@dch

My stance would be more-or-less the opposite - that the more people involved, the more opportunities there are to "route" around problematic people (grifters/populists/bad actors etc).

Like, if you have a small group, it's harder to exclude a bad actor; and even just as percentage, they're able to influence a bigger proportion of your peer group. With a much bigger network, there's many more opportunities to...simply ignore them or use someone else.

I used an example somewhere of a dodgy electrician; if he's one of only a few that you can "access", you've got a problem. If you have a much larger network, you have two advantages (at least) - firstly, you would likely have access to many more electricians, so you have broader choices. Secondly, you are able to get much more aggregated information, which allows you to make a better-informed decision.

That second point is a bit abstract, but for example: in a smaller group, someone might simply take a dislike to the electrician in question, for unrelated reasons. Trivial example - maybe he broke up with someone's sister, so people are badmouthing him. In a larger group, that kind of thing gets absorbed in the aggregated reviews, as such.

Regarding scale, that's what I was trying to get across in the thread that I linked - it's all *very, very* doable without needing a centralised authority. In fact, we do it now - mostly in imperfect ways that could stand to be improved, for sure, but they give a prototype of what would most likely happen in a stateless society.

("Bad actors" and "does it scale?" are two of the most common arguments that people use when joining anarchist conversations; I do apologise, but please believe that plenty of thought has gone into how to address those and retreading can be frustrating; you happened to be the last of many people yesterday to bring those up and I'd run out of spoons to go over it again. My bad, sincerely)

@simon_brooke