Philosophical issues: politics

[ebola?]

mods: please remove if you don't like this idea for topics.

I was thinking that we could have a topic devoted to political theory. What is your overall theoretical framework? What is your assessment of the contemporary situation? Where do you see things going? What are your prescriptions for what is to be done about it?

Feel free to discuss, debate, describe, put forth more formalized writings, etc.

I'm going to hold off on posting my thoughts...too drained right now, and I've been overly vocal about them in the past.

 

[neonads]

My framework is that of the psychological, and to a lesser degree, sociological roots of motivation to participate in democratic governance and an economic proposal to compliment the needed changes. I think this is very much a root cause of the current apathy towards participation, and consequently the susceptibility to corruption, waste and deterioration in living standards in Western countries.

If people felt valued by their parents, they would feel confident enough to speak their feelings instead of harbouring them which leads to anxiety, depression, and irrationality. As adults, they would feel confident enough to voice their concerns to all levels of government thereby letting it be known that corruption will not be tolerated.

But parents have a lot to deal with. A major shift in priorities needs to occur with the majority of parents towards a harmonious home life where both parents have equal respect and standing and work on their relationship in a manner that includes the whole family. Too often financial pressures make this all too difficult to prioritise so some kind of government initiative should be formed as a high priority.

We are facing overpopulation stress and live in poorly planned cities. Hopefully this stress will spur some kind of streamlining but as always, the cost/benefit ratio will ensure the least possible will be done to alleviate it. Again, a government initiative will be needed. With the advent of faster and faster internet, it should be possible to decentralise many large organisations into financial districts, or 'nodes' located all over the country connected centrally by the internet. Basically, get the jobs back from overseas and place them close to the workers and customers.

This doesn't necessitate state-owned monopoly such as in Communist China, but rather state-owned infrastructure including buildings that are rented out to whichever business can afford to pay. This will ensure fair competition and prevent commercial real estate appreciation based speculation which is a big barrier to startup businesses.

The banking sector needs an overhaul. There is not enough regulation to prevent economic crises. Without going into the details, firstly there needs to be a reconciliation between the very wealthy and the state to eradicate state debt, and secondly there needs to be transparent governmental control of the entire banking sector and the invention of new derivatives that reflect the change in structure. With the combination of state ownership of financial districts and the state power of money and loan issuance there will be little incentive to engage in anti-trust behaviour nor engage in corruption.

Reliance on imports must be minimised unless they can be balanced with exportation to the country of origin. That means no more 'oil for cash' inflation, but a more equitable trade of 'oil for technology' and helps to develop resource-rich, tech-poor countries into long-term trading partners.

Hopefully, with the stabilisation of the economy into a predominantly home-produced, home-consumed, import/export balanced type, we should regain job and wage security and make it easier for parents to raise responsible new citizens who engage in politics and culture rather than shy away from them.

 

[Jamshyd]

^ Very interesting and well thought out.

Although my political ideology is very simplistic and mechanistic, the fact that it will never be realized (in the foreseeable future) is rooted in the very flawed psychology of individuals.

My political philosophy is essentially transcendent anarcho-communistic. It goes roughly as follows: (note: I apologize if this looks like it takes itself too seriously, I was having fun with the forum's formatting options, plus this makes it easier for reference if anyone wants to comment )

I will start with what my political philosophy is not:

1. It is not feasible or "realistic" at the moment due to the condition in point F below being beyond the reach of most humans.

2. It is not designed to improve prosperity or increase the number of humans. Rather, its main goal is to alleviate suffering as much as possible and to work toward social equality. Therefore, it does not propose a solution to the problem of limited resources, but rather a suggestion for making the best of what little we have.​

​

And so:

A1. Humans are selfish creatures from birth.

A2. To preserve the current system (and avoid the idea of imminent death with which they avoid sufferingₓ), humans reproduce mindlessly and replicate the current erroneous system in their offspring.

A3. And so, said selfish humans are numerous and multiplying (whether it is time for neo-malthusian ideas or not is up for debate)​

B. Since we have not yet colonized space*, our resources are limited.

C. The SUM of all the advantages that each human has equals the SUM of all the disadvantages that each human has†.

D1. Due to the above, we have the current system of childish, social-darwinistic capitalism where everyone is out there to blindly hoard as much as they can.

D2. This results in great inequality and suffering due to this system catering only to specific advantages that only a minority posses (see footnote below).
​

E. While the system described in E is the current status quo and accepted as the only reality, it is, in fact, erroneous and will surely lead to excessive unnecessary suffering, as well as recklessly destroy the lives of other beings due to points A and C.

F. Therefore, if every human were to transcend her or his selfishness‡, a new framework can be set in motion as follows:

G1. Instead of focusing all one's energy on accumulating resources, the energy becomes focused instead on totally giving them to others.

G2. To give an oversimplified model:

• persons a, b, and c have (the advantages to acquire) resources 1,2, and 3, but all require resources 4, 6, and 7.
• Persons d, e, and f have (the advantages to acquire) resources 4, 5, and 6 but all require resources 2,8, and 9.
• Persons g, h, and i have (the advantages to acquire) resources 7, 8, and 9 but all require resources 1, 3, and 5•.

G3. Therefore, if G1 is met and all resources are divided equally, every person gets everything they need without having to accumulate it themselves due to everyone else having given what they can.
​

G4. Furthermore, any given group will be able to produce better (and therefore give more) when all the resources they need but cannot acquire are readily provided by all others, and so on and so forth.​

H. If G is set in motion with humanity free of selfishness, it will move perpetually and lead to a symbiotic rather than a parasitic relationship between humanity and the world.​

Appendix:

It goes without saying that the transcendence of selfishness essentially includes the abandoning of nationalistic and political boundaries, and ultimately, of war and the necessity of having a military. As well, the selfless state, combined with fulfilment of all of needs by others' giving, would result in low crime rate due to the lack of need to criminally obtain resources, and ultimately, Law would become peripheral rather than central to society.

Additionally, alienation from both work and society would be eliminated, due to people doing what they can without pressure to work simply for the sake of making money.​

Needs Improvement:

- An explanation of how the system works without a government. A rough sketch for now: Assuming a state of selflessness, those who have management as a resource they can provide (again, without considering their position as one of power), would be responsible for the movement of resources from their origin to their point of need with unbiased, equal division.

- Expanding the last point of above appendix. ​

Footnotes:

ₓ When in fact, suffering is the result of life as it currently goes.
* Even if humanity were to colonize space, the criticism in D still applies due to point D2 until all resources somehow become renewable and infinite.
† However, that does not mean that any given person has equal advantages and disadvantages. Some humans are far more disadvantaged than others, and vice versa.
‡ By overcoming the fear of death and therefore its resulting obsession with the self and its existence.
• Bear with me! I am number-dyslexic so if there is a numeric error, I apologize, and hope you get the point anyway.
​

Thanks for reading, any constructive criticism is very welcome!

