Enemies Should Be Carefully Chosen
One of the things I love about The Wire is that “The System” is a character. hell, a main character. Hell, in many ways, The System is the antagonist of the entire show! Cops/Drug dealers does not map to Good Guys / Bad Guys. Instead what you have is a bunch of people trying to accomplish their goals and often being prevented by the nature of the world and the web of incentives that governs it. A system that those nominally in charge of (Mayor, police chiefs) are at the mercy of almost as much as everyone else.
As humans, we are naturally disposed to find enemies in the world, and to band together against those enemies. Enemies inspire passion, hard work, and togetherness. This may not be a particularly noble or desirable characteristic, but it is part of the landscape of the world and so those of us desiring to change the world must work with it. (Robin Hanson: “If you want seasteading to work, you’ve got to make sure you have a good enemy!”)
The type of enemy our minds tend to come up with usually either people or ideas that a group of people subscribe to. Somehow, systems of rules and webs of incentives just aren’t classified as the right data type to intuitively jump to mind as an enemy. They aren’t seen as actors – entities with moral obligations who are wrong to do what they do.
Hence the brilliance of The Wire – a show where some characters are more moral than others, but the differences are not huge, and people are largely constrained not by evil or evil people but by the system in which all of these non-evil, self-interested people work. That system, to a large degree, then becomes the enemy.
Now, I certainly believe that some ideas are our enemies, like democratic fundamentalism. And “The Government” makes a convenient scapegoat, to be sure. But in the long run, it won’t do, since we aren’t trying to do away with governments – merely create a system in which we can more easily experiment with a wider variety. “Status Quo governments”? But we want to trade with and influence them, and enemies aren’t seen as things to be traded with and influenced.
It is also tempting to see any action of government that I don’t like or see as immoral as the enemy. Income taxes, or the War on Drugs, for example. But while that may galvanize a small group, it doesn’t appeal to those who might support experimental government but like income taxes and drug bans. An enemy like “the current system of geographic monopoly states which tend to centralize power, resist secession and local autonomy, and thus provides little room for innovation” is something that I think a large number of people can get behind…but can we get behind it with enthusiasm? After all, as you make the enemy broader, vaguer, and more abstract, it loses relevance and the power to inspire passion.
Another important criterion is that we should focus on problems that we can solve. Rather than just complaining, we must provide a positive example of an alternative. If we don’t know how to fix a problem, there is no reason to complain about it or point it out. So, for example, there is no point in complaining about human greed, selfishness, or in-group/out-group divisions – only about them being harnessed in bad ways.
Vague enough to appeal to many, specific enough that they seem real and people care, and in areas where we can provide viable alternatives…we must pick our enemies carefully.
Seeking Self-Determination Is Not Selfish
Two hundred years and 25 days before I was born, some wise men wrote the following stirring words:
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable 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 whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.
And so the nation was founded on the principle of political self-determination via secession and settling the frontier. Not abandoning law for anarchy, not might makes right, not selfishness and greed, but the simple idea that a group of people who feel their government is not serving them and will not change have not only the right but the duty to create a new system which will better effect their Safety and Happiness.
It is this tradition in which seasteading was conceived, and this tradition in which libertarians want to use it. We are a small group with their own vision of a just society which is not shared by the majority, and thus we have little political influence in America. Like anyone else, we don’t like this, and would like to achieve political self-determination. If we are so passionate about this vision and so dedicated to it as to be willing to leave our home country to achieve it, then to mock and prevent us is at best churlish and at worst a form of political imprisonment.
Brad Reed somehow fails to connect these dots in his Alternet piece: Seasteading: Libertarians Set to Launch a (Wet) Dream of ‘Freedom’ in International Waters. With delightful candor, he states:
Before I continue, I’d like to point out that while I’m not a libertarian, I do value the contributions that they make to our political discourse. Think of libertarians as the short-sellers of state power — the people in the back of the room who reflexively call “Bullshit!” whenever the government tries to expand its reach. While I think they’re often misguided, their role as bipartisan skeptics of government intervention is a necessary and important component of any democracy.
That said, libertarians can get themselves in trouble when they fail to accept that they’re doomed to be a frustrated minority who only score points when the government tries to overreach its authority.
