perfidy

I think in some ways I was primed to accept Moldbug before ever I heard of him.  Not by my growing conviction that Conservatism in philosophy and practice was seriously flawed, not by the obvious dysfunctions of our republic, and of other governments around the world.  But by science fiction.  Frank Herbert, Neal Stephenson, John Brunner, Robert Heinlein - some of my favorite sf authors - all had in their stories things that cracked the door that Moldbug later kicked open.

Stephenson is the obvious one.  In Snow Crash and Diamond Age, he describes a society descended from, but very different from our own.  In Moldbuggian terms, the USG collapses - and the result is not quite a reset.  There is a remnant USG, the Feds, who are still exhibiting all the dysfunction we've come to love, but unable to inflict it on everyone else.  Everywhere else, the quasi-national franchise state has taken over.  These entities are soveriegn nations competing for customers, and have adopted a bewildering variety of governmental structures.  Mr. Lee's Greater Hong Kong was the best of these, a free-wheeling nation state run by Mr. Lee and whose citizenship was available for a fee.

Moving this world further into the future, the Diamond Age imagined a world where nanotechnology has become a commonplace.  At the pinacle of prosperity and power in this new age are the Neo-Victorians, who live on islands constructed by advanced technology off the coast near large cities.  Like most of the sovereign states in the books, citizenship is voluntary - but there is no indication that the Victorians practice any sort of democracy.  They have a queen, and the aristocracy are referred to as "Equity-Lords," a term that I would later find particularly apt in light of Moldbug's neo-cameralist ideas.

Stephenson, across the decades of future encompassed in these two books (from contextual clues, Lord Alexander Chung-Sik Finkle-McGraw is probably about my age) portrays a world unfolding more or less as Moldbug might have imagined - the collapse of Democracy, the growth of thousands of micro-states, a return to classical international law.  What struck me particularly about the New Atlantis of the Neo-Victorians was that the basis of their prosperity was described as being cultural - a culture that rejected most of the political theory of the past two or three centuries.  They were reactionaries, they lived in a society of their own creation designed to correct the flaws of the 20th Century West.  They wrapped themselves in manners and propriety, yet they retained the essential liberty of the Anglo-Saxon tradition.

When I finally read Moldbug a decade after I first read Diamond Age, this was the image that kept popping up in my mind, and probably contributed greatly to its plausibility for me.

Frank Herbert is best known for the Dune series, and for fathering a son who is actively ruining his father's legacy.  As interesting, fully-realized, well-written and just fabulous as Dune is, there is another book that not many have read.  Herbert's Dosadi Experiment is in many ways more interesting than Dune.  Rather than exploring the border between religion and politics, it explores politics more or less straight on.

Since not many people have read Dosadi, here's a primer. In Dosadi, interstellar travel is possible through the efforts of the Caleban, intelligent stars who can teleport you from planet to planet.  The ConSentiency is the interstellar government of a largely peaceful multi-species society.  One of the key elements of this government is the Bureau of Sabotage:

...sometime in the far future, government becomes terrifyingly efficient. Red tape no longer exists: laws are conceived of, passed, funded, and executed within hours, rather than months. The bureaucratic machinery becomes a juggernaut, rolling over human concerns and welfare with terrible speed, jerking the universe of sentients one way, then another, threatening to destroy everything in a fit of spastic reactions. In short, the speed of government goes beyond sentient control.

...BuSab began as a terrorist organization whose sole purpose was to frustrate the workings of government in order to give sentients a chance to reflect upon changes and deal with them. Having saved sentiency from its government, BuSab was officially recognized as a necessary check on the power of government.  First a corps, then a bureau, BuSab gained legally recognized powers to interfere in the workings of any world, of any species, of any government or corporation, answerable only to themselves.

Crucial to the progress of the story are the Gowachin, a frog-like species with an interesting legal system:

The Gowachin regard their legal practices as the strongest evidence that they are civilized. Gowachin law is based upon the notion of a healthy disrespect for all laws; the purpose of this notion is to avoid the stultifying accretion of a body of laws and precedents that bind Gowachin mechanically. In a Gowachin trial, everything is on trial: every participant, including the judges; every law; even the foundational precept of Gowachin law. Legal ideas from other systems are turned on their head: someone pronounced "innocent" (guilty in other terms) by the court is torn to pieces by angry spectators; judges may have bias ("if I can decide for my side, I will"), though not prejudice ("I will decide for my side, regardless"); defendant and plaintiff are chosen at trial by the side bringing the complaint choosing one role or the other; torture is permitted; and all procedural rules may be violated, but only by finding conflict within procedural rules (an example of Nomic).

Gowachin law is illustrative of a dominant theme in Herbert's books set in this universe: that governments, law, and bureaucracy (collectively, society's tools for regulating itself) are dangerous when allowed to escape human (sapient) control. In both novels, the Bureau of Sabotage (BuSab) plays a major role. An official bureau, its mandate is to slow the workings of government(s) to ensure that the machinery of governance never overpowers those subject to its power. Historically, BuSab was created when government had become terrifyingly efficient, with laws conceived, mandated, and funded within hours, thus subjecting sapients to an overpowering bureaucratic juggernaut.

