From: Technotranscendence (neptune@mars.superlink.net)
Date: Thu Nov 07 2002 - 21:20:51 MST
On Thursday, November 07, 2002 6:21 PM Charles Hixson
charleshixsn@earthlink.net wrote:
> The problem appears to be the centralization of control.
> When a power is controlled by a small group, the group
> tends to act in such a way as to make itself more important.
> This is necessary to ensure that they will continue
> to exist. Also, as it becomes more powerful, it becomes
> more attractive to those whose main goal is less the
> accomplishment of the legitimate goal of the entity
> (presuming it was created to accomplish some task),
> and more toward increasing power for it's own sake.
> Given this, those in charge will take care that the task for
> which it was created is never completed, as this would
> eliminate their justification for controlling whatever the
> power is.
I'm not in disagreement with this. This is basically the Carroll
Quigley view of how social organizations change from instruments --
organizations that mainly serve some external purpose, such as fighting
crime -- to institutions -- organizations that mainly server the
internal purpose of perpetuating and growing regardless of whether they
are instrumental for the rest of society.
Government control or regulation tends to achieve this by separating
costs-payers from cost-makers. Private institutions can do this to some
extent, but ultimately unless they can force others to bear the cost on
a routine basis -- as opposed to one time theft and the like -- they
tend to collapse as costs will eventually eat them up. (How do they
insulate themselves from such costs? Typically by getting government to
regulate in their favor or give them subsidies. We see the latter with
the recent airline bailouts. Jet Blue didn't need a bailout and is
doing just fine. United and American got theirs though.)
Even so, a lot of people together -- a large group -- can make similar
mistakes. They can, e.g., vote for programs that create the above
problems.
> Now I'm not really talking about the beat police
> here, as they don't make policy. But I am talking
> about the police chiefs, mayors, prison guards
> unions, legislators, etc. And, of course, the
> policeman's union, as opposed to the individual
> police. And then there are the individual police
> who are also all in favor of their own share of
> control of power...
On the last, the incentives are more in favor of the cop who is like
that than the one who is not. Notably, in police corruption cases and
brutality, such as the Abner Luema (spelling?) sodomy-rape in NYC, the
good cops were noticeably absent. That a whole police station would try
to cover up the incident is telling. Yeah, it's just one station, but
one _whole_ station!
> So the problem becomes: How to create a social
> structure where either there are no centralizations
> of power, or where those who control the centralized
> power can have no effect on it's continued existence.
> This isn't an easy job, but it's what is required for a
> stable libertarian society. (You may achieve a libertarian
> society without this, but it won't be stable.)
I tend to agree and that's why I'm for free market anarchy. I don't
believe, however, that any such system will be permanently stable. Even
robust examples like Ancient Iceland eventually collapsed -- but after a
few hundred years -- much longer than the US has existed as one
commentator pointed out. (See "Privatization, Viking Style: Model or
Misfortune?" by Roderick T. Long at
http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig3/long1.html ) My thought here is that
societies with a central state (archic/monocentric) already are already
that much closer -- even if it's the libertarian wet dream of a minimal
state -- to tyranny than anarchic/polycentric societies.
The incentives and the structures in societies with polycentric legal
systems -- Pre-Chrisitan Iceland, Medieval Ireland, the Law Merchant of
Northern Europe, Anglo-Saxon England, the not so Wild West of the US,
certain preColumbian tribes in North America, etc. (see the Bruce L.
Benson's _The Enterprise of Law: Justice Without the State_, David
Friedman's _The Machinery of Freedom_, google for Hans-Hermann Hoppe's
online essays, and Murray Rothbard's _For A New Liberty_ for more on
these) -- tend to make for more stable, long run freedom than other
societies. This still leaves the problem that they eventually
succumbed, though, again, only after a long period of relatively high
freedom.
Space settlement and perhaps some forms of virtual colonization could
provide a very long term stable environment. How so? To stick with
space settlement, given the ease of movement in space and its vastness,
one will be able to easily migrate and even hide. Centralization in
general will be very hard and I think, in space settlements, almost all
tyranny will be local. As transportation technology gets better, too,
this increases the ease of migration and stealthing. On the Earth's
surface and in its atmosphere, on the other hand, as transportation
technology gets better, it becomes ever easier for government control to
increase. Ditto for surveillance technology. (Granted, in space
there's no positive feedback between the latter and freedom, but such
technology is not as dangerous as it is on Earth's surface. It's much
harder to spot everything in the solar system than it is to spot
everything on the Earth's surface. Notably, while there are really not
uncharted islands on Earth, there are NEOs we don't even know about.)
That said, free market anarchy is more in line with Extropianism, since
it maximizes social extropy. It might not be frictionless, but it beats
all contenders. (Okay, that's my story and I'm sticking to it.:)
Cheers!
Dan
http://uweb.superlink.net/neptune/
"You wanna get high?" -- Towelie from "South Park"
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