Let A Thousand Nations Bloom

From an interview with Paul Romer in the China Daily:

“It’s possible to do something that’s very different. It’s hard for people to believe that just a little fishing port could grow into a huge successful city like Hong Kong,” Romer said.

Keynesians extol the city’s achievement as an “economic miracle.” In a short span of five decades, Hong Kong has grown from a city with a GDP per capita that was lower than that of its poorest African counterparts into one that is richer than the vast majority of countries across the globe, helped by a combination of factors such as the rule of law, its laissez-faire economic policies and a government that has made doing business and earning a living relatively easy.

Really? If by Keynesianism you mean rule of law and free trade, then, well, okay I guess.

1) The Struggle for Truth is an Anti-Authoritarian Pursuit

Karl Popper is probably best known for his work on the philosophy of science and for his political work The Open Society and its Enemies. In it, Popper elegantly argues in favor of liberal democracy: the “Open Society.”

Slightly lesser-known is Popper’s work laying the foundation of a field called evolutionary epistemology.

‘Epistemology’ is the study of knowledge and its growth. To put it rather crudely, Popper and his cohorts make the argument that human knowledge, just like biological evolution, evolves through trial and error. Ideas are ‘varied’ by creative action, and ‘blind’ attempts based on new theories conceived by adventurous individuals. These variations are then winnowed away by criticism and experiment.

Popper set out this view of the onward march of knowledge as applied to science – he calls the process ‘conjecture’ and ‘refutation’.

The full argument behind this view is too much to get into here. Suffice to say that it seems logical that our social knowledge – things like governance, law, customs, and other social technologies – also evolve through a similar trial-and-error process.

W.W. Bartley, a student and later colleague of Karl Popper, argues that this evolutionary view completely changes the terms of debate for philosophers. We are no longer concerned with justifying our knowledge, since all things can be doubted. Instead, we must be concerned with criticism of ideas – we must allow as broad a scope as possible to critique the old, and allow innovation towards the new.

His conclusions for society are surprisingly subversive:

Instead of positing authorities in terms of which to guarantee and to criticize action and opinion, we aim to construct a philosophical program for fostering creativity and counteracting error.

Within such a program, the traditional “How do you know?” question does not legitimately arise. For we do not know.

A different question becomes paramount: ‘How can our lives and institutions be arranged so as to expose our positions, actions, opinions, beliefs, aims, conjectures, decisions, standards, frameworks, ways of life, policies, traditional practices, etc. – whether justifiable or not – to optimum examination, in order to counteract and eliminate as much error as possible.

Thus a general program is demanded: a program to develop methods and institutions that will contribute to the creation of such an environment. Such methods may be expected to be generally consistent with, but not restricted to or limited to, science.

2) An Environment to Evolve our Social Knowledge

Only hinted at in Bartley’s list of things that must be open to ‘optimum examination’ are political systems and social orders.

Popper’s own view is that liberal democracy allows for change and experimentation in political order without bloodshed and violence. He is certainly correct that democracies, especially on the model of decentralized federalism, allow for some policy experimenting, (usually) peaceful transference of power, and reform and change through collective action like voting.

But, as I have argued here before, do we believe that Western democracies are the absolute end of institutional evolution? We are called by Popper and Bartley to doubt all standards, all absolutes, as open to future revision after criticism has taken its salutary toll. Our knowledge continues to advance – does our social knowledge remain stagnant?

As Western democracies have matured it’s no longer as obvious that democracy conceived of as simply a majoritarian electoral system is the best framework to prevent violence and bring about better lives. To be perfectly clear: this does not mean that voting, individual rights, the protection of free-speech and dissent, social safety-nets or anything traditionally embodied under the heading “democracy” are bad, or must be changed.

But it means we must doubt.

Many modern democracies are violent, both internally and against foreigners. Consider the War on Drugs, which has such disastrous effects in both inner-cities and Latin America. Or consider the seemingly unending War on Terror which, whatever one may say in its defense, has been incredibly costly in money and innocent blood.

