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	<title>Comments on: Since When Is Competition Illiberal?</title>
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	<link>http://athousandnations.com/2009/05/06/since-when-is-competition-illiberal/</link>
	<description>Towards a Cambrian Explosion in Government</description>
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		<title>By: Grant</title>
		<link>http://athousandnations.com/2009/05/06/since-when-is-competition-illiberal/#comment-119</link>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Grant]]></dc:creator>
		<pubDate>Thu, 07 May 2009 14:25:26 +0000</pubDate>
		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://athousandnations.com/?p=102#comment-119</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[I don&#039;t think anybody is calling you a pragmatist, Patri.  That aside, you talk about eliminating a priori foundations of government while then immediately positing competition as just such an a priori.  Let&#039;s be counterfactual for just a second and say that a better result would come about through Stalinist central organization, but that the level of competition you&#039;re proposing would actually destabilize whatever benefits we might enjoy.  

To use Stalinism to be facetious, certainly, but I don&#039;t think the point is. There are costs to markets that can&#039;t be ignored and when you pose clean and clear Social Contracts as the form of legalized state power, again you&#039;re a priori, and worse, you&#039;re still in Greek philosophical technology but instead of a semi-empowered human acting on the state, you&#039;ve traded that for the servility of the Crito.  Even if your seastead is a liberated as you presume and brings aboard no counter-revolutionaries, a small Social Contractual state can be more binding than the state we find ourselves in, too top-heavy and distracted with the problems of empire to be bothered with putting upper-class intellectuals in cages. Sometimes the most pervasive freedoms are in the failures of the overseers not the hubris of the slaves.]]></description>
		<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>I don&#8217;t think anybody is calling you a pragmatist, Patri.  That aside, you talk about eliminating a priori foundations of government while then immediately positing competition as just such an a priori.  Let&#8217;s be counterfactual for just a second and say that a better result would come about through Stalinist central organization, but that the level of competition you&#8217;re proposing would actually destabilize whatever benefits we might enjoy.  </p>
<p>To use Stalinism to be facetious, certainly, but I don&#8217;t think the point is. There are costs to markets that can&#8217;t be ignored and when you pose clean and clear Social Contracts as the form of legalized state power, again you&#8217;re a priori, and worse, you&#8217;re still in Greek philosophical technology but instead of a semi-empowered human acting on the state, you&#8217;ve traded that for the servility of the Crito.  Even if your seastead is a liberated as you presume and brings aboard no counter-revolutionaries, a small Social Contractual state can be more binding than the state we find ourselves in, too top-heavy and distracted with the problems of empire to be bothered with putting upper-class intellectuals in cages. Sometimes the most pervasive freedoms are in the failures of the overseers not the hubris of the slaves.</p>
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		<title>By: Miscellaneous Links and Clips &#171; Brad Taylor&#8217;s Blog</title>
		<link>http://athousandnations.com/2009/05/06/since-when-is-competition-illiberal/#comment-117</link>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Miscellaneous Links and Clips &#171; Brad Taylor&#8217;s Blog]]></dc:creator>
		<pubDate>Thu, 07 May 2009 02:23:15 +0000</pubDate>
		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://athousandnations.com/?p=102#comment-117</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[[...] debate on libertarianism and democracy continues: Patri Friedman here and here, Will Wilkinson [...]]]></description>
		<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>[...] debate on libertarianism and democracy continues: Patri Friedman here and here, Will Wilkinson [...]</p>
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		<title>By: DanB</title>
		<link>http://athousandnations.com/2009/05/06/since-when-is-competition-illiberal/#comment-116</link>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[DanB]]></dc:creator>
		<pubDate>Thu, 07 May 2009 01:56:53 +0000</pubDate>
		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://athousandnations.com/?p=102#comment-116</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[The great lengths to which people go in arguing about politics are a source of continual amazement to me. Issues like this - is democracy a better form of government than the alternatives? - simply cannot be settled by debate. The only way to find out is to try; the idea that we can get closer to the truth by &quot;debating&quot; reeks to me of obsolete Greek philosophy. The Greeks thought they could just reason their way to the truth; they totally failed to realize that better results would be obtained by just going out and measuring a bunch of things.]]></description>
		<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>The great lengths to which people go in arguing about politics are a source of continual amazement to me. Issues like this &#8211; is democracy a better form of government than the alternatives? &#8211; simply cannot be settled by debate. The only way to find out is to try; the idea that we can get closer to the truth by &#8220;debating&#8221; reeks to me of obsolete Greek philosophy. The Greeks thought they could just reason their way to the truth; they totally failed to realize that better results would be obtained by just going out and measuring a bunch of things.</p>
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		<title>By: patrissimo</title>
		<link>http://athousandnations.com/2009/05/06/since-when-is-competition-illiberal/#comment-114</link>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[patrissimo]]></dc:creator>
		<pubDate>Wed, 06 May 2009 22:00:00 +0000</pubDate>
		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://athousandnations.com/?p=102#comment-114</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Great question!  It is plausible but will initially be expensive.  You can learn a lot more at &lt;a href=&quot;http://seasteading.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;seasteading.org&lt;/a&gt;, including &lt;a href=&quot;http://seasteading.org/strategic-areas/engineering/clubstead&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;our first platform design&lt;/a&gt;, patent pending.]]></description>
		<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>Great question!  It is plausible but will initially be expensive.  You can learn a lot more at <a href="http://seasteading.org/" rel="nofollow">seasteading.org</a>, including <a href="http://seasteading.org/strategic-areas/engineering/clubstead" rel="nofollow">our first platform design</a>, patent pending.</p>
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		<title>By: Chris</title>
		<link>http://athousandnations.com/2009/05/06/since-when-is-competition-illiberal/#comment-113</link>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Chris]]></dc:creator>
		<pubDate>Wed, 06 May 2009 17:18:26 +0000</pubDate>
		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://athousandnations.com/?p=102#comment-113</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[This whole seasteading thing is news to me, so please forgive my ignorance, but I&#039;m wondering if this is a purely hypothetical proposal made for its political appeal or if folks have really done any engineering grunt work on the feasibility of a floating city.  Is this even plausible from a mechanical standpoint?]]></description>
		<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>This whole seasteading thing is news to me, so please forgive my ignorance, but I&#8217;m wondering if this is a purely hypothetical proposal made for its political appeal or if folks have really done any engineering grunt work on the feasibility of a floating city.  Is this even plausible from a mechanical standpoint?</p>
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		<title>By: Democracy and Markets in Government</title>
		<link>http://athousandnations.com/2009/05/06/since-when-is-competition-illiberal/#comment-107</link>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Democracy and Markets in Government]]></dc:creator>
		<pubDate>Wed, 06 May 2009 06:45:36 +0000</pubDate>
		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://athousandnations.com/?p=102#comment-107</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[[...] post on libertarian democraphobia has elicited a sharp response from Patri Friedman. It&#8217;s good stuff, but I think we&#8217;re talking a bit past each other. In part, [...]]]></description>
		<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>[...] post on libertarian democraphobia has elicited a sharp response from Patri Friedman. It&#8217;s good stuff, but I think we&#8217;re talking a bit past each other. In part, [...]</p>
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