EDIT: Fixed formatting.

 

[neonads]

^ Thanks for the compliment, it still has many wrinkles. My only criticism is that the system you describe would lower physical suffering due to lack of resources at the cost of raising psychological suffering due to a dampening of entrepreneurship and creating the feeling of being trapped within a herd. Rather than healing our aversion to physical suffering it masks the symptoms.

Oh, and I think there's a typo in point E where it refers to itself instead of D1.

 

[ebola?]

Wow...cool, interesting posts!
I will give a more detailed (and complete) reply when I am not working overtime (and thus afford a non-zapped brain at the day's end).
...

>>If people felt valued by their parents, they would feel confident enough to speak their feelings instead of harbouring them which leads to anxiety, depression, and irrationality. As adults, they would feel confident enough to voice their concerns to all levels of government thereby letting it be known that corruption will not be tolerated.
>>

Not that this is mutually exclusive with what you've put forth, but perhaps it is because people become aware of very real political disenfranchisement, they then withdraw their interests and efforts from political participation.

>>We are facing overpopulation stress and live in poorly planned cities.>>

While I think this is true, the seat of real over population is in the so-called underveloped Global South, where population growth is eclipsing people's ability to purchase food (well, the situation would be more accurately described as worldwide mal-distribution rather than simple overpopulation).

>>This doesn't necessitate state-owned monopoly such as in Communist China, but rather state-owned infrastructure including buildings that are rented out to whichever business can afford to pay. This will ensure fair competition and prevent commercial real estate appreciation based speculation which is a big barrier to startup businesses.>>

So a well-functioning state would presumably prevent the sort of exploitation that would arise with a rentier class...but what will prevent the exploitation of labor by capital?

(shit...back to work)
ebola

 

[neonads]

Not that this is mutually exclusive with what you've put forth, but perhaps it is because people become aware of very real political disenfranchisement, they then withdraw their interests and efforts from political participation.

Yeah. It's a destructive feedback loop where corruption breeds disenfranchisement which breeds apathy which breeds corruption. A complete ethos change in the role of government in family affairs would go a long way towards reducing apathy, but I think it would need to be implemented alongside political decentralisation at the local level. Bring back the militia! (Seriously, community responsibility and all that.)

While I think this is true, the seat of real over population is in the so-called underveloped Global South, where population growth is eclipsing people's ability to purchase food (well, the situation would be more accurately described as worldwide mal-distribution rather than simple overpopulation).

Ugh. I'm beginning to feel like Atlas. I haven't gone through the global agribusiness issue enough to tie that in.

So a well-functioning state would presumably prevent the sort of exploitation that would arise with a rentier class...but what will prevent the exploitation of labor by capital?

Well I don't think it can ever be wholly prevented, but the idea is that by cleaning up the banking sector as well as the government, there will be little chance to gain unfair advantage over the competition thereby evening out the distribution of business sizes instead of the top-heavy oligopoly we have now. With a more fair competition comes the greater ability to bargain over worker's rights.

Thanks for the critique!

 

[ebola?]

neonads:

Remember, criticisms of omission are a bit lackluster...no one can go through everything.

>>Yeah. It's a destructive feedback loop where corruption breeds disenfranchisement which breeds apathy which breeds corruption. A complete ethos change in the role of government in family affairs would go a long way towards reducing apathy, but I think it would need to be implemented alongside political decentralisation at the local level. Bring back the militia! (Seriously, community responsibility and all that.)>>

I'm way with you here.

>>
Well I don't think it can ever be wholly prevented, but the idea is that by cleaning up the banking sector as well as the government, there will be little chance to gain unfair advantage over the competition thereby evening out the distribution of business sizes instead of the top-heavy oligopoly we have now. With a more fair competition comes the greater ability to bargain over worker's rights.
>>

Well, workers' bargaining would be improved in the following way:
presumably, workers could more easily quit their jobs and found businesses. Consequently, employers would need concede higher wages because employers would hold a less advantaged position in labor markets. There is a logistical issue, though. As it stands, most profits are reinvested in the means of production. How will this work with state-ownership of "infrastructure"? At which point do the means of production become "infrastructure"?

>>
The banking sector needs an overhaul. There is not enough regulation to prevent economic crises. Without going into the details, firstly there needs to be a reconciliation between the very wealthy and the state to eradicate state debt, and secondly there needs to be transparent governmental control of the entire banking sector and the invention of new derivatives that reflect the change in structure. With the combination of state ownership of financial districts and the state power of money and loan issuance there will be little incentive to engage in anti-trust behaviour nor engage in corruption.
>>

Mmmm...traditionally, financialization has come as a type of "fix" when profits in production are beginning to stagnate. With such fixes, you have a type of inherent instability, when the economy is temporarily bolstered, but the original conditions that caused such stagnation are obscured and reproduced (Harvey; Silver and Arrighi 1994; Brenner). State control of finance, while possibly helpful, won't solve everything.

>>
Reliance on imports must be minimised unless they can be balanced with exportation to the country of origin. That means no more 'oil for cash' inflation, but a more equitable trade of 'oil for technology' and helps to develop resource-rich, tech-poor countries into long-term trading partners.
>>

While a step in the right direction, I don't think that this will solve the problem of rife poverty in the "third world", as workers there could continue to receive pittances for the exportables that they manufacture, while the spoils of such exports go to a tiny (but now local) minority.

Jamshyd:

I like your picture and am mostly in agreement.
However, I don't think that the abolition of selfishness is a necessary precondition for some sort of anarchic (or at least radically libertarian) polity or a radically socialist economy.

Here, I might be nearing the "global" picture of the orthodox Marxists. Because the capitalist economy (insofar as it has actively operated for the last 200 years or so) entails collaborative productive processes. I think that even predominantly self-interested workers could see that some sort of shared distribution would be necessary to create a fair and free economy.

However, the question would be, would people have enough self-control to avoid "free riding" to the degree necessary for a well-functioning socialist economy? I think that the jury is out on whether this would be viable.

Consequently, I think that a functioning socialist economy would need be anchored by smaller, more face-to-face units of production and distribution that operate on a more local basis. It is a great deal harder to fuck over your neighbor than an foreign, abstract entity.

More and more, I am beginning to think that:
1. Any transition toward a more just economy would need be multi-fronted, involving some processes that are very gradual.
2. Even if some sort of anarcho-communism is ultimately the most desirable economic arrangement (and I think that it is....this arrangement would maximize human freedom), various "intermediate" arrangements, some involving currency, would need play a role in such an economic transition.

