- There's not much dispute over what succeeded in the past. In the past, per capita economic growth succeeded in a VERY decentralized system...with the rulers basically unable to restrain the actions of the citizens. Best examples: British peasant cottage weaving to start the industrial revolution, and the early Sili valley. Government can't figure out what to do, ignores the situation, everyone wins big, transforms the way life works.
- There's not much dispute over the fact that peace/low crime are essential to the good life, defined any-which how you like.
- There's not much dispute over the fact that all the systems we have seen so far have tended to decay over time. Greece decayed, Rome decayed, Britain decayed, America too.
- There's no disagreement that Democracy causes many of the problems we see in government now.
- There's little dispute, even, about what is the good life for most folks: safety from violence, and freedom to pursue the good life, and (mostly) freedom from government action.
The libertarians believe that concentration of power is THE problem...and the only path out is to build a government that is prevented from doing enough stuff that it largely avoids the bad stuff. The most applicable recent line I've read here is the Borepatch refrain: "tar and feathers".
Those of us on the left-libertarian/anarchist border think that very little should be a lot closer to none than the typical libertarian does... mostly because we find that police and military agencies (if not individuals) are inevitably like (ALL) other institutions: primarily self-protecting and attempting to grow, secondarily doing their nominal job. Strict interventionism, personal firearms, no drug laws, no prisons, no police, citizen-arrest, privately owned highways, and 10 years to evolve appropriate other institutions would solve about 300% of the problems currently "solved" by our system.
The formalists believe that lack of responsibility in government is the problem. Exaggerating mildly...unlimited power to the executive, with a 60% voting majority able to hang said executive. If the executive has proper incentives to make things work, he will fix things so that they work -- If the policeman who kills an innocent kid gets a Lethal Injection, rather than being protected by his cronies in the justice system, the no knock raids stop . Essentially, the model is the modern corporation, with shareholders, and accountability. It's actually me who advocates the death penalty for bad legislation, though, not the formalists. They just want to be able to switch to a shareholder-style democracy, picking an (effectively) unlimited-power CEO, not a one-nose-one-vote style democracy. The best argument I've heard for this is effectively (thanks Devin): All prior instances of good divided power situations came from semi-frontier situations, with no established elites. Since we have established elites, it's impossible to move to a properly decentralized system. Given this, the best path forward is the authority-with-responsibility path.
Again, I encourage comments, especially from the formalists.
Posts
2 comments:
In the past, per capita economic growth succeeded in a VERY decentralized system...with the rulers basically unable to restrain the actions of the citizens.
I don't think this is really true. What caused per capita economic growth was when the rulers chose not to intervene in ways that would harm the economy.
For instance, I'm not sure if it's accurate to characterize the British government of 1800 as weak. Certainly the king was weak compared to Parliament, that was a new development. But the central government overall was stronger than it ever had been. See for example the Inclosure Acts.
The British Parliament at the time was run by a plutocratic class. This class was very libertarian when it came to its own interests (manufacturing, trade), but it could be very heavy handed when dealing with the commoners (inclosures, settlement acts, the Combination Act).
The government was also very strong in terms of protecting property and enforcing contracts.
Remember, as I've said before, there is a big difference between strong and being interventionist. A manager can be very strong, but very good at delegating. Or a manager can be very weak, but be nosy and micromanaging.
The British government of the early 1800's featured a much strong central state than in previous centuries. But this central state was run by a plutocratic class that used its powers in pro-growth ways.
And if we look at other countries, we see a lot of strong governments correlated with pro-growth activity. For example, the Meiji restoration in Japan broke the power of the distributed feudal system, and replaced it with a much strong, pro-growth state.
In Germany, the years of highest growth were after unification.
China is another example of a strong government exhibiting fast growth.
Conversely, weak governments, like the modern Ukraine have stalled out in growth. The central government is not strong enough to control subordinate officials, so those officials use their offices to extort money from people engaging in normal business.
The same applies to 18th century France. Louis the XVI was quite a weak king, he had very little control over the sprawling bureaucracy. Each bureaucrat had an incentive to maximize his own revenue at the expense of growing the pie, so you had a tax farming effect.
The rest of your post I agree with. Formalists believe that
They just want to be able to switch to a shareholder-style democracy, picking an (effectively) unlimited-power CEO, not a one-nose-one-vote style democracy.
In my version of formalism at least, the CEO does not have unlimited power. Like a corporate CEO, the CEO would have to get board approval for major actions.
Also, the government would make contracts and sell land to fee simple property owners. There would need to be some sort of independent court system to resolve cases between the property owners and the government, or the residents and the government.
And of course in any transition, the existing rights of property owners and tenants would be preserved (for example, I would preserve the Bill of Rights).
But the point of the written rights and independent court is not so much to constrain the power of the government. The point is to reinforce the government acting out of enlightened, long term self interest (as opposed to unenlightened, short term interest).
An enlightened profit maximizer would still sell land and enforce property rights. Anybody purchasing land would demand a neutral arbiter to oversee the cases. Thus there would still be an independent court system (at least in my version of formalism, moldbug's system may or may not be different depending on which posts you read).
Aretae, you begin by saying that we all agree on several points. I'm not so sure that our agreement is as deep as you suggest.
I'm not sure that we agree that "decentralization" is the key difference between governments that coincided with high levels of growth and governments that didn't.
I think we'd emphasize good government vs. bad government.
You also say we agree about the evils of democracy. I think we would go much further than you. Basically all the problems with government you list to support left-libertarians position are problems with democratic government, in my humble opinion.
Post a Comment