The Wire, Treme, and Civil Societarianism
The dramatic theme of The Wire isn’t explicitly stated until the final season, when Clay Davis marches up the courthouse stairs to his trial, carrying a copy of Aeschylus. (That the show’s creator, David Simon, had this in mind from the get-go is revealed in the show’s Bible.) It’s a real break from the show’s hyper-realism–I can’t imagine a State senator carrying a Greek tragedy, cover facing out–but what Davis says to reporters in his defense animates the whole series–namely, that no good deed goes unpunished. With Clay Davis, the irony here is delicious.
In fact, this theme forms the backbone of the Wire pilot episode. The dramatic question of McNulty’s plot line is whether or not he’s going to pursue justice or follow the chain of command. Barksdale breaks the witnesses, the case against D’Angelo falls apart, and Judge Phelan wants to know why. If McNulty keeps quiet about it, the bureaucratic machine would continue on in its predictable grind. But here–yes, it is a ironic tragedy–McNulty makes his unwise decision. He tells Phelan everything: Barksdale’s connection to the murders, the lack of case work. In short, and in the words of the Bunk, “There you go Jimmy, giving a f**k, when it’s not your turn to give a f**k.”
That encapsulates the Chain of Command philosophy and I gather it’s why the show resonated so well with libertarians. The Chain of Command is public choice economics symbolically enhanced: malignant incentives pervade public institutions and warp their function. If you can advance your career, and make everyone worse off in the process, then you will. (For libertarianish reactions see Robin Hanson and Patri.)
As a huge fan of the show, I’m very excited to see David Simon’s next project, a show set in New Orleans. It’s called Treme and it’s about how neighborhoods in the city are getting on post-Katrina. Word’s out that HBO picked it up for a whole season. Should be good. The linked article gives Simon’s vision for the series:
It’s a metaphor for where we are in America right now’ [Simon] said the story should resonate with Americans considering the recent economic downturn. He compared Americans’ faith and reliance on the nation’s economic structure to New Orleans’ faith and reliance in the city’s levee system, both of which have proven to be “more fragile than anyone ever assumed.”
Since Simon’s avowedly left-wing and radical, it’ll be interesting to see how his political beliefs inform the characters and plot lines of Treme. (The title refers to a musically rich neighborhood and community in New Orleans.) Since this blog dreams for a land of a thousand nations and a million resilient communities, I hope Simon gets the chance to read Sanford Ikeda and Peter Gordon‘s work on New Orleans, especially an article entitled “Power to the Neighborhoods.” They write:
As New Orleans rebuilds, city officials have an opportunity to redirect their efforts away from the misguided policies of the past and toward the promise of private neighborhood associations (PNAs). Such organizations would aid the re-emergence of New Orleans as a “living city”— one that generates its economic growth from its own local economy. A network of PNAs would create many different kinds of communities with a variety of rules, fees, and services among which people can pick and choose. New Orleanians could vote with their feet without leaving the city.
We’ll have to see how David Simon portrays it, but Gordon and Ikeda give lots of evidence that top-down urban planning and chain of command style leadership exacerbated the hurricane’s fallout. It occurs to me that their response to this is in line with what Arnold Kling has called Civil Societarianism. (I would edit Simon’s levee metaphor: New Orleans’ misguided faith and reliance on the city’s levee system is comparable to Americans’ foolish reliance on the Federal government.) Another thing that comes to mind, is that post-Katrina New Orleans will offer a miniature test of sorts for Mancur Olson’s views on stability and the accumulation of interest group politics. Will the city get an institutional reset? In some ways, there is some evidence it has. One example: The hurricane destroyed the credibility of teacher’s unions and eliminated their influence. Now the city is a hot bed of education reform. Charter schools are flourishing. Let’s hope Simon’s show isn’t blind to these facts.
Declaration Of Independence & The American Revolution
When in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and of nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.
IN CONGRESS, JULY 4, 1776, The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America
Thomas Jefferson Memorial
Welcome to our final climactic mega-extravaganza post of Secession Week, in which we both celebrate the spirit of ’76 and lament its shortcomings. Perhaps nothing exemplifies this marriage of heaven and hell more than Thomas Jefferson himself, a giant whose rhetoric still shines in the firmament (We hold these truths to be self-evident), but whose personal life bespeaks moral turpitude (Sally Hemings). As Stephen Gordon of the Liberty Papers writes:
While I certainly take a great deal of pride in the fact that a lot of people risked their lives, liberty and property to secure a nation free of Europe’s chains, I’ll never forget that we placed even crueler chains upon a significant segment of our own population…
As a white person of mostly European ancestry, I understand the pride that most Americans feel on Independence Day. As I’m not black, I’ll probably never be able to truly understand the feelings of African-Americans on the topic. Were I black, I’d likely feel a sense of pride that many of my ancestors laid down their lives to promote a system of government which eventually led to the freest of societies in the history of the world. I’d probably also wish to ensure that people never forget the absolute horrors of slavery. As many of my white friends want us to learn from the positives of the founding of our country, my black friends want to ensure that we truly understand our history so we never repeat the same mistakes.
Gordon points us to a moving 1852 speech by Frederick Douglass, “What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?” who, on the one hand, can say:
The signers of the Declaration of Independence were brave men. They were great men too great enough to give fame to a great age. It does not often happen to a nation to raise, at one time, such a number of truly great men. The point from which I am compelled to view them is not, certainly, the most favorable; and yet I cannot contemplate their great deeds with less than admiration. They were statesmen, patriots and heroes, and for the good they did, and the principles they contended for, I will unite with you to honor their memory.
