choosing from strangers whom have no reason to actually represent my views other than I might vote for their opponent(s), whom also won't represent my views. 

Some countries like Switzerland mitigate this problem by focusing on more direct and consensus-based democracy, but most countries don't even attempt to balance representative democracy with more participatory forms. 

2. Well the Bill of Rights is an obvious example of institutionalized liberal values. I am not saying the Bill of Rights is wrong, as it is necessary to balance against the threat of majoritarian representative democracy, but it is an example of an ideologically institutionalized limit on democracy. Other's are the electoral college and senate, which are meant to mitigate majoritarian whims. None of these would be necessary if our system were consensus-based rather than majoritarian, or I guess in the case of the United States central government, not even that. 

3. Do you have a more specific mechanism by which you think hierarchies arise? Generally the argument is that during the first agricultural revolution it became possible to accumulate resources, and there was an incentive to protect these accumulated resources. The first institutions of violence were then formed in order to protect said accumulated resources, and those who controlled said institutions were able to impose their will on those whom didn't. Hence, hierarchy and ruler-ship came to be. Over time this continued until societies where minority of people totally enslaved a majority of people came to exist. These slave societies self-destructed after the slaves revolted, and what remained were fragmented kingdoms and fiefdoms where feudal contracts were instituted. Eventually, after a bunch of class warfare the merchant class took power from the gentry (land-owning class) and helped abolish serfdom. What we have today is more egalitarian than feudalism which was more egalitarian than slave-societies. Socialism would be even more egalitarian than what we have today. Technology played a significant role in these developments, and there is no reason to believe that technology won't play a significant role in future developments (and the trend has been toward more equality rather than less.) So this static view that hierarchy will always exist, seems to be missing how much societies have changed within the last few millennia as technology has changed. 

People like you amuse me greatly! 

For a start, Socialism and Liberalism aren't the same thing. Socialism aims to completely transform society by abandoning the class structure, the idea that money is king and at the same time, increasing democracy and individual freedom, especially for the working classes. Liberals openly support capitalism and aim to reform it into a more humane system by as you would say creating 'big government' through a welfare state and regulations. Such ideas if not defended will always be eroded by the right eventually. I believe such reforms are only a start though and we need mass protest to really see significant change in society. Regardless of what side of the fence we are on, we all agree politicians are often bloody useless!

What is your idea of freedom anyway?

Because I don't think the west is really that free anyway, although certainly freer than other places. We may have freedom of speech and the like, but we can't run our own workplaces and really don't have that much control over our own lives. We are forced (in circumstance) to do any old job, even if it isn't suitable or the best use of a person (eg intelligence, creativity, strength). Often most people aren't rich enough to do as they like. There's a wonderful world out there and we just put it behind this giant paywall!

Socialism if anything would open it up for everyone to enjoy and we certainly are advanced enough to do it now. And don't worry you won't lose your opinion!

1. But that is also why a representative democracy works: if you do not represent your voters in the way they expected you too, you will loose support. A democracy is not about everyone getting their own wishes through but to give the power to the people as a group. But ina representative democracy, or any democracy at all, checks and balances are important to balance the system.

2. I wouldn´t necessarily call is just liberal but also conservative and social democratic in many ways. And they are not protections against democracy but rather a viewpoint that, in order for everyone to have their rights and guarantee the democracy, control measures must be implemented. That is not to say that these foundations can´t be changed but it would require a massive dedication from the people to do so. It is the old question of whether a democracy should have the right to abolish itself if the people decide it?

3. Just because we might be a species that has an evolutionary tendency towards hierarchies, doesn´t mean that society will remain static or that these hierarchies will never change. But I try to look at this from a laymans perspective on evolutionary processes: it has been extremely benefitial for humanity in terms of technological development, how old we can become and how we can protect the young and the weak in the structure we have in society that it is reasonable to assume the our ability to form strong bonds in different groups and create ordered structures where we elect leaders and have people with different assignments is deeply entrenched in our genes and has been one of our evolutionary benefits compared to most other species. The downside of this is that we wage war against each other but when we look at it, we have had a net positive in our development. It is not a matter of what I personally would want us humans to be as a species, because the way we function has caused ourselves and the world around us a great deal of pain. But this is a question of what I personally find to be the most probable answer we have based on the emphirical data regarding the development of our species.

