Thank you so very much. I wanted to do a point-by-point takedown like this... but I'm feeling a little burnt out when considering just how much similarly glib pro-authoritarian fare on LW needs this treatment.

You've said many things that I wanted to say; I'd only note that I think your rejection of authoritarianism here is lacking a meta level:

When moral pressures have been co-opted, observant (but not necessarily rational) people might reasonably tend to take on the belief that all moral pressures are suspect. Reversed stupidity is not wisdom: the correct answer is not "enforce all moral pressures, regardless of how draconian"; nor is it "reject all moral pressures as draconian". The correct answer is "figure out what the RIGHT moral pressures are, in terms of which moral pressures ACTUALLY PRODUCE the amount of cooperation we want, and then ensure that those moral pressures are the ones being applied in this community."

The problem is, once we concede that Reverse Authoritarianism doesn't let us do much, WHO exactly is going to figure out which authoritarian-like actions are "legitimate" and "needed"? It can't be all planned out in advance by community consensus, either.

This would be like a Leninist today defending an argument for a second Bolshevik revolution (against the obvious historical evidence) with: "Oh, but we KNOW what went wrong! We just shouldn't let more Stalinists get into the party, that's all! And this time we won't be purging any innocent people; that was so silly and counterproductive of us!"

To avoid yet more abuse of power, you can't merely tell people to make the object-level "correct" decision; you need a system that would constantly correct for self-serving rationalizations, corruption and power-blindness among the decision makers. If abuse and tyranny emerge as "spontaneous orders", then their prevention must be a perpetual and multi-faceted process, not a one-time Gordian knot to cut.