I have thus far had a great deal of difficulty integrating Foucault's critique of human freedom (or the idea of it) and description of the productivity of power into my general political views. I think that Foucault had some difficulty with this too.

ebola

 

[neonads]

Thanks for the reply, a lot to mull over.

There is a logistical issue, though. As it stands, most profits are reinvested in the means of production. How will this work with state-ownership of "infrastructure"? At which point do the means of production become "infrastructure"?

I assume you mean plant and innovations. With plant, they would remain the property of the business and go towards it's capital assets. There are already adequate definitions of what constitutes plant and what constitutes part of a building. When a business rents a premises, they get a lifetime contract meaning they can leave but the government cannot make them leave unless they break the law. It will also force the government to perform regular health and safety inspections as it's the state's property, just as a landlord would.

With innovations, it is tricky as they often allow a sustainable market lead which can turn into to monopoly. Any dampening of innovation may allow foreign tech leads and losses in the global market not to mention the military aspect. There will always be someone more capitalistic and innovative than you if you don't go 100% laissez-faire. My idea is to have the whole country working on innovations for the benefit of the whole country under an internationally focussed laissez-faire system and have military research performed solely by the government. It would work like this:

1. Company designs an innovation.
2. State can choose to buy management rights to the innovation at the price equalling the cost of it's research. The business must comply to all requests for original data for valuation and offers of purchase and cannot sell it's innovation to another business.
3. State sets a fixed price to sell to national businesses only, the price being ideally the one that maximises the total sales profit. Government economists would estimate this.
4. Originating company and state share the net profit from sale of the innovation.

This should prevent monopolies forming at the national level and give incentive to innovators and the state whilst keeping the trade secret in the hands of these parties.

Mmmm...traditionally, financialization has come as a type of "fix" when profits in production are beginning to stagnate. With such fixes, you have a type of inherent instability, when the economy is temporarily bolstered, but the original conditions that caused such stagnation are obscured and reproduced (Harvey; Silver and Arrighi 1994; Brenner). State control of finance, while possibly helpful, won't solve everything.

Well I'd gut most, if not all of the derivative system anyway. If there's any derivative out there that isn't speculated upon to the point where personal profit comes at the cost of system instability then I'd like to know about it. I'm really pushing it at the moment with regards to my knowledge of finance. If production is down due to loss in international market share, then the previous innovation scheme should right it, if possible. If the loss is due to a global downturn, then it will prune those businesses that relied too heavily on exports - every business should thus have primarily a domestic target market. Remember, that if you go bankrupt, your creditors get your assets and if the government is the sole creditor, then they do well under all but the worst conditions meaning they can continue to provide services and capital.

I'm aware of the slippery slope in lending that would lead to a ban on even lending a few dollars to a friend. I would say that private loans are not illegal, but that you can't take someone to court over default. Get possession of the collateral at the time and trade back later or keep it.

While a step in the right direction, I don't think that this will solve the problem of rife poverty in the "third world", as workers there could continue to receive pittances for the exportables that they manufacture, while the spoils of such exports go to a tiny (but now local) minority.

Much of the problem's of the Third World are caused from the use of imported currency to buy black market weapons. Perhaps a barter between nations would be better, primary goods for secondary goods. This will help them achieve industrial self-sufficiency. The government would buy the goods/services from the domestic market to exchange for the imported goods which it can in turn sell to the domestic market. This could also have the effect of preventing direct dealings with foreign businesses meaning you would deal mostly with Socialists, Autocrats, and others of the same system, but not so much with Capitalists.

This would be unfeasible though, as it'll take only one intervening nation to cash-up and arm some rebels. A lot of global good will must come before it.

 

[zorn]

I think I'm coming from a very different viewpoint than other folks here. I'll try and lay out my basic political philosophy here, for anyone who's interested. It's useful I think to first lay out what the purpose or goals of the political system should be; and then to talk about the practical questions of what system best achieves those goals. (If we disagree about the first, we're having a philosophical debate and may never agree with one another; if we disagree about the second, we're just having a purely practical debate about what the facts suggest.)

In my mind, the ultimate purpose of a political system is to seek two goals: first, upholding the freedom (or autonomy) of its members, and second, working for their common good. Sometimes these two goals will be in tension, and a good political system will have to come up with a balance.

By freedom, I mean several things. There's the freedom of people to live their lives as they choose to live them, unconstrained by the threat of force -- either from the government or from others. There's also the practical requirements for that freedom to mean anything; people should not be trapped by social or economic arrangements that drastically limit their opportunities. They should have the resources and opportunities necessary to have some control over their life.

The common good speaks for itself. We want people to be healthy, happy, fulfilled, and prosperous, with clean, safe, supportive surroundings. The government should adopt policies that promote these things. In practice this largely means establishing an economic system capable of producing wealth and prosperity; promoting things like scientific/medical research and art which benefit everyone in society; taking care of the environment and public health; combatting serious threats to the social fabric (like alcoholism or drug abuse); and so on.

I think those are the correct goals for a political system: what all governments everywhere should seek to accomplish. I'm curious, do others agree that this should be the purpose of a political system? These two goals of freedom of the common good, along with balancing act necessary between them, to me are the essence of liberalism, and are the starting point for my political philosophy.

---

Stating those goals is as far as we can go with pure philosophizing and thinking. Everything further, dealing with what actual political choices we should make, how to improve the current situation, and so on -- all that depends on empirical judgments about the world. Here's a few key points I think the facts establish:

1. Representative democracy is the best form of government currently known. Because it's so easy for those in power to become corrupt and self-serving, we need to keep governments accountable as much as possible. Democratic elections are a way of doing this. They're extremely imperfect, but they do work. And so representative democracy provides a much better way of constraining governments, holding them accountable, keeping them honest, than any other known arrangement does.
   
2. Market-based economies are by far the best currently-known economic arrangements. No other economic system has come close to the market-based economy in generating wealth and prosperity, in giving individuals the freedom and economic means to gain some control over their lives. Until we discover a better system, we should stick with a fundamentally market-based system.
   
3. We should extensively regulate this system to maximize people's welfare and freedom. The government should use as non-intrusive means as possible (e.g., redistributive taxation) to promote a fair, relatively equal distribution of income. If possible it should guarantee universal basic services to everyone: support in old age, health care, education, and a good deal of social support. It should intervene aggressively to correct flaws in the market system, as long as those flaws are amenable to solution.
   
4. Governments should be limited and subject to checks on their power. (The same should apply to other powerful organizations.) All concentrations of power are subject to abuse, and those in power convince themselves they're acting for the greater good. So it's important to keep limits on those in power, to keep what they do open and subject to scrutiny. Utopian plans which involve granting despotic powers to a governing body are generally doomed.