While I share his viewpoint that libertarians are “Doomed to be a frustrated minority”, it makes his later perplexity about why libertarians would want to expatriate rather baffling:
In the end, the strangest part about the seastead project isn’t its founders’ impracticalities but rather their base motivations.
Normally, when a minority of people want to break off from their homeland to form a new country it’s because of genuine oppression such as religious persecution, ethnic cleansing or taxation without representation. Thiel, on the other hand, lives in a society whose promotion of capitalism has let him grow rich enough to blow $500,000 founding his own personal no-girls-allowed treehouse in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.
What exactly does he have to be angry about, again?
Now, I can understand him not finding the libertarian vision of a just society appealing. Most people don’t – that’s why libertarians are doomed to be a frustrated minority. But in a country founded on the idea that people should be free to determine their political destiny, what is strange about people who don’t feel they have that freedom wanting it?
I don’t agree with the types of oppression which the author has determined are “genuine”, on a practical or historical basis. First, his list neglects political self-determination, the principle that led the founding fathers to revolt, and one which modern American liberals have supported for a number of breakaway republics. And second, he includes “taxation without representation”, yet doesn’t seem to realize that someone in a tiny political minority in a democracy has little more effective representation than, say, a colonist ruled by a remote sovereign. (Especially with FPTP voting).
If you have the good fortune to adhere to one of the two popular political belief clusters in America, try to imagine the situation of the libertarian. Pretend that the only top-two Presidential candidate your party ever ran was way back in 1964, and he was crushed in one of the most lopsided elections in the nation’s history. Pretend that your party is currently represented by a single Congressman, who had to run under a mainstream party to be elected to Congress, and who entered the Presidential primary, ran a massively successful campaign by your party’s standards, and still only got a few percent of the primary vote. Can you see why you might be a bit down on democracy – at least with this set of voters?
There is something almost zen-like in Mr. Reed’s ability to simultaneously hold these two contradictory thoughts: to be outraged about the idea of women having no political influence in a democracy, while being outraged that libertarians might object to having no political influence in a democracy. Perhaps this is because he believes in the romance of democracy – that what matters is getting to vote, and not whether your vote ends up giving you a voice in government and giving you a country vaguely like the one you want. Or perhaps it is simply that he likes women and hates libertarians.
Either way, let us have no more of this facile musing about what the silly privileged libertarians might possibly have to be angry about. We are angry because we have no political influence and no chance at getting any via the current system, because we see through the (admittedly brilliant) mirage of the ballot box which makes everyone feel counted even when they never win. Our movement is unusual in that it is based on beliefs, not ethnicity, and has no geographic center (though NH is trying), but just like any other secession movement, it is based on the desire for political self-determination. We may be a frustrated minority, but we don’t have to be a doomed one. Is that really so hard to understand?
A Rude Anger
According to its website, AlterNet “is a key player in the echo chamber of progressive ideas and vision.” Hoping to reverberate in that din of wisdom, Brad Reed heaps some scorn on libertarians, seasteading, and anything else in that tag cloud:
In the end, the strangest part about the seastead project isn’t its founders’ impracticalities but rather their base motivations.
Some others, like Love of the World, have dilated on Reed’s “progressive” criticism:
Although these fantasies of self-appointed sooperman sequestration are a recurring libertopian wet-dream, it is apparently an especially alluring notion now that these would-be titans and grifters fear they might actually be taxed and regulated a little in an Obama Administration (if only) thus slowing by a smidge their relentless ongoing (or at any rate pined for) looting and raping of the planet and of the overabundant majority of the people and other beings who share it with them.
Base motivations! Raping the world! Ohhhhh, the inhumanity!
Okay, let’s talk about this like adults, mmmm’kay? Unfortunately the U.S. does not provide exit interviews for those who decide to permanently leave, so we don’t know why they flew the coop. Yes, it may come as a surprise, but people do in fact emigrate from the U.S. (Even with BO as Prez! Can you believe it?) They leave for all sorts of reasons–perhaps they fell in love, perhaps they found a better paying job, or whatever. I can’t find any up to date numbers, but this page estimates that over 2 million people emigrated between 1995 and 2005. Much to the Stasi’s chagrin, none of them had to list the reasons why they decided to leave, but in any event, I can’t find any AlterNet stories impugning their base motives for leaving. Nor do I see any blog posts at Love of the World on how these miscreants are skirting their duties to the progressive doctrine of slow suicide–I mean, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. And so I eagerly await the next development in “progressive” thinking: exit interviews in which those emigrating must prove their exit is worthy of State approval. It wouldn’t be the Ministry of the Interior, after all, unless they knew what was going on inside our heads.