Gowachin legal practices are to law and the courts what BuSab is to government bureaucracy: a governor on an engine, preventing a static pronouncement on the state of things (real or intended) from ever over-ruling sentient judgement or discreation at the contingent moment. Inasmuch as only sapience or full consciousness is capable of dealing with a dynamic universe, no procedural set judicial algorithm can ever supersede or effectively protect sapience.

This aspect of the novels is echoed in Dune Messiah, when the Emperor, Paul, rejects a request from a subject world for a constitution. Ostensibly, the purpose is to provide basic guarantees for the people; in reality, it's an attempt to check the Emperor's power with legal limits. Paul justifies his decision by arguing, in his official pronouncement, that constitutions are dead things, limited and limiting to what can be currently conceived as a threat from which the people require protection, ultimately enfeebling them by depriving them of the essential human challenge to deal with an ever-changing universe.

(Both of those quotes are from Wikipedia.)  The main character of the story is Jorj X. McKie, a Sabateur Extraordinaire and the only Human admitted to the Goawachin Bar as a legum.  The center of the story is the planet Dosadi, an experiment conducted with the connivance of one of the Calaban.  Humans and Gowachin are sequestered on the planet Dosadi, a poisonous desert whose only inhabitable area is one river valley.  In this valley is Chu, a city of 89 million humans and Gowachin.  They cannot leave, and every form of poisonous and intoxicating substance known to either species is available.  Many forms of government have been tried on Dosadi - as the story begins, it is a dictatorship.  But one thing that the Dosadi are not allowed to remove is the DemoPol, which is something of a combination of opinion poll, propaganda device, and election tool.  On Dosadi, it is recognized that the DemoPol is one of the chief means of their oppression.

The Dosadi Experiment is monstrously cruel - hundreds of millions of sentient beings forced to lived in horrible conditions over generations, and forbidden any solution that would improve their lot.  It is a cruel society, necessarily; violent and callous.  To maintain a civilization under these conditions is almost impossible, but those most capable of survival under these conditions are very competent indeed.

I imagine that Moldbug would say that Dosadi is an exaggeration of things we see in our society - not so cruel, not on the edge of Malthusian collapse - but similar in its callousness, crime, and most importantly the inability to change what we recognize to be broken.  I remember feeling how odd to entertain the notion that something with "demos" in it could be bad - democracy is the ultimate good, as I had been taught.  If you haven't read the book, do so immediately.

Heinlein has been much more discussed in the context of politics - especially Starship Troopers.  I think that Farnham's Freehold and Moon is a Harsh Mistress are both more accurate representations of Heinlein's actual politics.  Certainly more so than the typical idea that the state in Troopers is fascist, which is obviously false to anyone who has read the book.  Heinlein talked a lot about authority and responsibility, and how they need to be properly aligned for there to be a functional society.  The key bit is that only veterans may participate in the government - people who have demonstrated that they have at least the potential to put society's needs ahead of their own are the only ones allowed near the levers of power.  Others, the taxpayers, are granted all the civil rights we expect save only the franchise.  They are free, but are subjects.

Mistress, on the other hand, introduced me to anarchism and libertarianism in the persons of Prof. de la Paz and Mannie.  But Heinlein did put a royalist in the mix, Stuart Rene "Stu" LaJoie.  I think that reading and enjoying this book was the extent of my serious belief in libertarianism.  Not that I have not (and continue to have) a deep sympathy with many libertarian ideas about many things.  I just don't think it can exist in the pure form.  Heinlein in general was skeptical of democracy, and I think that a lot of that seeped in deep, only to bubble up later.

Finally, John Brunner's Shockwave Rider.  Not a dystopian novel, by any means, but the United States of this world has definitely fallen down in a lot of ways.  A coarsened culture, callousness, violence and crime, corruption in government - what we see now, turned up a few notches.  In many ways, this was a precursor to the cyberpunk genre - computer worms, the hacker hero, bleak environment, corporate and gov't thuggery.  Notably, the book was the first to include the idea of the self-replicating computer virus, and also the Delphi Pool, which bears a passing resemblance to DARPA's Policy Analysis Market.

The politics of Brunner's book verge toward the socialist, but yet with a healthy dose of libertarianism.  While I think his solution is more than a bit utopian; like Snow Crash, his portrayal of a democratic government overwhelmed by organized crime, and the social decay created by too rapidly changing technology is vivid, and powerful.  Shockwave Rider didn't effect me so much with its politics, directly, but by the idea that wisdom is not the same as intelligence.  You hear that a lot of course, but this book showed it.  Rationality and logic and science are only tools, powerful tools to be sure; but if you have a society that is not founded on wisdom you get atomization, grief, violence and cruelty.  Brunner might not agree with this - but I think that the idea that you have to live for something outside yourself is more of an argument for monarchy than a democracy - people link themselves more naturally to people than abstracts.