---

So as you can see, I think the current systems in Western Europe, Japan, South Korea, Aus/NZ, the USA, etc. are relatively close to the best known system. At no other time in human history have so many people been so free and so well-off. These systems are by no means perfect, but they're far superior to the systems of the past, and they're far superior to any other system that's been tried. So I disagree vehemently with suggestions for massive overhaul of the current political system. To be worth implementing, a political/social/economic system has to work, and it has to work in the real world, with real people and all their flaws, attempts to game the system to their own good, and so on

How would I actually change the current system, say here in the USA? Most of my changes are incremental, things that are part of daily political discussion (though a few aren't.) That's because I think the biggest challenges are practical -- we need to choose policies that succeed, and with something as complicated as society trial-and-error is the way to go. I think we should have much more progressive tax rates, and greatly expanded programs aimed at greater income equality. There's no "natural" ratio between the salary of a poor janitor and that of a rich CEO or doctor -- some difference is necessary for efficiency, but we should keep at closer to the levels of inequality seen in the 1950s than today's rather obscene ones. I think we should have a publicly-guaranteed universal healthcare program, along the line of France's or Australia's. I think we should have universal child-care, obligatory parental leave, and other policies designed to foster both gender equality and good childcare. I think we should scale back copyright laws, and perhaps switch completely away from "copyright" to a library system, where all works are available for free, and artists get paid from a taxpayer-supported fund depending on the popularity of their work. I think we should open up our borders dramatically, and let far more people who wish to immigrate do so. I think we should implement a serious policy to deal with global warming: either a steep carbon tax or a carbon cap-and-trade system with auctions and no loopholes. Etc.

 

[neonads]

I think those are the correct goals for a political system: what all governments everywhere should seek to accomplish. I'm curious, do others agree that this should be the purpose of a political system?

I do agree and believe that transparency is key to obtaining the most of both goals in a balanced and sustainable way.

So I disagree vehemently with suggestions for massive overhaul of the current political system.

I've yet to imagine or see a plan to incrementally increase transparency in government. There are no doubt many large corporations who owe their continuation as market leaders, or even as operational businesses, to manipulating politics in their favour. This is another feedback loop that cannot be so easily changed without bold policymaking.

The gentlest solution I can offer is that of an incentive based system of checks and balances throughout all levels of government. Each department of every level of government would employ a professional intelligence agent to act as it's representative. Every year there is a ballot held where each rep picks 'out of a hat' another department to spy on. All data within the government's domain must be accessable to all agents, failure to do so would result in an investigation and a monetary reward to the whistleblower payable by the offender. This should remove the need for domestic counter-intelligence as infiltrators and traitors would be unable to form networks without being detected.

All international intelligence activities would be handled by the military and remain off limits to the scheme. The reason being that it would not be an effective set of operations if under so much scrutiny and would be prone to infiltration. The other reason for leaving it with the military is that because they are not allowed to operate within the borders, they would have no need to spy on citizens except perhaps politicians in attempts to influence policy. In this case, a separate ballot system within the military would also curb this activity and provide chances for promotions as well as the cash incentive. All expositions would be made public.

 

[ebola?]

neonads

>>I assume you mean plant and innovations. With plant, they would remain the property of the business and go towards it's capital assets. There are already adequate definitions of what constitutes plant and what constitutes part of a building. When a business rents a premises, they get a lifetime contract meaning they can leave but the government cannot make them leave unless they break the law. It will also force the government to perform regular health and safety inspections as it's the state's property, just as a landlord would.>>

This gets a bit tricky when owners of firms (well, their employees, really) begin to transform the land on which the sit. This "built" environment is a key facet of advanced economic development. I don't think that this complication is in any way damning though.

>>It would work like this:

1. Company designs an innovation.
2. State can choose to buy management rights to the innovation at the price equalling the cost of it's research. The business must comply to all requests for original data for valuation and offers of purchase and cannot sell it's innovation to another business.
3. State sets a fixed price to sell to national businesses only, the price being ideally the one that maximises the total sales profit. Government economists would estimate this.
4. Originating company and state share the net profit from sale of the innovation.

This should prevent monopolies forming at the national level and give incentive to innovators and the state whilst keeping the trade secret in the hands of these parties.>>

My primary hesitation with the process you've outlined is the amount of power vested in the state, which may come to control any process that it wants, really, and will possess a massive concentration of proprietary knowledge.

>>Well I'd gut most, if not all of the derivative system anyway.>>

This gets tricky, as finance and other forms derived from but removed from production have played a key role in propping up the economy when it is otherwise down. Removal of such activity would cause immediate economic downturn, which would erode popular (and particularly business interests') support for the state.

>>If production is down due to loss in international market share, then the previous innovation scheme should right it, if possible.>>

But how? By effecting innovations unique to the inventing country, changing the international field of comparative advantages, and opening up new avenues of trade? There have been many cases where copy-catting has been more profitable. This'd then depend on the situation at hand.

>>If the loss is due to a global downturn, then it will prune those businesses that relied too heavily on exports - every business should thus have primarily a domestic target market.>>

I'm not sure how viable this is. The current division of labor is thoroughly global, particularly with markets for intermediate goods. For example, natural resources are concentrated in localized pockets throughout the globe. Furthermore, many firms depend on selling to consumers wealthier than their employees, and thus extend themselves into international trade.

I'm with you on this suggestion, but it looks like it'd be hard to get there.

>>
Much of the problem's of the Third World are caused from the use of imported currency to buy black market weapons. Perhaps a barter between nations would be better, primary goods for secondary goods. This will help them achieve industrial self-sufficiency. The government would buy the goods/services from the domestic market to exchange for the imported goods which it can in turn sell to the domestic market. This could also have the effect of preventing direct dealings with foreign businesses meaning you would deal mostly with Socialists, Autocrats, and others of the same system, but not so much with Capitalists.>>

Well, you'd need states that focus on importing goods for infrastructural development, and you'd begin with the initial roadblock of prior int'l disparities in wealth born of history.

All in all, good suggestions. I'm just nit-picking.

ebola

 

[ebola?]

Zorn:

>>It's useful I think to first lay out what the purpose or goals of the political system should be; and then to talk about the practical questions of what system best achieves those goals. (If we disagree about the first, we're having a philosophical debate and may never agree with one another; if we disagree about the second, we're just having a purely practical debate about what the facts suggest.)>>

Good point. But how often do we tend to disagree over the former?

>>
In my mind, the ultimate purpose of a political system is to seek two goals: first, upholding the freedom (or autonomy) of its members, and second, working for their common good. Sometimes these two goals will be in tension, and a good political system will have to come up with a balance.
>>

What about maximizing each individual's "good" (utilitarianism)?
The other ultimate ends I can think of are kinda wackier (piety, "progress", coming to better understand the universe, etc.).

