Minarchy doesn't have to Suck
Four comparatively easy (relative to anarchy) fixes which can minarchy suck a lot less.
I believe anarchy is possible - just not without some major changes, and definitely not as anarcho-capitalism is currently sold. However, minarchism may be good enough. The inflection point of maximal human liberty may be with slightly less liberty in certain areas. Since I'm not an aspie, I accept this. Hell, most anarchists already accept this by being willing to impose restrictions on murder and assault. Those restrictions work because those actions are highly detrimental to the freedom of others and most don't want to perform them so the opportunity costs of their denial are low for the population overall.
I was reading Jake Shannon's Why I'm a Libertarian Minarchist. Minarchy, like anarchy under current conditions, doesn't work. It morphs into a giant state as people seek "gibs me dats" and politicians promise the world for those whose spheres of concern are greater than their spheres of influence. Those same politicians are often the ones who those decrying anarchy claim would take over.
Platitudes about "getting the right person in," "getting out the youth vote," and "getting money out of politics" are a fucking waste of time and I'm tired of mouthbreathers bringing them up. The first two do close to nothing and the third will never happen so long as politics and power are connected and there's limited transparency (or shit-giving + "do something about it" ability in the general populace). The problems are systemic.
Minarchy is probably more possible than large-scale anarchy in the near-term future. The transition to that social organization attractor requires less structural changes. I propose four "relatively easy" (compared to implementing anarchy) proposals for making minarchy more likely.
I was reading Jake Shannon's Why I'm a Libertarian Minarchist. Minarchy, like anarchy under current conditions, doesn't work. It morphs into a giant state as people seek "gibs me dats" and politicians promise the world for those whose spheres of concern are greater than their spheres of influence. Those same politicians are often the ones who those decrying anarchy claim would take over.
Platitudes about "getting the right person in," "getting out the youth vote," and "getting money out of politics" are a fucking waste of time and I'm tired of mouthbreathers bringing them up. The first two do close to nothing and the third will never happen so long as politics and power are connected and there's limited transparency (or shit-giving + "do something about it" ability in the general populace). The problems are systemic.
Minarchy is probably more possible than large-scale anarchy in the near-term future. The transition to that social organization attractor requires less structural changes. I propose four "relatively easy" (compared to implementing anarchy) proposals for making minarchy more likely.
Fix #1 : Sortition
Shannon is probably right about anarchy allowing psychopaths/sociopaths to take over. All large-scale anarchistic societies have either been eaten from without or within. Unfortunately, the problem of psychopaths also exists within statist social structures - statism just allows psychopaths to make the rules! It's said that politics is the process of separating the willing from the able... and going with the willing.
There are pretty much two kinds of people who want to go into politics (ancillary types are outliers). The first are those who have a great idea and want to see it implemented. The second are those who want power - and who tend to be psychopaths/sociopaths. The first either have to become the second to get shit done or get booted out or discouraged by the former. It's like how there's a tendency for bad cops because cops turn bad or get pushed out by bad cops.
Most people aren't jerks, but most people who seek power are. I'd much rather get a representative sample of the population. Enter sortition - selection by lot. It has a boat load of benefits over elections, and few (important) downsides. Less money in politics. No more media playing kingmaker. No more pandering. No more stupid votes cancelling good votes. Less identifying with the system (aka "it's ok because our guy did that" and "the government IS the people" or, worse, "the government IS society"). No more 42% of congressmen/senators are lawyers unless 42% of the general population are lawyers. Better cultural, race, and economic representation - and especially less rich, lawyer, and silver menace." These would have to be a paid positions, unfortunately, otherwise it'll be a rich person's / retiree's game.
If people are too stupid to govern (preferably themselves), then they are probably too stupid to vote for someone who will govern. If society is mostly comprised of stupid people then the society is probably doomed anyways. At least sortition lets less jerks in.