Yet while also concluding…
Fellow-citizens; above your national, tumultuous joy, I hear the mournful wail of millions! whose chains, heavy and grievous yesterday, are, to-day, rendered more intolerable by the jubilee shouts that reach them. If I do forget, if I do not faithfully remember those bleeding children of sorrow this day, “may my right hand forget her cunning, and may my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth!” To forget them, to pass lightly over their wrongs, and to chime in with the popular theme, would be treason most scandalous and shocking, and would make me a reproach before God and the world.
The Huffington Post suggests that having a black President means that African-Americans can finally celebrate. But for many, ambivalence about the 4th still continues. Bryan Caplan wonders “why American independence was worth fighting for?”, with lots of interesting discussion in the comments. And Mencius Moldbug is skeptical too. In Why I Am Not A Libertarian (an essay I quite like, despite being a libertarian myself), Moldbug takes his anti-revolution point of view to its logical conclusion:
Libertarianism is, more or less, basically, the ideology of the American Revolution. And the American Revolution was, in my own personal opinion, more or less, basically, a criminal outrage of the mob – led by leaders who were either unscrupulous, deluded, or both.
This is an extreme claim, but as always, he provides excellent references (more here as well). Alex Knight at Strike The Root suggests things to do while boycotting the 4th, and Stephen Kinsella at LRC says farewell to Thomas Jefferson, referring (among other things) to Jeff Hummel’s The Constitution As Counter-Revolution, which offers a new twist on history (though not so new, perhaps, if you’ve read the aforementioned links).
But enough curmudgeonly contrarianism, for after all, the American Revolution led to one more nation blooming, and quite a nation it turned out to be. So let’s turn to…
Independence As Inspiration
For many of us who are displeased with current governments, Independence Day offers great inspiration. Almost 1500 Tea Party Protests are planned across the country (news coverage here). John Payne offers four reasons to Celebrate Secession at his blog (cross-posted to The American Conservative):
The most basic reason for supporting secession is that it makes government more accountable to the people it governs. The smaller a polity is, the easier it is for an individual’s objections to be heard whether that be through voting, petition, protest, etc. It also becomes harder for one group to oppress another the more they have to interact with each other. Dehumanizing some distant group is very easy; it is much harder to do with your next door neighbor. In the words of my all time favorite libertarian hero Karl Hess, “Adolf Hitler as chancellor of Germany is a horror; Adolf Hitler at a town meeting would be an asshole.”
And Brad Warbiany at the Liberty Papers writes:
On this anniversary of the date of American Independence, it is right to celebrate. It is right to remember the valiant and principled action of the Founding Fathers to take on the world’s great superpower and assert their rights — many lost their lives in the effort. We have a nation worth celebrating.
But in remembrance of those who we are celebrating, it is important to understand their significance in a historic context (again, see the books recommended above). It is important to remember that the principles they are fighting for are again in peril. And it important to realize that in order for those principles to be recovered, we must tirelessly call the United States Government for what it is — illegitimate.
Over at the seasteading blog, last year I called for us to take inspiration from the Declaration:
Nowadays the theoretical morality and practical advantages of replacing despotism with democratic self-government are widely recognized. Those who throw off the chains of tyranny are following a well-trodden path to a known destination. But someone had to take that first bold step into the unknown, guided by their vision of a just society and frustration with existing systems … it would have been a terrible loss for humanity if America’s founders had resigned themselves to the status quo of monarchical tyranny. As it would be for us today to resign ourselves to the status quo of terrestrial democracy. So on this July 4th, let us pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor that we will not make the same mistake.
At LewRockwell.com, Robert Higgs eloquently explains how we can love our country without loving its government, and Anthony Gregory writes about how the ideas of freedom are catching on.
Our humble event, besides inspiring numerous contributions, has inspired Bill Miller to start a Secession University blog:
For some time now I’ve been toying with the idea of putting together a website where the issues of secession can be fully discussed with every detail and nuance of this knotty subject explored. Your request for postings during this week of celebrating our Declaration of Secession has inspired me to finally pull the idea together.
Today’s inaugural post describes plans for a series of 25 or more posts about the secession of States from the USA.
Misc
Courtesy of the New Yorker
Wired Magazine reports that North Korea celebrated the holiday by firing a barrage of ballistic missiles – a unique interpretation of traditional fireworks. We’d rather not think about that, so we’ll take refuge in humor, like John Cleese’s revocation of American Independence, and culture, like The New Yorker’s collection of Independence Day covers. Speaking of culture, nothing says July 4th in America nowadays like Nathan’s Famous Hot Dog Eating Contest, where a new world record was set:
To be more serious for a moment, Ilya Somin at the Volokh Conspiracy responds to our Wednesday topic by asking Was the Declaration of Independence an Example of Secession, Revolution, or Both? And Mike Lux at Huffington Post paints the Declaration as a triumph of progressivism over conservatism. Does that make American Secession Movements the bleeding edge of progressivism? That would be cool, because extreme progressivism is usually where the babes are. Hmm, guess the serious thing didn’t last. That must mean it is BBQ time, so let’s wrap up…
Conclusion
Your authors and editors here at Let A Thousand Nations Bloom have labored long and hard this week on bringing you a fine selection of Independence and Secession related ideas, and we hope you’ve enjoyed it. Now we’re off to our BBQs and parties (if you are too, perhaps you’d like to read tips for outdoor cooking, or how to photograph fireworks?)
But the event doesn’t have to end today. If you found Secession Week thought-provoking and valuable, then share it/post it/digg it/tweet it when you get back to the office on Monday, consider subscribing to our blog regularly, and keep us in mind next year, when the event will return, bigger and better. In the meantime, there are no finer words we could leave you with than these:
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness. That, to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That, when any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or abolish it.
Secession Week: Friday – Non-territorial Secession
Welcome to our penultimate Secession Week post, in celebration of Independence Day tomorrow. Today’s concept is non-territorial secession, or seceding without moving. For those who are totally unfamiliar with the concept, I offer a brief introduction.