>>
By freedom, I mean several things. There's the freedom of people to live their lives as they choose to live them, unconstrained by the threat of force -- either from the government or from others. There's also the practical requirements for that freedom to mean anything; people should not be trapped by social or economic arrangements that drastically limit their opportunities. They should have the resources and opportunities necessary to have some control over their life.
>>

Fair enough. But what constitutes force? And what if the context of a monopoly of force (which is routinely applied) serves as a precondition for non-coerced (genuinely or superficially non-coerced) social interactions?

If we think of freedom as autonomy, I think that there is a great deal more than this "non-interference". Wouldn't maximizing autonomy be maximizing the available courses of action that one could take (or latent self-potentials that one could actualize), these courses of action constrained primarily by factors internal to the person (think auto-nomos), minimizing outside barriers? You seem to take a bit of this on in the second half of the above quoted paragraph. . .

>>
The common good speaks for itself.>>

Oooh, not quite. Happiness? Wisdom? Progress? Some system of virtue? etc. . .

>>I think those are the correct goals for a political system: what all governments everywhere should seek to accomplish. I'm curious, do others agree that this should be the purpose of a political system?>>

In general, I agree (nitpicky critique is my "shtick" ).

>>These two goals of freedom of the common good, along with balancing act necessary between them, to me are the essence of liberalism, and are the starting point for my political philosophy.
>>

This gets more complicated though. Freedom as "freedom-from" lends itself to liberalism (the state acts as an arbiter of interests). But if we think that political autonomy is important, or civic responsibility, etc., all possibly within "the common good", we have to stray a (tiny) bit from liberalism. I should also add that diverse thinkers, from Marx to Rand, operate mostly within the terrain of liberalism.

>>Representative democracy is the best form of government currently known. Because it's so easy for those in power to become corrupt and self-serving, we need to keep governments accountable as much as possible. Democratic elections are a way of doing this. They're extremely imperfect, but they do work. And so representative democracy provides a much better way of constraining governments, holding them accountable, keeping them honest, than any other known arrangement does.>>

This sounds sensible. However, the measures necessary to ensure that representatives represent (and represent the right people) might entail an utterly radical restructuring of politics. Also, there may yet be other, fruitful methods of political organization that we have yet to try.

>>Market-based economies are by far the best currently-known economic arrangements. No other economic system has come close to the market-based economy in generating wealth and prosperity, in giving individuals the freedom and economic means to gain some control over their lives. Until we discover a better system, we should stick with a fundamentally market-based system.>>

While none of what I'll say directly contradicts your sensible declaration, I must add some nuance:
1. Free-market capitalism and state-bureaucratic economic planning are not the sole alternatives.
2. Some socialist variants include markets (but not capitalist markets).
3. Many economic models have not had their experimental test (although failed tests wreak severe problems)

>>We should extensively regulate this system to maximize people's welfare and freedom. The government should use as non-intrusive means as possible (e.g., redistributive taxation) to promote a fair, relatively equal distribution of income. If possible it should guarantee universal basic services to everyone: support in old age, health care, education, and a good deal of social support. It should intervene aggressively to correct flaws in the market system, as long as those flaws are amenable to solution.>>

Again, sensible. However, does redistribution remove the incentives that effect productivity and innovation?

>>Governments should be limited and subject to checks on their power. (The same should apply to other powerful organizations.) All concentrations of power are subject to abuse, and those in power convince themselves they're acting for the greater good. So it's important to keep limits on those in power, to keep what they do open and subject to scrutiny. Utopian plans which involve granting despotic powers to a governing body are generally doomed.>>

But what sort of checks would reign in abuse of power effectively? What about when one concentrated power (the state) is used to reign in others (capitalist firms)? In Political Parties, Michels argues that these problems are insurmountable.

>>So as you can see, I think the current systems in Western Europe, Japan, South Korea, Aus/NZ, the USA, etc. are relatively close to the best known system. At no other time in human history have so many people been so free and so well-off. These systems are by no means perfect, but they're far superior to the systems of the past, and they're far superior to any other system that's been tried.>>

I think that this is based on an epistemological misconception. We have a world economy and politics play out on an international scale. Much of the prosperity of the nations that you note depends on deprivation of the Global South/Third World. These disparities were born initially out of imperialism, but the spread of democracy and markets doesn't appear to be fixing things.

>>So I disagree vehemently with suggestions for massive overhaul of the current political system. To be worth implementing, a political/social/economic system has to work, and it has to work in the real world, with real people and all their flaws, attempts to game the system to their own good, and so on>>

Like I said: we don't know what works 'till we try it.

>>I think we should have much more progressive tax rates, and greatly expanded programs aimed at greater income equality. There's no "natural" ratio between the salary of a poor janitor and that of a rich CEO or doctor>>

Hear hear!

>>I think we should have a publicly-guaranteed universal healthcare program, along the line of France's or Australia's. I think we should have universal child-care, obligatory parental leave, and other policies designed to foster both gender equality and good childcare. I think we should scale back copyright laws, and perhaps switch completely away from "copyright" to a library system, where all works are available for free, and artists get paid from a taxpayer-supported fund depending on the popularity of their work. I think we should open up our borders dramatically, and let far more people who wish to immigrate do so. I think we should implement a serious policy to deal with global warming: either a steep carbon tax or a carbon cap-and-trade system with auctions and no loopholes. Etc.>>

I'm with you on this too.
In sum, you sound like me when I put on my "liberal hat".

ebola

 

[zorn]

Hi ebola,

>>So as you can see, I think the current systems in Western Europe, Japan, South Korea, Aus/NZ, the USA, etc. are relatively close to the best known system. At no other time in human history have so many people been so free and so well-off. These systems are by no means perfect, but they're far superior to the systems of the past, and they're far superior to any other system that's been tried.>>

I think that this is based on an epistemological misconception. We have a world economy and politics play out on an international scale. Much of the prosperity of the nations that you note depends on deprivation of the Global South/Third World. These disparities were born initially out of imperialism, but the spread of democracy and markets doesn't appear to be fixing things.

This is entirely wrong, I think, on a number of levels. I've heard it a number of times and it seems to be the standard 'escape' argument, so I want to spend a little time on it. It's really a pretty weak brew.

First: you say that the world economy & politics are global now, implying cross-country comparisons are of little use. But this is transparently incorrect. Politically, only a small handful of elections, votes, etc of any not occur above the national level these days, and those are in the EU. Economically, things are nearly the same. For all the talk about increasing "globalization," most economic activity is still internal to countries. Today in the USA, the sum total of imports and exports comes up to only 23% of the total goods+services produced in the country. (And that's probably an overestimate, since I did a naive calculation with gross value and not value added.) The majority of this trade, well over half, comes from other rich countries. And we're vastly more globalized than in the past -- in 1960 exports+imports came out to only 9% of the total economy. When the USA was becoming rich, foreign trade was only a small part of the economic picture!

