From: Technotranscendence (neptune@mars.superlink.net)
Date: Mon Aug 19 2002 - 17:51:51 MDT
On Thursday, August 15, 2002 7:23 PM Rafal Smigrodzki
rms2g@virginia.edu wrote:
> Ah, but the differences between rich and poor
> are real too. Should the upper house be rich
> and the lower house poor? How about those
> between ethnic groups? What about male/
> female differences? What about other real
> differences? What do you mean by a non-
> real differences here?
>
> ### The differences between the rich and poor
> have a much weaker correlation with the ability
> to govern (that is, there is only a weak correlation
> between personal wealth and the ability to make
> sound political decisions), and, more importantly,
> wealth has no causal relationship to governing
> ability, while IQ does.
There are a few things in the above statement that need to be addressed.
One, you're probably right about this meta-level point: the issue here
is what correlates with the "ability to govern" -- which I take to mean
govern justly, efficiently, etc. After all, governing could just mean
ruling despotically, but I take it you don't mean that.
Two, whether ability to govern correlates with high IQ remains to be
proved. Yes, there does seem to be evidence of high IQ correlating with
some other traits you and I like -- such as a tendency toward financial
success, longer range planning, lower incidence of crime, and less
aggressiveness. Even these are not tight correlations, but loose ones,
IIRC. And they are just correlations. It could always be -- though, I
admit, I find it unlikely -- that high IQ is the outcome of another
trait or of one of these traits. (How might this be? Well, imagine
high IQ does not measure generalized intelligence well, but merely
mental speed, memory, planning, and perhaps ability to do tests well.
Such traits might correlate well with financial success, since a person
might see opportunities faster than even smarter rivals and might
remember things like risk is always there and might be better at
planning overall just through experience. I'm making this up as I tend
to believe more in generalized intelligence than the alternative here.)
Three, do they also go along with ability to govern? That would be the
important thing here. After all, it might be that there's some other
trait or cluster of traits that maxes ability to govern and high IQ does
not correlate well with that. Even if it correlates somewhat well, you
might want another level of selection to avoid evil geniuses. (Having
low IQ people vote on the laws does not get around this. If someone's
much smarter than than any human, I might be able to better manipulate
the rest into thinking something is for their own good... Think of how
easy it is right now to manipulate people with the War on Terror...)
> I don't quite understand the question regarding
> ethnic groups here. Gender differences in
> cognition might have an impact on
> the ability to govern but I feel we have insufficient
> data to decide in which direction they go (are
> women better than men at governance?).
Well, e.g., if the parenthetic remark is correct, then you do have a
problem, since men have an average IQ that that's lower than women's yet
at the extremes men tend to have fatter tails. I.e., there are more
very high IQ men than high IQ women (and more very low IQ men than very
low IQ women). IIRC, the very high and lows are completely saturated
with men. This would mean that if women were better for some reason or
other at governing, then under your system we'd have more men in the
upper house of your legistlature who are not as good at this role.
This might not be so bad, but even that remains to be seen. (I mean
"not be so bad" here because it could be that high IQ men are not
terrible at governing just slightly less good at it than women on
average. Let's say there was a scale of 1 to 10 on ability to govern.
It could be men average 5 and women average 8, but high IQ men are 7.5
while high IQ women are 9. The human average would be roughly 6.5, so
7.5 is better than average, though not as good as 8 -- and chances are
there would be enough hgih IQ women to push this number closer to 8 or
maybe past it.)
> I wrote
> about "real differences" as physical characteristics of persons (such
as
> height or IQ), while a non-real difference would be merely a
difference in
> our attitudes towards a person, such as being untrustworthy by virtue
of not
> belonging to one's tribe, or guilty of an arbitrarily defined crime.
I get the idea, but I'm just saying that ethnic differences are not
unreal and they might lead to other things that a priori should not be
ignored. E.g., in many European countries, such as Italy and Germany,
crime rates are higher among recent immigrants. Does this mean these
differences are unreal? No. It might mean crime is higher for a
different reason than pure ethnic differences, such as poverty or lack
of assimilation into mainstream culture. Even if it does mean only
that, surely you wouldn't want a sortitionist process to select people
more likely to crime to be selected for your upper house, no?
> But that's the point under discussion: whether your system would work
or
> work better. (I assume by "efficient process of lawmaking" you mean
> "efficient" at making good and just laws and not just making laws. If
> not, why not just have an unelected bureaucracy ruled by an absolute
> despot bent on making efficient laws?)
>
> ### Having smart people design a product
> usually makes it better, and giving the
> customers the ability to examine and
> accept/reject it assures a consistently high
> quality. The upper chamber being the
> engineers and the lower chamber as the
> discerning customers would simulate the
> free market better than the current system
> (still very crudely, I know). Even the most
> ethical and unselfish despot would not be
> able to approach the market's abilities.