The beneficial aspects of federalism (decentralized experimenting in policies, competition and criticism from other polities), have been eroded as power is centralized in places like Washington DC. Civil liberties typically assumed under the banner of democracy (such as habeas corpus, or free expression on the internet) are constantly under attack by political forces within democracies, whether in a bill like the NDAA or SOPA.

Mechanisms of democratic change like regulatory bodies, voting, pamphleteering for your party, writing your Senator etc. have all been thoroughly critiqued on grounds ranging from the behavioral irrationality or ignorance of the voter, to the nefarious influence of special interests.

Again, this absolutely does not deny the beneficial effects these efforts have had in the past or future, or to claim that some sort of ‘dictatorial alternative’ is better.

But we have to doubt. Democracies have rigidities of their own.

To rise to Bartley’s challenge in politics is to say, “How do we expose our political beliefs, our institutions, our social orders and technologies to optimum examination? So that we may counteract our own mistakes and correct our errors.” If we want a better world, we must acknowledge and criticize our shortcomings.

For Popper, our prevailing nation-state system is the environment that subjects these things to open criticism. But we should, following his lead, be willing to challenge our own beliefs in any political order.

We have to imagine criticizing the system at one degree higher; we should be willing to subject the nation-state system itself to an environment of criticism. How else do we expect to fully evolve our social knowledge?

This environment, I believe, is one of competition and consent in social systems. It is one of a thousand nations blooming : or what one might semi–seriously call “The Really, Really Open Society.”

James Poulos has a piece in Foreign Policy calling for a “Return of the King” as a way to salvage the decaying European Union. Waxing poetic, he says:

Bonaparte, a professional soldier born to Genovese nobles, spread his armies across the continent in a quest for political unity…

Poulos abandons Mr. Bonaparte for a time, and the rest of the piece is a rather innocuous discussion of why French values — embodied by the imperious (and imperial) Bonaparte — must triumph over German values if the EU is to survive.

“When the alternatives to French leadership are either nowhere men dispatched from Brussels or bean-counters in Berlin,” he argues, “does French pride — relatively more generous, powerful, and legitimate — seem so outrageous? If Europeans answer that question seriously, they just might be inspired to make more of Napoleon’s legacy than a tourist trap.”

I’m not interested in discussing the details of the EU here, but rather the fundamental outlook Poulos is expressing.

There are many problems in the world, some of which demand the attention of people from across national boundaries.

But ‘political unity’ is not always the answer — either across borders or within them. ‘Political unity’ at the hands of an megalomaniacal military conqueror (even if just for spicy allegory) only channels the kindred spirits of tyranny and tragedy.

Here’s why:

Reasonable people disagree about what it means to lead “the good life.” Reasonable people disagree about their duties to their fellow man. Reasonable people disagree about the content of the terms ‘justice’ or ‘truth’ or ‘sanctity’ or ‘love.’ We can wish this weren’t the case (I certainly do, all the time), but it is what it is.

In truth, these disagreements about deep values may be ultimately irreconcilable. Ludwig Wittgenstein, referring to the ideas of ethics and aesthetics as ‘beyond logic’ and therefore ‘beyond speaking,’ says of these things “we must pass over in silence.”

Political institutions are the tools we are given to frame our own pursuits of the good life and our own moral codes. By forcing all people beneath a single political framework, we create conflicts. Suddenly any conflict of values becomes a struggle for control over the political framework. If you don’t seize the helm, someone else will.

Anyone observing the bloodthirsty debates over ‘creationism’ in public schools, or whether our centralized health agencies must pay for contraception has a window into what full-fledged ‘political unity’ brings with it. The erratic flows of government money, lobbying and special-interest wrangling in Washington DC or within the EU is the economic counterpart to the battle for a ‘unified’ political engine.

If, as I think is quite possible, these ultimate values are simply beyond the powers of logical argumentation to fully resolve, then to unify all people under a one-size-fits-all social framework is to condemn all of us to a future of constant fighting.