Overview
This is not a new concept, and has been proposed by many names and in many flavors, such as:
- Polycentric Law: “a legal structure in which providers of legal systems compete or overlap in a given jurisdiction, as opposed to monopolistic statutory law according to which there is a sole provider of law for each jurisdiction.”
- Market Anarchism: a “philosophy in which monopoly of force held by government would be replaced by a competitive market of private institutions offering security, justice, and other defense services – “the private allocation of force, without central control”. A market would exist where providers of security and law compete for voluntarily paying customers that wish to receive the services rather than individuals being taxed without their consent and assigned a monopoly provider of force.”
- FOCJ: Functional, Overlapping, and Competing Jurisdictions – A reinvention of these 150-year old ideas by Swiss economists Bruno Frey and Reiner Eichenberger in the 1990s, in articles like FOCJ: Competitive Governments For Europe.
- Panarchy: “a conceptual term first coined by the Belgian botanist and economist Paul Emile de Puydt in 1860, referring to a specific form of governance (-archy) that would encompass (pan-) all others …In his 1860 article “Panarchy” de Puydt…applied the concept to the individual’s right to choose any form of government without being forced to move from their current locale. This is sometimes described as “extra-territorial” (or “exterritorial”) since governments often would serve non-contiguous parcels of land.”
Arnold Kling contributes a post about the idea, which he calls Virtual Secession:
The problem with physical secession is that it is very difficult to achieve critical mass. There is probably not much overlap between the people you want to live with and the people who want to choose your particular form of government. The vast majority of us put up with government we dislike in order to live in proximity to people with whom we want to work and play.
With virtual secession, you could still live in San Francisco or Manhattan or Silver Spring while seceding from much of the government at the city, state, and Federal level. You and your next-door neighbor might belong to very different governmental units.
Arnold also has a paper on Competitive Government which covers a number of different models, some much like non-territorial secession, with great references. (A post of mine about how seasteading relates).
Historical Cases
Historical context is very important when it comes to questioning the current method of governing. If a system has worked in the past, it is much more likely to be able to work in the future. I have two favorite references for historical methods of providing today’s government services privately on a person-by-person basis. The first is The Voluntary City: Choice, Community, and Civil Society, edited by David Beito, Peter Gordon, and Alexander Tabarrok. Its essays contain a wide range of examples of past methods of providing today’s monopoly services on a voluntary basis. The second is The Enterprise of Law: Justice Without The State, by Bruce Benson. In addition to offering theoretical discussions of virtual secession, the author covers the history of law enforcement in England over the last millennia. This history gives the lie to today’s automatic assumption that courts and police must be public monopolies. Systems very different from what we are used to can function, and function well – sometimes even better than our own. This book influenced me strongly, by giving historical reality behind a set of ideas that I had thought might only work in theory.
There are other interesting examples of societies where laws enforcement was provided in a non-territorial fashion, such as David Friedman’s work on Iceland and the Xeer law in Somalia. Peter Leeson’s Cato Unbound essay Self-Governance Works More Often Than You Think contains numerous historical examples as well.
Polycentric Law
This article by law professor Tom Bell is a good introduction from a legal perspective, and Randy Barnett wrote an entire book, The Structure of Liberty, exploring the idea of a polycentric constitutional order. Bruce Benson, whose book will be discussed below, has a good article about Polycentric Governance:
Let me say that my own preferred terminology here is “customary law communities” (bottom-up development of rules and institutions as opposed to top-down imposition of rules and institutions under “authoritarian law”). These communities do not just rely on self-enforcement in the sense of unilateral (morality-driven) or bilateral (e.g. tit-for-tat) actions. They often establish third party dispute resolution mechanisms (arbitration, mediation) backed by ostracism threats, and other institutions.
The first point I want to make is that while these communities may be based on geographic proximity, they also may be based on kinship, functional proximity as in a trade association or the “business community,” religion, or any of a number of factors that create repeated dealings and/or reputation effects).
This article is part of an entire issue of Cato Unbound, in August 2007, devoted to a discussion of non-territorial governance, although with a rather more provocative title:
Market Anarchism
Wikipedia states that the main 20th century proponents of this model were Murray Rothbard and David Friedman (who happens to be my dad). David’s book Machinery of Freedom is an excellent introduction to the subject, focused somewhat on libertarians, and written very accessibly. This annotated bibliography contains the key Rothbardian references and a number of others. Bryan Caplan’s FAQ is another great source of information. The best current work being done in this area, in my opinion, is by Stefan Molyneux at Freedomain Radio. He has some excellent books available for free online, as well as over a thousand podcasts and many videos, like this introduction to the site:
A glaring hole in most market anarchist works is the lack of any reasonable incremental path to get from current monopolistic governments to ones where unbundled services are provided privately. Agorism addresses this by proposing a steady process of economic secession to develop private provision of police and courts over time. I have questioned Agorism on this blog, although a number of Agorists believe I have misunderstood or misanalyzed the approach. Regardless of the merits of Agorism’s specific incremental strategy, at least they have one.
Panarchy
Reader Adam Knott offers a selection of works to read:
First, the original essay “Panarchy,” published in 1860 by Paul Emile de Puydt. In this essay, de Puydt lays out his vision of the idea of multiple nonterritorial coexisting governments. This essay is one of the most wonderful essays in libertarian literature, written entirely without rancor. In this essay, de Puydt explains that government should be something open to individual choice and something nonterritorial in nature, just as religions are.
Second, a compilation of essays written by living panarchist authors, including John Zube, the oldest living panarchist philosopher. These are wonderful and original essays that make the case for voluntary choice in governments. One of the articles, by Gene Callahan, is written specifically on the subject of secessionism. But all the essays are about the individual’s right to choose his government (his right to exit, join, or form them) and not have it imposed upon him on the basis of geography.
