political thought

Human Nature, War and Armed Conflict

Edwin van de Haar Liberty, Philosophy , , , , , , , , , ,

The list of ongoing armed conflicts in the worlds is long (see, for example, here) and has been long for centuries. There are many websites and research institutes that keep track of their number, the parties involved, the main issues, et cetera. There are many different definitions of war and armed conflict. Here, wars are simply defined as armed conflicts with participation of one or more states whose sovereignty is internationally recognized, whereas armed conflicts do not require state involvement. Armed conflicts have always been around in great numbers, often state-sponsored, for example the numerous and seemingly never ending conflicts in the Middle East, or recently in Northern Africa following the so-called Arab Spring. The recent collapse of Libya into civil war may serve as evidence.

The number of interstate wars dramatically decreased after the end of the Cold war, giving stimulus to loads of academic papers about democratic or liberal peace. Yet this era might well be over, given the situation in the Ukraine, but also many explosive situations in North-East Asia and South-East Asia.

Academic research resulted in a long and varied list of possible causes for wars and armed conflicts.  Think for example of geopolitical factors (land, borders), natural resources (oil, gas, mines), population related issues (minorities of other countries living in a particular area, people demanding  their own country), religious conflicts, the protection of one’s own people abroad, global political reasons (participation is war as a consequence of an alliance, or to preserve the balance of power), humanitarian reasons (genocide), et cetera. In contrast to popular belief, wars and conflicts are often multicausal, so there is not just a single but a number of reasons for their initiation and continuation.

War and conflict are the result of human action. Despite all the peace talks and agreements, treaties, other forms of international law, arbitration, the work of international organizations, and the pre-emptive actions by great powers in world politics, war and armed conflicts have never been eradicated. So it seems fair to assume this has something to do with human nature as well. Here the literature is much smaller, perhaps as a consequence of the dominant belief (at least in the Western world) in rational human beings capable to overcome war and armed conflict. As a matter of fact international relations as an academic discipline owes much of its origin to this idea. After the First World War many academic positions and departments were established, with the explicit aim to search for ways to prevent such disasters from happening again. Unsurprisingly, without much result.

The ‘human are guided by rationality thesis’ has been defended by many liberals in the American tradition (also known as social liberals or high liberals) and some libertarians as well. In fact most liberal IR theories are based on this idea. However, the idea that that human beings and conflict cannot be separated has been prominent in the writings of classical liberals such as Hume, Smith, Hayek and Mises, but also by Ayn Rand.  Interestingly, for this latter position there is now increasing evidence from other academic disciplines, such as psychology and neurosciences. For example the famous book Thinking Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman, or more specifically War and Human Nature by Stephen Peter Rosen, Thayer’s Darwin and International Relations, or Donelan’s Honor in Foreign Policy.

While much more work needs to be done in this field, it is safe to conclude that liberals should not think about how to abolish war. Instead, the relevant question is how to deal and limit the inevitable occurrence and continuance of war and armed conflicts.

Another Liberty Canon: Arendt

Barry Stocker History, Philosophy, Politics , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Hannah Arendt (1906-1975) was one of the more influential writers on political thought during the twentieth century. Born in Germany, her political views and Jewish origins (she was also Jewish in identity though not in religion) meant not only that she had to leave Germany after the Nazi takeover, but that she had to escape from Gestapo interrogation. A period in Paris was ended by the 1940 German invasion, which led to another escape from detention, and her final destination of the United States. She was able draw on this direct experience of totalitarianism and antisemitism to write The Origins of Totalitarianism, one of the classic works on this topic, which also considers the role of political anti-Semitism, as distinct from older religious prejudice, in the formation of the modern phenomenon of totalitarianism.

Arendt reached beyond an academic and scholarly audience in her most widely ready book, Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil, based on her journalistic reporting on the trial of one of the major administrators of the Holocaust, Adolf Eichmann. Though the book did much to draw attention to the extreme horror of  Holocaust, and and its history, which strange as it might seem now was not the object of a great deal of public or scholarly discussion in the immediate postwar period, also led Arendt into a morass of angry criticism and even hatred, in part for supposedly trivialising Eichmann’s criminality. However, the point of referring to the ‘banality of evil’ was not to say that the Holocaust was trivial, or to deny Eichmann’s criminality, but to suggest that as a person he was more of a small minded conformist than a grandiose anti-hero of apocalyptic evil.

From the point of view of Arendt’s work in political theory, her writing on the Holocaust and totalitarianism, contributed to her understanding of modern politics in its darkest possibilities, which were distinct from older forms of tyranny. That understanding itself drew on the breadth of her historical approach, including literary and cultural interest, which went back to the Ancient Greek beginnings of western political thought. Her understanding also included the ethical and religious thought of late antiquity, as can be seen in her doctoral dissertation, Love and Saint Augustine. She had a general appreciation of the whole of human life, with regard to consciousness and action, which is behind The Life of the Mind and can be found in some of her political theory, most obviously The Human Condition.

Arendt’s interest and appreciation of ancient politics, particularly the democracy of city state Athens,  sometimes leads to her being labelled a nostalgic and a believer in anti-individiualistic integrated communities. This can only be a parody though, Arendt thought that there might be some things to learn about modern politics through comparison with antiquity, but she did not advocate a return, and her interest in antiquity was in those communities like Athens and the Roman Republic, where we can see individualism growing and a decline in community based on adherence to tradition and to communal assumptions.

Arendt thought that the Athenians had achieved liberty of a significant kind for the aristocracy, and to some degree for the lower classes, on a real but limited basis in which some had the leisure to think and argue about the rules and laws of the city state. That form of library rested on ‘heroic’ and patriarchal values according to which the home and family are the place of economic production and therefore the place of necessity.

Liberty was understood with reference to the tradition of  heroes going to war or to a more recently evolved habit of widespread public free speech about public affairs. Arendt did not argue for this as the all time ideal, but as a moment with some ideal aspects, which was bound to fail. Partly it failed because law was understood as custom and communal obligation, rather than as concerned with contracts between free individuals.  In her historical analysis, the Romans made progress on the legal front, because they saw  that law can and should evolve with regard to the best ways of grounding freely chosen contracts,  while also failing to maintain political liberty as the republic gave way to Imperial autocracy

Arendt emphasised that the Roman model inspired modern movements for liberty, particularly the French and American Revolutions (the comparison is made in On Revolution). Though she wrote about the motives and early actions of French revolutionaries with great sympathy, she pointed out that it had all ended in revolutionary terror and then country-revolutionary autocracy, so that the American Revolution had created a better model, as shown in the long lasting nature of the Constitution. She both respected that achievement and pointed out that it rested on assumptions about the dominance of a land owning class, so that it could not in itself provide all the answers for modern liberty, even it established an enduring framework, which survived major shifts in the location of economic wealth and the sources of political power.

For Arendt, the modern capitalist world undermined the idea of a strict separation between a private realm of economic production, based on family ownership and use of land, as economic activity became what happened in factories and other enterprises, with regard to national and world markets. The social-cultural result was an undermining of the antique assumption that intellectual life is superior to, and dominant over, physical activity and economic life. It also  resulted in states that seemed more remote from traditional forms of allegiance and everyday customs, because the state became increasingly something concerned with legislative and administrative activity that aimed to enable production and trade, so for the first time establishing the state as something that aims to constantly elevate material wealth and ‘national welfare’. Arendt, in this way, argues that commercial society tends to create its own statist reaction.