Second: you say that the deprivation of the Third World was initially born out of imperialism. This is false, as a look at the economic history of any of these countries will tell you. China and India did not become poor countries when they were subjugated by European countries. Rather, they were more-or-less always quite poor, just as Europe prior to 1400 or so was quite poor. What we can see happened was that Europe began to grow much wealthier and more advanced, roughly starting with the Renaissance. Because they were so advanced, European countries were able to colonize, conquer, and dominate the rest of the world (instead of vice versa.) But the wealth came first.

It's not clear whether their domination of the Third World colonies benefited the imperialist countries at all! It may even have been harmful. (Note that I'm talking about the countries as wholes here -- obviously certain politically-connected individuals benefited greatly.) Consider: Spain and Portugal had, by far, the widest colonial empire and influence in the early centuries of imperialism. And their dealings were of an especially exploitative, rapacious, and violent kind: witness the conquistadors in South&Central America. Yet Spain and Portugal's relative wealth declined during this time, as they were overtaken by the UK, Netherlands, and France. If exploitation of the Third World were the source of wealth, we'd expect Spain & Portugal to have become fabulously wealthier during this time, when in fact the reverse happened!

Indeed the same pattern plays itself out over & over again. During the 1700s and 1800s, Britain ruled a huge swathe of Third World countries. Yet during this time it was overtaken by the USA and nearly by Germany, both countries with essentially no colonies!

Finally: you say that the spread of democracy and markets doesn't appear to be improving things in poorer countries. But just look at: China. India. Singapore. South Korea. Japan. Taiwan. The UAE. Israel. Ireland. Costa Rica. Puerto Rico. Clearly they are improving things in many places. All these countries have become rich, or much richer, through market-based economies, global trade, and (in some of them) democracy. Now it's true that not all countries with market-based economies have become rich -- it's clear that there are other requirements as well. (Poor government, with corruption, rent-seeking, etc., seems to be the main problem IMO.)

The theory you espoused -- that the wealth of rich countries is just stolen the Third World, that rich countries are only rich because they exploit the poor countries -- is a fantasy. This theory would require that poor countries were richer once, and only became poor from exploitation -- yet poor countries have pretty much always been poor. This theory would imply that poor countries that isolate themselves from the rich countries (like North Korea, Cuba, or pre-Deng China) would be richer since they aren't exploited -- but they are generally poorer than the countries that do trade with the rich world. This theory would require that the decrease in wealth among poor countries would bear some relation to the increase in wealth among rich countries -- but look at the historical income tables, there's just not enough money there to account for even a fraction of rich countries' growth. Back in the times of the Roman Empire, wealthy nations may have got their wealth through domination and robbery of other countries -- (though even then I suspect it was only ever enough for a small elite, not enough to raise the average income appreciably) -- but certainly not in the modern era.

The truth is that most countries, for most of history, have been desperately poor. In modern times, some European countries managed to develop and become rich, through the magic of science & technological development and stable, law-abiding market-based economies. Since then, many other countries grasped this have become rich; while those who didn't have uniformly remained poor. The evidence is quite clear on this -- everywhere you look you can see another example. It's crazy I think to subscribe to some alternate history where exploitation is the source of wealth.


-----

>>Market-based economies are by far the best currently-known economic arrangements. No other economic system has come close to the market-based economy in generating wealth and prosperity, in giving individuals the freedom and economic means to gain some control over their lives. Until we discover a better system, we should stick with a fundamentally market-based system.>>

While none of what I'll say directly contradicts your sensible declaration, I must add some nuance:
1. Free-market capitalism and state-bureaucratic economic planning are not the sole alternatives.
2. Some socialist variants include markets (but not capitalist markets).
3. Many economic models have not had their experimental test (although failed tests wreak severe problems)

[...]

Like I said: we don't know what works 'till we try it.

By market-based I mean just that -- market-based. Certainly not some right-wing laissez-faire fantasy. So I'm not sure what you mean hereCertainly, there's a wide set of options that are market-based -- some good, some bad, some untried but worth trying.

Yet I'm not sure what you're suggesting. Socialism per se has been tried -- and failed miserably. Anyone who wants to propose a socialist or similar economy needs to really deal with "actually existing socialism" and explain how their idea is different and why it will avoid the problems that made every attempt at a socialist state a dismal failure.

Fair enough. But what constitutes force? And what if the context of a monopoly of force (which is routinely applied) serves as a precondition for non-coerced (genuinely or superficially non-coerced) social interactions?

If we think of freedom as autonomy, I think that there is a great deal more than this "non-interference". . .

I'm explicitly rejecting the wacky-libertarian view that freedom is just freedom from certain unauthorized uses of force. This is one component of freedom, but the others you mentioned are just as important. I'm not sure what you mean by the bit about "the context of a monopoly of force." It's obvious that worlds where the use of force is limited are often going to lead to freer actions than worlds where it's not -- I think that's a big reason most people prefer a world with force in the hands of the police and strict regulations on those police, to an anarchic Wild West with various private armies, armed gangs, armed individuals, etc.

This gets more complicated though. Freedom as "freedom-from" lends itself to liberalism (the state acts as an arbiter of interests). But if we think that political autonomy is important, or civic responsibility, etc., all possibly within "the common good", we have to stray a (tiny) bit from liberalism. I should also add that diverse thinkers, from Marx to Rand, operate mostly within the terrain of liberalism.

On the contrary, I think liberalism is exemplified by this balance, between freedom on the one hand and the rationalist pursuit of the common good on the other. Every liberal government has implemented policies -- from copyright laws, to setting rules for inheritance, contract, and liabilitiy, to currency issuance, to education, to defense funding -- policies which actively contrain individual liberties and interests in the pursuit of the common good.

However, the measures necessary to ensure that representatives represent (and represent the right people) might entail an utterly radical restructuring of politics. Also, there may yet be other, fruitful methods of political organization that we have yet to try.

There might be more fruitful methods, but I don't think anyone has come up with them yet. And by representative democracy, I mean just that, what we have in the USA, France, UK, Italy, Israel (for Jews at least), Japan, etc. What makes you think representatives in these countries aren't representative? Keep in mind that "representing the people" doesn't mean "following my preferred policies."

Again, sensible. However, does redistribution remove the incentives that effect productivity and innovation?

It may change the incentives. If you tax income and, say, use the proceeds to fund a "negative tax" on low-income workers (like the EITC), then you greatly increase monetary incentives for those workers, at the cost of slightly lowering monetary incentives for wealthy workers. I think this is a good tradeoff, especially since high-income/status work has plenty of non-monetary incentives of its own. But it does give a good reason for limiting taxes to a certain level. Tax rates of 80% probably have a severe incentive-reducing effect; rates of 40%, not so much.