There are pretty much two kinds of people who want to go into politics (ancillary types are outliers). The first are those who have a great idea and want to see it implemented. The second are those who want power - and who tend to be psychopaths/sociopaths. The first either have to become the second to get shit done or get booted out or discouraged by the former. It's like how there's a tendency for bad cops because cops turn bad or get pushed out by bad cops.
Most people aren't jerks, but most people who seek power are. I'd much rather get a representative sample of the population. Enter sortition - selection by lot. It has a boat load of benefits over elections, and few (important) downsides. Less money in politics. No more media playing kingmaker. No more pandering. No more stupid votes cancelling good votes. Less identifying with the system (aka "it's ok because our guy did that" and "the government IS the people" or, worse, "the government IS society"). No more 42% of congressmen/senators are lawyers unless 42% of the general population are lawyers. Better cultural, race, and economic representation - and especially less rich, lawyer, and silver menace." These would have to be a paid positions, unfortunately, otherwise it'll be a rich person's / retiree's game.
If people are too stupid to govern (preferably themselves), then they are probably too stupid to vote for someone who will govern. If society is mostly comprised of stupid people then the society is probably doomed anyways. At least sortition lets less jerks in.
Fix #2 : Localism
Sortition wouldn't necessarily fix the problem with the "starry-eyed planner" type of person except that there'd be less of a need to pander and no need to worry about reelection. The real fix to the problem with that group (and many other problems) is localization. To have a federal legislature which provided the same representation suggested by James Madison in Federalist #58, there'd need to be 8,000 representatives (if minors are not counted in population). Legislatures become pretty dysfunctional around 500 members. Even New Hampshire which is "best in citizen representation" has less than 500 reps.
In computer programming, you want to avoid god objects. Instead, one breaks the problem into smaller problems and then solves those smaller problems. Once all the small problems are solved, the entire thing is solved. A similar approach in politics is to leave most of the decisions up to individuals, then impose some specific rules at the town level, fewer and more general rules at the county level, still fewer and more general rules at the state/province level, and very few and general rules at the national level. Disputes can be settled by arbitration but neither side in the dispute should ever be the judge. So if New Hampshire and Connecticut need to fight, then the Federal government can preside. If the Federal government is one of the parties, then maybe Michigan presides.
People currently go right to the top because it's more emotionally satisfying to elect the PRESIDENT rather than some state rep. even though the vote for the state rep carries more selective power (thought not necessarily effective power). They also do so because of game theory: if they push their issue locally and their opponents go to the national level, the localists lose due to the supremacy clause (or equivalent) even though there are restrictions on what laws are supremely valid (but thanks to the judges making the rulings being employed by the national government such restrictions are often ignored or justified out of existence).
The other big reasons to support localism are:
In computer programming, you want to avoid god objects. Instead, one breaks the problem into smaller problems and then solves those smaller problems. Once all the small problems are solved, the entire thing is solved. A similar approach in politics is to leave most of the decisions up to individuals, then impose some specific rules at the town level, fewer and more general rules at the county level, still fewer and more general rules at the state/province level, and very few and general rules at the national level. Disputes can be settled by arbitration but neither side in the dispute should ever be the judge. So if New Hampshire and Connecticut need to fight, then the Federal government can preside. If the Federal government is one of the parties, then maybe Michigan presides.
People currently go right to the top because it's more emotionally satisfying to elect the PRESIDENT rather than some state rep. even though the vote for the state rep carries more selective power (thought not necessarily effective power). They also do so because of game theory: if they push their issue locally and their opponents go to the national level, the localists lose due to the supremacy clause (or equivalent) even though there are restrictions on what laws are supremely valid (but thanks to the judges making the rulings being employed by the national government such restrictions are often ignored or justified out of existence).
The other big reasons to support localism are:
- More people get what they voted for. This is a near mathematical certainty with the worst-case scenario being equal to what exists without localism. The U.S. is divided about certain issues like abortion pretty evenly. The same goes for several other topics. That means 50% of people have to be pissed off at any ruling or closer to 100% have to be partially pissed off with a compromise.