Arendt equivocated to some degree about whether capitalism was to be preferred to socialism, but in political writing emphasised enhancing individuality and a spirit of competition and that can only be seen as directed against the expanding administrative state, particularly as she argued for more separation between political questions and social welfare questions. She looked for ways in which modern political participation could focus on the best parts of the antique legacy: public speech focused on the conditions of liberty rather than on expanding state activity, contests for esteem in the public sphere rather than levelling down egalitarianism.  Perhaps her equivocation about socialism can be seen as leaving the way open for ‘socialism’ as defined by left libertarians, markets without a state that promotes politically inspired concentrations of wealth and power. She was certainly a prominent critic of Soviet style state socialism.

Arendt had a grasp based in rather classically oriented political theory, of how capitalism tends to produce statist reactions to itself, which parallels the more political economy and economics oriented work of Austrian economics and Virginia Public Choice theory on  the rise of the administrative state and rent seeking.  Together with her interests in how to avoid antique tyranny and modern totalitarianism, this makes her a great twentieth century pro-liberty voice, particularly for those interested in the historical, psychological, moral, and literary aspects of political thinking.

All of Arendt’s major contributions to political thought are mentioned above. A good starting point for those new to Arendt might be the essays collected in Between Past and Future or The Promise of Politics. 

A few further remarks on foreign policy and libertarianism

Edwin van de Haar Liberty , , , , , ,

Brandon’s and Fred’s blogs make me want to write a few further remarks on the relation between foreign policy and libertarianism.

1. One should be aware that ‘the libertarian argument’ does not equal ‘comments about US foreign policy’. Libertarianism should be a theory for all people everywhere. Much of the debate on foreign policy among libertarians is about American foreign policy. The US however is the exception, in terms of capacity, defense budget, possible reach of its military operations, the number of military alliances, et cetera. One cannot just say ‘smaller defence’ is better for all countries, as this would entail that many small countries would not be able to defend themselves, and indeed many are not. Even most (rich) West European countries are unable to defend themselves without NATO.

This is not to say one should not criticize US foreign policy decisions, or argue against particular military interventions abroad. It does call for further thinking among libertarians about the position of a great power in world politics. I think, particular in a globalized world, it is too simple to say such a power should retreat as much as possible from international affairs. A power vacuum will be filled, and there is no guarantee this will be beneficial to the US or the West. Indeed, I suspect it will not be.

2. Also, there is not one ‘libertarian idea about international relations’, here it is useful and needed to distinguish a separate classical liberal position, as I have argued in my book on classical liberalism and international relations theory (see the covers to the right) and will further elaborate in Degrees of Freedom, my next book that will be published next year with Transaction Publishers. There are many differences, but a main one in this context is that libertarians argue for defense as self-defense, while classical liberals accept that countries are part of international society of states, which demands a more active role in some areas. Not least a role in maintaining a regional or global balance of power. I think that is completely in line with Hayekian ideas about sponataneous order (pdf).

3. Libertarians lack meaningful thoughts about the dynamics of a world which would (partly) be characterized by libertarian ideas. Most will accept that a peaceful paradise is unlikely to unfold, yet do not think much about the alternative situations. This gap must be filled to make the basic argument more convincing (or not of course).

Normas, decisiones y complejidad

Federico Sosa Valle Culture , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Hace pocos días, se publicó en el sitio americanscientist.org un ambicioso artículo sobre el concepto de lo aleatorio. El autor, Scott Aaronson, trataba de elucidar bajo qué criterio podíamos distinguir una serie aleatoria de números de otra serie de números ordenados conforme cierto patrón, difícil de determinar, pero estructurante al fin de un orden en la serie. En otras palabras, si una computadora arrojaba “aleatoriamente” un número “9” y luego otro número “9” y luego otro y otro, ¿estábamos ante el resultado del azar, que se juega en cada nueva jugada, o ante un patrón que podía expresarse en una fórmula? ¿Si de repente apareciera en la serie un número 4, eso confirmaría el azar, o nos indicaría que nos encontramos ante un patrón más complejo?

Aaronson propone en el referido artículo, como criterio identificatorio de un número aleatorio, la característica de no ser susceptible de reducción a un algoritmo más simple. La explicación aparece como plausible y tiene un gran poder de seducción. Sin embargo, desde nuestro punto de vista, tal conceptualización no permite distinguir azar de complejidad. Friedrich A. Hayek se inspiró en Kurt Gödel para proponer, como caracterización de un fenómeno complejo, aquél sobre el que, en atención a la heterogeneidad de sus elementos, ninguna teoría puede ofrecer su descripción completa, es decir, que no puede expresarse en un algoritmo más simple.

La noción de fenómeno complejo tiene sus raíces en el empirismo de David Hume: las relaciones entre los términos (una serie de números, por ejemplo) no se encuentran en los términos mismos, si no que son atribuidas por el sujeto (en nuestro ejemplo, le adjudicamos un patrón a aquella serie de números.) Desde el momento en el que el conocimiento general no proviene de los hechos si no que es atribuido a los mismos, tal conocimiento general no nos permitirá agotar el conocimiento de lo particular. En otras palabras, siempre habrá un elemento empírico en toda teoría.

Para continuar con nuestro ejemplo: podemos enunciar un patrón que explique la sucesión de una serie de números, pero estamos expuestos a que aparezca un nuevo número en la serie que nos obligue a revisar nuestra teoría. Cuando aparece un nuevo acontecimiento que se escapa a nuestras expectativas, lo que hacemos es reajustar la noción de orden que le atribuimos a la realidad. Lo que hace que una serie de acontecimientos configure un orden o estructura, y no sea caótica o aleatoria no es, por consiguiente, que las expectativas en torno a los acontecimientos siempre se cumplan, si no que exista un rango de acontecimientos que nunca se verifique, en otras palabras: que determinadas expectativas sean sistemáticamente frustradas.

Igualmente, la confusión entre azar y complejidad puede ser fecunda y arrojar más luz sobre la naturaleza de la segunda. Por ejemplo, Nicolás Maquiavelo culminaba “El Príncipe” con la afirmación de que la iniciativa era la virtud fundamental del político, ya que la fortuna tendía a favorecer más al arriesgado que al cauto. En términos poblacionales, vemos más hombres de éxito con iniciativa que sin ella ya que, para resultar exitosos, se tuvieron que conyugar dos situaciones: la decisión de asumir riesgos y que la oportunidad favorable efectivamente se haya presentado. En el conjunto de políticos sin éxito encontraremos a los cautos y también a los arriesgados (que no tuvieron suerte). Va de suyo que podemos sustituir “fortuna” por “complejidad” sin perder mucho del sentido de la idea.