The Libertarian / Formalist debate continues over at Aretae and Foseti.  Just start at the top and keep reading.  I've been in meetings all day, and haven't done much more than skim - more updates on this tomorrow.

Kids, I have come into possession of a $75 Amazon gift card.  While I could easily fill this with items from my wishlist, I was wondering if anyone has recommendations.  Read a good book lately?  Let me know.

Over at Aretae, the debate continues.  Finbarr and Foseti are arguing the Formalist/Moldbug case, and Aretae the Libertarian.  I have to say, this is some of the best debate I've seen on the web.  This is how it should be - people trying to make clear arguments, without making recourse to emotion, or straw men.  This, in other words, is fun.

I haven't had a chance to read thoroughly and weigh in on it all, but I will as soon as I have a moment.

In chronological order, here's the stuff:

• Do the formalists disagree?
• Foseti vs. Aretae
• The formalist libertarian debate part 336
• Formalists vs. Libertarians II

I enjoin you to read it.  And the comments.  There'll be a test.  And while you're at it, go ahead and read Germania and Finbarr's response, The Tribal Origins of Totalitarianism.

It figures that I would finally get around to blogging about Anti-Democracy, Reaction, and allied topics, and Moldbug would stop blogging for a month and a half.  So it seems that I have no recourse but to point at old Moldbug material.

I've already mentioned a couple - the open letter series, for starters.  Another interesting series, equally long, is the Gentle Introduction to Unqualified Reservations (in my head, I can't help but think Unreserved Qualifications.  Maybe Moldbug brings out my inner dyslexia.)  If you want a convenient gateway into the prolix thought of Moldbug, some dude created a table of contents for UR, with all the posts organized into categories, with handy links to the books that Moldbug references in his posts.

So there's that.

One of the things that really caught my eye, and imagination, was his claim to be a Jacobite.  MM seems to have become bored by this idea, he hasn't mentioned it in a while.  But a while back, he had this to say:

I suggest a Stuart restoration in an independent England. Through some beautiful twist of fate, the Stuart succession has become entangled with the House of Liechtenstein, who just happen to be the last working royal family in Europe. The father-son team of Hans-Adam II and Hereditary Prince Alois are not decorative abstractions. They are effectively the CEOs of Lichtenstein, which is a small country but a real one nonetheless. As you'll see if you read the links, the last "reform" in Lichtenstein actually increased the royal executive power. Take that, 20th century!

And Prince Alois's son, 13-year-old Prince Joseph Wenzel, just happens to be the legitimate heir to the Stuart throne - illegally overthrown in a coup based on the notorious warming-pan legend. Therefore, the structure of a restoration is obvious. The Hanoverians have failed. They have become decorative pseudo-monarchs. And as for the system of government that has grown up under them, it makes Richard Cromwell look like a smashing success. Restore the Stuarts under King Joseph I, with Prince Alois as regent, and the problem is solved.

Unrealistic? Au contraire, mon frere. What is unrealistic is "a sense of purpose as a nation, a uniting ethos which will restore our sense of pride..." Frankly, England does not deserve pride. It has gone to the dogs, and that may be an insult to dogs. If England is to restore its sense of pride, it needs to start with its sense of shame. And the first thing it should be ashamed of its the pathetic excuse for a government that afflicts it at present, and will afflict it for the indefinite future until something drastic is done.

For example, according to official statistics, between 1900 and 1992 the crime rate in Great Britain, indictable offenses per capita known to the police, increased by a factor of 46. That's not 46%. Oh, no. That's 4600%. Many of the offenders having been imported specially, to make England brighter and more colorful. This isn't a government. It's a crime syndicate.

Ideally a Stuart restoration would happen on much the same conditions as the restoration of Charles II, except perhaps with an extra caveat: a total lustration of the present administration. It has not partly, sort of, kind of, maybe, failed. It has failed utterly, irrevocably, disastrously and terminally.

Therefore, the entire present regime, politicians and civil servants and quangocrats and all, except for essential security and technical personnel, should be retired on full pay and barred from any future official employment. Why pick nits? The private sector is full of competent managers. You can import them from America if you need. Don't make the mistake of trying to sweep out the Augean stables. Just apply the river. (If a concession must be made to modern mores, however, I think this time around there is no need to hang any corpses.)

Now isn't that fun? When Prince Joseph becomes ruler of Liechtenstein, he will be the first heir of the Stuarts to be since James II to be ruler of an actual country. A small country, to be sure, but a real one. Interesting too, is that before the Stuart line stopped claiming the title of King, they always claimed to be Kings of England, Scotland, Ireland and France.

I've read a couple sf novels that involve the Stuarts scheming to regain the throne, maybe we need another one, set in the current day - though it'd be an odd set of circumstances that could possibly lead to young Prince Joseph claiming his rightful throne of England.  And I don't think Liechtenstein is about to invade across the channel.