Why not just go for the market here period? After all, your demarchy
would still be, as I pointed out, a monopoly. It faces no competition.
Yeah, the customers might have input into the design process, but this
is no different than democracy in general. The market works mostly not
because it's democratic, but because people aren't forced to accept
current solutions it offers. One can find substitutes or do without or
even start one's own firm to make what one wants.
BTW, the customers don't choose here. The lower house does. The
customers would be the total population not involved in governance --
not the internal review board. So, you analogy breaks down there. Kind
of BMW thinking their customer is their quality control department.
This is the difference between voice and exit options. In voice option
systems, you don't get to exit out of the systems. You get to have a
say -- vote, petition, veto, lobby, etc. -- but you still have to accept
the the organization or its output. Democratic government is the
epitome of this sort of thing. Your demarchy is just one species of
this.
Exit option systems usually don't give you a voice, but you can break
the relationship if it doesn't work out. This is kind of the market
model. I don't get to vote on BMW's board, but I can choose not to buy
their products or services.
Notably, exit option systems tend to be more responsive to their
customers since the latter can walk. This makes for the evolution of
all sorts of feedback mechanisms to fine tune the relationship. Voice
option system usually wind up becoming like punctuated equilibrium
systems, since it takes time for dissatisfaction to build to the point
where enough or the right voices get heard. This is why we see
governments going through reforms than become bloated again.
> ### You are right. However, so far I haven't heard of a good,
> competitive way of managing large-scale violence, fraud
> and enslavement, therefore the singleton solution embodied
> in a government is, by default, the only one. I
> can think about making it less dangerous and
> more efficient but not about
> dispensing with it altogether.
I disagree on all these counts. We didn't get to the current world
because nation-states were better at managing large scale violence.
Rather, they were bad at managing it and that's part of how we got here.
In fact, given the extremely obvious escalating level of violence over
the past two hundred years or so, I think we can see the Hobbesian war
of all against all takes place mostly because of governments.
Add to this, governments do not necessarily prevent fraud. They often
condone it and even commit it. The recently uncovered missing $1+
trillion due to US government accounting irregularities is only one
case. Now, yeah, this is anecdotal, but you really have to do better to
provide evidence that fraud actually takes place on a wider scale when
there's no government. I bet you're just relying on your gut feel here.
Regarding enslavement, that's an even bigger laugh, since chattel
slavery existed and still exists now (in the Sudan) under governments.
It's only a change in culture over the last three centuries or so that
actually made slavery unpopular -- not government per se. If it were a
matter of government, then what about the previous five thousand or so
years of slavery under governments?
If you mean that it easy, once one has a solution to a social problem,
to enforce it one the whole of society via government, granted. Still
that ease is not costless and often backfires. It also invites others
who have solutions to follow suit -- even when the solutions they have
might actually not work (as in redistributionist policies helping people
out) and be the ones that either cause new problems (as in the War on
Drugs or the War on Poverty) or just grow power for its own sake (as it
seems to be with the War on Terrorism).
I would rather the imperfect market anarchy society over the imperfect
statist one. It won't be utopia, but at least social problems will be
more tractable and self-limiting.
> One point - does judicial law apply only to consenting
> parties?
That is correct. If people want to settle a dispute via a court, they
must agree to it. This doesn't mean there won't be disputes over courts
and the like, though, in the past, the way this was settled was often by
ostracism or other penalties. (You might claim these won't work today,
but this is mostly because we have governments in the way. E.g., in
proprietary communities -- which is most likely what a free market
anarchy society would stabilize into -- one would have a vested interest
in not pissing off one's community and would have a hard time, if one
were ostracized, finding other communities to accept one. Yeah, that
might not stop the psychokiller or the super wealthy murderer, but few
things do stop these types, so let's not pretend governments do.)
> I thought a
> summons is a type of coercion, isn't it?
A summons is a means of forcing one to participate in a particular
government court. I don't believe historically summons were used.
> Also, don't precedents extend
> single decisions to a large number of cases?
Only if other judges accept them. Why would they be accepted? Well,
hopefully because all parties would agree that a given judgment rendered
on a previous case fit the current one. In this sense, precedents often
might be more economical -- it's easier not to reinvent the wheel.
Also, a judge noted for flagrantly inventing law would probably not get
many disputants.
Cheers!
Dan
http://uweb.superlink.net/neptune/
See "Dialectical Objectivism: An Answer to Ronald E. Merrill" at:
http://uweb.superlink.net/neptune/Dialecti.html
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