 

[IGNVS]

maktub

 

[neonads]

Ebola

My primary hesitation with the process you've outlined is the amount of power vested in the state, which may come to control any process that it wants, really, and will possess a massive concentration of proprietary knowledge.

This system will only work with a completely transparent government as it would then come to fully represent the people. So rather than it being an entity that holds all the cards and can mete out reward and punishment for it's own good, it becomes a collective bureaucracy and repository for the whole nation that prevents individuals from forming their own parasitic hierarchies.

It's very tribal-like, just on a grander scale. Instead of having your alpha-male, charismatic leader who inspires unity in response to threat, you have a robust set of laws that enforces unity constantly. The threats that face a modern nation are smaller in relative scale but many in number, we need to keep ahead of these threats because they provide the cover for treason.

This gets tricky, as finance and other forms derived from but removed from production have played a key role in propping up the economy when it is otherwise down. Removal of such activity would cause immediate economic downturn, which would erode popular (and particularly business interests') support for the state.

Financiers are experts in this field and will detect any changes imposed that threaten their business. I'll have to work on this one, and sharpen up my knowledge of finance too.

But how? By effecting innovations unique to the inventing country, changing the international field of comparative advantages, and opening up new avenues of trade? There have been many cases where copy-catting has been more profitable. This'd then depend on the situation at hand.

Yes, just like that. Copy-catting is fine. If they are successful then it shows that they read the market better and produced a superior product, even if it's quality is not.

I'm not sure how viable this is. The current division of labor is thoroughly global, particularly with markets for intermediate goods. For example, natural resources are concentrated in localized pockets throughout the globe. Furthermore, many firms depend on selling to consumers wealthier than their employees, and thus extend themselves into international trade.

I'm with you on this suggestion, but it looks like it'd be hard to get there.

It does require a lot of upheaval at the moment. I'll just have to focus on filling the gap.

Well, you'd need states that focus on importing goods for infrastructural development, and you'd begin with the initial roadblock of prior int'l disparities in wealth born of history.

Ah but those disparities are not absolute in value and will undoubtably change for the better in response to the non-interventionism. The wealthy nation may have an abundance of technology, but in the marketplace as a product, it will only fetch so high a price as others are willing to pay. For the unfortunate countries that have little resources, there is little that can be done outside a global welfare system that eases the transition back to the land's carrying capacity and/or relaxing immigration policy.

Another framework I'm working in is the nation=organism analogy. It permeates every facet and I go to it first whenever I have a sticking point. Nature is remarkably adaptable and has left many examples of solutions to analogous problems.

Once again, thanks for the counterpoints.

 

[ebola?]

Heh...I made a bunch of master-threads so I could neglect them.
No, real life'll sneak up on you.

>>
First: you say that the world economy & politics are global now, implying cross-country comparisons are of little use. But this is transparently incorrect. Politically, only a small handful of elections, votes, etc of any not occur above the national level these days, and those are in the EU. Economically, things are nearly the same. For all the talk about increasing "globalization," most economic activity is still internal to countries. Today in the USA, the sum total of imports and exports comes up to only 23% of the total goods+services produced in the country. (And that's probably an overestimate, since I did a naive calculation with gross value and not value added.)>>

I would like to see more of the primary data that lies behind this assertion. I would want to know specifically how such data handles multinational corporations who, while based in the United States, and whose customer base is primarily in the US as well, depend on foreign labor.

I also did not mean to imply that there has been a sudden upsurgence of globalization in the last forty years or so. What I was trying to say is that capitalist economic activity has depended on international trade from its inception. While such trade never encompassed the majority of economic transactions, flows of raw materials, unfinished goods to zones of cheap labor, and finished goods toward zones with healthy bases of consumers have played key roles in economic development, and domestic economies have structured themselves in light of such international economic activity.

>>When the USA was becoming rich, foreign trade was only a small part of the economic picture!>>

In light of the above picture, I would argue that foreign arms trade played a key role in the ascent of US manufacturing (Silver and Arrighi 1994).

>>Second: you say that the deprivation of the Third World was initially born out of imperialism. This is false, as a look at the economic history of any of these countries will tell you. China and India did not become poor countries when they were subjugated by European countries. Rather, they were more-or-less always quite poor, just as Europe prior to 1400 or so was quite poor. What we can see happened was that Europe began to grow much wealthier and more advanced, roughly starting with the Renaissance. Because they were so advanced, European countries were able to colonize, conquer, and dominate the rest of the world (instead of vice versa.) But the wealth came first.
>>

I was probably way too heavy-handed in my initial description. While I agree that it's not like nations in the global South were bustling centers of manufacture and commerce before they were invaded, and I will concede that Europe's initial prowess in such invasion depended on a prior upswing in economic and scientific vigor, Europe's success following these invasions depended on how the global South was later administered. Indeed, it is in part because of Europe's ability to draw on raw materials and cheap labor in the global South (the quintessential cases being raw materials mined in Africa and textile production in India in the 1800s), that development in the global North accelerated further and development in the global South stagnated.

>>It's not clear whether their domination of the Third World colonies benefited the imperialist countries at all! It may even have been harmful. (Note that I'm talking about the countries as wholes here -- obviously certain politically-connected individuals benefited greatly.)>>

I would say that these politically connected individuals proved key for steering the course of world economic and political history.

>>Consider: Spain and Portugal had, by far, the widest colonial empire and influence in the early centuries of imperialism. And their dealings were of an especially exploitative, rapacious, and violent kind: witness the conquistadors in South&Central America. Yet Spain and Portugal's relative wealth declined during this time, as they were overtaken by the UK, Netherlands, and France. If exploitation of the Third World were the source of wealth, we'd expect Spain & Portugal to have become fabulously wealthier during this time, when in fact the reverse happened!>>

The Spanish case is an interesting one, as indigenous Americans presented greater resistance to laboring under the regimes of those who occupied them, particularly as slaves. You then have these 3 latter nations coming to benefit from their own later participation in the colonial system. But yes, I think that direct usurpation of wealth from colonial subordinates is not the single or even primary key to understanding the global North's dominance in accruing wealth.

>>
Finally: you say that the spread of democracy and markets doesn't appear to be improving things in poorer countries. But just look at: China. India. Singapore. South Korea. Japan. Taiwan. The UAE. Israel. Ireland. Costa Rica. Puerto Rico. Clearly they are improving things in many places. All these countries have become rich, or much richer, through market-based economies, global trade, and (in some of them) democracy. Now it's true that not all countries with market-based economies have become rich -- it's clear that there are other requirements as well. (Poor government, with corruption, rent-seeking, etc., seems to be the main problem IMO.)
>>

I would say that many of these nations, in particular South Korea, Japan, and Taiwan, have benefited by rising in position in the world economic system. Rather than continuing to supply cheap labor to foreign multinational corporations through subcontracting, these countries have launched their own widely successful multinational firms, drawing from cheap labor and employing subcontractors based elsewhere. Now I'm not saying that democracy and market participation are bad things (well, I'm deeply ambivalent about market participation), but they're no panaceas.