A parting thought. I live near a dense community of traditional, extremely conservative members of a Hasidic Jewish sect. I object to many aspects of their lifestyle and belief system, especially the way women are regarded as second-class citizens.

I believe it is perfectly acceptable to criticize this as regressive and wrong, but should I get my own Bonaparte and “spread my armies across” New York City to ‘unify’ the Hasids beneath my will?

This conflict of philosophies between the Hasids and I can be contained, because we do not need to struggle for control of the same institutions.

They can run their own schools, wear their own special clothes, and run Kosher shops.

I can read heretical literature at a secular university, eat non-kosher food, and flirt with gentile girls. And I can even, should I want, shop at Hasidic stores (which, by the way, are often the best-run around). I can even sit next to Hasids on the train where we, in true New York fashion, politely ignore each other for the duration of the trip.

In the areas where we agree (the efficacy of taking the subway, where the best produce is for sale), we converge and have peaceful exchange; where I disagree with them (what days are sacred, where to go to church, sexual relations), we part our separate ways and ‘do our own thing’.

This arrangement is possible because of the scope that still remains in New York City for choice in education, food, or religion. If we had to live beneath a fully ‘politically unified’ education system, or food regime, or religious outlook, you can rest assured I would have far different feelings about people trying to impose a Hasidic lifestyle on me.

And they wouldn’t care much for my lifestyle either.

Perhaps Poulos should consider the wondrous diversity of Europe before he gets out his exhuming shovel.

In between coaching debate and reading ridiculous numbers of books, I’m a pretty big sports fan. My first love when it comes to sports is and will always be the San Francisco Giants. The Giants were the best team in the Bay Area between 1997 and 2003 or so, which were really my formative years when it came to sports. Those were also the years when Barry Bonds was at his peak. A lot of people hate Barry Bonds – I don’t. I can’t. And Grant Brisbee, the best Giants blogger out there, has the best explanation of why.

The default position of McCovey Chronicles is that you wouldn’t understand. You weren’t there when Bonds was doing amazing things….when I think of Barry Bonds, I’m going to think about baseball. Good baseball — the best I’ve ever seen. I’ll think of the fear he put in pitchers and managers…And if you can’t think of all that when you read Bonds’s name? Well, I understand. Bonds almost certainly took advantage of chemicals that other players in baseball weren’t willing to….Just put yourself in our shoes when you get a second. Or in the shoes of Cardinals fans or Cubs fans. When 40,000 people get out of their chairs in Milwaukee next April and give Ryan Braun a standing ovation, don’t just assume that they’re all bleating goats who will chew on whatever tin cans they’re fed. This stuff’s complicated. Being a passionate fan of anything messes with your brain chemistry. That’s what made my brain spam me with feel-good chemicals after Bonds got off with a slap of the wrist. When I think of Bonds, I think about some of the fondest memories baseball has ever given me. Around these parts, that will give him a pass for an awful lot over the rest of his life, even if you can’t understand that.

There is nothing you can say about Barry Bonds that will make me hate him. I have far too many positive memories associated with the man – watching him come up in the ninth, with the Giants down two, and just knowing, KNOWING, that the Giants were about to win the game. His performance in the year he hit 73 was the most dominant performance by any baseball player that I can remember. As a Giants fan that year…with him in the lineup, it felt like nothing was really out of reach.

And you know what – I feel the same way about Ron Paul.

There’s nothing you could say about Ron Paul that would make me hate the man. You could accuse him of racism, bigotry, whatever, and I wouldn’t care. The way that Barry Bonds is associated with positive feelings about sports in my brain, that’s the way that Ron Paul is associated with positive political feelings. Bonds represents my favorite team, and Paul my favorite political philosophy. He is a leader of my tribe. You wouldn’t understand.

I have a feeling that there are a lot of Democrats who feel the same way about Barack Obama.

And a lot of Republicans who feel the same way about George Bush.