Still - there is something about monarchy that exerts a fascination upon the mind, maybe even especially the American mind.  The evolutionary psychologist angle would imply that there is something in us that responds to things like kings.  I think it's possible that the key difference between a modern dictatorship and a older style divine right monarchy is not just in the attitude of the autocrat, but in the culture of legitimacy that supports a kingdom in a manner that no dictatorship can ever expect.

NYTimes' Kristof: A Modest Proposal: A King and Queen for America

Well, hot damn with whip cream! Did I ever jump on the right boat. I admit, somewhat shamfacedly, that I don't dig this whole democracy thing, and just days later the NYTimes is calling for the installation of a monarchy. Do I have timing or what?

Wait, they didn't mean it like I thought they meant it.

It turns out that Mr. Kristof is calling not for a Stuart Restoration as I had hoped, but rather for finding some dope to take Prince Charles' job of walking around cutting ribbon and looking like a doofus.  The point of this, apparently, would be to free President Obama from all the tiresome ceremonial duties of his job and focus on gettin' shit done.  Like, you know, talking to the CEO of BP about the oil spill and stuff.

A figurehead head of state is a nifty foreign policy tool as well. President Obama has twice had to delay his trip to Indonesia and Australia because of the press of domestic policy, but an American king and queen could spend days greeting crowds and cutting ribbons at new schools. And when they aren’t traveling, our king and queen could be kept busy hosting state dinners five nights a week.

Some folks complain that it’s silly to fret that Mr. Obama doesn’t emote. Of course, it is. It’s farcical that we have bullied our president into trash-talking on television about kicking some you know what.

One of the things I admire about this administration is its cerebral, no-drama emphasis on empirical evidence in addressing issues such as health, education and poverty. This is government by adults, by engineers rather than by dramatists.

But Mr. Obama also knows that drama and emotion are the fuel of American politics, and that’s why he’s struggling to feign fury.

As Stephen Colbert observed about the oil spill: “We know if this was Reagan, he would have stripped to his skivvies, put a knife in his teeth, gone down there and punched that oil well shut!”

That's obviously incorrect.  Reagan would have asked Chuck Norris to swim down and punch the oil well shut, and Chuck Norris wouldn't need a knife.  Chuck Norris might roundhouse kick the leak, or just glare at it - that's a stylistic issue solely up to Chuck Norris' discretion.  But you know that well will stop.

The monarchy in England is expensive.  And embarrassing.  Why would we want that?  Why spend billions of dollars a year for a mook like Charles, his cringe-inducing siblings, and the pleasure of watching a pathetic reality show funded on your dime.  Let's let the networks pay the bills, please.

No, if you're going to get a monarch, let's us do it right.  A milquetoast, emasculated semi-monarch is not the answer.  The answer is a kick ass monarch.  Someone who can speak truth to power because he is, uh, power.  Someone like this.

And that gets us to this, a thread over at Aretae's where Devin Finbarr was schooling me on being a total wuss about reaction.  Here I was, being cautious, and worrying about some possible ill effects - it turns out I was worrying about the wrong effects:

Devin's responding to my earlier comment, here:

[quoting me] My problem with neocameralism as Moldbug goes on with it is that while ideally we'd want Steve Jobs or the like - competent, visionary, minimalist in how he runs Apple - we might get the CEO of Microsoft, or GM. In fact, the latter seems more likely. [end quote]

The management of even GM far exceeds the management of the U.S. government. While many corporations stagnate or fail, they actually have a much harder problem. Microsoft needs to constantly run just to stand still. Maintaining market share/profits requires constant innovation, which is not easy at all.

A government basically needs to keep order, enforce rule of law, maintain a stable currency/business climate, and that's it. A government does not need to innovate (except perhaps in military matters) - it can delegate that to the private sector.

But the U.S. government(s) is increasingly failing to enforce basic rule of law. No corporation has ever destroyed its capital as the American cities did in the 1970's. Almost no corporation manages to turn an operating loss on real estate.

[quoting me] Of course the problem of hereditary monarchy is an issue too - what if the son is an idiot? Elective monarchy might be better, until you get to a point where you have competing claimants to the throne. [end quote]

Elective monarchy is cool, but the trick is to make sure that the elections do not devolve into politics. Once there are parties, competing factions, feedback loops between campaign promises and the results of power, then you're right back where were are now.

As you can see, Devin's thought about this a bit. The next exchange goes a bit further. I commented:

Valid point - the gubmint's job should be easier. You still have the problem of relative bad management - look at North Korea. Almost no corporation - but not to say none. Of course no system will prevent gross stupidity.

The one thing that got me about the Neocameralist proposal was that with the shareholders and choosing a CEO, it seemed as if Moldbug had just created a very odd sort of democracy, not anything really different. Because if the board can remove the ceo for incompetence, you're right back at politics - same as with an elective monarchy, but worse.

