From: Technotranscendence (neptune@mars.superlink.net)
Date: Sun Aug 11 2002 - 21:24:54 MDT
On Saturday, August 10, 2002 4:07 PM Dan Fabulich dfabulich@warpmail.net
wrote:
>> however, face competition under market anarchy where under
>> your "demarchy" -- I only put it in quotes because I believe
>> someone else used the term many years before you to mean
>> something different (perhaps "sophocracy" would be more
>> accurate: "rule by the wise")
>
> The original term was "aristocracy," which means "rule by the best."
> Plato famously advocated a system much like this: where the wise
> philosophers would form a caste that would rule over the rest of
society
> as custodians.
Yeah, though the method of selection was a bit different -- not that it
matters much. Also, this is similar to Rousseau's _Social Contract_
where mass democracy is still allowed but a few select individuals frame
what is to be voted on. (I'm generally against the idea, as you know.)
> Of course, once you realize this, it's easy to see that a new
> class system based on IQ would suffer from many (though
> not all) of the same problems that aristocracy had when the
> aristoi were understood to be those with "good breeding."
Exactly. My view is, though, that a class system forms whenever one
group has the legitimate ability to use force against another. Our
current system is a class system, since there are, e.g., taxpayers and
tax receivers as well as manifold government interferences in all
aspects of life. (This applies to all extant nation-states I know, so I
need not restrict this claim to just the US or even just the West.)
> I'd argue that even the natural inclination of private citizens
> to promote a class system on this basis would have
> negative consequences for everyone, in the same way
> that racism would have negative consequences even in
> an anarchocapitalist society.
I don't completely disagree, but in a free market society -- be it
anarchocapitalist or minarchist -- the costs of racism are more
localized. A person cannot, e.g., use the force of law to enforce
racism, though she might be bigoted herself. This does not mean the
problem is solved. After all, society is a kind of totality and
individual actions influence the culture at large. However, I think a
more free market society would likely become less racist over time --
or, at least, not as institutionally racist as quickly as a less free
market one.
Thomas Sowell's _Preferential Policies: An International Perspective_
gives plenty of examples where racist people actual deal with each other
through market interactions. E.g., Jim Crow laws in the South (of the
US) were scoffed at by streetcar owners because they knew they would
lose Black customers. Sowell concludes that the streetcar owners "were
[not] any less racist those whites who did not [own streetcars]. Their
opposition to segregated seating was economic rather than ideological."
(p21) In other words, the streetcar owners were probably just as racist
as the next guy, but not willing to pay the price for manifesting their
racism when it cut into their bottom line. In other words, long before
Rosa Parks, market forces were working against racial segregation.
> In particular, class systems
> promote misinformation and mistrust between classes.
That's partly how they perpetuate themselves. And, granted, removing
government intervention -- whether through anarchism or minarchism --
will not undo all the damage here, though it will be a good start and,
at least, remove some impedients to solving some pressing social
problems.
> History has shown
> that even highly intelligent people can fall prey to these
> misunderstandings.
Agreed, but this is no different from what I said in an earlier email.
Cheers!
Dan
http://uweb.superlink.net/neptune/
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