Aretae

The virtue of excellence

Wednesday, October 3, 2012

Tyranny

The Formalist position is that anarcho-Tyranny is the worst kind.

The Libertarian position is that tyranny is crappy any which way it comes...and we're thoroughly opposed to all the flavors: They all suck badly.

Tyranny of the Monarch
Tyranny of the Masses
Tyranny of the Nation over the individual (pick a spelling:  Fascism, Naziism, Communism)
Anarcho-tyranny.


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7 comments:

Leonard said...

The formalist position is also that "tyranny" is not necessarily all that bad. Real tyranny, of course, is always bad. Tyranny is the opposite of the rule of law: it is arbitrary and unpredictable rule. But we have been programmed (as you show) to think that all rule other than good clean pure honest good democracy (ahhhh!!) is tyranny by definition. Ain't so. A monarch can abide by the existing law. Of course, he also has the other option; to abrogate the existing law; but this power is what it means to be sovereign.

Moldbug discusses this in this article, among others.

The diagnosis is that the insecure state is or will become tyrannical and thus bad. The secure state, on the other hand, will be bad or not depending on its constitution; but at least in principle the interests of the secure ruler and his citizens are largely aligned.

October 3, 2012 at 7:50 AM
Chris Byrne said...

One should also mention here the anarchist fallacy.

Anarachy is in theory the system with the greatest individual freedom; but in practice always results in a tyranny of the strong over the less strong.

Even without warlordism, an aggregation of power into voluntary associations until such associations are strong enough to no longer be voluntary, is inevitable.

October 3, 2012 at 10:14 AM
Aretae said...

Leonard,

Tyranny of the masses is the name the libertarians have for unconstrained democracy. We consider them equivalently bad.

Indeed...there is the questoin of rule by law...but rule by sovereign is NOT rule by law...indeed, it is among the worst violators.

And I find Moldbug wholly unconvincing on this point. BBdM has (a) historical evidence, and (b) has done the game theory to a point of being predictive. Sovereigns suck to the extent they have power, and don't have to please the populace. All real world ones do, all known ones have, and the game theory says all sovereigns should.

Indeed, the best predictor for quality of governance given BBdM's research is the number of actual people that the government has to please to stay in power. The more the better. Full stop. Note: In USA, the number is smaller than it appears.

I continue to find secure rulership laughable as a concept.

October 3, 2012 at 7:35 PM
Aretae said...

Chris....

In practice ... we don't have that data. I am aware that there are many people (including myself at many points in the past) who have argued that position...but it's a pure logic position of a form that I find to have very low predictive substance.

David Friedman + others have listed anarchies that fit our definition, but which lasted longer than the age of the USA so far... Is that data weak? Perhaps...but then we don't have the data on long-term anarchies, and the argument fails.

October 3, 2012 at 7:38 PM
drpat said...

Could you point to a list of stable anarchies?

October 4, 2012 at 7:35 PM
Aretae said...

The ones normally mentioned by anarchic scholars were midieval Iceland, the era of the Sagas, and similar time-framed Ireland. Similarly, they point out how much better Somalia is doing under its 10 year anarchy than it was under a government.

October 4, 2012 at 7:53 PM
Chris Byrne said...

The reason there is little data on long term anarchies, is because there haven't been many if any.

Anarchy is inherently unable to resist assault by external forces. The act of collective resistance in and of itself negates the anarchic nature; become an anarchosyndicate.

I will concede that anarchosyndicalism has the POTENTIAL to be the "optimal" free society; if one considers optimal, the best balance between personal freedom, stability of society, ability of the society to defend itself against tyranny both from within and without, and the resolution of disputes and arbitration of contracts etc...

There have been no true stable long term anarchies; but there have been a very few anarchosyndicalist societies (including those mentioned, which were not true anarchies).

October 4, 2012 at 8:14 PM

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