1. Works "at what?" is the question. It certainly doesn't work at being democratic, which was my point. Democracy means "people power", in a representative democracy the people don't have the power if their representatives don't represent them. The representatives have the power. With tactical voting it is not necessarily true that you'll lose support "if you do not represent your voters in the way they expected you to", because there is no alternative individual whom will in the choosing-mechanism (election.) There is also heavy filtering of whom can fill a particular position in representative democracy before you even get to vote, which means that your choice of representative is limited from the start. An actually representative democracy would involve many people appointing their representatives to represent them independently of any electoral process. Checks and balances are meant to limit majoritarian democracy and mob-rules. You might say that it is necessary, I'd agree, but I'd argue that it is only necessary because majoritarian democracy isn't all that democratic. Depriving a part of the demos of their autonomy does not make a democracy. 

2. It's liberal in the political sense of the word. Both modern social democracy and modern conservativism are now merged with branches of liberalism which emphasize different areas of liberal ideology. In 1788, conservatives were pro-monarchists and absolutist, and social democracy (whether in its socialist or liberal form) wasn't a thing yet. The Bill of Rights was the codification of liberal beliefs with respect to human rights. I don't see how it can get any more ideological than that. The idea that majoritarian democracy must be limited and there must be a separation of powers is itself ideological, based on classical liberal ideology.  Democracy (in the general sense) is not a system, it's a state of human social relationships where all people (not merely a subset; whether it be a minority or majority) have political power. What you mean when you are referring to democracy is liberal-democracy, the dominant form of government today, denoted by the institutionalization and standardization of liberal values through the state-mechanism. Liberal democracy is more democratic than the absolutism and feudalism which preceded it, but I wouldn't say it is all that democratic by the standards of a radical democrat or a deliberative democrat (both of which are alternative conceptions of democracy.) 

"Liberal democracy is a liberal political ideology and a form of government in which representative democracy operates under the principles of classical liberalism. Also called western democracy, it is characterised by fair, free and competitive elections between multiple distinct political parties, a separation of powers into different branches of government, the rule of law in everyday life as part of an open society and the equal protection of human rights, civil rights, civil liberties and political freedoms for all people. To define the system in practice, liberal democracies often draw upon a constitution, either formally written or uncodified, to delineate the powers of government and enshrine the social contract. After a period of sustained expansion throughout the 20th century, liberal democracy became the predominant political system in the world."

3. So you're going to have to provide some evidence for this "evolutionary tendency." The fact that most of human (and hominid) history was denoted by small tribal/familial egalitarian groups kind of disputes this evolutionary determinism you're trying to imply. Of course, evolution is complex, and since humans have subjected ourselves to different environments and social contexts it's possible that we'd lean toward egalitarianism (and anarchy) in one context and hierarchy in another (which is what I've argued.) I don't agree that "it would require a massive dedication from the people to do so." Most of the changes in social organization throughout human history weren't done by design, but by social forces which no individual (or group of individuals) had total control of. Basically these forces acted spontaneously and unconsciously, as a sort of social evolution. If we were to speak of it in Dawkinian terms, the mechanism of social change was (and is) the meme, in the same way the mechanism of evolution is the gene.  

Organization =|= hierarchy, one can have organization without hierarchy. For example, the industrial revolution brought a level of organization unheard of under feudalism, but it was far less hierarchical (but still capitalism is very hierarchical) than feudalism. Fewer mandates and rules were imposed on the lower classes by the upper classes under capitalism than under feudalism, and this lead to much more productive forces. Socialism prescribes that the lower class of workers obtain total freedom in their workplace and organize according to principles which they choose free from the constraints of their bosses. The prediction is that productivity will increase considerably as people sort into those occupations, positions, work-hours, etc that they feel most suited and which incentive them to perform more efficient work.  

I agree, that we should look at the empirical data. And the data doesn't necessarily imply that humans are evolutionary predisposed toward hierarchical organization. If anything, the data shows that it requires active social-engineering by those whom gain short term advantages to cement said advantages in violent institutions. When these institutions are dismantled, so is the hierarchy dismantled and if it is replaced, it is replaced by a much weaker but more flexible hierarchy. 

Been a while since I got back to responding, hope that doesn't make things too out of date.

