My priomary anti-formalist objection is purely ethical, non-utilitarian. Freedom is a top-level value, along with wealth. Attempting to skip the ethics part is like attempting to understand why religious HBD'ers aren't advocating mandatory abortion for the stupid classes.
However, my practical objection goes like this:
There are no spherical cows.
MM misunderstands state power. While fnargl might make for a decent wealth-maximizing path to a near an-cap state (with a tax)...no human autocrat can ever reach this, and more importantly can't even approximate it. MM's assumption of safe, non-power-jockeying rule is (a) unknown in all of human history, and (b) against human nature. Once you remove the assumption that we CAN approach this using a monarchy (or near), it seems to me that the whole edifice crumbles.
So...Two questions of the formalists:
- Does Moldbug's (non-techno-fantasy weapon locks) solution rely on non-power-jockeying? No pretenders usurping the throne in Monarchies. No kings suppressing the power-jockeying among subordinates. No coalitional structure that ACTUALLY determines the rulership, despite the pretense of monarchy (See Shogunate Japan)
- If not...what are the impacts of removing the (false) assumption of no power-jockeying from the Moldbuggian model? How do you address the research of Bruce Bueno de Mesquita, who (a) has a game theoretic model on how power maintenance works that is substantially better supported than the pop-evo-psych models of game/PUA, and (b) has an awfully good real track record as a political predictor, both in autocracies (Iran, Russia) and democracies (India).
- Furthermore, how do we address the BBdM model that says, summarized in 11 words: "For an autocrat to maintain power, he MUST screw the population."
As far as I can personally tell...once you remove the fake fnargl...most of the problems Moldbug attributes to democracy turn out to be problems with government.
Note...this is NOT an argument for AnCap. This is an argument that the Moldbuggian position of autocracy in order to solve the problems of democracy fails badly. If Moldbug has answered this question, I'd take a link...or an analysis from my formalist readers.
I see 2 avenues for attack, neither of them promising:
- Yes, we CAN get fnargl-like non-jockeying behavior.
- BBdM's model is bad.
But indubitably, my formalist readers have looked at this problem harder than I have...and have responses.
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10 comments:
I am not 100% sure it is clear, but (at least as I see it) Fnargl is supposed to stand in for a joint-stock corporate overlord. Not for any particular CEO who runs it. So I think we can approximate Fnargl, and I don't see the sovcorp approximation as a spherical alien cow.
I think your 2 questions morphed to 3. My responses:
1) First, I am not sure what your parenthetical ("(non-techno-fantasy weapon locks)") is supposed to mean. I do not find weapon locks on all weapons down to a pistol to be at all a fantasy. I carry a powerful computer (aka iPhone) with me everywhere I go. Electronic weapon locks on pistols exist today; radio-controlled locks exist for cars now. So, I think MM is completely correct that the ability of the security forces to coup could be nullified. Developing such weapons might require a year or two of moderate product development work by a small weapons company. (Indeed, it would seem as if something along this line for heavy weapons would be a great business right now, for sales to third world. Perhaps too thin of a market.)
This leaves several problems:
a) getting the security forces to fire on mobs and otherwise carry out orders that can be repugnant to human moral sentiments (historically quite doable: recruit foreigners; create esprit de corps; "other" the mob. I don't see large problems here, but worth mentioning at least)
b) implementing joint-stock corp without supervening enforcement (requires crypto; several problems to solve, maybe hard)
c) getting sovcorp going in the first place
2) I certainly think power-jockeying would happen in a sovcorp, just as it does in existing joint-stock companies. I don't see particular problem with it. I do see problems with coalition-building in a traditional biological-limited monarchy.
I do not see that any person or group in the sovcorp needs to be omnipotent, as you suggest BBdM says in the older discussion.
3) The people are being "screwed" in the sense that they are being taxed. I can think of some other kinds of screwage a sovcorp would be likely do, too. I.e., sterilizing criminals. I am not sure what further screwage BBdM suggests is inevitable. Perhaps you could say more.
Good post. Not a formalist, but I think the rejoinder is...democratic ancap fails too. To whatever extent benign/enlightened autocrats are rare, it's equally against human nature to expect people not to be moved by pictures of photogenic poor kids, and signal moral superiority by coercing public provision of free stuff to said photogenic kids. From there, it's a hop, skip, and jump to the entire lobbyist extravaganza we have today. Only way to stop it is to have a strong enough leader to check the early democratic stirrings - which has at least happened once (Singapore, HK, a few others). Self-restraint in self-governance has happened roughly never.