Asimismo, The Economist publicó la semana pasada un interesante artículo sobre la relación entre la estructura del azar y laestructura de las decisiones. Todo parece indicar que efectivamente existen buenas y malas rachas, pero ello no se debe al azar si no a la estructura de decisiones que se toman frente a una situación difícil o imposible de comprender. Un jugador tiene a la suerte de su lado cuando, luego de ganar la primera apuesta, en las sucesivas va reduciendo su exposición al riesgo. Correlativamente en este caso, a menores riegos, menores ganancias pero también menores pérdidas, con lo que el resultado neto de todo el conjunto de jugadas es positivo. Paralelamente, si un jugador pierde en su primera apuesta, incrementar el riesgo de las sucesivas con la idea de compensar la primera pérdida sólo lo llevará a la ruina. En síntesis, una muy buena estrategia para lidiar con el riesgo es actuar como un sistema de retroalimentación negativa: a cada desvío del promedio estándar, responder con mayor moderación. Después de todo, la comparación con un sistema de retroalimentación negativa era la caracterización que F. A. Hayek hacía de la función del derecho y de todo sistema normativo en general, aportando mayor estabilidad y mejores resultados netos.

Publicado originariamente en http://www.ihumeblog.blogspot.com.ar , el blog institucional de la Fundación Instituto David Hume (www.ihume.org), de Buenos Aires, Argentina.

The concept of “dispersed knowledge” should be a commonplace!

Federico Sosa Valle Culture , , , , , , ,

I dare to state that the world would be a better place to live in if the concept of “dispersed knowledge” were a commonplace. Perhaps it is an elusive idea and that is why every now and then political intervention regards itself as the saviour from the “chaos of the market”.

But what most people are used to call “chaos” is, in fact, “complexity”. Every single rational agent is an administrator of the bits of information gathered by him from the limited range of his experience, using devices of perception, such as senses, social values, norms, and technologies. The said devices are mostly common to other agents and thus contribute to make the compatibility of several individual plans, the most of them unknown to each other, possible –and the stability of the social order rests on the degree of such compatibility.

As we said, social spontaneous conventions as language, monetary economy, trade, morals, and law systems –along with many others- are devices used by the these agents to cope with the complexity of an order of things built on a framework of plans of multiple individuals, most of them yet undiscovered. It is a complex order of facts, but it is an order still: spontaneous conventions make of the multiple bits of information from the different individual plans a coordinated set of resources applied to carry out the most of them. It is a complex system of coordination of knowledge, with gaps and perturbations, but it is a system that can deal with a higher amount of information than any individual or committee would be able to do.

Since our concept of rationality is mostly instrumental, regarding as “rational” a set of resources deliberately applied to attain a known aim, it is easy to consider the complex order resulting from spontaneous coordination of individual plans as “irrational” -and this charaterisation gains strength with every new crisis. At this point, what we have to notice is that the net benefits rendered by the extended society –i.e.: the spontaneous coordination of the dispersed knowledge from multiple individual plans and institutions- are higher than what any other alternative system of organization of human beings could bring about. The consequence of the argument is that dispersed knowledge is both a burden to central planning and lever to the open society.

We know that almost the whole work of F. A. Hayek is devoted to this quest, but if I had to choose a single paper that keeps the kernel of this philosophy I would choose “The Use of Knowledge in Society”. This would be a good starting point to make the idea of “dispersed knowledge” part of our cultural background, like heliocentrism or Gödel’s theorem.

Originally published on http://www.fgmsosavalle.blogspot.com

Are libertarians more intelligent than conservatives and liberals?

Brandon Christensen Liberty , , , , , , , , , ,

The short answer is “yes.”

Jonathan Haidt, a moral psychologist at NYU’s Stern School of Business, published a paper in 2012 with three colleagues exploring libertarian morality. Dr Haidt is well-known for his work on studying morality among conservatives and liberals in the US, but has become increasingly interested in libertarians (or, at least, he can no longer ignore us).

Among the factors that Haidt and his colleagues explore and compare with liberals and conservatives is intelligence, or at least one common measure of it:

The Cognitive Reflection Task is a set of 3 logic questions that have correct and intuitive answers. Correct answers on these questions is said not just to measure intelligence, but also to measure a person’s ability to suppress an intuitive response in service of the cognitive reasoning required to solve these problems.

[…]

Results.

Table 3 shows that libertarians find the correct answers to these questions at a slightly higher rate than liberals and moderately higher rate compared to conservatives (also see Figure 4).

Interpretation.

The cognitive reflection task provides a behavioral validation of the hypothesis that libertarians have a more reasoned cognitive style. In our dataset, this measure inter-correlates with both Need for Cognition […] and Baron-Cohen Systemizer […] scores, with libertarians scoring higher than both liberals and conservatives on all three measures. Taken together, a convergent picture of the rational cognitive style of libertarians emerges.

Although the Cognitive Reflection Task is just one test among many that attempts to measure intelligence, and although I am not a big believer that intelligence tests are any good at detecting intelligence (they are, however, great for analyzing structural issues within a society or across different societies), it’s hard to argue with the results: Libertarians score higher on intelligence tests than either liberals or conservatives. Here is the paper. I’d be very interested in reading through more literature that deals with this, but libertarians are new to a lot of scholars (which is why Haidt’s “common-sense” approach is being considered groundbreaking for including libertarians).

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You don’t really need to read the paper though. Dr Amburgey, the house liberal of this blog, explains well why liberals tend to score slightly lower on intelligence tests than libertarians. Here, for example, is Dr Amburgey trying to tell me that the CIA is not really arming rebels in Syria if it goes through proxies like Qatar and Saudi Arabia. It’s an intelligent response, to be sure, but a libertarian – slightly more superior in his cognitive abilities, according to science – knows better.

Notes  On Liberty‘s house conservative*, Dr Delacroix, amply demonstrates why conservatives are not in the same league as liberals or libertarians.

With the fact that libertarians are more intelligent than liberals and conservatives in mind, I’d like to take a moment to a) bask in the glory of it all, and b) go back to Rick’s question about the One Big Change that I’d like to make.

I think that there is a way to incorporate open borders into a One Big Change-style reform while also leaving room for other improvements such as financial competition in the markets (rather than between governments) and competing tax regimes. I’d dig deeper and go a little more structural. I’d federate the entire world, and I wouldn’t make the federation out of the current agglomeration of nation-states, either. I would destroy the states currently in place and federate the administrative units that currently operate underneath the nation-state.

This, I think, would do a great job of incorporating open borders (everyone is part of the same federal union now), financial competition (no more national banks), tax regimes (you can more easily vote with your feet), and a common legal system that protects individual rights such as private property and freedom of religion.

*Dr Delacroix is, of course, a libertarian. He just calls himself a conservative out of spite for liberals, and because he mistakenly thinks of himself as a paternalistic defender of the common man from Leftist condescension and aggression.

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Eurocraine and Russocraine

Fred Foldvary Current Events , , , , , , ,

Elections are supposed to achieve social peace by providing a government that represents the people. But voting has not brought peace to Ukraine. Many people distrust the honesty of the elections, and many in Ukraine have disagreed with the policies of the government, both when policy favored association with Europe and when it favored association with Russia. The fact that many voters in the Crimea and eastern Ukraine favor union with Russia, or else independence, shows that many there do not feel well represented.