You could tell Democrats that Obama has been a worse president on civil liberties than Bush, that he’s expanded the surveillance state, made indefinite detention into a bipartisan consensus, and authorized a step no president would have dared before – assassinating an American Citizen without due process.  I’ve tried.  It doesn’t change a thing.  Despite the fact that my progressive friends were furious at Bush over his civil liberties abuses, when confronted with Obama’s record, they shrug, deflect the point, or engage in some other form of handwaving.

Barack Obama is the leader of their tribe. I wouldn’t understand.

You could tell Republicans that Bush was the worst president when it came to fiscal discipline that you can imagine, that his policies doubled the size of the department of education, started pointless and terribly executed wars, and was just a complete disaster for conservatism. Who cares. They are about to nominate Rick Santorum, who was probably the biggest team player of the Bush Years, and went along with every policy that conservatives are now trying to repudiate.

Bush was the leader of their tribe. I wouldn’t understand.

Politics isn’t about policy. Irrationality is rational. And sticking with your tribe is everything. Persuasion is possible on the margins – with people who haven’t given politics a ton of thought, or who have felt uncomfortable most of their lives. But once you’ve picked your tribe, you’ve picked your tribe. I doubt there are many people who voted for Clinton, Kerry, and Obama who will ever consider voting for a Republican or Libertarian-ish presidential candidate. To vote against a Democrat would be to vote against yourself, to vote against your own identity.

Technological solutions to politics – solutions that create a possibility for exit – are important for a lot of reasons. But most important of all might be that they let people change their political preferences without abandoning their tribe. When the Chinese moved to the special economic zones, they didn’t have to give up their membership cards in the Communist Party. If life is better in New Tegucigalpa, liberals might just go there…and they can go there without giving up their membership cards in Team Liberal.

It’s a hell of a lot easier to change the world when you can let your opponents save face.

The Economist laments:

Two forces make American laws too complex. One is hubris. Many lawmakers seem to believe that they can lay down rules to govern every eventuality. Examples range from the merely annoying (eg, a proposed code for nurseries in Colorado that specifies how many crayons each box must contain) to the delusional (eg, the conceit of Dodd-Frank that you can anticipate and ban every nasty trick financiers will dream up in the future). Far from preventing abuses, complexity creates loopholes that the shrewd can abuse with impunity.

The other force that makes American laws complex is lobbying. The government’s drive to micromanage so many activities creates a huge incentive for interest groups to push for special favours. When a bill is hundreds of pages long, it is not hard for congressmen to slip in clauses that benefit their chums and campaign donors. The health-care bill included tons of favours for the pushy. Congress’s last, failed attempt to regulate greenhouse gases was even worse.

Complexity costs money. Sarbanes-Oxley, a law aimed at preventing Enron-style frauds, has made it so difficult to list shares on an American stockmarket that firms increasingly look elsewhere or stay private. America’s share of initial public offerings fell from 67% in 2002 (when Sarbox passed) to 16% last year, despite some benign tweaks to the law. A study for the Small Business Administration, a government body, found that regulations in general add $10,585 in costs per employee. It’s a wonder the jobless rate isn’t even higher than it is.

The anonymous authors offer some weak policy suggestions and exhortations: Republicans and Democrats need to work together; they should replace the regulatory-tsar with an independent body that subjects laws to cost benefit analysis, etc…These suggestions are all well and good, but they’ll never happen. What we need is some ability for regulatory reset. Free cities, free economic zones, charter cities, bootstrapping sovereignty in Native American reservations are all ways of doing this. Good luck cutting through the thicket one branch at a time with any speed. Better, as the man in Concord said, to strike at the root.