Additionally, there is no pre-requisite that the whole of society or the community be involved. It could merely be a matter of arbitration between the affected parties, where both the man who killed and the family/interests of the person who was killed resolve the dispute with a mutually agreed arbitrator/judge/jury. They agree to accept whatever decision is made at the end of the process. Under a system with no/less hierarchy, and since both parties mutually agreed to the arbitrators, there is no/less worry of unfairness. Possibly, built into this agreement there is also an appeals process, where somebody has special protections. Ultimately, what is just and what is fair is decided by those involved and nobody else. 

I think this just kicks the issue back to a previous step, good luck getting people to agree to who is and isn't a fair mediator. Perhaps this can best be illustrated through Arizona's attempts to help put a stop to gerrymandering, where an independent, bipartisan commission was assigned to redraw districts as fairly as possible. Within a couple of months, both parties were accusing that commission of being biased towards the other side. Unless there are authorities that both sides are required to submit to, you're just going to end up in a cycle where no one will concede on who is fair and even less gets accomplished.

Both the girl and her mother asked the judge for leniency, nobody felt harmed, yet he still was punished. Such a large misappropriation of justice, where nobody felt to be the victim wouldn't happen in an anarchic society. This is a perfect example of how fixed laws can (and I'd argue often do) fail to achieve justice out of an aim toward expediency. Expediency seems to be the main argument you are making throughout your response, that it would be too difficult or costly to have flexible rules and flexible justice systems. But isn't the point to have an accurate justice system which proportions the costs to those whom have been inter-subjectively evaluated to have induced costs upon others? Where the focus is on helping those in conflict resolve the dispute, rather than impose moral mandates passed down by fixed laws? This can only happen in the absence of rulers, rulers whose will is just as arbitrary as any of ours, but is imposed on us from above. 

I don't really think I've said much about expediency, it's more a question of whether justice is ever delivered at all, and again, with an anarchic system you're simply substituting one failing of justice for another...except in the latter system, the failings are far more frequent. I would prefer a system with fixed rules that admittedly have failings to a system that is based on the cooperation of accused parties. Perhaps this reflects the split in our thinking more than anything; I don't view humanity (or at least, a significant portion of it) as ever being capable of developing the restraint necessary to participate in a society like that, whereas it appears you do.

Fixed rules are there to provide consistent rulings, not to promote expediency (as someone who's worked for both a law firm and a judge before, I can tell you that the US justice system isn't particularly concerned with expediency). There's already accusations made towards the justice system about judges applying the law unfairly to certain demographics, and those complaints would only increase if judges decided not only how to apply rules, but also what the rules themselves were. 

Assaults and other forms of violent crime are things which I'd largely think wouldn't be in the business of the public, unless they are exceptionally brutal or the assaulter is a serial assaulter. These are things which would be resolved through arbitration or immediate social peers. One does not have to mobilize the whole city to judge every crime, but maybe the immediate neighborhood would be involved, or maybe merely the two private parties would resolve the dispute themselves. It depends entirely on the case and whether or not it affects many people. 

A thought process like this concerns me immensely, especially in the case of serial assault from family members. Many victims who are beaten by parents, spouses, etc. become so afraid of their assaulter that many of them are either extremely nervous about reporting their circumstances to law enforcement, and some never do at all. Law enforcement in general has worked to make it easier for victims to ask for help and find safety, but it's still extremely difficult because of the inherent fear of the assaulter. I'm trying to imagine a situation where victims now have no law enforcement to go to, but instead have to rely on the public for help. Who would you even go to for protection, especially in cities that aren't large enough to form their own, citizen-organized relief house? Hope that you've got a friend who will let you stay over permanently? And who, then, resolves a crime like this? The victim is probably too terrified to go public on their own without the backing of the law, and the neighborhood could just as easily be even worse if the assaulter is well established.

I'm not as familiar with circumstances surrounding rape and other forms of sexual assault, but every report I've read leads me to believe that there's a similar fear factor that plays in, so tack that on as well.

So in the United States most communities already have such authority, gun laws and castle doctrines can be determined at the local level. Many other laws like zoning laws, laws regulating police, tax laws, etc are determined by communities and it works fine (some would argue better than having a unitary state do these things.) What I am suggesting is that communities not have fixed, discrete borders, but rather gradient ones. The community is bound to its members rather than a geographical area, and these members can leverage the community's common resources to seek justice. There is no need to keep track of laws, because the law is whatever comes about through the arbitrated dispute resolution. So this discussion is really about the pros and cons of dispute resolution via arbitration vs. dispute resolution via fixed laws determined by an external authority. 