The election in Ukraine will not solve the governance problem, because it is just a continuation of the same system that some are rebelling against. Ukraine needs a new structure of government and democracy. The solution is to shift political power from the central government to the people as individuals. When a citizen of Ukraine holds power equal to that of all others, he will have nothing to rebel against.

Individual sovereignty can best be represented by a neighborhood council. The neighborhood should have a small population, such as a thousand residents. That is small enough for the people to personally know the candidates and for someone to be elected with little cost. The government of Ukraine can begin the decentralization by establishing neighborhood or village election districts. If the neighborhood population is a mixture of ethnic Ukrainians and Russians, and the people wish to have a council that is aligned with one of these groups, or other interests, then the residents may regroup their districts and have councils that best represent their individual interests. This is the level-one level of governance.

In the Russian language, “Soviet” means “council”. The Soviet Union was supposed to be a union of elected councils, and there was indeed a structure of bottom-up multi-level soviets, but in practice, the Communist Party ruled top-down. Ukraine should resurrect the old Soviet system, which actually derives from the 19th-century anarchist concept of associations of voluntary communities. The Bolshevik slogan was, “All power to the soviets!”, but instead they perpetuated the dictatorship of the proletariat, usurped by the party oligarchs.

The power of the neighborhoods has to be constrained by a constitution that recognizes and enforces natural rights. In most countries, constitutions that proclaimed liberty have failed to be implemented, mainly because the structure of mass voting facilitates plutocracy, with policies that transfer wealth from workers to the moneyed and landed interests, resulting in poverty that gets remedied by trickle-down government welfare.

But with the bottom-up system of genuine soviets, the government would much better represent the people, and constitutional rights would be more strongly protected. As the level-one councils elect level-two regional councils, and these elect the supreme soviet or national parliament, the structure would prevent the usurpation of power from the top. The president would be elected by the parliament and easily dismissed if the people are dissatisfied. Any council member could be recalled by the council that elected him.

Decentralized government gets hampered by centralized tax collection, such as an income tax or value-added tax imposed from the central government. Decentralized governance is suitable to decentralized public finance, and the source of public revenue best suited to local power is the tapping of the area’s land rent or land value. Taxing wealth and investment invites capital to flee, hide, or else it shrinks from the burden. But land cannot hide, and it does not run away, nor does land shrink when taxed. Revenue from land-value taxation can be applied by the level-two councils, with revenues sent to both the level-one and level-three governments.

Ukraine needs two things: better governance and strong economic growth. The replacement of the current complex of market-hampering taxes by taxes on land value and pollution would give the economy such a comparative advantage that investment would pour in, wages would rise, the government would be able to pay off its debts, and the economic misery that fuels much of the unrest would be replaced by an economic joy that would eliminate the economic motivation to join Russia.

With small-group voting, the residents of eastern Ukraine would have their own local Russian-speaking councils, and probably ethnic Russian level-two councils representing some 25 thousand persons. The constitution of Ukraine should devolve most government services to the level-two councils, including local security, education, and public works. The ethnic Russians would no longer feel alienated from the government, and the government of Russia would find it difficult to control the local governments, because the council members would come from the people.

As to the situation of takeovers of government buildings in eastern Ukraine, the national government should surround them with walls of troops while establishing new centers of administration in other guarded buildings. But a lasting solution needs to replace the current government with councils that people feel represents them. The one good thing about the old Soviet Union, the bottom-up multi-level system of soviets, was the element that was most discarded without any debate. Ukraine: bring back the soviets, only this time, make it “all power to the people” as individuals and their chosen councils.

“The Economic Origins of Territorial States”

Brandon Christensen History , , , , , , , ,

That’s the title for a paper by Scott Abramson in the Department of Politics at Princeton. Among the gems in this excellent paper:

[…[ before the French Revolution, before the era of the mass conscript army, wealth could not only purchase the technologies of violence, but also the manpower required to prosecute major wars. That is, rather than being an age when large states dominated militarily, this was a period where the population and natural resource advantages of territorial states provided little benefit in the production of violence. Leaders of states could, for a negotiated price, hire a Hessian colonel or an Italian condotierro and retain their men for a campaign season just as they could use these resources to purchase the most advanced technologies of coercion like siege artillery or rearms. It was by virtue of their economic capacity city-states like Genoa and Florence or groups of independent towns like the Swabian league could raise armies that matched or even exceeded those of territorial states like France or England

and

[…] the relationship between geographic scale and survival probability is the opposite of what war-making theories predict. Over this span small states were more likely to survive than their larger counterparts. In other words, rather than being an age of the territorial state” the period between 1500 and 1800 was one in which small political communities not only persisted but remained the typical form of political organization.

Read the rest of the paper here. So small territorial units dominated much of Europe during the initial phase of modernity and industrialization. What I’m trying to piece together is a way to incorporate the ability of small states to provide for themselves while at the same time maintaining ties with multiple neighbors in a way that binds them economically and politically, but without the coercive apparatus of a central government.

I think Madison was thinking about the same thing when he drafted the federal republic of the US, but it seems to me there is a right way to do federal republics (US) and a wrong way (Latin America). Does this make sense?

More regions contemplating independence?

Adam Magoon Current Events, Liberty, Philosophy , , , , , , , , ,

The historically great city-state of Venice is contemplating independence from Italy. “Over two million residents,” nearly half of the total population, “of the Veneto region took part in the week-long survey, with 89 percent voting in favour of independence from Italy.” The  Indipendenza Veneta party believes that the centralized Italian government is unable “to stamp out corruption, protect its citizens from a damaging recession and plug waste in the poorer south.” Venice joins Catalonia and, for better or worse, Crimea this year in considering breaking away from it’s central government. Catalonia’s request for an independence referendum denied by the Spanish prime minister while we all know how long Crimean independence lasted.  All is not lost however.

These types of referendum must be celebrated by libertarians throughout the world. The further decentralization of governments is a goal that can directly lead to a freer, more libertarian society and will serve as a siphon weakening governments worldwide. To quote, as I do so often, the great Murray Rothbard:

“Once one concedes that a single world government is not necessary, then where does one logically stop at the permissibility of separate states? If Canada and the United States can be separate nations without being denounced as in a state of impermissible ‘anarchy’, why may not the South secede from the United States? New York State from the Union? New York City from the state? Why may not Manhattan secede? Each neighbourhood? Each block? Each house? Each person?”

Why not indeed.

Polystate – book 3

Rick Weber Books, Law , , , , , , , , ,

This is my nth response to Polystate and covers the third and final portion of the book (for the 1st through n-1th responses see here, here, and here).

As a quick reminder, the purpose of this book is to consider a possible political structure where individuals choose their own government (“anthrostate”) and these governments operate in the same geographic area (under a “polystate”). This is in contrast to the current system of geographical monopolies on coercion (“geostates”).

Book three attempts to identify insoluble problems with the idea of a polystate. The first problem is the potential for bureaucracy explosion (no, not that kind). A greater (which is to say any) degree of customized service in our current government would surely come with increased costs. There may be technological solutions to this problem, and competition between anthrostates would surely add pressure to get around these costs. In any event, the administrative questions are actually quite interesting. I suspect that many government services would end up moving back into civil society and private markets and the result would be lower monitoring costs in the case of civil society (e.g. for social security through mutual aid societies), and greater use of specialization and innovation in the case of market goods (e.g. for safety standards).