- It's easier to vote with one's feet under localism. As much as the statist phrase "if you don't like it you can just leave" sucks, it sucks less if it's more doable. Moving to a different country requires giving up a lot and jumping through a lot of hoops. Moving to another province or town requires far less.
- More Speed, Accuracy, and Context. Decisions made at the local level can typically occur faster (though perhaps not as fast as a centralized dictatorship), they are more accurate in general because the information used is less diluted by intermediaries, and they have more context - information about what information is relevant. Sometimes there is no globally "correct answer" and local decisions allow decisions that are right for one area or set of circumstances to not be imposed on others for whom it makes no sense.
- Representatives are more accessible locally. I used to live next to the assistant town manager and across the street from a state representative. If I had a problem, I could go knock on their doors and talk with them. I doubt I could do the same with federal representatives or the president.
- Damage control. Local decision makers may be just as corrupt or ignorant as national ones, but the damage bad decisions cause is more likely to be contained to a smaller area and number of people.
- City on the hill / concurrent experiments. Even going to the state level in the U.S. allows 50 laboratories to experiment with social and economic policies. I wasn't opposed to RomneyCare at the state level because, even though I suspected it'd suck, I didn't live in Massachusetts and wanted to see the results. Instead, its descendant was pushed on the entire nation before the kinks were worked out of the Massachusetts model. In situations where there is one "correct answer," concurrency allows quicker discovery of it.
Fix #3 : Arbitration without Conflicts of Interest
This is just obvious - it's a conflict of interest to have the arbitrator paid by the same party as one of the parties. The Supreme Court unilaterally ruled that they get to decide what's constitutional and, as a result, the supremacy clause has become pretty all-encompassing. For matters where the national government is a party, the court should be comprised of a random grouping of provincial governments or some other third party.
The government being the judge of its own power is a recipe for big government - especially given the nature of bureaucracies.
The government being the judge of its own power is a recipe for big government - especially given the nature of bureaucracies.
Fix #4 : Transparency
It's coming anyways - time to embrace technology. The government claims it can spy on emails and even did a bunch of shady things regarding the Associated Press yet they have a conniption about Bradley Manning. Reagan famously said "trust, but verify;" transparency can't be a complete replacement for trust, but it can help.
Implementing as much publicly-accessible transparency as is reasonable and cost-effective lowers the cost of detection for the general public. While people can pretend corruption isn't that prevalent, they can refuse to take steps which get bad people and bad rules gone. When it's in their face, cognitive dissonance will force them to nut up or shut up.
Financial transparency is also indicated as most problems can be traced to a monetary cui bono. The government loves looking into the banking records of citizens but hates having its own books audited. Such audits require trusting third parties. A solid currency with a known generation and destruction process such as a population peg or something like bitcoin go a long way to eliminating elites controlling the economy. A mathematically guaranteed way to trace transactions eliminates hiding CIA drug-running in off-books accounts.
Implementing as much publicly-accessible transparency as is reasonable and cost-effective lowers the cost of detection for the general public. While people can pretend corruption isn't that prevalent, they can refuse to take steps which get bad people and bad rules gone. When it's in their face, cognitive dissonance will force them to nut up or shut up.
Financial transparency is also indicated as most problems can be traced to a monetary cui bono. The government loves looking into the banking records of citizens but hates having its own books audited. Such audits require trusting third parties. A solid currency with a known generation and destruction process such as a population peg or something like bitcoin go a long way to eliminating elites controlling the economy. A mathematically guaranteed way to trace transactions eliminates hiding CIA drug-running in off-books accounts.
Bonus Fix #5 : Dividend
I'll throw in one more. I'm not convinced this is easy, but some of the other fixes might not be either. Specifically, the dividend portion might be an easy-ish sell, but choosing a good source of funding is likely to get a lot of pushback.
Want to keep government small, give people money. Wait! What?! That's the problem we have now! Yes, because the government has a monopoly on the services it renders and it can charge it to groups other than the ones getting the benefits (aka soaking the rich). Without elections and with a better social representation of law-makers, that problem is reduced (though not eliminated). If the money comes from those getting the benefits rather than those who have more, the problem is further reduced. Such an change may require a lot of people to modify their thinking and drop the sour grapes attitude, so it may not happen.