As a public administration student and someone who's worked in local governments in multiple cities, I think you're vastly overestimating the control that local governments have, at least in respect to gun laws/regulations. Local governments are very limited in what they can do in regards to guns; these laws are by and large decided at the state level, and attempts to subvert those are usually blocked when offended parties either report or even file lawsuits alleging their rights being infringed upon. In fact, I did a quick search through my home city of Chattanooga to see how many gun laws had been put in place over the past five years and found absolutely nothing beyond one ordinance specifically applied to parks. A quick google search found at least five from the state alone.

Police and zoning both tend to be regulated much more at a zoning level, so I agree there, but my point was more directed at laws that passerbys would need to be aware of. Zoning regulations certainly don't fall into that category, and police regulations, for the most part, do not either.

Furthermore, militaries are by-products of nation-states, and in order for the military to exist there must first be a nation-state (with a fixed tax-base) to fund it. So under the conditions of an anarchic society where nation-states have been rejected by most people as legitimate entities, where exactly is this military going to get its initial resource allocation? 

I'm not trying to state that an actual, full scale military would pop into existence, rather using the comparison of how the absence of a force dedicated to protecting people becomes problematic.

How did the gang come to exist in the first place? Gangs must start somewhere. 

Option 1 would be that they move in from a country that doesn't share our hypothetical country's anarchic views. Perhaps they're a widespread gang like Mexico deals with currently, and perhaps their individuals who moved over recently, still possess a "hierarchical" mindset, and then proceed to organize into a gang when they find themselves dissatisfied with the social system here.

Option 2 would be that they are local citizens who just find themselves discontent with anarchy and believe it would be better suited under some other system, and then choose to pursue violence as a means to that end. Perhaps they themselves were discontent with what they felt was the community failing to distribute justice correctly. 

Option 3 would be to meet social needs, which might sound silly at first, but it's nowhere as uncommon as it sounds. According to Mike Carlie, professor at Missouri State, many gangs form just from unfulfilled social needs. In really simplistic terms, people struggle making friends and turn to other outcasts as a means of social gratification. Their collective disdain for those they perceive as rejecting them may eventually result in violence. It's not uncommon, and it's not something that laws play a noticeable role in, either.

And there's probably plenty other options that I haven't thought of that experts could speak to.

If I lived in an anarchic community, and a bunch of people were proselytizing for people to join their gang -- a system of organization based on hierarchy -- I'd bring it up with my peers, we'd form a community militia, and then forcefully disband the gang which is acting in anti-social ways.

And how exactly do you plan on doing that? Do you know anything about dealing with gangs, or does anyone in your community? Do people in your community have experience following and giving the orders necessary to carry out raids? Do they have experience in tracking down gang members and projecting where they might appear next? Does your community have enough experience with wielding firearms to be able to defend themselves?

This might be an extreme case, but take something like the Gulf Cartel, which has come across to the US from Mexico and maintained a steady presence in Southern states. The Gulf Cartel, or CDG, is operated very efficiently, almost like a military. Many of its sect leaders have significant combat experience with Mexican police, as well as experience training recruits and hiding from law enforcement. And this isn't an isolated groups; gangs consistently cross borders into other countries.

So let's say in this anarchic nation, a gang from a hierarchical nation crosses over, with that level of danger attached. Are you really prepared to go fight groups that routinely kill trained police and likely have years of combat experience with people pulled from your community, many of whom may have never participated in a serious fight before?

So you're ignoring four things in this hypothetical: 1. the gangs need to recruit within the external society, 2. anti-gang people can associate just as easily as the gang can, and because of its hierarchical nature it only takes killing key managers in the gang to rid oneself of it whereas you can't do the same with an egalitarian organization. 3. gangs are most prolific in destitute societies with corrupted authorities already extant. 4. gangs fill a niche for people who feel they don't belong, but under socialism this sense of alienation becomes less likely as social bonds are a strong value. 

I think you're underestimating how easy all of these things are. Recruiting is very easy for gangs; many of them specifically target unpopular high schoolers who feel isolated by classmates, and it develops from there. Unless you want to make the case that an anarchic society undoes the awkwardness of growing up, #1 and #4 are still present regardless.

I would argue #2 is, at best, misleading. While you can perhaps associate as easily as a gang can, that's not the major concern here. The concern is whether "anti-gang people" can organize and operate as efficiently as a gang can, and that I'm just not convinced of at all. Without the training and combat skill necessary to intercept and kill members, you're getting nowhere real fast.