Folk Activism…Signaling
Robin Hanson points out that our intuitive politics is even less effective than I described it in Beyond Folk Activism:
In large polities, the main function of our politics in our lives is how it influences the way others see us; its influence on us via policy is far weaker. But it looks bad to admit we do politics to selfishly show off, instead of to help society make better policy. So we are built to instead talk, and think, as if we do politics for its influence on policy; we are build to be self-deceived about how politics matters to us.
Our ancestors argued beliefs and negotiated actions in groups ranging from size two to a hundred. No doubt they evolved to adapt their behavior to the size of the group, at least within this range. And for the largest groups, the main payoffs from their arguing and negotiating behavior was not via influencing the resulting group beliefs and actions, but from how their words and deeds influenced how others thought of them. This is all the more true for modern group sizes, and I suspect our strategies are adaptive enough to emphasize impression management even more for larger groups.
So not only are our behaviors adapted to the wrong size group, but they are mainly about signaling and achieving status within the group, not actually accomplishing change. After all, increasing status gives a private gain, while improving policy helps the whole tribe, and selfish genes are focused on private gains. Makes sense – no wonder activism is difficult!
Which suggests that we should try to give status to those with the greatest achievements, so that status-seeking selfishness results in gains for all. We’re pretty good at doing this in some spheres – idolizing the champions of charity, but terrible at it in others – taxing, mocking, and demonizing success at business, even though entrepreneurs capture but a small fraction of the wealth they create. I think libertarians are pretty bad at this – we tend to grant recognition and status to speakers and thinkers based on their passion and eloquence in the cause of liberty (signaling their role as members and potential leaders of our tribe), as opposed to actual effects at increasing it.
If we actually want freedom, as opposed to wanting membership in a tribe with passionate and eloquent leaders, perhaps we should change our standards.
Related Blogs
We are building our blogroll, and would welcome your feedback. Drop a comment if you know of any good blogs on competitive government, secessionism, polycentric law, practical micronations, or any other topics related to our domain. Preferably blogs which try to understand the problems of bad government, analyze them, propose, and perhaps even (gasp) implement! solutions, as opposed to just complaining about the problems.
Civil Society – An Island Of Grass In A Sea Of Weeds
Arnold Kling writes:
The traditional libertarian solution for corrupt government is Constitutional restrictions on government activity. Smaller government means smaller scope for corruption.
I am not sure I believe that the traditional libertarian solution works. I suspect that what really makes for limited government is the opportunity for exit. In the early 1800’s, it was possible for an American to pick up and move to a remote area where government had very little impact. That possibility tended to limit the power of the central government.
I think that the big challenge for libertarians is to create conditions that enable people to exit from overbearing government. Patri Friedman’s idea is seasteading. I am a skeptic on that one.
I completely agree with the general idea that we need more exit, and more competition. And skepticism on seasteading is no problem at all, in my book. As I wrote in the conclusion of my Beyond Folk Activism essay:
If a fraction of the passion, thought, and capital that are wasted in libertarian folk activism were instead directed into more realistic paths, we would have a far better chance at achieving liberty in our lifetime. We must override our instinct to proselytize, and instead consciously analyze routes to reform. Whether or not you agree with my analysis of specific strategies, my time will not have been wasted if I can get more libertarians to stop bashing their heads against the incentives of democracy, to stop complaining about how people are blind to the abuse of power while themselves being blind to the stability of power, and to think about how we can make systemic changes, outside entrenched power structures, that could realistically lead to a freer world.
In other words, if you think that voting for Ron Paul or Bob Barr is the answer, while I may share your vision of a better society, when it comes to strategy I’m afraid you are part of the problem. If like Arnold you think that seasteading won’t work but are in favor of systemic changes to increase exit and competition, you are part of the solution. He continues:
I think we need to boost the organizations of civil society that compete with government: private schools, private firms, charities, neighborhood associations, and groups that supply public goods using the “open source” model. The term “civil societarian” is one that I coined, at least according to Wikipedia, which is itself an example of an open-source public good.