If the government doesn't get to set taxes, but the market does, dividends have a more responsive upper bound. (Yes the Laffer curve says taxes are bound now, but there's less of a direct feedback mechanism.)
A useful example is one of the battery core. It used to be you buy a car battery and then you either bring it to the dump or chuck it in the woods. The dump probably just buries it. That's bad for the environment. By making people and companies pay more up front for the battery and then refunding people when they bring the dead battery back, people have an incentive to not just chuck the battery in the woods. Good political effects can also happen with a dividend. The best example I'm aware of is the Alaska Permanent Fund.
Each resident of Alaska gets about $2,000 a year as a payout from Alaskan oil well leases. Unfortunately the taxes on Alaskan property are low so most of the dividend probably drives up land prices. Also unfortunate is that the federal government ruled that Alaska couldn't restrict the dividend to people who had lived there for a certain number of years so that the state could avoid a lifeboat effect. Thankfully for them, Alaska is dark, cold, and isolated enough that few people want to flock to that lifeboat anyways.
Attempts have been made by the oil companies and other groups to repeal the dividend. Even with deceptive wording such referendums fail to pass; money in one's hand is worth more than abstract notions to most people. This is also why taxing one's paycheck as a worker earns it is a deviously evil idea - some people actually think they're getting free money on April 15th (instead of getting some of their own taxed earnings back)!
LVT with a dividend has the potential to keep government small in two ways:
Want to keep government small, give people money. Wait! What?! That's the problem we have now! Yes, because the government has a monopoly on the services it renders and it can charge it to groups other than the ones getting the benefits (aka soaking the rich). Without elections and with a better social representation of law-makers, that problem is reduced (though not eliminated). If the money comes from those getting the benefits rather than those who have more, the problem is further reduced. Such an change may require a lot of people to modify their thinking and drop the sour grapes attitude, so it may not happen.
If the government doesn't get to set taxes, but the market does, dividends have a more responsive upper bound. (Yes the Laffer curve says taxes are bound now, but there's less of a direct feedback mechanism.)
A useful example is one of the battery core. It used to be you buy a car battery and then you either bring it to the dump or chuck it in the woods. The dump probably just buries it. That's bad for the environment. By making people and companies pay more up front for the battery and then refunding people when they bring the dead battery back, people have an incentive to not just chuck the battery in the woods. Good political effects can also happen with a dividend. The best example I'm aware of is the Alaska Permanent Fund.
Each resident of Alaska gets about $2,000 a year as a payout from Alaskan oil well leases. Unfortunately the taxes on Alaskan property are low so most of the dividend probably drives up land prices. Also unfortunate is that the federal government ruled that Alaska couldn't restrict the dividend to people who had lived there for a certain number of years so that the state could avoid a lifeboat effect. Thankfully for them, Alaska is dark, cold, and isolated enough that few people want to flock to that lifeboat anyways.
Attempts have been made by the oil companies and other groups to repeal the dividend. Even with deceptive wording such referendums fail to pass; money in one's hand is worth more than abstract notions to most people. This is also why taxing one's paycheck as a worker earns it is a deviously evil idea - some people actually think they're getting free money on April 15th (instead of getting some of their own taxed earnings back)!
LVT with a dividend has the potential to keep government small in two ways:
- So long as it's market-based, there is less reason to fight others through the courts since (s)he who wants it more can just prove it with more money. Less need to resolve disputes means less need to make laws and fund courts and police which means less government.
- Paying a dividend to everyone gives them a direct monetary interest in keeping the government small since the government would have to take money from the dividend to pay for things so long as
a. It couldn't just print money because of something mathematically guaranteed like bitcoin and
b. It couldn't arbitrarily raise taxes because the taxes are market-based and
c. It couldn't borrow money - this is still an issue, but sortition and localization (governments competing with one another) would hopefully reduce such tendencies.