And finally, The Present State of Liberty is an essay I self published in 2007. In this essay, I argue that libertarianism has failed as a political movement because it is still a movement that thinks in terms of political monopolism and geographic government. I argue that libertarians generally either support liberalizing a democracy, or they support the utopian vision of a particular author (such as Rand or Rothbard), but neither of these things is true liberty, because neither vision includes the right to opt out or secede and go one’s own way. Liberty exists when the individual may choose, not only goods and services and his place of domicile, but also the government he lives under.
Here at Let A Thousand Nations Bloom, we couldn’t agree more. Everyone has a different concept of freedom and utopia, and we seek a world where any group who share a vision can go form a sovereign country, and thus individuals have a myriad array of choices for types of governments to live under.
(Note that there is a Facebook group for Supporters of Libertarian Extraterritorial Secession.)
This post is merely a short overview of some of the flavors of and references for virtual, extraterritorial, or non-territorial secession. Functional, overlapping, and competing providers of government services is a large area of political thought, with numerous high-quality books, essays, and academic papers. These references should be a good start.
We hope you’ll take a brief break from your BBQing and fireworks to join us tomorrow for our final day of Secession Week, focused on the Declaration of Independence and the American Revolution.
An Introduction To Non-Territorial Secession
Normally, secession consists of an entire region seceding from a large one, and forming its own autonomous government. In non-territorial secession, you might:
- Secede from your city’s library services, because you only read things on the internet.
- Secede from your city’s garbage service because you would rather compost or store your own tash
- Secede from your city’s police protection, because for the same cost, you can buy yourself a gun, defense training, and a good alarm for the house.
The idea may sound strange at first (only pay for services if they are worth it? That’s crazy talk!), but if we think of government as just another industry, it makes sense. We choose our cell phone provider, our car insurance provider, our DSL provider, and many other providers of business services independently from among competing firms, and we don’t have to move to change providers. It is only with government, which divides the world into many regional monopolies, where we have to buy a giant package of many services, determined by our location.
If these services could be unbundled and offered by multiple providers in a given location, we would have far more choice, and could assemble our own bundle based on our unique preferences. And the competition between providers, just like in any market, would result in higher quality, more cost-effective service.
While some aspects of government service (like national defense) may be difficult to provide on a person by person basis, there are far fewer of these “natural monopolies” than you might think. As we mentioned in yesterday’s post, looking at history offers a new perspective on what forms of government are possible. Today, fire services are often considered to be a natural monopoly because fires can spread, but in the past, private fire insurance which only protected subscribers was used. As Wikipedia says:
London suffered great fires in 798, 982, 989, and above all in 1666 (Great Fire of London). The Great Fire of 1666 started in a baker’s shop on Pudding Lane, consumed about two square miles (5 km²) of the city, leaving tens of thousands homeless. Prior to this fire, London had no organized fire protection system. Afterwards, insurance companies formed private fire brigades to protect their clients’ property. Insurance brigades would only fight fires at buildings the company insured. These buildings were identified by fire insurance marks.
There are numerous other examples of services that we are used to seeing as natural monopolies, but which can or have been provided on a person-by-person basis. Some people believe that every aspect of government, even the courts and the military, can be provided in this fashion. Whether or not you believe in the strongest version of the non-territorial secession, we think there is an excellent case that many services of today’s regional monopoly governments could be better provided by competing, non-territorial entities.
To learn much more about the theory and history of these ideas, head on back to Secession Week: Friday – Non-territorial Secession.
Welcome to our fourth post for Secession Week, in celebration of Independence Day this weekend. Today’s theme is federalism, which Wikipedia defines as:
The term federalism is … used to describe a system of the government in which sovereignty is constitutionally divided between a central governing authority and constituent political units (like states or provinces). Federalism is a system in which the power to govern is shared between national and central(state) governments, creating what is often called a federation. Proponents are often called federalists.
Confusingly, in Europe the word is sometimes used for those who support a strong federal government, like the EU, but we are using the earlier meaning of a federation of fairly independent political units, whose central government restricts itself to activities with interstate implications, like national defense.
Federalism is not a fringe issue – the battle over states rights reached the nations highest levels in recent Supreme Court cases like Raich vs. Gonzalez and Kelo vs. New London. And as Real Clear Politics reports in Can Federalism Solve America’s Culture War?, popular blogger Andrew Sullivan recently defended federalism in The New Republic: “The whole point of federalism is that different states can have different public policies on matters of burning controversy–and that this is okay.”
The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy points out that federalism vs. centralization has been an issue since the founding of the United States:
The Articles of Confederation of 1781 among the 13 American states fighting British rule had established a center too weak for law enforcement, defense and for securing interstate commerce. What has become known as the U.S. Constitutional Convention met May 25 — September 17 1787. It was explicitly restricted to revise the Articles, but ended up recommending more fundamental changes. The proposed constitution prompted widespread debate arguments addressing the benefits and risks of federalism versus confederal arrangements, leading eventually to the Constitution taking effect in 1789.
The “Anti-federalists” were fearful of undue centralization. They worried that the powers of central authorities were not sufficiently constrained e.g. by a bill of rights (John DeWitt 1787, Richard Henry Lee) — which was eventually ratified in 1791. They also feared that the center might gradually usurp the sub-units’ powers. Citing Montesquieu, another pseudonymous ‘Brutus’ doubted whether a republic of such geographical size with so many inhabitants with conflicting interests could avoid tyranny and would allow common deliberation and decision based on local knowledge (Brutus (Robert Yates?) 1787).
James Madison
In what has become known as The Federalist Papers, James Madison (1751-1836), Alexander Hamilton (1755-1804) and John Jay (1745-1829) argued vigorously for the suggested model of interlocking federal arrangements (Federalist 10, 45, 51, 62). Madison and Hamilton agreed with Hume that the risk of tyranny by passionate majorities was reduced in larger republics where sub-units of shared interest could and would check each other: “A rage for paper money, for an abolition of debts, for an equal division of property, or for any improper or wicked project, will be less likely to pervade the whole body of the Union than a particular member of it.” (Federalist 10).
