The idea is it wouldn’t work on trust, each element would be bounded by forces other than a single structure; getting to the state in which self-regulation is possible is the difficult, or maybe impossible, part. When in the regulated state, power grabs wouldn’t work.

We have a bunch of temporarily embarrassed tribal warlords among us.

There was this really good short story illustrating this: (edited to add: "Cloak of Anarchy", Larry Niven, thx to below).

A park where anything goes ... because sentry robots keep the peace. When the robots break, things get scary quickly.

I've become convinced that a well-governed society is the perfect foundation for a limited anarchist commune set up on property legally purchased. Libertarian, essentially. Or Amish.

> This is the thing I don't understand about (a superficial interpretation of) anarchists

I think most superficial interpretations of anarchists are based on edgy LARPers rather than real political ideology.

Fun fact: Anarchy means "without rulers", not "without laws" or "without social order". There's a wide diversity of political thought under this umbrella, but the key underlying common denominator is (on some level, at least) a rejection of hierarchy (and often a rejection of capital).

Though it's fun to imagine what the philosophical and political beliefs that underpin a colloquial understanding of the word might look like, the answer is usually simply: Teenagers.

I get the impression that even the definition of "anarchy" itself is subject to anarchy, with lots of disagreements and infighting. The more even-keeled anarchists that I've seen stress that they're not against hierarchies, only involuntary hierarchies, with the idea being that individuals should be welcome to organize themselves into hierarchies into which they delegate power, as long as that power can be revoked at any time, which sounds like a reasonable proposition. And then there's crypto-anarchism, which is just right-libertarianism in a Scooby Doo monster mask.

Its not a rational position, rather a kneejerk emotional one. Various other extreme positions share the same setup (nazism, communism etc).

Try talking to some anarchists and its pretty obvious their ideas don't go deep nor can stand well some questioning. Once you are in fairy land, anything may seem like a good idea to tackle ie some injustice.

It's the anti-establishment impulse taken to extremes. Anarchism is one of the niche destinations of that mindset. Another, ironically, is full blown communism.

What's sort of funny, is how all these seemingly polar-opposite anti-establishment flavors are actually far closer to each other than they are to mainstream political left or right.

The anti-establishment part ends up overriding everything else

That's how you end up with Bernie/Trump crossover voters