Finally, #3. Gangs are most prolific in societies where a significant number of people feel alienated, and that can be entirely independent of the job authorities are doing. Long Beach, Los Angeles, Newark, Oakland, and Oklahoma City are the top five cities by gang violence in the United States; regions with not a lot in common. I'd argue the city itself is rarely the problem, it's just about where the gang can establish a foothold. And that foothold is largely dependent on how well they can recruit, which is mostly due to alienation.

The key word is "presently." There was a time when civil society and direct democracy were very important parts of people's lives. Think of the town meeting.  It was through capitalism and the internalization of bourgeois values that this has been reduced.

Sure, it's admittedly been higher in the past, but the point is that history has demonstrated that it can fall off. And unlike the present system which at least sort of works with minimal participation, a community agreed to system completely falls apart with that level of participation. I'd also be very curious as to what you're base the claim that capitalism and bourgeois values are to blame for this on. Local government participation has fallen off more markedly since the 1950s, and you'd be hard pressed to make the argument that society has become even more favorable to capitalism since then.

You don't have to, but why join the community in the first place then? I'm assuming that if somebody voluntarily joins a community they'd be active in it. Otherwise they could merely be an atomic person, with all of the pros and cons which come with that. Under the conditions of freedom people will only associate if there is a benefit to association. If the individual costs of being part of a community exceed the individual benefits then of course somebody will exit the community. Those whom remain will be the ones who deliberate. 

Why do people move into cities if they don't want to participate in town meetings? Why do people join neighborhood societies if they have no intention of showing up to weekly meetings? People want the benefits of community without the cost. Or, in your example of an anarchic society, perhaps they'd just like there to be someone to look into their death if they get murdered since the police are gone and communities are largely looking out for themselves.

Do you think that an educated population can't have said intelligent debate in the absence of hierarchy? I don't think anarchy can be achieved without an educated population. If somebody feels they aren't qualified they can always appoint a friend to decide on their behalf. This is different from electing somebody because you directly appointed the person you know rather than elect somebody you don't know as a collective with people whose interests you might not share. 

I'm a little uncertain of where that came from; my point is directed at people being willing to give up their time in order to have an intelligent discussion about every potential person who might be entered into the database. If anything, this is a point about time, not intelligence. To reference a previous point, jury duty comes to mind. It's not that you can't have intelligent jurors, it's that they just won't show up unless they're compelled to.

Without those laws there would never had been a need for the civil rights movement in the first place. Black men, women and their allies would've been able to defend themselves ( especially in counties where they were a huge majority) by associating and empowering one another. But since the Jim Crow states prohibited association and empowerment, they had to work within the system. That doesn't mean the system is valuable in itself, but it is necessary to work with in the short term. 

I feel like this paints a very inaccurate picture of US history, and world history in general. Slavery was legal in the United States, and to my knowledge, all European countries that employed the practice, until a law was passed that specifically restricted it. I suppose you can make the argument that Section 9 of Article 1 of the Constitution comes close to that (preventing Congress from making slavery illegal until 1808), but slavery took place long before any US government existed. Slavery was taking place in Virginia in the early 1600s, a solid two decades before the first law regarding slavery was put in place by the existing government.

The concept of slavery itself dates back far beyond any system of government at all, people were subjugated and forced into servitude long before any laws existed. I think this gets at my larger point more than anything; despite there being no hierarchy in place to alter people's views of each other, humans still created their own hierarchies and forced others to the bottom of them. Laws became necessary to undo those hierarchies that had been formed. In the case of the United States, laws (specifically amendments 13-15) had to be passed to deal with the systems of racial oppression that had been built over the course of several hundred years, most of which were initially constructed outside of the influence of the law. These amendments weren't perfect, they still left several "voids" in authority like I've mentioned before, which Southern governments then used to exploit the intention of the law and keep oppression in place through Jim Crow, and more notably, the Black Codes. The laws had to continually be tweaked over time to address these issues, and as time has gone by, the country has moved towards a less inequal society. The US certainly isn't perfect when it comes to racial issues, but I find it notable that an issue that initially began with no interference from the government at all, i.e. people taking advantage of others and forcing them into slavery, was one that was ultimately solved with laws.