As Mencius Moldbug (a veritable demon of primary sources) often shows us, writing from long ago reveals our false assumptions that things must always be and have always been like they are now. To see “A rage for paper money” characterized as an “improper or wicked project” by the founders of our country helps put the Fed and fiat currency into historical context. Speaking of Moldbug and historical context, his contribution for this event is up – Secession, liberty, and dictatorship:
Tribalism excluded, I see only one remaining reason to either talk about secession, or actually carry it out: the tantalizing project of creating a new sovereign structure from a clean-room design in the 21st century. When implemented on existing populated territory (rather than via dynamic geography), this can be described as a reboot.
If one favors the secession of California, it is not because one feels the Schwarzenegger administration has done such a great job that it should be promoted to full sovereign stature, like the PLO. It is because one feels that the way California is being governed is entirely wrong. It is completely and utterly misguided. The political institutions of California are not in any way susceptible to repair. Rather, they require complete replacement.
And for any such thing, they cannot remain joined at the hip to Washington, DC. If one favors a reboot of California, secession is obviously a prerequisite, simply because Federal law is such an important part of the process of state government. All of USG at once could reboot, of course, or all the states could reboot separately, or California could just decide on its own that it’s too cool for school. For the purpose of this essay, we’ll consider only California.
He then explores possible political systems which could be used to govern California – coming to some unusual conclusions and proposing an answer synthesizing various historical models. If you’ve never read Mencius before, make sure you’re sitting down – reading his essays feels like I’ve dropped acid and put on the sunglasses from They Live!, and the world has been enlivened by the simultaneous stripping of deception and adding of extraneous color and the occasional hallucination.
We have several contributions for today’s theme here on A Thousand Nations. Will Chamberlain contributes another original piece on Federalism, Secession, and Free Trade, as does Mike Gibson in Foundations of Federalism: Experimentation & Value Pluralism. And I discuss some technical aspects of local competition and which tax/ownership schemes properly incent governments in Seasteading, Tiebout, and Federalism: Seasteading FTW. (In an older post at the Seasteading Blog I discuss why federalism leads to less conflict than democracy.)
The main Constitutional support for federalism, which has been sadly weakened by the Supreme Court, is of course the Tenth Amendment, which states: “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.” Constitutional scholar Randy Barnett advocates creating a whole new Bill of Federalism amendment to the Constitution, as you can read in this WSJ article:
In response to an unprecedented expansion of federal power, citizens have held hundreds of “tea party” rallies around the country, and various states are considering “sovereignty resolutions” invoking the Constitution’s Ninth and Tenth Amendments. For example, Michigan’s proposal urges “the federal government to halt its practice of imposing mandates upon the states for purposes not enumerated by the Constitution of the United States.”
While well-intentioned, such symbolic resolutions are not likely to have the slightest impact on the federal courts, which long ago adopted a virtually unlimited construction of Congressional power. But state legislatures have a real power under the Constitution by which to resist the growth of federal power: They can petition Congress for a convention to propose amendments to the Constitution.
Read his proposed amendment, or see responses by Stephan Kinsella at Mises, Ilya Somin at Volokh (who has some excellent comments), and Michael Boldin at the Tenth Amendment Center.
And finally, the Daily Paul questions whether we should support the looser Articles of Confederation over the Constitution. At LRC, Walter Block and Stephan Kinsella see central intervention against federalism as a mixed bag, because it promotes violence, but is often done to support freedom.
We’ll be back tomorrow with a post on non-territorial secession through systems like polycentric law.
(This post is part of the Thursday: Federalism day in our Secession Week blogging series)
It’s unnerving how many arguments in popular American politics overlook the benefits of federalism. To take but one example–you hear me Lou Dobbs?–the absurdity of arguments for protectionism. Consider it on the state level, and its force is attenuated. Should California raise tariffs against imports from New York to protect its industries? Riiiiight. Instead of buying American, should we buy Californian? Vertically integrated in Kansas, baby! Doesn’t even pass the laugh test. No one’s mind becomes vulcanized by the heat of patriotic emotion on these questions. When firms and jobs migrate from one state to another, largely because of tax and regulatory incentives, not a peep–and why should there be? (See Will Chamberlain’s post today on just this kind of reasoning.)
You might think this is obvious, but of course, even in our current health care debate, such manifestly schlocky arguments have wormed their way into the brain trust of the White House. Lawrence Summers recently implored his colleague Christina Romer to present arguments to the president much to this effect (since Obama’s political advisors loved to jaw on about it) : socialized medicine will help American businesses stay competitive with foreign firms.
If this were true, why not argue for state-based experimentation? No one, and I mean no one, has argued that Massachusetts-based businesses would become more competitive against their rivals in California, if only the Bay State socialized medicine for its residents. (For a richer argument, see Greg Mankiw.) Or what about that “Public Option” that will force private insurance companies to be honest and more efficient? Again no one argues for this option at the state level. But why not? If it makes so much sense at the national level, convince the rest of us with a state level experiment first.
Now Massachusetts has run one health care experiment. Hurray for federalism! If only we could learn from this fiasco. Many would do well to consider the consequences of enacting an “individual mandate”. Costs have mushroomed along with prices, as the state’s spending on health programs has increased 42 percent since 2006. It’s a tax on the middle class. Rationing is on the table. Meanwhile, Texas has run a different health care experiment with some success, as Jonothan Wilde recenly blogged here.