Another big one is the importance of “sacred locations.” If we had always lived in a polystate, Jerusalem might be considered a state of mind. But in the world we live in, it’s a geographical location, and different groups want it for themselves. A market with private property allows these groups to express the importance of this location by outbidding others for its purchase, but such a system is likely not good enough for some members of the relevant groups, and it’s plausible that violence could be resorted to. At the risk of sounding like an insensitive social Darwinist… maybe that’s not the worst possible outcome?… But certainly still a bad, though the root problem is the beliefs of those people; determining which political structure (all of which have costs and benefits) is “best” is an interesting question.

I think the biggest area of potential contention (by non-libertarians) is demonstrated by the issue of gun control. One anthrostate’s gun control is meaningless if it coexists with another that doesn’t have gun control. In other words, a polystate is less polycentric confederacy and more anarchist default plus an odd contract structure for particular firms. This leads to the final problem: transition.

The epilogue discusses the “issue” that the proposal is for a minimal polystate. We can think of this as a contemplation of federalism. This is a thought experiment in radical federalism that is so far down the spectrum of possibilities that it puts the onus of governance on the individual. In many ways, discussions by libertarian political economists can be thought of more as discussions of federalism than discussions of liberty; I think it’s worth thinking about the connection between federalism and freedom, as well as different potential forms of federalism.

Here are my overall thoughts: The book presents an interesting thought experiment and the author does an excellent job of providing well thought out analysis without going overboard. There is plenty to think about, and plenty more discussion to be had (note: read this book with friends and discuss it over beers). ZW had a choice of going into more detail and making a stronger case, or going into less detail and leaving more of the thought experiment to the reader. I think he perfectly balanced these two goals.

Note: an ungated version of that last link is available here. The article is “Afraid to be free: Dependency as desideratum” by James Buchanan.

Polystate: Book 2

Rick Weber Books, Economics, Law , , , , , , , , ,

This is my third entry on Polystate and will cover book 2 (entries one and two covered book 1). This section covers a thought experiment in polystates and begins immediately with the flattering implication that macroeconomists can make speculative predictions about complex systems. This is typically where an Austrian would say “the world is too complex to make speculative predictions which is why  we need a flexible system.”

Quick reminder: a polystate is a state that contains non-geographical anthrostates. Anthrostates have rules relevant to their members, while polystates have rules relevant to the interaction of anthrostates and their members.

My first qualm with ZW’s conception of anthrostates is that there are local spillovers in governance, culture, etc. that would likely lead to enclaves. ZW addresses this now with rule number one of polystates being that no anthrostate may claim territory. My general feeling on federalism is that the higher units will have rules that are more universally accepted, so that a nation will have prohibitions on murder, while regions of states/provinces may have fairly uniform rules on abortion, drug use, etc., individual states have their own traffic laws, and cities have their own rules on neighborly conduct. Polystates are a radical form of federalism, but in order for them to work adequately, they must start with fairly uniform basic rules on property rights over land.

Rule two is that individuals choose their anthrostate annually (by birthday). The specific interval is fairly arbitrary but it seems obvious that it should be neither too long (in which case anthrostates gain monopoly power) or too short (in which case they can’t credibly commit to govern in difficult situations such as collecting taxes or enforcing punishments). The alternative to a time-based restriction would be a social-stigma based restriction which has pros and cons of its own but I’m tempted to think would be more effective (though with some very important caveats that warrant further discussion!). The birthday rule is interesting as it staggers political change leading to greater stability than having “global revolution” at each shift; we face a similar problem in today’s world of election days.

Rule three is where things get tricky: anthrostates that take territory lose their government status under the polystate order. This creates a collective action problem among other anthrostates as enforcing this rule won’t be free and won’t have uniform benefits to others. ZW recognizes this, but the problem still stands. This is essentially the same as the national defense problem. This is really the big one: are geostates unnecessary but inevitable? Essentially this book is considering a special form of anarchy and so belongs in the same category of other classic thought experiments.

It obviously isn’t statelessness, and so it isn’t quite anarchy, but I’m not so sure anarchy is quite anarchy either. Even the sort of state imagined by David Friedman has coercion, it’s just decentralized. Likewise, polystates specifically allow anthrostates to act coercively, but it subjects them to competition. In essence, the polystate proposal is to increase competition among governance structures by allowing them to be geographically diffuse.

An interesting institutional feature of polystates is that anthrostates are no longer bound to seek something like an end state. Where as the USA tries to set up a system for the median voter who is expected to be there for life, an anthrostate could specialize in particular stages of individuals’ lives. There could be a state for students and one for seniors (… I wonder what a world with AARP running an anthrostate would look like…).

ZW doesn’t mention this, but if individuals can be members of more than one anthrostate (of course, based on the rules and enforcement of those rules by the relevant anthrostates) then it is conceivable that government services not be so horizontally integrated. This raises an interesting line of inquiry: is a polycentric polystate possible?

A big problem is the “inherent goodness” of imposing rules on people who don’t want them. It’s easy for libertarians to say that drug laws are dumb (because they are), but as Ryan Murphy surely writes somewhere, where people see value/justification in imposing their views on others we run into problems. We’re pretty much all cool with prohibiting murder, but what about less clear cut issues? If I saw veganism as having the same moral weight as murder (“I don’t think humans should be treated like that.”) then I would be morally justified in striking down with great vengeance and furious anger those who attempt to poison and destroy my brothers with icky lentils. The best solution would be for me to stay the hell away from Berkeley. Again, we’ve got local spillovers in governance. We also have tribalistic barriers to the sort of integration economists want to see for the good of everyone.

In the final section on war ZW raises an interesting point regarding the possibility of war-mongers self-selecting into aggressive anthrostates. This is a troubling notion, but such behavior is expensive. North Korea is aggressive, but manageable because Kim Jong Un isn’t wealthy enough to pose a more drastic threat to NATO. With self-sorting, a North Korean anthrostate would lose many of its productive people and be even less of a threat. But ZW doesn’t raise the question of nuclear weapons…

The example of Kidnappocracy drives home the point that ultimately coercion underlies any system of governance. Rights are as rights are enforced. Political structures are created to resolve rights disputes in an amicable (sort of) fashion, and polystates will still need means of resolving these disputes. Even in a geostate, some people are willing to fight and die for their views, but the institutional change to a polystate seems somewhat orthogonal to such issues. Anthrostates will serve as focal points, and having more disparate focal points may increase the possibility for conflict. But mostly it would just be a different sort of federalism; if we don’t see violence between people from different states, and if effective institutions emerge quickly enough, this problem may be small and quickly swamped by other benefits.

Ultimately the resolution of problems between members of different anthrostates would require that 1) their disputes are matters of honest disagreement that can be resolved with arbitration, 2) interactions that may lead to such disputes are minimized by a general refusal to interact, or 3) there is a strong and near universal support for (this sort of) federalism such that people are willing to resolve differences to support the overarching system. The second seems most likely, supporting the hypothesis that geostates will typically be more successful even if they will be less prosperous.