And Devin comes back with:

Shareholder voting is majorly different from democracy.

First, the votes are weighted by the number of shares owned. The typical rich, large shareholder is far smarter and competent than the average American. So right off the bat that's an improvement.

But the most important difference is that there is total alignment of goals. The question of how to grow the pie is totally separate from the question of how to divide the pie.

In democratic debates questions of how to grow the pie and divide the pie are mixed. For example the healthcare bill partly dealt with how to make the system better for everyone, and partly with dealing goodies (the mandate as a giveaway to insurance companies, the subsidies as a giveaway to the Democratic base, etc). Political parties constantly support policies that will actually shrink the pie overall, if it increases the portion for their own side (see again, the healthcare bill). Even worse, they will couch their arguments for changing the division of pie in terms of growing the pie. For example, the democrats have argued that subsidies would save money because people would no longer use emergency room. The parties will actually believe their own myths, and both parties will become utterly delusional about how to actually grow the pie.

And worst of all, the fights over dividing the pie generate an enormous amount of antagonism. The parties polarize and begin to hate each other.

Shareholder ownership fixes the "divide the problem problem" by fixing shares outright. And then distribute all benefits of the company in straight up cash. If you distribute benefits as in kind benefits (imagine starbucks issuing shareholders dividends in lattes), then that will not benefit all shareholders equally, and thus will cause conflict.

Once the shares are fixed, everyone in the company has the same goal - increase the share price.

When I joined my current company I had a month of somewhat stressful negotiation over my stock options. But once that was done, and the contract signed, my interests were very well aligned with management. As a result, a company of 150 people all work together as a team with one unified goal.

That said, shareholder management for a sovereign has a number of problems. These problems stem from the fact that there is no external authority to enforce the companies contracts. Potential problems:

a) how do you enforce minority shareholder rights?

b) how do you keep management from stealing the company from the shareholders?

c) how do you prevent the military from stealing the company from the shareholders?

d) how do you prevent the sovereign from engaging in for-profit activities that are morally repugnant? (for example, going on slaving expeditions, breeding slave children in incubators, liquidating residents who were unable to support themselves)

Well those could be issues. At least now I have the right issues.  And those issues are real ones, and I think that there is little way that you could formally - by means of institutions or laws - prevent them.  The only way to keep these gremlins at bay is culture.  There is nothing material preventing the US Marines and their little helpers in the other services from jacking the entire US Government with M1A2 Abrams tanks and sheer ballsiness.  Except for the culture that makes something like that unthinkable.  I think the reason we have no coups here, or generally in the anglosphere is simply that, along with (nod to Aretae) the economic growth that makes things happy for many people, most of the time.  Of course, the two are related.

We have a culture that on the whole prizes order, and peaceful resolution of differences.  If we, miraculously, had a Stuart Restoration here in the US tomorrow, that fact more than anything would prevent c) so long as the restoration was legitimate (result of a plebiscite, or the like.)  Our culture also holds certain things to be reprehensible.   Some of these things actually are reprehensible, others less so - but I think that no king, any more than any president, could maintain the legitimacy that upholds their rule if they violated key precepts of the local give me money culture.  This would likely take care of d) and any incubator babies and smoking in bars in the capitol city.  It would also militate against a), though to what extent I'm unsure.

The real problem is b) - but since that's the problem we already have, I don't see how you could use that to argue against a reactionary solution.

As Devin pointed out elsewhere, we educate our young to be good democrats.  We could equally educate them to be good monarchists.  The key in any transition would be to set good precedents, and build the cultural institutions that would support the new order over time - much as Washington did in the early days of the Republic.

Not that that transition is imminent.

Read the whole thread, it's kind of a primer on Formalist/Moldbuggian ideas.

Over at Aretae, another post is getting some good comments - Devin Finbarr seems to have a bit of teh smarts.  He mentions that he's working on a draft summary of Formalist/Moldbug ideas, you can see it here, it's worth a look.

Aretae had a post up earlier today, and another yesterday, that hit right at what I've been thinking about. The one thing that holds me back from going full hog Moldbug is just the idea of Freedom. Moldbug would likely say that I'm just confused - that without order, you can't have liberty. And I can see that. Anarchy is not freedom, it's a free-for-all. "What is good?" someone famously asked. Is it better to be able to do whatever you please, or to have a peaceful and ordered society that allows you a maximum, if not theoretically absolute degree of liberty? Does having the vote magically make us free? Clearly not and I think that that points out a key confusion in our modern estimations of freedom, liberty, authority and the like.

Now I know Johno thinks I hate his Freedom, but I think it might be a case of that word not meaning exactly what we think it means. Do we feel more free because we have the right of franchise - does this give us some sort of idea that we are involved somehow in the direction of our ship of state? I think yes to the former, but only to the extent that the latter is operational. We voted, we did our part, and we are satisfied for the next four years no matter what sort of horrific actions are taken in our name - be they the passing of a universal healthcare bill or starting a land war in Asia. That keeps us complacent while dark forces align against us. The permanent civil service bureaucracy, academia, the vast right wing conspiracy, corporate interests, the Bilderbergers.