Except its not, "just left in the open." Anarchy is not merely statelessness. It is the process of actively opposing hierarchies, including the state. All of the institutions in an anarchic society are designed to prevent hierarchy from arising, which is significantly different from "just left in the open." People associate into cooperatives, communes, and syndicates to prevent capitalist exploitation. People form militia to prevent exploitation through direct violence. People accept norms of property that are mostly fair and egalitarian. People participate in civil society in order to achieve the goals which they can only achieve with the support of others. So on and so forth. They don't need an authority or ruler to do these things. 

I think I've covered this before, but the issue is not one of "could this work if the society you've described was actually implemented." It's "could a society reasonably make this transition?" For the sake of debate, I'll assume that you're right and that if people were associated into various groups to prevent authority being subsumed, they would. But the issue is, for a country in the midst of a transition, people are not. And my argument is that any country attempting to make that transition will inevitably fail because the safeguards that you talk about that are supposed to stop the subsuming of authority, i.e. the people associated into cooperatives and the likes, are not in place yet. In a country that stands as a democracy today, any one segment of authority that is taken away will be "just left in the open," because the things that you've alluded to that could protect it either do not exist yet or are not well organized enough and cannot be until after the transition.

Individual protestant churches might have been abusive and exploitative, but on the macro-level Christianity became much more egalitarian with the protestant reformation. I don't think that can be contested. Religion is a useful tool for authority, so it makes sense that authoritarians will use it. 

I'd argue there was actually quite a bit more abuse than you're giving it credit for, but the point about the reformation is interesting, because in countries where protestants did ultimately gain a foothold, they held virtually no authority until after a civil war. France, England, Hungary, all had wars where division of religion was at least one major factor, and resulted in more protestant control. In other words...the idea itself didn't spur change, the war itself (and the changes in authority that resulted thereafter) did. In other words, yet again, nothing changes until authority is taken from someone and actively kept from that person.

1. There are costs involved in the arbitration itself. Eventually people will be sensitive to any further sunk costs and opt to resolve said dispute. The reason why you don't see this in your legislator example is because there are no personal costs involved with the legislators. The legislators are acting and working on the tax-payers dime for what they perceive to be the taxpayers interests (being generous here), and would be spending their time in session regardless of what they do with that time. You might argue that there are political costs, but it isn't entirely clear that the political costs of not conceding outweigh the political costs of conceding, and hence you don't have concessions. 

Finally, one can make the agreement  in a way such that one is bound by the rules of one's selected jury or arbitrators. This is not totally voluntary and free, but it is more free and voluntary than in our current system. 

Most disputes even in our current society are resolved by arbitration, so I don't see why you think the idea is all that far-fetched. 

2. Is it not the evaluation of whether or not justice has been achieved an individual value? Do you believe in objective morality? Whether or not you answer yes or no to the latter question determines significantly how you see the maximization of justice. 

3. Consistent rulings to what? All cases are different, even if the difference might merely be who is involved. The only reason why there is a question of fairness is because the judge is not selected by the disputed parties in a fair manner, but by the public as a whole or an appointee (and therefore might represent public/external prejudices.) Juries are a bit more fair (because they're randomized and selected), but even then the selection process is often skewed. 

Again I must inquire about whether or not you have a belief in an objective morality, because this determines whether or not you view consistency as a valuable standard. 

4. Are you suggesting there won't be any communitarianism in the absence of legal mandates? Certainly things like domestic violence shelters, help-groups, and other means of community/social-based assistance exist in a socialist society where many resources are commonly shared. Remember, you are judging the necessity of government-mandated social institutions in a capitalist society based on private property and large-scale alienation. There is a reason why anarchists are also socialists. That law enforcement currently does a thing, doesn't mean it can't be done by other alternative social organizations whom use common property available to the whole community. 

5. In my state, both of the largest cities Pittsburgh and Philadelphia have gun laws exclusive to them. I am sure it is true of other municipalities. For example, it is legal to open carry without a license in the whole state except in Philadelphia. So certainly many local governments have power over gun laws, devolved to them by the state of course, but all local laws are devolved by the state in our current society. 

6. Can you provide a concrete example? 

7.a This just becomes a matter of foreign invasion. In that case, guerrilla warfare has been quite effective at staving off organized foreign invaders. Just look at the ability of the United States to intervene in local conflicts abroad, with the best funded and trained military the world has ever seen. 