An informative article in the Economist on how Luther’s theses went viral in the 16th century:

Although they were written in Latin, the “95 Theses” caused an immediate stir, first within academic circles in Wittenberg and then farther afield. In December 1517 printed editions of the theses, in the form of pamphlets and broadsheets, appeared simultaneously in Leipzig, Nuremberg and Basel, paid for by Luther’s friends to whom he had sent copies. German translations, which could be read by a wider public than Latin-speaking academics and clergy, soon followed and quickly spread throughout the German-speaking lands. Luther’s friend Friedrich Myconius later wrote that “hardly 14 days had passed when these propositions were known throughout Germany and within four weeks almost all of Christendom was familiar with them.”…

Unlike larger books, which took weeks or months to produce, a pamphlet could be printed in a day or two. Copies of the initial edition, which cost about the same as a chicken, would first spread throughout the town where it was printed. Luther’s sympathisers recommended it to their friends. Booksellers promoted it and itinerant colporteurs hawked it. Travelling merchants, traders and preachers would then carry copies to other towns, and if they sparked sufficient interest, local printers would quickly produce their own editions, in batches of 1,000 or so, in the hope of cashing in on the buzz. A popular pamphlet would thus spread quickly without its author’s involvement.

Medieval illuminated manuscripts were very costly to produce, requiring conspicuous attention to detail, craftsmanship, and rare materials, not to mention highly skilled labor. The lingua franca of the establishment church was Latin. By and large only priests could read and write it. Since readership was small, so were the number of interpretations of the Bible. The laity left understanding the word of God to the priest.

But the printing press disrupted this market. Suddenly the costs of producing and disseminating Bibles and pamphlets decreased dramatically. With many Bibles and more readers came more interpretations. Authority began to fragment.

There are all sorts of caveats to this narrative, but it’s a great example of how technology can alter the balance of power between the center and the periphery.

Heh:

The ABC drama is about a renegade crew of a nuclear submarine who go on the run after defying an order given under suspicious circumstances to deploy their weapons. They seek refuge at a NATO listening post and declare themselves the world’s smallest sovereign nation with nuclear capability. They then face the challenges of creating a new society while potentially fending off threats from other countries.

La plus ca change and all that…Greenwald:

“The survey shows that 70 percent of respondents approve of Obama’s decision to keep open the prison at Guantanamo Bay. . . . The poll shows that 53 percent of self-identified liberal Democrats — and 67 percent of moderate or conservative Democrats — support keeping Guantanamo Bay open, even though it emerged as a symbol of the post-Sept. 11 national security policies of George W. Bush, which many liberals bitterly opposed.”

Repulsive liberal hypocrisy extends far beyond the issue of Guantanamo. A core plank in the Democratic critique of the Bush/Cheney civil liberties assault was the notion that the President could do whatever he wants, in secret and with no checks, to anyone he accuses without trial of being a Terrorist – even including eavesdropping on their communications or detaining them without due process. But President Obama has not only done the same thing, but has gone much farther thanmere eavesdropping or detention: he has asserted the power even to kill citizens without due process. As Bush’s own CIA and NSA chief Michael Hayden said this week about the Awlaki assassination: “We needed a court order to eavesdrop on him but we didn’t need a court order to kill him. Isn’t that something?” That is indeed “something,” as is the fact that Bush’s mere due-process-free eavesdropping on and detention of American citizens caused such liberal outrage, while Obama’s due-process-free execution of them has not.

Power creates its own legitimacy. To weaken corrupt governments, you can either focus on undermining legitimacy or power, hopefully both. Suckered into the voice gambit, the anti-war, pro civil rights movement is nothing more than the cat’s paw. They thought they could lay bare the illegitimacy of Bush era policies, but because they did nothing to check a raging hulk, they’re stunned, back peddling, mumbling. The protests of 2007 have faded into a faint whisper. It is the dawn of acquiescence and denial.

Writing about a growing class divide between the cognitive elite and the rest, Arnold Kling has been making use of Neal Stephenson’s Diamond Age to explain the trend. In Stephenson’s post nation state future, a group of highly productive bespoke engineers establish a community based on the virtues of the Victorian era: discipline, self-control, submission to authority, tolerance of extreme inequality in talents and wealth, propriety, and everything else Keynes, Virginia Woolf, and the others in the Bloomsbury Group loathed.