True liberty is vanishingly absent. I cannot put in a light fixture without paying a $250 fee and filing plans with my county. I can't light up a smoke in a bar after work. I can't have my son sit in the front seat of my car. I can't kill any of the hundreds of deer that wander through my woods. I can't start a business without navigating a frightening wicket of regulations and tax laws. I can't, I can't... Most of these restrictions would be anathema to our founding fathers, who basically started a whole damn war over the equivalent of a postage stamp fee.

So, yeah, I'm on board with the libertarian liberty thingy. Free up everything so we can have that mad economic growth. But how does that society run itself? How does it not encrust itself with all the things we hate, or get invaded by heavily armed agrarian reformers? What if there's a dispute between my private security firm and yours? Do they select champions and let God favor the right?

And really, is liberty everything we need? Equality, I think we have a surfeit of. Fraternity is doing fine, seeing as I'm an only child. What perhaps we are lacking is tradition and order. Look at large parts of our nation's capital and ask yourself if liberty and equality are more important than order. A while back, Aretae had a post about how traditional, conventional wisdom is going to be most right, most of the time, for most people.

In the comments to one of Aretae's posts that I linked up there at the top, I commented:

I'm torn. On the one hand, your defense of libertarianism is righteous and strong. On the other, Moldbug's got history at his back.

Something you said a while back in regard to traditional advice is going to be best for most people, moist of the time has been crouching in the back of my mind, waiting. Could it be, that while the our desired end state is something like what you are advocating - minimal government interference, economic growth, unicorns - requires something more? That the place of a king who is not a dictator is to provide the traditional bulwark for libertarian wackiness?

Back in the late 1700s, as you've argued, we had freedom that was unprecedented, in an intelligent populace largely isolated from danger. This resulted in the growth! growth! growth! that you go on about. It seems that our current system, can't maintain its current vector without running into something ugly sooner or later. We've layered and slathered it with all sorts of things that you, I and Moldbug can all agree are very bad indeed.

The problem with libertarianism for me hasn't been the economics - that, to me, is or should be fairly self evident. But the idea of private security companies does not fill me with joy, exactly. And other like problems. Why not have a king? It would provide something more than an abstraction for the ordinary run of citizen to latch on to, provide a framework of tradition that would provide maximal outcomes for most everyone. We'd have pageantry. Which isn't crucial, but hey, shiny! And still freedom, the "Rights of Englishmen."

To have a monarch that was concerned with foreign relations, maintaining a justice system (with jury nullification, to be sure) and maximizing his profit by creating as close to an ideal business climate, well that would be cool. If someone created a floating Atlantis a la Stephenson's Diamond Age, I'd likely want to move there.

What is lacking, though, is a populace with traditions of living in a society of that sort, the kind that is very aware of their rights as Englishmen even though they do not, and likely never would have the right to vote.

A couple years ago, I ran across - I can't remember how - a peculiar website. Unqualified Reservations is a reactionary anti-democracy advocacy site. It's pseudonymous (I hope, for it would require some truly cruel parents to be otherwise) author Mencius Moldbug argues at great length that our current system of government is irretrievably broken, and that our only hope is a complete do-over. And that when we start over, we should be leaving all the democracy business behind us.

Well, that sounds weird, doesn't it? One's natural instinct is to judge the author mad, and go about one's affairs. But if you dig in a bit, you see that there are two aspects to his voluminous writings. (Those who remember fondly the USS Clueless will not be staggered by their length. But everyone else will.) The first aspect is an incisive critique of what we have right now. The second is a prescription for what we should replace it with, and how. In the first, I find myself more or less completely convinced. The second - I have issues with.

In the time since I first happened upon UR and Moldbuggianism, I've read his entire archives. Which is a metric buttload of stuff, to be sure. Without a whole lot of exaggeration, I can say that it had a serious impact on how I view the world. This may sound cheap - but one of the reasons I've not posted much over the last couple years is that I can't comment on anything related to current affairs without thinking about Moldbug, and I wasn't quite ready to out myself as an anti-democracy reactionary. But I guess that time has come. And I find myself surprised at how much I've resisted actually admitting that, even on a little-read blog with a single digit audience.

In my discussions with intelligent and well-informed individuals over the last decade or so, I often found myself looking at problems, arguing about solutions with a distinct sense that something was missing. While I am temperamentally conservative, I guess, I as often found myself attacking conservatives as liberals. Some cases could be explained away as those politicians or pundits failing to live up to conservative ideals. Or they were idiots. Or they were just politicians of whom i shouldn't be expecting anything. Or in the case of George Bush, some would say all three. Railing against all sides of the political spectrum makes you either a libertarian, I conspiracy nut, or just bitter and confused. I was trending toward the latter, with dalliances in the other two.

I felt that there should be a unifying explanation for everything I hated. A grand unified theory of hate. The whole process was similar to what I went through with dark matter and cosmology, and like then, I found an answer.

Back a couple months ago, I went looking for people who were commenting on Moldbug in an intelligent way, and I do believe I hit the jackpot in finding Aretae, Isegoria and Foseti. (I've been reading them, and dropping a few comments here and there, for a couple weeks now, and I recommend them highly.)

To them, most of what I'm about to say is old hat. Perhaps they can add some thoughts. This is for my fellow Perfidians, and my reader. (Hi Bram!)

Okay, how to summarize Moldbug? The dude has written probably a million words in the last four years. But, thanks to the magic of the internets, we have this: Condensed Moldbuggery. And you can start where I started with "How I Stopped Believing in Democracy" or dive into the first part (of 12!) of "An Open Letter to Open-Minded Progressives" The basic idea though, is that progressivism is a cancer, descended from universalist protestantism and metastasized into a number of horrific tumors including Nazism, Communism and the US Government. Along the way, he demolishes modern conservatism, takes swipes at libertarianism, and sings the praises of people we've largely forgotten, like the nineteenth century historian Thomas Carlyle.

It's hard to digest in one lump. But his critique of what we have before us is, I think, spot on. It gives us reasons for why the left acts like a religion. Because it is. It gives us a hint as to why conservatism fails, utterly, at most things it tries to do. Because, for one, it is merely warmed over thirty year old progressivism fighting against current progressivism. And for another, it fails to understand what it is. It survives because the dominant religion needs heretics, and because it is a home for traditionalists who don't like change. It explains why the State Department behaves so oddly, why the military is not allowed to win, and any number of other things.

The short of it is that a reactionary believes that the real struggle is between order and chaos. Modern progressives are, at heart, anarchists and the enemy of civilization. True liberty can only occur after order has been secured - the emergent order of markets, networks and the like depend on an underlying real order. And the store of civilizational order that we had built up has been pissed away by ten generations of democracy, the result being the crap heap we see before us.

To take one hypothesis and use it to explain a wide array of phenomena is, to me, a good sign of a powerful theory. So I dig it. It resolved issues that I had long had with politics - and gave me a way of looking at things that was entirely outside the bipolar democratic/republican thinking that had long been unsatisfactory. Moldbug's analysis of the modern world now has a comfortable apartment in my brain.

I have more issues with what he proposes as solutions for these problems, but I'll save that for the future. In the meantime, I really suggest - despite its length - reading the open letter series. Even if you remain unconvinced, I think you'll at least be entertained.

Saw that on a bumper for the first time this morning.  As I recall, we didn't start seeing the 1.20.09 stickers until a little later in Bush's second term.

I think I'm going to get a 1.20.21 sticker made up.

This lays out the just really uncanny similarities between Madoff's ponzi scheme and that third rail of American politics, Social Security.  I can't say I'm surprised to discover this.  I've thought this for some time, and anyone who is not just about to retire is truly delusional if they're counting on getting anything out of the thousands of dollars they've put into the SS 'lock-box' over the years.

If only I could have kept that money, and used it to buy canned goods and ammunition.  That'd be a better retirement plan than anything the government is likely to be able to provide for anyone my age (vintage 1969, baby) or younger.

Of course, this is merely one more example in a long line of similar comparisons - "if anyone in the private sector did x, they'd be in jail - why do these politicians stay in office and get sweetheart real estate and commodities deals?"  Makes you wonder about that whole "we're a nation of laws, not men" concept, don't it?

Found in a Friday/Saturday op-ed piece in the Wall Street Journal, this tidbit from Peggy Noonan, while trying to avoid the appearance of a conflict of interest:

...I'm speaking of the interview Wednesday on Fox News Channel's "Special Report With Bret Baier." Fox is owned by News Corp., which also owns this newspaper, so one should probably take pains to demonstrate that one is attempting to speak with disinterest and impartiality, in pursuit of which let me note that Glenn Beck has long appeared to be insane.

Conflict of interest clearly avoided, and a public service offered.

While I was putting together some information for a gloating post on the collapse of the the whole Anthropomorphic Global Warming thingy, I found this calm and well organized bit that neatly outlines the whole thing in a sane and even tone.  Especially in light of the fact that the central figure in the AGW movement has admitted that there has been no statistically significant warming in the last fifteen years (a period that has seen ever more crazed claims of mounting disaster unless. we. act. right. now!) - this just lays it out:

On what grounds do we defer to scientists?

We defer to scientists on the grounds that their information is true.  They are using verifiable data.  They are using clear, repeatable processes.  Their theory/model predicts experimentally verifiable results.  They are using solidly agreed upon theory.  The proxy for solidly agreed upon theory is publication of (and citation count of) articles in science journals.  Finally, science is assumed to be done in a disinterested fashion.  Truth is more important than specific conclusions.  All of those things, we don't generally have time to check for ourselves, and it would take a lot of training to do so.  In AGW, all 5 reasons to defer to the scientists have broken down.