A key to averting the loss of civil society is to overcome the progressive ideology championed by Chait. That ideology amounts to an all-out assault on civil society. Picture civil society as a nice lawn, and picture government as a weed. As the weed grows, the lawn gets wiped out. Civil Societarianism is the ideology that tries to grow the lawn. Progressivism is the ideology that tries to grow the weed.
This sounds great in theory, but in practice the weeds have been wiping out the lawn for at least 75 years, perhaps 150 depending on your definitions. A fight against progressivism is a rear-guard action, which is why I advocate a full-out retreat so that we can shift ground to someplace with terrain more suited to civil society. There may well be specific areas, such as education reform (vouchers & charter schools) where we can grow patches of lawn, but they are going to be islands in a sea of weeds for the foreseeable future.
The metaphor is starting to strain, because we don’t really have a two-dimensional landscape. The institutions of civil society operate within a framework constrained by government, and unfortunately, government is growing enormously in scope. While I dream of a backlash where the Republicans reject failed neoconservativsm and move towards libertarianism, I’m not optimistic. I see the part of the lawn accessible to civil society as continuing to shrink. And unfortunately, it’s hard to compete against a provider of public goods that charges zero cost to users of those goods.
Education is a great example. It’s much harder to compete with public schooling via private schooling where all your customers double-pay. Vouchers and charter schools work much better. But the flip-side of their public funding is government control. You have to pass these reforms through a resistant, progressive system that believes students are best served by schools with a uniform curriculum (diversity is only for skin color), operated for the benefit of the largest union in the USA (3.2M members). And Obama’s budget is massively increasing federal funding – and thus federal control – of this area.
I can understand why someone who finds exit options unappealing would see civil society as the answer, but I just don’t think it can have much impact. Still, better than giving up – or campaigning for Bob Barr.
The Nation of Why Not
I saw this commercial this weekend which inadvertently hits very close to home here on this blog.
Let A Thousand Forms Of Banking Bloom
The Mises Blog links to an interview with George Selgin on free banking, published by the Fed, no less. The comments section has a long and enthusiastic debate on the relative merits of full and fractional reserve banking. I will attempt not to get sucked into the details of my own particular opinions on these systems, but rather stick to a higher-level defense of diversity and experimentalism.
One of the major issues I have with Austrian economics is the belief that one can determine things about the real world through a priori reasoning and that such reasoning dominates empirical studies. As Selgin remarks in an early comment:
we have centuries of evidence concerning uninsired fractional-reserve banking systems, including plenty concerning relatively free systems, such as those of Scotland, Canada, Switzerland, and elsewhere. Consider just Scotland and Canada. What does the evidence from these episodes show? Briefly: that bank runs were extremely rare; that notes almost always circulated at par; and, most obviously, that many free fractional reserve banks survived and prospered without any government guarantees (though some did fail, of course, as must happen to firms in any competitive industry).
Let’s by all means have an open debate about the merits of fractional reserve banking. But let us please make it an informed debate, rather than one based on sheer speculation.
And then, frustratedly, in a later one:
history doesn’t always provide us with abundant examples of arrangements we are inclined to consider ideal. Consider the 100-percent reserve system. Many of you have insisted on its advantages, and have made empirical claims concerning them. Yet there are absolutely no historical examples you can point to, apart from perhaps a single instance or so, long ago, and short-lived at that. Compared to this meager empirical evidence concerning the workings and consequences of 100-percent reserve banking, the evidence free bankers have to draw upon in support of their claims is very substantial indeed.
Finally, if I’m annoyed at 100-percent reserve types, it’s because of the sort of insistence upon a priori reasoning,and corresponding resistence to empirical evidence, of which they are so often guilty, which I point to above and have pointed to in many of my other posts. Of course it get’s annoying when people insist that, say, all swans “must” be white, despite your having pointed out gaggle after gaggle of perfectly black ones!
This insistence on finding optimal theories a priori through reasoning is, in my belief, antithetical to actual progress in most areas. The world is a messy, complex place, and in general it is far better to go try something out, from which you can learn, and which can always be revised, than to sit around trying to perfect it and convince other people of its perfection. While I am not much of a scholar on Austrian economics, my understanding is that Hayek saw part of the advantage of a free market as allowing decentralized learning through experimentation.