All in all it’s a pity. Americans tend to ignore the state level experiments we have, while hope springs eternal from the legislative fount of Washington that we must act nationally and think globally. There must be one national solution to these problems! And here we come at last to the other benefit of a federal system: respect for value pluralism. There is no one correct answer as to how we ought to live. It may be lamented by some, and celebrated by others, but it’s invariably true that not all values can be reconciled within the same political system. The idea that there’s one best society for all is laughable. But perhaps James Madison was more eloquent:
As long as the reason of man continues fallible, and he is at liberty to exercise it, different opinions will be formed. As long as the connection subsists between his reason and his self-love, his opinions and his passions will have a reciprocal influence on each other; and the former will be objects to which the latter will attach themselves. The diversity in the faculties of men, from which the rights of property originate, is not less an insuperable obstacle to a uniformity of interests. The protection of these faculties is the first object of government. From the protection of different and unequal faculties of acquiring property, the possession of different degrees and kinds of property immediately results; and from the influence of these on the sentiments and views of the respective proprietors, ensues a division of the society into different interests and parties.
This diversity is a good thing. Federalism, with a strong separation of powers, can enshrine it. But unfortunately in today’s American political discussion, all evidence lately seems to support the contrary. With each new administration, Republican or Democrat, centrifugal forces in Washington pull tighter and tighter. Whither goes federalism in this mess? And will our respect for value pluralism and experimentation go along with it?
Federalism, Secession, and Free Trade
(This guest post by Will Chamberlain is part of the Thursday: Federalism day in our Secession Week blogging series)
Many people view federalism as the great triumph of the American system – as one of the foundations for the economic growth, freedom and prosperity that citizens of the United States enjoy. And, this might well have been true – between 1776 and 1861. But after the Civil War, federalism has lived on in name only, because the Civil War functionally abolished the right of secession. And in the absence of secession, the relationship between state governments and the federal government is no different than the relationship between city governments and state governments – not a symbiotic relationship, but a subservient one.
The jurisdictional battles fought over medical marijuana are a classic example of this. While states may have different laws about medical marijuana, allowing for some form of experimentation, it’s no different than cities experimenting with different laws. In the end, if there is any violation of any federal law, federal law trumps state law. Why? Because they have the guns, of course.
The ultimate irony of all this is that the legal justification for this sort of government action comes from the Commerce Clause, which, if read in its literal form, is actually the linchpin of any federal system’s economic growth. The commerce clause gives the federal government the right to regulate commerce between the states. In the absence of this clause, small, distributive coalitions could have quickly formed in small jurisdictions, and bring trade and prosperity to a standstill, similarly to how pre-unification Germany had stagnated with every bishoprick and principality having it’s own set of tariffs, quotas, and regulations. In the end, it was only the “jurisdictional integration” (a nifty Mancur Olson neologism) that followed German Unification that caused an economic reset in Germany which allowed the economy to flourish.
Which brings up the question – what, exactly, is federalism, in its purest form? Well, it’s simple. A healthy, functional federal system is really just a free trade zone – nothing more than that. Each member of the zone has complete sovereignty, save for the fact that they cannot get in the way of trade between nations. This sort of system allows for the internal legal experimentation necessary to generate innovation in government, without the stifling protectionism that is so common when small distributive coalitions can quickly gain leverage over a variety of small polities.
Clearly, the USFG does quite a bit more than enforce a free-trade pact. And now the European Union is heading down the same path, with increased centralization, and even a new President, due to come if Ireland “reconsiders” its position on the Treaty of Lisbon. But such is the nature of federalism – it is almost always temporary. It is hard to create an institution that is strong enough to enforce a free-trade pact between sovereign nations, and not strong enough to become the sovereign itself.
So, for those countries like Great Britain, who are considering leaving the European Union – I’ll indulge in some mild policy advice. Leave now, before it’s too late. The minotaur doesn’t get smaller.
(This post is part of the Thursday: Federalism day in our Secession Week blogging series)
Dan Rothschild at GMU’s Mercatus Center posts about Seasteading, Tiebout, and Federalism. Since this post is about the same three topics, I have shown my admiration by stealing his title – although I had to add my own twist :). He discusses competition between jurisdictions:
One of the most interesting things about state and local policy research is that localities are engaged in (admittedly imperfect) competition with one another. The Tiebout hypothesis, proffered by Charles Tiebout in his famous article “A Pure Theory of Local Expenditures,” suggests that in federal systems state and local governments compete with one another: if you don’t like the public services provided by your town or state, you can move to another one that provides a basket of public goods and services (and tax structures) more to your liking. People vote not only with ballots but with their feet.
It raises interesting questions for the future of the Tiebout model that sovereign nations may be forced at some point in the not-too-distant future to compete more for their citizens’ fealty.
And speaking of Tiebout, Bryan Caplan, points out a weakness to Tiebout competition in Standing Tiebout on his Head: Tax Capitalization and the Monopoly Power of Local Governments.
His basic point is that if local government is financed by property taxes, then wasteful taxes will get capitalized into real estate values, and this eliminates the landowner’s incentive to exit, which is required for competition. For localities to compete, it must be the case that if the local government raises taxes, you can leave and avoid paying those higher taxes. But a new, wasteful tax reduces the amount someone else is willing to buy your land for by exactly the amount that it will cost you to pay the tax. So there is no incentive to leave – you can stay and pay the tax, or leave and pay the tax in a lower resale value. In essence, the property tax increase transfers value from the landowner to the locality.
I found the thesis quite interesting, because I had previously thought of property tax as a good way to finance a private government (on a floating city), naively thinking it aligned the city and landowner incentives. While Caplan has an excellent point that changes in property tax are not subject to competitive pressure, two solutions occur to me.
First, I don’t think the argument applies to the government’s incentive to make good laws, because the government wants to maximize revenue. A bad law which decreases property values will decrease the future expected revenue from the property tax. If the law is “increase property taxes”, the decreased tax base is compensated for by the increased tax rate. But if it is a change in how the locality is administered or regulated, then the government will increase or decrease its future revenue based on whether the law makes real estate there more or less valuable. Hence, even if local units don’t compete on tax rates, they will compete on spending it efficiently.
