= new reply since forum marked as read
So I'm only involved in so-called "non-heirarchical" (I prefer the term collectively run, which has
some positive non-leftist connotations) projects at a local level. Generally speaking, it is like any
other system of self-organization. Just, you know, not top-down.
They are all prone to abuse by assholes. In fact, the person who said that it works great until you get
2 or more people together was being overly specific. This is true of human society in general; that's the problem.
Don't forget that anarcho-utopians existed before the hard left came along and made it seem all ooo scary.
It wasn't supposed to be a left-right thing; that's a gloss applied by the major political parties over
direction they want to see the gov't. Of course when you look at party alignment, "left" libertarians
are naturally aligned with the left these days, but I prefer to associate with populism, especially since
I'm a spiritual person and most folks on the hard left are anti-religious.
Left-libertarians rely on customs, traditions, and social institutions in place of the State. That's the whole point.
Occupy is an example of a self-governing social institution.
Obviously there are many anarcho-punks who casually subscribe to nihilist notions. These people are silly and
make it difficult to have a reasonable discussion about the issue. (e.g. groups like Crimethnc that publish tracts
in lefty bookstores about abolishing all institutions and belief systems). They are silly.
Jeffersonian democrat (small d) vs. Anarchist
Been falsely assuming Asimov for years. 
The "public" and the "state" are two that are common today. The Church was common in place of the state hundreds of years ago. (A vast improvement regardless of if you approve of the state at all!) Each group serves as a counterbalance of power to the other, or at least should in a properly working system. If you have to much power in the state you get authoritarianism or communism. If you get too much power in the public then you get rampant abuses by those who have the resources to become more powerful than other members of the public.
There needs to be a balance between the two. One needs to check the other's power evenly. We as a society have not yet figured how to do this properly. What is needed is little tweaks, not systemic overhaul. We need to find a way to ensure that the state doesn't trounce public opinion but that the public opinion doesn't run rampant hurting other people in society.
On review, the graph lines should be inverted... concave instead of convex... but I'm not making a new graphic now. Lol. Essentially between the two economic models, the polar opposites are communism and capitalism... rule by state and rule by free market. The potential for injustice rises as the existence of autonomous regulation (checks and balances to power) decrease. Autonomous regulation decreases the further unbalanced power is held between the state and the public.
Mainly, with the left you have authoritarian leftism and libertarian leftism. On the right, you have authoritarian rightism and libertarian rightism.
Sure, Gandhi was very far left on economic issues, but nobody serious would say he would use the same methods as another far leftist, Joseph Stalin, to achieve the same goal.
The same could be said of Adolf Hitler and Augusto Pinochet. Unlike Pinochet, Hitler's economic policies were pretty centrist with elements of leftism and rightism incorporated, while Pinochet's economic policies were hailed by the far-right as the model to emulate, going so far right as to privatize the nation's Social Security system entirely and advocating total deregulation of the markets in true law-of-the-jungle capitalism, yet in common parlance both are considered right-wingers because both advocate capitalism. It's just that Pinochet advocates totally pure capitalism.
I'd rather go do my own thing. Bye. 