I come away increasingly convinced that perhaps the most fundamental aspect of governance is geographical sorting. I don’t like geostates (I don’t think many people truly do), but I think geographically localized governance is effective because it reduces interaction by people with contradictory conceptions about good behavior and so reduces conflict while supporting order. I think ZW’s ideas are largely influenced by a sort of a sci-fi view (that I’m highly sympathetic to) which reflects the sort of governance we see on the Internet. 4chan is a very different place from Facebook and every subreddit has it’s own unique culture. In such a world, “geography” is a different matter; it takes a different form, but it’s still there.

Secession and libertarianism – Ukraine Edition

Jacques Delacroix Current Events , , , , , , , ,

The most basic rule of schoolyard behavior is this: Don’t challenge the school bully if your knees are buckling under you. Mr Obama keeps ignoring the rule, with predictable results: One tyrant, one despot after another receives his confirmation that the USA is no dangerous, no matter what you do. Thinking the US in not dangerous is very dangerous for the world. I keep challenging the ones and the others, including mainstream libertarians, to say what will, or should replace the pax americana that has given us relative peace since 1945. No one cares to answer.

This introduction, not by way of beginning to argue that the US should have gone to war over Crimea. I don’t believe it should have; I don’t even think the US should have risked war ever so little because of Crimea. I think rather that Mr Obama should have been absent, with a pass for the nurse’s office, for example. Neither am I being pathetically “realistic,” here. Mine is a principled position. Let me explain.

Anyone who has any libertarian fiber but who maintains his criticality should be instinctively in favor of secessions. Two reasons.

First if being governed is an assault on individual liberty, being governed by those who are unlike you in some fundamental way is a doubly liberticide. Fundamental differences include, but are not limited to, language. That’s because your language largely determines the way you see the world and your sensitivities, what’s important to you as a person. Governors who have different beliefs, who operate on the basis of different assumptions, who nurture different dislikes than you are bound to commit slow rape on you every day of your life. That’s true even if they harbor zero hostile intention toward you. And that’s unless you volunteer, of course, as many immigrants like me – do.

I wish good luck to the Catalan independentists and to the Scottish autonomists. I would even if you proved to me beyond the shadow of a doubt that powerful economic interests undergirth their efforts. It’s true that Catalonia is more prosperous than the rest of Spain. It does not prevent Catalans from feelings how they do. They probably would, if they were less prosperous. I don’t know if the Scots would like to split from the UK absent North Sea oil but, if they do, they do, and that’s it. I believe, of course, that the Tibetans have had a solid claim for secession for all the time they have been under Chinese rule. (And, yes, it may well be that the objective quality of their lives has improved under Chinese Communist Party dictatorship.)

Am I saying that it’s better to be oppressed by those you think of as your kin?

Yes.

The Crimean population overwhelmingly wanted secession from Ukraine. Without the presence of Russian guns, the referendum would have been, maybe, 76 % in favor rather than 96%. The final result would have been the same. It’s not difficult to entertain this double thought: Putin is a gangster and the Crimeans would rather be Russian citizens.

Speaking of Putin: The fact that he used exactly the same arguments as Hitler in 1939 does not logically imply that he did something like dismantling and gobbling up independent Czechoslovakia. The Czechs and the Slovaks, were not volunteers the way most Crimeans are. The annexation of Crimea by Russia changes little to all this. (See below.) Crimeans did not feel Ukrainian, overall and they were tired of being very poor under the Ukraine. They would rather be moderately poor as Russians. It’s not hard to believe either.

The second reason for libertarians to favor secession instinctively is that rational people cannot treat the boundaries of nation-states as if they were sacred, the way most governments pretend to do. At best, one could argue that that fiction contributes to world stability. (I doubt it but it’s not a stupid position.) Rather, the borders of existing nation-states are often the result of centuries of sometimes successful wars (France), or of recent shameless robbery of one’s neighbors (the US), or of colonial bureaucratic insouciance (Iraq). In some cases, the tracing of boundaries looks like a joke: Take for example the long penis-like extension of Afghanistan into China in the eastern part of the former country. The mapmaker, probably a junior English officer must have chuckled with relief in his loneliness.

National boundaries may be useful or even indispensable (to control entry, of undesirables, for example) that makes them a necessity, or a necessary evil. Nothing confers on them a status above critical thinking: Sometimes, the violation of existing borders should not be countenanced; sometimes, such violation deserves only a shrug.

Note with respect to the present annexation of Crimea by Russia following this secession, I am saying nothing about the ensuing strengthening of the Russian kleptocracy. The encouragement of tyrants inherent in the Putin impunity also belongs in another essay.

The fact is that the prevention of secession has always produced tons of mischief, most of it violent, much of it an affront to basic human decency.

Hitler used the existence of a sizable German minority in a strategically important part of Czechoslovakia, of smaller Hungarians-speaking and of Ukrainian-speaking smaller minorities elsewhere to start World War II. It’s possible, even likely that Hitler would have used another excuse absent this one. But linguistic minority aspirations gave a cover of semi-legitimacy to his aggressive action. Without such legitimacy, it is quite conceivable that British and French public opinions would have demanded that Hitler be stopped while it was still possible. (The whole sorry story of Western passivity and vacillation in 1938-39 is recounted in minute, hour-by hour detail in William Shirer’ s classic: The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich.)

In more recent times, we witnessed violent and massive ethnic cleansing in Kosovo , the three-year long siege of a large city one hour flight from Rome, Sarajevo, and the starvation and daily bombing of its civilian population, and the massacre of thousands of men and boys, also in Bosnia. Most of these horrors could have been avoided by finely wrought enough secessions, even at county level if necessary.

A contrario examples abound of the healthful, virtuous nature of secession as a solution to intercommunal tensions. Some come from the most unlikely places.

The dissolution of Czechoslovakia – a radical form of secession – in 1993 was so peaceful that it went almost unperceived . The resulting Czech and Slovak Republics have since continued separately on their fairly prosperous paths. They maintain sound relationships as good neighbors (as very good neighbors, more or less like the US and Canada).

Paradoxically, today’s Iraq offers a striking example of the virtuousness of secession. The world follows with a tired eye Iraqi Arabs eviscerating each other along communal lines. That is, the Sunni Muslim Arabs there and the Shiite Muslim Arabs there are slaughtering each other every day, same as when the presence of Americans was said to cause all the murderous civil strife. Many Sunnis and many Shiites consider themselves members of existentially different groups. They do so for reasons that are probably difficult for Westerners to understand (except those who remember the Wars of Religion in Europe, of course, between 1520 and 1648.) It matters not; as far as they are concerned, those are reasons worth killing and dying for. Keeping them bottled up together, forced co-habitation, is not likely to attenuate these sentiments. (Think of ill-matched college roommates.)