7.b For that matter, they would have to secretly organize, if they wished to rule others. Again remember, an anarchist society is one in which the majority of people have rejected rulers and abolished the institutions which allow rulers to rule. If a subset of the population wants to institute rulers they're going to have to go against the social systems which have been especially tuned to eliminate ruler-ruled relationships. That's easier said than done, in a context of a society where ruler-ship has already been eliminated. For example, suppose I wish to reinstate private property and the state to protect it. I'd have to convince all of the people around me who share that view, in secret, that I wish to do such a thing. If I do it out in the open, then everybody who is around me that doesn't want private property and the state to be reinstated would prepare for any act of aggression on my (or my peer's part), if not outright kick me out of the community. Remember, anarchism is the state of not having rulers, it isn't the lack of organization and preparation. Such things can and will exist. 

7.c  Again, the greater anarchist society is already socialist, which implies that people's varying social needs are being met as best they can given the resources available (you can disagree that socialism achieves this, and it would be my job to convince you.) It would have to be shown that a hierarchy with a ruler can better address people's social needs than an egalitarian community designed precisely based on providing social needs. That is merely an argument on the viability of socialism. 

8. Yes, how do you think institutions of hierarchy were overthrown and destroyed in the first place? An anarchist society requires people (and the social institutions they create) to be attuned to and have the means of preventing relations of ruler-ship. 

Furthermore, all of your questions apply to the people whom wish to create the gang too. How would they find out how to create a gang? How would they persuade people to join? Are they familiar with using guns? 

It's almost as if there hasn't been a precedent of people self-organizing, but there has. Militia and guerrilla warfare have existed for millennia now, in fact, much longer than institutional gangs or militaries. 

9. How did the Gulf cartel grow? Who initially trained its first members? Where did its funding come from? I am going to assume that there was quite a bit of involvement from the Mexican and American governments which led to its creation, and most of its funds likely came from the illegalization of valuable commodities. 

10. If I were able to overthrow the state -- an institutionalized powerful entity with a disproportionate ability to levy tribute from its population -- in the first place, what is a gang compared to that? If I were able to overthrow the state because it was weakened, have I also not recognized that I must weaken gang power in order to achieve anarchism? Are state power and gang power separate?  

11.a There is much more to the psychology of a gang member than "high school students who were awkward or don't feel as if they belong."  Structural poverty and the ability to profit on criminal activity are much more correlative here. The viability of a gang depends significantly on how desperate the population is. It's why you find so many more gangs (per capita) in a country like the United Kingdom (I chose not to mention the United States due to its border) than you do in Norway, despite Norway being relatively soft on crime. 

11.b Why wouldn't common people have access to training and combat skills? These things can be taught in community schools or by parents at home. Furthermore, are most gang-members very trained? You can cite the odd gang here and there, but plenty of gangs have poorly trained members who don't even know how to hold a gun. 

11.c But you're not considering the resources the gang needs. They need an ability to make super-normal profits. It's why most gangs in Mexico and the United States are tied to the drug trade. They make profits due to the illegalization of drugs. Likewise, early mafias made profits due to the illegalization of alcohol. Organized crime has very much been tied with the ability to make special profits. How can this occur in a socialist society? Furthermore, you mention alienation, but one of the key points of socialism is to reduce alienation. 

Structurally there are significant differences between the way gangs operate and grow based on the policies of the states which most directly influence them. It's not a case of random and spontaneous organization, actual structural institutions and laws are very important here. 

12. I actually can argue that society has become more favorable toward capitalism since the 1950's. In the 1950's a third of all people were in labor movements which internalized quite a bit of socialist ideas, and a much larger proportion of the population were agrarians, skeptical of big banks and big corporations. Today, only about 7% of the population participate in labor movements, and a much smaller proportion of the population are agrarian. The Boomer generation (onward), due to their suburban-lifestyles have internalized quite a bit of bourgeois social values and have become much more accepting of capitalism than prior generations. This is why fusionist Reaganism appealed to them so much. 

13. The thing is, in an anarchic society community membership is somewhat detached from geographical membership. Many communities will overlap according to geography in so much as there are no common property disputes. In our current society, people have no choice but to join a community based on their geographical location. This is the difference between freedom of association and not being free to associate. 

14. Which is why I mentioned the ability to appoint somebody who is willing to participate. Those who have the time can represent those whom trust them. 