>>This theory would imply that poor countries that isolate themselves from the rich countries (like North Korea, Cuba, or pre-Deng China) would be richer since they aren't exploited>>

Not really. I do contend, however, that we can imagine far more equitable frameworks for international economic development.

>>This theory would require that the decrease in wealth among poor countries would bear some relation to the increase in wealth among rich countries -- but look at the historical income tables, there's just not enough money there to account for even a fraction of rich countries' growth.>>

Once again, I would say that we would need to look at the flows of raw materials and labor, not direct pillage of wealth.
...
Thanks for the very elaborate perspective. Gave me many things to think about and many ways to question my own views.
More on this later. . .

ebola

 

[ebola?]

Fuck...my response got deleted. Well, one more time:

For Zorn:

>>
Like I said: we don't know what works 'till we try it.
By market-based I mean just that -- market-based. Certainly not some right-wing laissez-faire fantasy. So I'm not sure what you mean hereCertainly, there's a wide set of options that are market-based -- some good, some bad, some untried but worth trying.>>

What I was trying to say is that you can have markets outside of capitalist social relations. For example, imagine an economy composed mostly of workers' cooperatives. There would be an intensive and extensive market but not capitalism per se.

>>Yet I'm not sure what you're suggesting. Socialism per se has been tried -- and failed miserably. Anyone who wants to propose a socialist or similar economy needs to really deal with "actually existing socialism" and explain how their idea is different and why it will avoid the problems that made every attempt at a socialist state a dismal failure.>>

Socialism is simply a system where property is somehow held in common rather than privately owned (particularly by capitalists). Past socialist attempts (well, almost all of them) have used a bureaucratic state to administer property relations. These attempts have all failed. But I think that there are other systems through which shared property could be administered outside of the state.

>>
I'm explicitly rejecting the wacky-libertarian view that freedom is just freedom from certain unauthorized uses of force. This is one component of freedom, but the others you mentioned are just as important. I'm not sure what you mean by the bit about "the context of a monopoly of force." It's obvious that worlds where the use of force is limited are often going to lead to freer actions than worlds where it's not -- I think that's a big reason most people prefer a world with force in the hands of the police and strict regulations on those police, to an anarchic Wild West with various private armies, armed gangs, armed individuals, etc.>>

Given the uescalation of the death toll from war in the 20th C. and bloated size of existing militaries, I don't think that we can say with confidence that a monopoly of (legitimate) force reduces the application of force.

>>On the contrary, I think liberalism is exemplified by this balance, between freedom on the one hand and the rationalist pursuit of the common good on the other. Every liberal government has implemented policies -- from copyright laws, to setting rules for inheritance, contract, and liabilitiy, to currency issuance, to education, to defense funding -- policies which actively contrain individual liberties and interests in the pursuit of the common good.>>


This is just a pedantic semantic point, so ignore if you'd like. Classical liberalism, as I know it, is solely concerned with maximizing the "freedom from" of each individual. The state then acts as an arbiter when people step on each others' shoes. The common good enters the picture solely as an aggregate of individual goods, and it's really only an implicit goal. Insofar as other goals are introduced, you have other political frameworks seeping in. Civic responsibility, for example, stems from republicanism.

>>
There might be more fruitful methods, but I don't think anyone has come up with them yet. And by representative democracy, I mean just that, what we have in the USA, France, UK, Italy, Israel (for Jews at least), Japan, etc. What makes you think representatives in these countries aren't representative? Keep in mind that "representing the people" doesn't mean "following my preferred policies.">>

We need to look to contemporary political participation as we conduct it concretely. We can choose our vote from a limited array of candidates (determined by wealthy donors, mass media, etc.) who will be our "representative leaders". For the most part, the electorate doesn't participate in creating and modifying the legislation that they must obey (ballot measures excepted). Authentic democracy would require thorough-going participation by the populace at large in their own rule.

>>
It may change the incentives. If you tax income and, say, use the proceeds to fund a "negative tax" on low-income workers (like the EITC), then you greatly increase monetary incentives for those workers, at the cost of slightly lowering monetary incentives for wealthy workers. I think this is a good tradeoff, especially since high-income/status work has plenty of non-monetary incentives of its own. But it does give a good reason for limiting taxes to a certain level. Tax rates of 80% probably have a severe incentive-reducing effect; rates of 40%, not so much.>>

I was just playing devil's advocate here. I agree whole-heartedly. It's really too bad that the negative income tax became so unpopular.

ebola

 

[ebola?]

neonads:

>>
This system will only work with a completely transparent government as it would then come to fully represent the people. So rather than it being an entity that holds all the cards and can mete out reward and punishment for it's own good, it becomes a collective bureaucracy and repository for the whole nation that prevents individuals from forming their own parasitic hierarchies.

It's very tribal-like, just on a grander scale. Instead of having your alpha-male, charismatic leader who inspires unity in response to threat, you have a robust set of laws that enforces unity constantly. The threats that face a modern nation are smaller in relative scale but many in number, we need to keep ahead of these threats because they provide the cover for treason.>>

My hesitation here is that government as such cannot be transparent like this (see Robert Michels Political Parties).

>>
Financiers are experts in this field and will detect any changes imposed that threaten their business. I'll have to work on this one, and sharpen up my knowledge of finance too.>>

Yes, but self-interested action in the financial sector often causes systemic instability.

>>
Yes, just like that. Copy-catting is fine. If they are successful then it shows that they read the market better and produced a superior product, even if it's quality is not.>>

I'm not so sure. Copy-cat dominated industry restrains the major economic restructuring that is often necessary to unfetter continued economic growth (see Robert Brenner).

>>Ah but those disparities are not absolute in value and will undoubtably change for the better in response to the non-interventionism. The wealthy nation may have an abundance of technology, but in the marketplace as a product, it will only fetch so high a price as others are willing to pay. For the unfortunate countries that have little resources, there is little that can be done outside a global welfare system that eases the transition back to the land's carrying capacity and/or relaxing immigration policy.>>

Mmmm...I'm just skeptical that the unregulated market will fix prior social inequalities. However, there has not yet been the right empirical test.

>>Another framework I'm working in is the nation=organism analogy. It permeates every facet and I go to it first whenever I have a sticking point. Nature is remarkably adaptable and has left many examples of solutions to analogous problems.>>

This is very reminiscent of Durkheim's ideas. I think that it is often more useful to think of society as characterized by stratified groups in conflict, latent or not (not well-functioning interdependence).

ebola