I like Kling’s appropriation of the term, but I also enjoy Stephenson’s more developed analysis in the middle section of his classic essay, In the Beginning Was the Command Line. The cultural trends he wrote about in 1999 have only grown starker:

Contemporary culture is a two-tiered system, like the Morlocks and the Eloi in H.G. Wells’s The Time Machine, except that it’s been turned upside down. In The Time Machine the Eloi were an effete upper class, supported by lots of subterranean Morlocks who kept the technological wheels turning. But in our world it’s the other way round. The Morlocks are in the minority, and they are running the show, because they understand how everything works. The much more numerous Eloi learn everything they know from being steeped from birth in electronic media directed and controlled by book-reading Morlocks. So many ignorant people could be dangerous if they got pointed in the wrong direction, and so we’ve evolved a popular culture that is (a) almost unbelievably infectious and (b) neuters every person who gets infected by it, by rendering them unwilling to make judgments and incapable of taking stands.

Morlocks, who have the energy and intelligence to comprehend details, go out and master complex subjects and produce Disney-like Sensorial Interfaces so that Eloi can get the gist without having to strain their minds or endure boredom. Those Morlocks will go to India and tediously explore a hundred ruins, then come home and built sanitary bug-free versions: highlight films, as it were. This costs a lot, because Morlocks insist on good coffee and first-class airline tickets, but that’s no problem because Eloi like to be dazzled and will gladly pay for it all.

Read the whole thing.

The tragedy of the anti-commons is a useful concept for understanding a prevalent type of government failure in both poor and rich countries–excessive permit and licensing requirements. A pervasive multiple licensing system can create an impenetrable conjunctive permission line that even the most energetic cannot overcome. To start a business, to build, to hire, to sell, you need first to convince bureaucrat A and B and C and D and so on. The longer the conjunctive line, the less frequently entrepreneurs enter the market with new products and services. The transaction costs for dealing with each bureaucrat are very high, as is the likelihood that any single one will say no. The upshot is an impoverished society. To take one example, in medieval times, barons who owned parcels of land along the Rhine River collected tolls from each ship that passed by. As a result, few ships sailed down the Rhine.

But why go to medieval Germany or post-communist Russia when here we have a great example from my home town, San Francisco:

The Ice Cream Bar opened Jan. 21 in the Cole Valley neighborhood — an homage to the classic parlors of the 1930s, complete with vintage soda fountain and lunch counter seating. It has become an immediate sensation, packed with both families and the foodie crowd, savoring upscale house-made ice creams and exotic sodas (flavorings include pink peppercorn and tobacco). The shop also employs 14 full- and part-time workers.

But getting it opened wasn’t easy.

“Many times it almost didn’t happen,” said Juliet Pries, the owner, with a cheerful laugh.

Ms. Pries said it took two years to open the restaurant, due largely to the city’s morass of permits, procedures and approvals required to start a small business. While waiting for permission to operate, she still had to pay rent and other costs, going deeper into debt each passing month without knowing for sure if she would ever be allowed to open.

“It’s just a huge risk,” she said, noting that the financing came from family and friends, not a bank. “At several points you wonder if you should just walk away and take the loss.”

Ms. Pries said she had to endure months of runaround and pay a lawyer to determine whether her location (a former grocery, vacant for years) was eligible to become a restaurant. There were permit fees of $20,000; a demand that she create a detailed map of all existing area businesses (the city didn’t have one); and an $11,000 charge just to turn on the water.

The article doesn’t investigate the origins and causes of this morass, but any plausible theory of urban development should figure out ways to dissolve the problem. I’d say it’s a reasonable assumption that we can thank baptists and bootleggers for each required permit. One by one the pebbles collect to thwart the flow of the stream. And the SF city planning commission seems to shrug its shoulders helplessly.

The whole episode in red tape asphyxiation inspired a humorous take on city planning in an Xtranormal skit. Enjoy [HT Boing Boing]: