As I read more, I am more and more convinced that a careful analysis of the problem suggests that the distance between modern libertarianism, Moldbug, and myself is not that far.
Things that all 3 camps seem to agree on...I think these are almost trivially true.
- Economic growth is the root cause of most human happiness (liberty, work hours, amelioration of poverty, environmental beautification, clean air, clean water, concern for the poor).
- Growth is, itself, almost entirely maximized by private enterprise, and almost exclusively hindered by state interventions.
- State interventions are primarily done to either benefit some group of elites (rich folks, or rich companies) at some net cost to the rest of us, or to signal some positive feature of government or politician (like caring) at some net cost to the rest of us.
- Those elements of human well-being that are not (at root) caused by economic growth are caused by lack of violence (war and violent crime and physical property crime, employer thugs and union thugs).
- Organizations tend to grow without limit.
- The best historical cases of growth have all been cases where the government is largely inactive or heavily limited (17th Century Holland, 18th century England, 19th century America, 20th century Hong Kong/Singapore, 21st century China), with a strong, trading, lets-get-rich culture.
- The stifling growth of government generally parallels both the growth of democracy and the growth of total wealth
- We have never seen a successful long-term limitation of government growth based on paper constraints. Constitutionalism has not yet worked long-term.
- People in general don't know what works, and are moderately easy to sway, in predictable, prejudicial, pro-government ways.
- Is it possible at all to generate long-term solutions? (Moldbug: yes, with incentives; Romer: maybe; try different things; Patri: probably: float away; Anarchists: Yes: eliminate government ; BBdM: no? It's inherent in government; Aretae: I don't know)
- How best to limit the stifling effect of government? (Moldbug: CEO-ish incentives & responsibility; Romer: try different things; Patri: New systems (on water); Anarchists: burn it down; BBdM: The Selectorate matters a lot; Aretae: I don't know)
- How much of government growth is due to democracy, and how much is due simply to the growth of wealth, because it's hard to skim 20% off a subsistence farmer? (Moldbug: democracy; Aretae: I suspect wealth is most of it).
- Where is the biggest problem in government? (Moldbug: Democracy. Libertarians in general: excessive power. Anarchists: the existence of government. Aretae: Our reliable sample set is tiny in quantity and time and quite homogenous. We don't actually know at all)
- What is more likely to constrain real world solutions (Moldbug: "Imperium is conserved"; BBdM: The selectorate wins; Aretae: First prototypes always fail.)
I guess here's where I sit.
Moldbug defines problems pretty well...Limitations on government have never worked before.
He is tremendously insightful about the modern clerisy, and their history, but his core, semi-unique belief is that the libertarians mis-state the problem. While libertarians agree that paper restraints cannot stop the growth of government (just like Madison did in his design of government, attempting to get parts in conflict), Moldbug goes further and believes that NOTHING can stop the growth of government authority. However, if authority is simply granted, the costs of government can be minimized by aligning incentives properly (same task Madison tried, but failed at)...and our best current guess is CEO-style structure.
However...Engineering, System design, software, process improvement, war, and every other HARD problem we've ever faced tells us that
- In practice, theory and practice are different (In theory, they're the same).
- First solutions never quite work
- though iteration 18 does sometimes, and sometimes your first iteration even fails less badly than what you had before. Usually iteration 1 fails worse than what you had before
- There aren't really any solutions, only trade-offs.
- More data often helps
- My favorite real data (and models from the data) is from BBdM and de Soto...and it doesn't seem to me line up with the Moldbugian theory
- With enough eyes, all bugs are shallow.
- Detailed structure and incentives matter a lot
- Since the details matter so much, they are usually designed with good intentions, but fail rapidly on a technicality
I think we're moderately distant on which model we think best explains the problem.
I always think that "all models are wrong, but some are useful".
I don't know how convinced anyone is of their respective models (I think Patri gave himself a 50% chance, which is almost certainly self-biased). I'm not very convinced of any specific solution, but I am convinced that it's obvious that NO ONE else should be convinced either. Romer and Patri seem to be 100x more likely to be correct (try different things to find a solution) than Moldbug (try this solution), even if Moldbug were to have the best idea going right now.