In real life neither ideology will ever happen unless we have thousands of nations and free movement among them. By that point it'll become an empirical question, and I expect that many of those polities to be non-democratic.
The question is: given that it is probably impossible for any sovereign to be as secure as Fnargl, can the benefits of Fnargl's rule be approached in the real world? Or, alternatively, is any threat to sovereignty going to produce the same destructive competition for power, whether the sovereign is teetering or relatively comfortable?
I feel that a relatively secure sovereign would rule less destructively than an insecure one, but I can't easily form that into an argument.
As to the government screwing the people, that's not in dispute: that's what government is for. The question is whether it is better to be screwed by some kinds of governments than by others.
It is true that the nominal form of government is not important; only where the real power is. But the variable formalism is trying to tweak is whether the culture believes that sovereignty ought to stay where it is, or whether it believes that all real power is there to be broken up.
Leonard, AMG, CF
1. Thanks much for the thoughtful replies.
Still trying to process into something useful.
Leonard,
BBdM says very simply...
If you want power, then you have 3 required jobs. This fundamentally defines who keeps power and who doesn't. If you do this, you keep, if you don't, you lose. And the system doesn't matter.
1. Minimize the number of folks who participate in the (real) decision of who rules.
2. Collect a 50%+1 coalition...with other folks who'd like to be in the coalition, so the folks in know they're replaceable.
3. Redistribute as much wealth as possible away from the populace and towards the coalition.
#3 is especially important because of the extent to which all human motivation is envy / status / covetousness -based, rather than greed -based.
Well, the odd thing in your summary is point 2. A "50%+1 coalition" sounds like it means "50% of the people". That makes sense when applied to liberal democracy, and possibly even single-party democracy, but not so much for more traditional autocratic forms.
I suppose you might say that it means you need 50% of the military power. (This is a generalization of the idea, and with modest technological assumptions, it does reduce to head-counting in democracy.) Military technology is highly relevant. If it allows one man (or one organization) to control the majority of military power, then that is sufficient. This is what neocameralism aims for with the crypto control of weapons. If all weapons down to the machinegun level can be disabled at the sole discretion of the sovcorp, it easily has the firepower to dominate all other would-be forces.
It's also worth mentioning poison-pill nukes.
Leonard,
Claim 1: focus on military as power only is wrong thinking. Economic power matters too...and in. Non-closed-borders world...it matters a lot. Perhaps more than military. Moral also. And
2. Reality: autocracies (all of them, now and historically) are coalitonal. A non-coalitional autocracy is far more fantastic and unprecedented than an operational anarchy. Maybe the core insight of BBdM. Perhaps that's the killer point? I consider BBdM to be far and away the best political thinker of the generation. Read his stuff.
It would be helpful if you'd find a canonical BBdM piece, so we are talking about the same thing. Note that for the purposes of intellectual debate on the net, I am against the suggested use of any non-free (beer) non webbed books or articles. Relying on meatspace information sources necessarily excludes the casual third party, who is not going to spend money and days of time to check an assertion. And I think any intellectual worth anything ought to have his ideas out there in readily accessible form -- this is the 21st century.
After a quick googling, I'd suggest this article -- it seems to assert what you say BBdM is about. I certainly do not disagree with what BBdM writes there. Indeed, I think that one can fruitfully think about neocameralism as an attempt to reify BBdM's 5 rules in as small an organization as possible:
1) Keep the winning coalition as small as possible -- the coalition are the stockholders, plus the apparat of state -- basically the security forces. The formalist denies any sovcorp activities except those. MM might involve the sovcorp in some of the traditional functions of state (i.e. most law enforcement, policing of ordinary criminals, lawmaking), but I believe that all functions of state can be privatized other than political security (protecting against coup and conquest), and a very small amount of administration.
On the security (employee) side, the realm can easily fire anyone because they cannot coup -- the sovcorp controls their weapons. Thus, the security forces do not need to be large.
The sovcorp is publicly traded. Thus, the group of large stockholders is continually being purged of unsuccessful men, while successful men buy in.