Note that the mechanism for this effect is different from competition via exit. Caplan is correct that the landowner is not incented to leave by the bad regulation, because its effects will be priced into his land values, just as with a tax change. However, unlike a tax change, this decrease in land values in the locality decreases the local government’s revenue, which they do not want.
Second, we might structure a city solely via leases, not ownership. That is, the central government owns all the land, and merely rents it out. Now the landowner and the government are the same, and revenue is based on how much land can be rented for. Better administration and laws will make the locality more attractive and increase rental rates, while bad laws will decrease them.
On land, of course, this is problematic to implement, because much value comes from large buildings which cannot be moved, people building them will insist on long leases (99 years for buildings in Palm Springs built on Indian Land, for example), which reduces the market feedback. Short-sighted administrators, once long leases are locked in, may not care that they are decreasing land values. (This is ameliorated somewhat if the administrator continues to sell new leases on new land within the domain, as that is essentially spot market based on the current and expected future regulatory environment).
In a floating city, however, things are quite different. What the local administration owns is not territory but aquatory. It leases the right to locate a floating, mobile building at a certain spot within its demesne. These leases can be much shorter (1-10 years, say), because if they expire and are not renewed, building owners suffer much lower costs than on land, as they can pay to move their buildings rather than abandoning them. The ownership of the underlying medium (and all its laws) is divorced from the capital which sits on it, allowing for the greatest jurisdictional competition.
Several people have correctly pointed out that seastead competition is weakened by social ties – even if it is cheap for a family and their house to move, they may be tied to a region by jobs, family, and friends. This is certainly true, but it does not eliminate competition, it only lessens it. An interesting implication of the model above that in the aquatory lease model, cities will compete for buildings, not just people. After all, a building is worth the most in the best jurisdiction, and if the building is mobile and the difference between two jurisdictions is greater than the cost of transporting it, it will get moved. The aquatory is leased to the building, the building is leased to the inhabitants, and everyone has an incentive to provide the most cost-efficient, useful environment for their customers.
Hence, Seasteading FTW. Or as Eelco Hoogendorn said, “Seasteading is the worst method to increase freedom – except for all others which have been tried.”
Secession Week: Wednesday – Secession vs. Revolution
Welcome to our third post for Secession Week, celebrating July 4th and America’s secession from the UK. Today’s theme is secession vs. revolution. Both are ways of changing governments, which is important, but they are very different in many ways. While we think this is an important topic, it is a more philosophical area than yesterday’s Secession In America. So what we have to offer is a small number of essays, often written specifically for this event, rather than a large number of links. Quality over quantity, so we recommend you read them all.
We’ll start with a general post from Clifford Thies in the Mises Daily, Secession Is In Our Future:
Can states secede? There are three levels on which this question can be answered:
1. the inalienable right of secession,
2. the international law of secession, and
3. the US law of secession.
All three say yes.
And then on to the topical material. Our own Jonathan Wilde writes about Revolution vs. Secession:
Revolution and Secession are very different things. Revolution is an attempt by a relatively small group of people to gain control over the machinery that rules a relatively larger group of people. Secession is a relatively small group of people breaking off from the larger machinery. The difference is crucial.
If you’re curious to learn more about whether the American Revolution was more like a revolution or a secession, we’ll include additional posts on the subject in Saturday’s American Revolution-focused Secession Week post.
Will Chamberlain writes a guest post about Bloodless Instability – why regime change is beneficial, and how we can accomplish it without bloodshed:
This would seem to be something of a double bind for those interested in both participating in a growing economy and not having their house turned into rubble. If your country is peaceful enough to be stable, then your economy is doomed to be sclerotic. If your country is dynamic enough to wipe out the special interests, there’s a significant risk that your country might decide to wipe out an entire race, because those things that create instability (war, totalitarianism, revolution, etc.) also create bodies.
But, as always, there is hope. Both secession and seasteading could create a framework for bloodless instability.
TGGP, in Better load your .44, this is civil war:
Dave Kopel notes the relatively low rate of gun ownership in Iran. It’s mostly restricted to ethnic minorities, or so I’ve heard. It brings to mind something Chip said recently in the comments about one of the benefits of gun-rights being the possibility of revolt. I’m inclined to say that’s one of the worst arguments in favor of them…I’m even in favor of secession anytime, anywhere for any reason but I’m hard pressed to think of times when wars for that were worth the price.
Mencius Moldbug offers similar opinions on the problems with revolution, in his eighth letter to an open-minded progressive, a reset is not a revolution:
…a reset is not a revolution. A revolution is a criminal conspiracy in which murderous, deranged adventurers capture a state for their arbitrary, and usually sinister, purposes. A reset is a restoration of secure, effective and responsible government. It’s true that both involve regime change, but both sex and rape involve penetration.
Of course, a failed reset can degenerate into a revolution. No doubt many involved in the rise to power of Hitler and Mussolini thought of their project as a reset. They were quite mistaken. It is a cruel irony to free a nation of democracy, only to saddle it with gangsters.
There is a simple way to distinguish the two. Just as the new permanent government must not retain employees of the old government, it must not employ or reward anyone involved in bringing the reset about. A successful reset may involve an interim administration which does have personal continuity with the reset effort, but if so this regime must be discarded as thoroughly as the old regime. This policy eliminates all meretricious motivations.
Tim Sandefur writes about Secession, revolution, and surrender of citizenship, defending the Civil War:
What real difference does the distinction between revolution and secession make? The answer is, it actually does make an important difference. If it were true that secession were lawful and constitutional, then the Union would have been unambiguously wrong in the Civil War: if secession were a lawful practice, then regardless of the reason for their having seceded, they would have been in the right. The northern states might have disagreed with their reasons for leaving the union, but they would have had no authority to stop it. But because secession is illegal, and because the President has the duty to see that the laws be faithfully executed, it was and remains the responsibility of the President to enforce the Constitution against states purporting to secede from the Union—by force of arms when necessary.