Posts
13 comments:
A couple of quibbles.
I disagree that Moldbug says that nothing can contain government. I think he believes that the only way to contain government is to make it want to contain itself.
Think of it like the invisible hand. If 'good government' profits the governors, the governors will have a direct incentive to practice good government. I'm much more willing to put faith in self-interest than in paper constitutions, which are then interpreted by the government itself.
Second, I think Moldbug's view of economic growth is a bit more nuanced than the average libertarians. He believes in economic growth, but he does not believe that policies which create more economic growth are necessarily better than the alternatives. In his own words:
"You'll notice, for instance, that, Mises is almost never normative. He will never tell you that the fashionable interventionist policies of his era are bad. He will tell you that they will not produce the results purportedly intended, or that they will have some other unadvertised effect. He will tell you, in other words, that the political reasoning behind them is bad. And as always, Mises will be right. But he does not prove that the policies are bad - just supported by bad reasons.
"So, for instance, Mises will tell you that mercantilist policies such as high tariffs or exchange-rate manipulation do not just reward exporters, but also punish consumers. Mises will not, however, tell you whether such a policy is good or bad for a country containing both exporters and consumers. (Rothbard will. But Rothbard often goes too far.) By Misesian theory itself, there is no such index of economic good, no quantitative means by which one man's advantage can balance another's disadvantage.
"Mises will tell you that policies such as these cannot be calculated. Mises is right: they cannot be calculated. As Carlyle says in his Chartism: government cannot be carried on by steam. Rather, its interventions (if intervene it must) can only be calculated by judgment."
IMO, anarchism is absurd. A geographic region with no security force will be conquered, and having multiple, independent security forces operate in the same region is a military absurdity.
I don't see a hug difference between Romer and Moldbug. Experimenting with a new form of government is extremely difficult. The U.S. continues to push democracy on every country that it can influence. If there is ever a chance to experiment with a different form of government, it would be very important to make that the design for such a government is the best possible. If the design is poor, then the experiment will be discredited.
Saying "let's experiment" is fine. But it's important that each experiment be really, really well thought out, and so that it is likely to succeed and result in more experiments.
Worst case though, it may simply be impossible to run any real experiments while the U.S. is still a democracy and still the hegemon. This means its either experiment on the U.S., or continue to suffer bad government. Neither of these courses are very appealing. Thus, government really is the impossible problem.
Seasteading is not for me. I love playing soccer and football on sprint days, golfing with my dad, swimming in lakes, eating ice cream on the boardwalk, pub crawling in the old downtown, etc. The "ocean tax", as Patri puts it, is still way, way, way higher than the government tax. If our government ever deteriorated so badly that the ocean tax was lower, than it would certainly be time to attempt a full reset/restoration rather than running away.
@Foseti:
Fair enough on half the Moldbug quibbles.
1. "Nothing can contain." I was overbroad, thank you for the correction.
2. Growth. While von Mises is correct on a technicality, he's basically wrong regardless.
If you wish to measure 1 feature of human society, to get a picture of how happy the kids and grandkids will be...measure growth rates. For net human well-being, growth rates dominate everything else over time. This is true by history, true by current events, and true by basic math. Growth rates win. See my post on Incentives
I believe that people (including perhaps von Mises and Moldbug) can argue with this...but I don't believe that their arguments can make much sense arguing against this.
@Devin
I think my opinion and yours are converging somehow on most points.
I agree with difficulty of experimenting, and I agree with the effective similarity between Romer and Moldbug (and Patri, really).
Likelihood, you made me write another post.
The remaining point is Anarchism. Anarchism seemed absurd to me for 5 years after I found out something about it. Then it seemed semi-plausible for 5 years, then not plausible for 5 more years. I've drifted back again lightly into the "not" camp. Suppose for a moment that the notion of authority being necessary has been as ruthlessly drilled into you as the efficacy of democracy. Of course you would find it absurd. If you were to go research midieval Iceland or Ireland, and learned that there were functioning anarchies that outlasted (@ 400 years) any of the contemporary democracies, or even the monarchies that Moldbug likes...would it change your mind about the absurdity? I haven't done the research myself, but I (relatively) trust folks who have.
