The ground state of random-anisotropy permanent magnets, such as isotropic nanostructured Sm₂Fe₁₇N₃, is investigated. The degeneracy of the ground-state of strongly disordered random-anisotropy magnets leads to finite-range ferromagnetic ground-state correlations and ferromagnetic configurations whose energies are comparable to the ground-state energy. This explains why the coercivity of typical rare-earth containing random-anisotropy spin glasses exceeds that of industrial ceramic magnets by more than one order of magnitude. By comparison, random-field spin glasses are unsuitable for permanent magnetic applications.