Formalists & Me

Make that THREE excellent posts in the last two days outlining formalist positions carefully.

Having reread them all a few times...I think I see the core positions on which we diverge now.

1. Autonomy. Huge, primary (final) human value. Among the top values people seek. All human beings gain massive value from not having someone telling them what to do. Furthermore, I am strongly inclined to believe that most people, and even most PICsies (Poor Impulse Control) can run their lives just fine solo.
2. Bad Government. I think that the formalists and I differ on the proper purpose of a state. I suspect that many of them would be unfond of the phrasing too.
3. Chaos. I think that a substantial amount of chaos is not just good but important. Uncertainty is necessary for improvement. Stable organizations attempt to suppress chaos. This is, over time, strongly bad.
4. Design. I believe that BUF (Big Up Front) Design all but necessarily fails. The more complicated the system being designed the faster the failure becomes obvious. Coupled with Hayek's Knowledge problem, and Pournelle's Iron Law, this means the exercise of central power is almost necessarily stupid/bad.
5. Ethics. Politics is substantially to be evaluated on ethics. Ethics are very complicated. Generally, a social ethics is a constantly changing response to circumstances. People have ~6 innate moral senses, in addition to being moved by Value, Virtue, and Deontological approaches. Victorian ethics were, at best, nothing special.
6. Font of power. I claim that power is necessarily coalitional, and based (exclusively?) on scarcity. China had long periods of strong monarch rule because of water scarcity. Europe had none, and could have none, because merchants and scientists could exit, and states were in competition with one another.
7. Game Theory. Game theory determines the outcomes over time. Anyone not at the negotiating table gets massively screwed. BBdM is a minor deity, and his game theory+history is very very clear. The smaller the coalition necessary to maintain power, the more rapacious the game-theory stable state. States with small coalitions necessarily tend in that direction. Similarly, the game theory stable state of profit-seeking security corporations is negotiation, not war. The wealthier the poor, the lower the relative power of the state.

Not all the formalists disagree with all of those, but I'm inclined to find the points of disagreement here. (I only had to change one word, and re-order to get the A-G thing going on).