In the meantime, you hardly ever hear of the Northern third of the same country, bloodied Iraq. I refer to “Kurdistan,” still formally a part of the Iraqi republic. Kurdistan, which does not exist officially, is people mostly by Kurds, a group with a distinctive language unrelated to Arabic. They comprise both Sunnis and Shiites. As far as the facts on the ground are concerned, Iraqi “Kurdistan” has achieved secession from its bloodied mother country. No shot was fired in spite of the quick-trigger violence of the Middle-East. The Kurdish area is so prosperous and so peaceful that others go there on vacation. The vacationers are first of all, Arabs from other parts of Iraq seeking relief from incessant violence in their part of the country. Second, Turks are crossing their southern border in increasing numbers for the same purpose . (May of those Turkish tourists are probably themselves ethnic Kurds.)

And we should not lose track of the fact that the 25 years of Saddam tyranny over all of Iraq, accompanied by internal massacres and two wars he started deliberately found what legitimacy it possessed in the supposedly sacred duty to keep Iraq unified. (Keep in mind that the Saddamite regime utterly lacked traditional legitimacy and religious legitimacy, or the political legitimacy that comes from winning fair elections, or any other source of legitimacy.)

Had Iraq broken up earlier into a Kurdish north, a Sunni center and a Shiite south, the world and, especially, the martyred Iraqi people, would have been spared enormous misery. It’s not too late to achieve this end.

I am speculating that many people’s unexamined attachment to the general concept of national border harks back to an earlier time, a time when they were coterminous with economic boundaries and with information boundaries. Not long ago, French citizens ate almost only French food, they wore only French-made clothing (there was even a lively traffic in illegal, smuggled blue jeans), and heard and read only news originating in France in French. All was produced almost entirely with French capital. National boundaries were then the very containers of our existence defined in the most concrete ways. None of this is true anymore for most countries. Borders are porous to most things including words (if not yet to people). Many people are thus ready to fight for a reality that disappeared quite a while ago.

A major more or less unintended effect of this pursuit of ghosts is that it easily turns to bloodshed, domestic and international. So, many Spaniard are resisting the threatened secession of Catalonia as if it would become a catastrophe of sorts for them. There is still little realization that nations that perceived themselves as homogeneous (for whatever reason) are spared major conflicts, including civil conflict. Homogeneous Denmark, with a similar level of development, is more peaceful than bi-community (linguistic communities) Belgium. Either a Walloon or a Flemish secession there would improve the lives of both Walloon and Fleming.

Secession is usually a good thing overall, for peace, and for individual liberties. Let them go and they will lose the ability to stab you in your own kitchen with your own kitchen knife. They may even become your friends, after a while.

N.B. I still have not heard anyone, or heard of anyone saying that he regretted voting for Obama. Amazing!

Demos sin cracia

Guillermo Pineda Philosophy, Politics , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

democracia2

Las democracias modernas instituidas como “el gobierno de la mayoría” comenzaron a aparecer ya entrado el siglo XIX y se popularizaron velozmente.  Al lado de ella, la promoción de los ideales del sufragio universal, la igualdad de derechos y obligaciones entre hombre y mujer, la abolición de la esclavitud y del trabajo forzoso de curso legal, entre otros principios empezaron a dispersarse como un veloz germen en las sociedades occidentales y sus ex-colonias.  Han pasado ya 200 años desde que el germen democrático se dispersó por el mundo.  Sin embargo, los más recientes acontecimientos que han perturbado el flujo de las democracias de mayorías se ha visto afectado en Ucrania, Venezuela y desde hace dos días en El Salvador.

¿Por qué será que el ideal de la democracia ha “fallado” en estos países? 

Los argumentos a favor y en contra son muchos y muy complejos. Deben ser comprendidos desde distintas perspectivas y entender las posiciones tomadas por todos los actores que se han visto afectados de manera directa e indirecta por estos eventos.  Nosotros, el resto del mundo observador, podemos participar con ideas para ojalá descubrir más preguntas en nuestro camino. Hoy quiero compartirles una idea que cruzó por mi mente.

¿Acaso nuestro problema no ha sido que hemos tenído más “demos” que “cracia” en nuestro gobierno y en el desarrollo de nuestro rol ciudadano?

¿A qué me refiero con esto?

El término democracia es antiguo y complejo y se forma a partir de los vocablos “demos” traducido al castellano como -pueblo y/o poder- y “cracia” que indica un -gobierno o sistema-.  Así y actualizando el término desde la antigua Grecia a nuestros días, la democracia se refiere al gobierno del pueblo.

¿Pero acaso no ha sido el pueblo el que se ha volcado a la rebelión en Ucrania, Venezuela y El Salvador? Entonces, ¿la democracia reaccionó en estos países contra la democracia?

Quizás lo que ocurre en estos tres países (que son producto de la colonización y de la subyugación a los imperios durante la Guerra Fría) es que quizás no han pasado el suficiente tiempo en independencia institucional y maduración de sus gobiernos como para lanzarse desbocados a procesos democráticos que deben ir de la mano de una reforma educativa y cultural de la ciudadanía.  Pero, ¡alto! Que conste, que no me refiero a que estos países post-coloniales y post-guerra fría deban regresar bajo el control de un dictador o de una metrópoli.  Sino que, la participación del pueblo (demos) no debería avanzar cuando se ha descuidado o se ha impedido continuar el proceso de institucionalización de la democracia en la vida ciudadana.

Ucrania, Venezuela y El Salvador tienen como un común denominador la inmensa pobreza y la enorme desigualdad educativa y cultural entre la elite gobernante que heredó el poder de sus antiguos amos colonizadores y el grueso de la población. La mayoría de la población en estos países ha sido condicionada a servir como un “agente legitimador” al momento de ejercer su voto pero no se le ha permitido adquirir conciencia absoluta de su rol como “ciudadano legitimador empoderado”. Porque es su voto el que le permite exigir responsabilidad, honestidad y resultados en el equipo de gobierno que eligió en las urnas.

Titulo: 7 killed in post-election protests
Via: FoxNews

En Venezuela ha sido la población cansada y agotada de la corrupción la que ha tomado conciencia del poder de su voto al exigir la renuncia del gobierno revolucionario (aún a pesar de que recientemente había sido electo por el voto de las mayorías).  Es acá que el pueblo ha empezado a ilustrarse en su poder como votante y garante.

Titulo: Days of Protest in Ukraine
Via: The Atlantic

En Ucrania ha sido el pueblo el que también ha tomado conciencia del poder de su voto y de su derecho de autodeterminación pidiendo la anexión de Crimea y su mayoría étnica rusa a Rusia debido a sus distintos intereses económicos, políticos y culturales con el resto del país.

Titulo: El TSE pidió a los contendientes que respeten los resultados que el pueblo decida.
Via: http://www.lapagina.com.sv

Y en El Salvador desde el día lunes debido a que las elecciones presidenciales concluyeron con una cercana diferencia de votos entre los partidos ARENA y FMLN. ARENA rechazó el conteo de las elecciones luego del anuncio de su derrota. 6,000 votos marcaron la diferencia y el partido ARENA rechazó la legalidad del proceso democrático.

