The Utopia of Rules

What Hacker News says

1. noitamroftuoJul 2026
   check out The Utopia of Rules by David Graeber https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Utopia_of_Rules

   A lot of this is about bureaucracy

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2. scarecrowbobMar 2026
   You might find it useful to distinguish between right and left libertarians.

   All my anarchist (left libertarian) friends are pretty consistently opposed to state and corporate surveillance. There is plenty of theory in a canon of literature that goes back to the mid 19th century, even as there are many subgroups and spurs off that general line of thought all with their own sets of (usually somewhat) consistent lines.

   If you want something short and brutal, I am a fan of "Desert" by anonymous, but "A Utopia of Rules" by David Graeber is not a bad thing to read and probably closer to a popular line. Or the CIA-Coded Yale academic James Scott has a lot to say, "Two Cheers for Anarchism" and "Seeing Like a State" both seem to have influenced a lot of people.

   Historically "right libertarians" (the US Libertarian political party, for instance) have been, uh, "less consistent" in their thinking, so you might have a hard time finding anything that looks like a "philosophy" in that branch of "thought". Plenty of goofy-ass ideas, but little consistency except a strange ability to begrudgingly conform to GOP politics at the end of the day.

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3. vishnuguptaMay 2025
   David Graeber has written a really good book about this exact topic and one that I highly recommend. He explores why and how bureaucracy crept up on us.

   “ The Utopia of Rules: On Technology, Stupidity, and the Secret Joys of Bureaucracy”

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

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4. roughlySep 2024
   Graeber's entire body of work is fantastic - there's a "mythology of progress" that's endemic to modern western culture, in which the current moment and way we live are the inevitable outcomes and apotheosis of human nature, that it's all natural and the way things simply must be. Graeber's books are an enjoyable, accessible dismantling of this mythology. "Debt: the first 5000 years" is an essential read, and both "The Utopia of Rules" and "Bullshit Jobs" are fantastic.

   (If you're through Graeber's library and still looking for intellectual bricks to throw, James C Scott is a good chaser - "Seeing like a State" is a profoundly enlightening book, and "Against the Grain" is something of a diet "Dawn of Everything". I have heard great things about "The Art of Not Being Governed", but it's a bit denser than the other two and I haven't made my way though it yet.)

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5. jonathanycAug 2024
   I mean the problem is there won't be any books directly refuting Nate Silver's argument because it's essentially just "people who disagree with me are irrational."

   Right-of-center, "Wait But Why" by Tim Urban and "Rationality: A-Z" by Eliezer Yudkowsky (and LessWrong in general) are much better at talking about examining our own biases. LessWrong will be much better than the stuff Tim Urban wrote, which is still better than what Nate Silver is writing. LessWrong is arguably not even right-of-center.

   Left-of-center, David Graeber's "The Utopia of Rules" does a good job of pointing out a lot of our society's quiet assumptions.

   But I mean ultimately when you say that such-and-such a crowd has a problem with "decoupling," you're just talking about what it means to be human. I guarantee you anyone who claims they don't have a problem with "decoupling" is lying. It just takes a little bit of time and you'll find something which seems like a minor point of order to you which makes them fly off the rails.

   My own biased and unhinged take is that the decline of religion in the West has given people total cognitive blindness to the idea that people might actually believe different things from you yet still be rational, i.e. that there are plenty of interesting and useful arguments that are valid but not sound.

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6. 317070Jul 2024
   "The Utopia of Rules: On Technology, Stupidity, and the Secret Joys of Bureaucracy", by David Graeber might be good for this one, though some of Graeber's other books also apply.
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