15. American slavery was based on the power imbalances (and exploitation) between the English, colonial Americans, certain tribal African slave-sellers, and other tribal Africans. This doesn't tell us anything about a world (or society) where power has been devolved to the common person, and where technology is not selective to a particular group of people. In other words, the global society we live in today is significantly different from the 16th century relationships between monarchies and colonial Africans. Furthermore, domestically, there were laws protecting the ownership of slaves. State militia were used to quell any thought of a rebellion. The fugitive slave act was passed to prevent people from fleeing. To ignore the laws (and state aggression) which institutionalized slavery (and therefore reduced the costs of holding slaves) is to ignore the history and culpability of the people involved. 

16. Actually no. Slavery developed along the first agrarian societies, and the first governments. These were intimately connected. Pure hunter-gathering societies didn't have slaves, because that would've been another mouth to feed and there really was no benefit. Now you can possibly say that slavery predates statutes (and states), but not necessarily law. The law was merely what the ruler(s) (arbitrarily) said it was. Slavery was not abolished by laws, but by popular sentiment. The laws were only created to override previous laws that lagged behind popular sentiment. 

17. You're not analyzing how humans created hierarchies though. That is very important. It was through the institutionalization of power through fixed ideas: religion, appeal to tradition, etc and disproportionate ability to induce violence (due to technological differences) that people were able to create and maintain these hierarchies. In an age of science, reason, and skepticism the first have been weakened, and in an age of rapid technological advancement and globalization the second has been reduced. 

This brings me to my next point. You're confusing the effects of the law for the social change. It takes a change in people's mindsets for a law (under a somewhat democratic system) to be created in the first place. Without laws meant to institutionalize slavery (and yes, they did exist, don't deny this!) slavery would've been eliminated as it became too costly for an individual to maintain slave ownership as the social pressures surrounding them accumulated.

A good example of a hierarchy where changes in law really won't do as much at this point as changes in sentiment, is the gender hierarchy. For all intents and purposes women and men are treated as legal equals (with some marginal inequalities), but they still aren't equal. Why? Because many people (enough) still have not internalized that some of the prejudices they hold aren't legitimate. The #metoo movement shows us that changing the social institutions through social conditioning directly (rather than relying on the law) can be at times be more effective. I am not opposed to using laws as a short-term solution where they are convenient, but the law is not the fundamental force of social change. 

18.  Sorry the companies that brought the slaves over to colonial America were chartered by law, the protection against slave rebellions were there due to law, the colonies themselves were charted by law.It is not obvious that in the absence of these things chattel slavery (at that scale) would've been viable. And again, one can't ignore the institutionalization of slavery which prolonged its status. There were laws in the United States (and Britain before there was a United States) which protected and enabled chattel slavery in way of social forces which opposed it. 

19. I can't see how you can ignore the influence of the British Empire on the slave trade here. There was not "no government influence." 

20. But this argument can be made for any social change, really. Look at the French revolution. It took many tries before the French fully abolished the monarchy and reactionary forces, but it still happened. Nothing of its equivalent replaced it. That it doesn't happen in one revolution doesn't mean it won't eventually happen. Change can happen via many smaller revolutions, and unless the hierarchy which replaces the prior hierarchy is equally hierarchical eventually a state of infinitesimal "near-anarchy" will come to exist, just as we don't need a perfect geometric circle to call something in the real world that approximates one -- a circle.

21. My argument was based on distinguishing abuse and hierarchy. While hierarchy is rooted in abuse, they aren't the same thing. The protestant reformation was necessary in order for the separation of the Catholic church (which was, and is, objectively much more hierarchical than the majority of protestant denominations) to lose its power over European kingdoms, estates, and the people which they controlled. This, in turn, was necessary for future political revolutions to flourish. The degree of hierarchy is important. This is not a mere binary of exchanging "hierarchy a" and "hierarchy b" when "hierarchy b" is much less hierarchical than "hierarchy a." Equating two different hierarchies gets us nowhere. As for the idea itself, it did spark change. It was the idea that the Catholic Church was not the mouthpiece of God which set the basis for the idea that the "divine right of kings" was bull-crap, which set the basis for "republicanism is a good idea." You can't ignore the power of ideas in determining where violence should be directed. 

Also, I am a bit confused in your use of "protestant" as some unified entity. The name itself kind of illustrates what it was. It was a movement of many different groups of Christians to protest the Catholic Church's power and authority. To speak of "protestant authority" and "protestant power" seems odd to me in this context.