Espero que no sea aún tarde para extender una invitación a reflexionar a los ciudadanos salvadoreños sobre el funcionamiento del gobierno democrático y de la necesidad de estudiarlo a más profundidad y, quizás, comprender que el voto de la mayoría (aún si efectivamente ganará por 6mil votos de diferencia) no es garante suficiente de legitimidad.  Y que, es urgente que ambos partidos realicen un pacto serio, democrático y honesto antes de queso se derramé una sola gota de sangre.

En Venezuela, Ucrania y El Salvador es aún posible alcanzar acuerdo y pactos de concertación que partan del respeto al gobierno democrático y que busquen una inclusión de ideas, actores y modificaciones a los actuales procesos en los que el Pueblo (demos) colabore en la construcción y progreso del del Sistema de gobierno (cracia).

Esto evitará muertes y violaciones a los derechos individuales.  Pero más importante aún, permitirá la evolución y maduración de sistemas democráticos de gobierno en estos países que aún ahora se vieron afectados por la injerencia de los poderes imperiales en sus asuntos. Que envidia que en estos países quizás estén a las puertas de un desarrollo democrático del cual nuestros países vecinos podrían aprender mucho.

Polystate, part 2

Rick Weber Books, Law , , , , , , , ,

After much distraction I’m back to continue my review of Polystate: A Thought Experiment in Distributed Government (part 1 is here). But now that I think about it, this isn’t so much a review, as a book club (of one…) where I respond to the book.

In this section, ZW gets into the benefits of polystates. He starts with the benefit of choice. Someone born into North Korea is utterly screwed, but someone born into an unattractive anthrostate can simply leave when they reach the age of consent. The reverse is also true: someone may join an anthrostate that the rest of us see as distasteful. Want to join a cult? You’re free to. The thought of that possibility will certainly make your inner-paternalist squeamish, but remember that if you aren’t free to make mistakes, you simply aren’t free.

Another benefit I wouldn’t have thought of is that traditionally problematic systems of government have a higher chance of success when they are separated from geography. For example:

It may be that the failure of collectivization has not got to do with the individual so much as the aggregate. If 95% of people work poorly in a collectivized environment, any random collectivized farm will perform poorly. But it may be the case that 5% of people would excel in such an environment.

I would expect a communist to protest that geographic seclusion is necessary to create New Communist Man. How are people supposed to learn how to shed their egoism if they cannot help but see the vulgar bourgeoisie all around them? But that sword cuts both ways and shows a benefit of polystates ZW didn’t bring up: a child raised in a fascist anthrostate can see non-fascists and so make a more informed decision of whether to stick with fascism when they get older.

ZW sees the polystate as offering a sort of decentralized Tiebout competition. That covers the demand side (what benefits to provide to whom). Adding in the supply side (who will face what opportunity costs) raises the problem of economic calculation in socialism. But ZW takes it in a different direction, hypothesizing that sorting between anthrostates would lessen decision making costs due to more homogeneous populations.

Choice ensures we get more of what we want with less hassle but also provides the option of exit at low cost. Taking geography out of the equation means that there is a larger number of potential state-competitors, as well as more credible movement on the part of citizens.

He raises an interesting problem related to a recent post of mine:

[T]here may be a difference between good governance and governance which pleases one’s constituency… But, regardless of the philosophy of good government, there is an extent to which good governance must have to do with what voluntary citizens decide is good.

First off: No! Government and governance are two different things! But putting that aside, the big problem we face is how to not just aggregate preferences (a difficult problem in itself), but how to ensure that (or even determine if) our method of aggregation results in something good.

I think cable TV is pretty good at giving people what they want, but I also think that the product is overwhelmingly bad. It’s not a big deal with TV because there are so many alternative sources of entertainment and information (although cable news might have existential dangers). Similarly, I think government broadly gives people what they want (not peace and prosperity, but xenophobia, “doing something,” paternalism, and the like) but that’s not a good thing. The idea of the U.S. senate was to prevent people from having too much choice so that good institutions could be preserved. So could the degree of choice offered by polystates be to much? On the other hand, how could you determine an answer without incorporating the revealed preferences of the governed?

Finally, ZW gets into an especially meaty benefit of anthrostates: peace. It’s hard to start a war with a disbursed enemy (“semi-random geographic distribution), and hard to finance one when your citizens can switch to a more peaceful government. This could be especially important in avoiding territory disputes as humans explore and colonize space (for example, if resources on the moon become valuable enough to justify the expense of following Newt Gingrich up there).

That concludes Book 1 of Polystate, and that’s where I’ll stop for now. I’ll be picking through the book fairly slowly, so I recommend that you buy the book for yourself!

A review in n parts: Polystate, part 1

Rick Weber Books, Law , , , , , , ,

Zach Weinersmith of SMBC comics just published Polystate: A Thought Experiment in Distributed Government. I’ve started reading it and immediately needed to start commenting. Before I get into the review, let me say that SMBC comics is an excellent web comic that everyone should read.

The basic idea ZW introduces is the polystate, a system of government comprised of anthrostates. An anthrostate is “a set of laws and institutions that govern the behavior of individuals, but which do not govern a behavior within geographic borders.” It is essentially government that individuals get to choose in the same manner that they get to choose their insurance company; so to neighbors can live under a different set of laws and any disputes between them are a matter for their anthrostates to sort out. At this point you should be thinking: Nozick did it. The idea of a polystate is essentially Nozick’s Utopia of Utopias.

He contrasts poly/anthrostates with geostates, the geographically defined monopolies on the use of force we are used to today. Does it need to be thus?

Why should we suppose that a person who likes hot dogs, is familiar with a two-party electoral system, and believes Abraham Lincoln was a great man is necessarily someone who should live in a temperate climate in the Western hemisphere?… This is not to deny that history and culture and the choices of individuals matter, but rather to assert that many of the “essential” qualities of nationhood are not, in the long run, meaningful ones.

I’ll agree and disagree. These qualities are relevant to some sense of cultural identity, but are not essential for defining the boundaries of a state. This cultural identity is part of the environment of informal institutions, which are part of a broader polycentric order. This is the underpinning of law (the way Hayek characterized it) which is much broader than legislation.

ZW approaches the problem like a mathematician and sets himself up with a hard sell, by assuming there will be a huge need for technological advances to overcome transaction costs. His argument rests largely on technological possibility and is highly concerned with interaction at the anthrostate level.

A polystate would likely increase the complexity of business and legal transaction. In a world with only 200 or so geostates, most commerce is not interstate and even if it were, geometry tells us that the number of possible two-state transactions is given by n(n-1)/2.

Nobody thinks the distribution of such transactions is uniform, and in real life we see a large proportion of international transactions go through countries that specialize in trade. Hong Kong would surely have an anthrostate analog. In fact, there are historical antecedents. He foresees rules being designed at the polystate level to simplify interactions but, “whatever rules were put in place, the results would be too burdensome to exist without a large bureaucracy or some sort of computational way to arbitrate these many interactions.”

The basic flaw in ZW’s approach is that institutions and laws are provided from the state, and so technology is the answer to transaction costs problems. In fact, the issue is that ZW (though he’s not alone on this) wants a change in institutions that will require a new order to emerge. His book will help to peacefully guide the process of societal change towards that new order. Technology will surely play an important role as well.

That gets us through the first four chapters. I will continue with more tomorrow evening.