As the single largest anti-secession, anti-federalism event in America’s history, and thus a huge blow against competitive government, I do not buy this argument, but it is good to have this side portrayed.
Donald Livingston, one of the foremost scholars on secession, also distinguishes between secession and revolution, in Secession And The Modern State:
It is not surprising, therefore, to find throughout critical literature acts of secession misdescribed as something else such as revolution or civil war. Let us briefly examine the difference between secession and revolution. Three conceptions of revolution have dominated modern political speech. The first derives from the Glorious Revolution of 1688. This is revolution as restoration, and its image is the turning of a wheel. According to eighteenth century whiggism, the Glorious Revolution was a bloodless restoration of a liberty loving Protestant regime from the attempted usurpations of the Catholic James II. The second form derives from John Locke. Here a sovereign people recall the powers they have delegated to a government that has violated its trust in protecting life, liberty, and property. The government is overthrown and a new government instituted. The third form has its source in the French Revolution and may be described as Jacobin revolution. Revolution in this sense is an attempt to totally transform an entire social and political order in accord with an egalitarian philosophical theory. In this sense Marxism is Jacobin revolution as are may other forms of contemporary political criticism. Gloria Steinem once said that to talk of reforms for women is one thing, to talk about the total transformation of society is feminism. So conceived, feminism is a species of Jacobin revolution. The same could be said of the egalitarian goal informing many actions of the Supreme Court from the 1950s down to the present. The Court has long since abandoned its traditional duty of interpreting the Constitution as law, and has usurped the role of being the most powerful social policy making body in the American federation.
All three conceptions of revolution presuppose the modern theory of sovereignty, and each is categorically different from secession. Secession is not revolution in the whiggish sense of the Glorious Revolution because it is not the restoration of anything within the frame of the modern state Secession is the dismemberment of a modern state in the name of self-government. Nor is secession Lockean revolution. A seceding people do not necessarily claim that a government has violated its trust. And even if the claim is made, there is no attempt to overthrow the government and replace it with a better one. Indeed, a seceding people may even think that the government is not especially unjust. What they seek, however, is to be left alone to govern themselves as they see fit. Finally, secession is not Jacobin revolution because it does not seek to totally transform the social and political order. Indeed, secession is conservative and seeks to preserve the social order through withdrawal and self-government.
I hope you enjoyed these various essays on the issue of secession versus revolution. Please continue making Secession Week posts and emailing us about them, as well as linking to our Secession Week Index, and helping us make this first ever Secession Week Blogging a success! Join us tomorrow for Federalism (Secession Lite).
Bloodless Instability
(this is a guest post by Will Chamberlain for Wednesday: Secession vs. Revolution of Secession Week)
Your average politician will often rail against “political instability” and advocate policies to keep things “stable,” such as subsidies, bailouts, quotas, and other forms of protectionism. But while stability certainly sounds like something positive for the economy, Joseph Schumpeter argued very persuasively that it was the “creative destruction” of capitalism that facilitated innovation, and further down the line, economic growth. Simply reframe the “stability vs. instability” dilemma as “scleroticism vs. dynamism,” and Schumpeter’s logic becomes all the more easy to grasp.
But what of government? While dynamism in the economy is something to be desired, dynamism in sovereignty has some obvious drawbacks. One is that transitions between sovereigns are rarely bloodless, and dead bodies littered all over the streets are hardly a boon to commerce. Another is that in the process of any conflict, capital is bound to be destroyed, so the economy will be handicapped massively.
But on this last point, the data simply doesn’t work out the way you might think. Even with the Marshall Plan, the German Economy and the Japanese economy were expected to be in tatters for decades – indeed, there were plans drawn up in the United States to feed those populations for years on end. Yet, within roughly fifty years, these economies had caught up to the likes of Britain and the United States, who had the luxury of not having major cities turned into giant parking lots.
Why? Because of the power of resets. In the Rise and Decline of Nations, Mancur Olson argues compellingly that one of the primary inhibitors of economic growth is the power of “distributional coalitions,” or what we would call special interests. Olson argues that these coalitions take significant time to form because forming them is a public good – while a group of workers would stand to benefit from forming a union, each individual laborer has little incentive to do the work to make it happen, because they would bear all of the costs while receiving only a percentage of the benefit. These coalitions do emerge over time, however, and when they do emerge they are a major inhibitor to economic growth, because of their increased capacity for rent-seeking.
Applying this logic to the comparison of Germany/Japan v. US/Britain, the reason that Germany and Japan grew so quickly in the aftermath of World War II is that the massive instability, the reset, that those countries had gone through had functionally wiped out the various entrenched interests that were turning the economy into mush. Meanwhile, the US and Britain were not so “lucky” and thus suffered through lower economic growth.
This would seem to be something of a double bind for those interested in both participating in a growing economy and not having their house turned into rubble. If your country is peaceful enough to be stable, then your economy is doomed to be sclerotic. If your country is dynamic enough to wipe out the special interests, there’s a significant risk that your country might decide to wipe out an entire race, because those things that create instability (war, totalitarianism, revolution, etc.) also create bodies.
But, as always, there is hope. Both secession and seasteading could create a framework for bloodless instability. A world of dynamic geography facilitated by seasteading is a world where jurisdictions are constantly shifting and rearranging themselves, a world continuously resetting. And, at least in the case of seasteading, bodies are a lot less likely outcome, because rather than depriving existing states of land, land would be created out of thin air.
Sure beats following down the path of the GDR.
Let A Thousand Nations Bloom 