Your "Growth Rates Win" is the best support I've seen for your measuring (as opposed to my aesthetic judging -- call it Nietzsche's smell test, judgment like casting a play):
If you wish to measure 1 feature of human society, to get a picture of how happy the kids and grandkids will be...measure growth rates. For net human well-being, growth rates dominate everything else over time. This is true by history, true by current events, and true by basic math. Growth rates win. See my post on Incentives
"Kids and grandkids" exposes one chink. Some might prefer to maximize an Apollonian party boat -- or all-out attempts to extend the lives of those now dying -- or even a Dionysian party boat. How much to "discount the future" has a wide debatable range.
Andrew,
I think you under-appreciate the growth argument. If you draw lines excluding, say, 2 years forward from present from consideration...the human mind doesn't ever operate in party-boat mode. There are at that point 0 (+/-3) people on the planet who prefer saving 10 people in 2 years to 11 people in 3 years, or 20 people in 8 years. Growth dominates for all people and all cases, except if you think you can get free goodies RIGHT NOW! I wrote on this a couple days ago.
Artae-
I don't know a whole lot about Iceland other than what I read in David Friedman's paper.
The only place that anarchy is doable is in a frontier society, preferably a frontier society with a large moat. In a frontier society its easier for the greedy to simply settle their own land rather than steal someone else's land, so a central security force is not needed.
Iceland was a frontier society. As the island filled up, they had to come up with a system for settling disputes, and thus had a pseudo-central government, but still left enforcement to the families clans. Eventually, the society calcified into a more formal state. The anarchic stage probably only lasted as long as it did because Iceland was so isolated.
At no point in its history has Ireland ever provided a model of good governance. It's early stages were extremely violent. The agriculture and technology lagged far behind that of Europe. It also got conquered. It blows my mind that anyone would use Ireland as example of how society should run.
I have a draft of a longer post about anarchy. It's not done yet, but you can give it a read through, you might find it interesting. I simply don't know how much more an idea can be debunked. There are no empirical examples outside of tiny frontier societies. Those examples aren't particularly appealing. There is no logical reason to expect that an anarchic society could ever be created, and lots of reasons why it could not.
Oops, left the above comment on the wrong post.
Artae-
I don't know a whole lot about Iceland other than what I read in David Friedman's paper.
The only place that anarchy is doable is in a frontier society, preferably a frontier society with a large moat. In a frontier society its easier for the greedy to simply settle their own land rather than steal someone else's land, so a central security force is not needed.
Iceland was a frontier society. As the island filled up, they had to come up with a system for settling disputes, and thus had a pseudo-central government, but still left enforcement to the families clans. Eventually, the society calcified into a more formal state. The anarchic stage probably only lasted as long as it did because Iceland was so isolated.
At no point in its history has Ireland ever provided a model of good governance. It's early stages were extremely violent. The agriculture and technology lagged far behind that of Europe. It also got conquered. It blows my mind that anyone would use Ireland as example of how society should run.
I have a draft of a longer post about anarchy. It's not done yet, but you can give it a read through, you might find it interesting. I simply don't know how much more an idea can be debunked. There are no empirical examples outside of tiny frontier societies. Those examples aren't particularly appealing. There is no logical reason to expect that an anarchic society could ever be created, and lots of reasons why it could not.
I agree that growth is awesome, and it's even plausible that *I* underappreciate the exponential function.
OTOH, it's so much easier to destroy than to create in human affairs. Heinlein quipped, "$100 placed at 7 percent interest compounded quarterly for 200 years will increase to more than $100,000,000 — by which time it will be worth nothing."
Avoiding destruction, being safe from other (anti-)social forces, might even be the Great Filter.
...so, Party Boats!! :P
(More hansonly put: Does Far mode always win? Isn't Near mode useful too?)
Far mode always wins when you're talking about far events. Near mode only wins about now. If there is a limit on actions such that actions planned now can only begin in 2 years, it's far mode all the way down.
Near mode only runs when you can reach it from here.
Davin is correct on at least one point, anarchy has a depresing tendency to devolve into government
Post a Comment