2) Keep the selectorate as large as possible -- I think the ownership group for any sovcorp would tend to be pretty broad, at least after a few generations of rule. Consider modern America: although perhaps 1/3 of households own any stock (directly), most people have a retirement account of some kind and most own stock via index fund. And many people are also part of a pension arrangement of some kind and thus indirectly own stock.
I should reiterate that I see nothing in the linked BBdM article suggesting any rule of 50%+1, in anything.
3) Control the flow of revenue -- the flow of taxes from subjects to owners is the raison d'etre of the sovcorp.
4) Pay key supporters just enough to keep them loyal -- on the ownership side, all get paid; as in 3, this is what the sovcorp does. On the employee side, there are no key supporters. All can be replaced, because none can coup.
5) Never take money out of your supporter's pockets to make the people's lives better -- again, taxation is what the realm does. Money is what the ownership group agrees on, because that is what they are selected for. The realm wants the people to be as productive as possible; therefore it does not abuse them, and it enforces private property and contract. But neither does it need their support, since they cannot succeed in taking power.
Leonard,
As an educator...
A set of principles is rarely/never enough to understand someone's thinking. Really, what you're looking at is a method of thinking, not a simple set of principles for discussion. If I were picking numbers, I'd say it takes usually 100,000 words (+/-, depending on profundity) to steep yourself in someone's way of thinking..and then you use the shortlist of principles as guideposts to the idea-set. If you just read principles...the succinctness of the principles is overshortened to actually understand.
On principle, I oppose your request for a canonical article, particularly a free one. At the same time, I've linked to that article before (or else Isegoria has), and it seems good.
2. This gets long. I'll have to post.
3. If I were summarizing as you did...I'd list among the most interesting features of BBdM is his game theory that shows that the correct response for any small ruling coalition is to completely impoverish the population, and take ALL the wealth for themselves. Which is one of the core challenges for the formalist. It seems that formalism designs a system guaranteed to suck for the citizenry.
Let me recall to you one of your postings of recent, wherein we discussed the point of arguing on the net. As I said there, to my mind the point is not to convince each other of anything (although I do not regard that as impossible, just very unlikely esp. in the short time in which a posting like this is acrtive). Rather, I think the points are (a) to clarify one's own thinking, and (b) to help third parties who are interested but not decided either way which seems more sympatico.
That said, let me offer another longer passage by BBdM, this time found in a book, Governing for Prosperity. The relevant section, "The Theory", starts on page 63.
Having read it, I would revise my earlier remark slightly. I won't get into too much; it would be long. Suffice to say that, at least as I read him, BBdM is concerned with real-world data, and does not address at all several important aspects of neocameralism:
1) salable selectorate rights
2) a non-resident selectorate
3) military security (both external and internal)
As such, neocameralism is simply outside of BBdM's analysis.
For example, consider (1). In all existing government designs, and particularly those BBdM analyzes, you cannot sell your right to select. In democracy, your vote is not even rentable, much less salable.
What happens when you can sell your share? Obviously, shares end up in the hands of the rich. Less obviously, they end up owned by people with low time preference -- people with high time preference sell so they can buy the things they want now. Thus, the neocameral selectorate are strongly self-selected as people with a long term financial outlook, just as anyone who owns any costly economic asset. They want to make it pay. Thus, the coherency of the ruling coalition (stockholders) is tremendous by comparison to any other system of picking selectors.
Now think about 2. In all existing governments, the voters or other selectors are physically resident and publicly known. Among other consequences, this means that (a) their physical security is highly relevant to the realm, and (b) there is a strong motivation for public policy that redistributes non-money goods. For example, status can be redistributed by requiring that at least two members of the Party be present on each corporate board. Contrast an anonymously owned sovcorp: here, any proposal to redistribute status runs into two problems. First, unlike money, status is very hard for a state to redistribute outside of its borders. Second, many of the owners may like their anonymity, and any such owners cannot be "paid" in status. Hence, they also would oppose any such proposal, preferring cash.
Finally, consider 3. No modern regime has centralized control of its weapons systems. As such, the masses are always a threat to power, and must be dealt with somehow. They must be either brought into the selectorate (by being paid off), or else they sit outside, disgruntled. Since they are a threat, any outsiders should be impoverished to as to command the least resources possible. This is the origin of your point (3). It is not relevant when the regime is secure.
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