And this is why I favor markets for huge problems like governments and banking which currently face poor incentives and undergo little learning. There is no need to figure out a priori which system is the best. Under free banking, full reserve and fractional reserve banks can compete for customers. Those who wish greater security can go with full reserve, those who prefer to earn a little interest can go with fractional reserve. During booms, I suspect money will tend to shift to the latter, during busts, the former.
Each individual will get to back their beliefs about banking with their own cash, and any benefits or costs of their chosen approach will accrue to them individually. If fractional works better, those who invest in fractional can laugh at the Rothbardian fuddy-duddies for not earning interest. If full works better, those who choose full can laugh at the gambling fools who dared to let their money be loaned out in hope of interest.
Such a joy that we have this marvelous meta-system of the free-market where we can allow multiple solutions, so that each camp gets to use their preferred system and we generate empirical evidence about all the options, rather than mandating a single solution for all. In this wonderful system, arguments over relative merits become much less heated, because we are merely trying to convince others to use our favored solution for themselves, so they can receive the same benefits, rather than to convince a majority that our favored solution is the best, just so that we can use it ourselves.
For me, the difference between those two situations is overwhelming. In one, I am empowered, calm, rational, and tolerant of differences – because those differences have little effect on my options. In the other, I am disempowered, angry, and intolerant, because I am at the mercy of others, who currently have foolish faith in fiat money and the Fed.
Hence I recommend to the Austrians, the Mises Institute, and all those who are sure that they know a better solution to some problem in society: do not push your solution. Do not try to convince the majority of it. You can have far greater impact by pushing the meta-solution, a world where we let A Thousand Nations Bloom. If your solution really is better, it will win. If it isn’t, it won’t – but it shouldn’t. The meta-solution will allow competition between a thousand forms of banking, a thousand ways to privatize the courts, a thousand policies for immigration, and far more besides.
These long debates of the relative merits of various options a priori are a waste of our limited time and resources, because we lack a framework in which they can be tried. Let’s build that framework, and try out the numerous options we already know about. Then we can return to the debate while developing empirical evidence – and each enjoying life under our preferred system.
In the Beginning Was The Pirate Deed
Peter Leeson is guest blogging over at the Volokh Conspiracy, amplifying some of the ideas in his new book, The Invisible Hook. Lots of good stuff to find, but in particular, Leeson raises an interesting point that I think underscores one theme dear to our hearts here in the land of a thousand nations. On the possible influences pirates had on Thomas Jefferson’s thinking, he writes:
Pirates confronted essentially the same dilemma in setting up their system of governance that James Madison famously described in Federalist 51. As Madison put it, “But what is government itself but the greatest of all reflections on human nature? If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself.”
Madison’s solution to this dilemma was constitutional democracy. “A dependence on the people,” Madison argued, “is no doubt, the primary control on the government.” “[B]ut,” he continued, “experience has taught mankind the necessity of auxiliary precautions.” “[T]he constant aim is to divide and arrange several offices in such a manner as that each may be a check on the other—that the private interest of every individual may be a sentinel over the public rights.”
This was pirates’ solution as well–but they forged it more than half a century before Madison put pen to paper. Pirates, of course, weren’t the first to invoke this solution. And there’s good reason to think that some of the legitimate world’s early experiences with democracy, separated powers, and so on, may have influenced pirates’ system of governance.
But could the direction of influence have also run the other direction?
What’s interesting to me here is that the typical pirate wasn’t half the political theorist Madison was. Or Jefferson for that matter. And yet, because the conditions permitted it, these pirates evolved forms of governance that bore a strong resemblance to the complex constitutional democracy Madison later proposed. The deed came first; the theory later. Perhaps independently. It really doesn’t matter who influenced whom. What’s exciting is that these pirates devised very complex political systems without any PhDs. In governance as with all things, experimentation with market-like conditions will lead to surprising outcomes, outcomes whose benefits and complexity are beyond the understanding of any particular actor within the system.
This fact ought to auger well for seasteading. Our minds are weaker than the systems they work in. Given the right conditions and incentives, we might find political systems developing in ways that outstrip even the boldest speculations made by any political theorist out of Harvard.
Let A Thousand Nations Bloom 