A.  On AGW, the data was not verifiable.  It was hidden data, that was not being released.  In the face of FOIA the data was not released.  Furthermore, ClimateGate emails say conclusively that there was a conspiracy to not release the data (which indicates fear of skeptics poking at it).  Furthermore, both Indian and Russian scientists/instrument techs have said that the data that the instruments gave have been manipulated in such a way as to provide the right conclusions.  Most recently, the line is that the dog ate the original data.  Conclusion: in the case of AGW, you cannot rely on the scientists for data.

B. On AGW, the processes were opaque.  First, the software was not released to the world.  And it was modeling software of the kind that we know (from experience with Macro) just doesn't work well in general.  When the software was released through the ClimateGate hack, we discovered that there was a very good reason that the software wasn't released: it sucks.  Feed in any data you like (the price of rice in china in the 15th century), and you'll get a hockey stick. Conclusion: in the case of AGW, you cannot rely on the scientists for process.

C.  On AGW, the theory and data don't line up ("Hide the decline").  Further, most predictions are effectively non-Popperian.  We can't verify.  Some of us would say that makes it not science.  Conclusion: in the case of AGW, you can't rely on the scientists for experimental verification.

D.  On AGW, the peer review process has been corrupted, as per the ClimateGate emails.  There was an active conspiracy to keep skeptical voices out of peer review process, and then active claims that "it's not peer reviewed science" against skeptics.  The peer review process for climate science is all the way broken.  Hence, there can be no supposition that peer-reviewed means good. Conclusion: in the case of AGW, you can' rely on the peer review process to converge upon true theory.

E.  On AGW, with all government grants going to climate alarmists, and 4 Trillion(!!!) Euros of green investment funds trying to find ways to make "green" investments more profitable, there is very little chance of disinterested science.  Furthermore, those of us who are suspicious of alarmism as per Mencken.

If you can't get funding for your current studies (or future studies) without coming to pro-AGW conclusions, somehow the AGW conclusions can be teased out of your data.

I'd like to hear what Al Gore was saying when the BBC interview with Phil Jones was released.  The entire global warming fiasco has been a perfect example of why science and government shouldn't sleep together, let alone get married.  They do not make a good couple, and their children are certain to be retarded.

But while you're waiting for me to get off my ass and write my own climate post, go and read the whole thing.  It's worth it.

I was wandering through the dank cellars of the Perfidious Archives this morning, looking for proof of my prescient thoughts on a completely different topic, when I ran across this post from the summer of 2005.  Here we are a half decade later, and this is fully as relevant now as it was then.

I quoted from an editorial by California State representative Tom McClintock:

Across California, children are bringing home notes warning of dire consequences if Gov. Schwarzenegger's scorched earth budget is approved - a budget that slashes Proposition 98 public school spending from $42.2 billion this year all the way down to $44.7 billion next year. That should be proof enough that our math programs are suffering.

As a public school parent, I have given this crisis a great deal of thought and have a modest suggestion to help weather these dark days.

Maybe - as a temporary measure only - we should spend our school dollars on our schools. I realize that this is a radical departure from current practice, but desperate times require desperate measures.

The Governor proposed spending $10,084 per student from all sources. Devoting all of this money to the classroom would require turning tens of thousands of school bureaucrats, consultants, advisors and specialists onto the streets with no means of support or marketable job skills, something that no enlightened social democracy should allow.

So I will begin by excluding from this discussion the entire budget of the State Department of Education, as well as the pension system, debt service, special education, child care, nutrition programs and adult education. I also propose setting aside $3 billion to pay an additional 30,000 school bureaucrats $100,000-per-year (roughly the population of Monterey) with the proviso that they stay away from the classroom and pay their own hotel bills at conferences.

This leaves a mere $6,937 per student, which, for the duration of the funding crisis, I propose devoting to the classroom.

To illustrate how we might scrape by at this subsistence level, let's use a hypothetical school of 180 students with only $1.2 million to get through the year.

We have all seen the pictures of filthy bathrooms, leaky roofs, peeling paint and crumbling plaster to which our children have been condemned. I propose that we rescue them from this squalor by leasing out luxury commercial office space. Our school will need 4,800 square feet for five classrooms (the sixth class is gym). At $33 per foot, an annual lease will cost $158,400.

This will provide executive washrooms, around-the-clock janitorial service, wall-to-wall carpeting, utilities and music in the elevators. We'll also need new desks to preserve the professional ambiance.

Next, we'll need to hire five teachers - but not just any teachers. I propose hiring only associate professors from the California State University at their level of pay. Since university professors generally assign more reading, we'll need 12 of the latest edition, hardcover books for each student at an average $75 per book, plus an extra $5 to have the student's name engraved in gold leaf on the cover.

Since our conventional gym classes haven't stemmed the childhood obesity epidemic, I propose replacing them with an annual membership at a private health club for $39.95 per month. This would provide our children with a trained and courteous staff of nutrition and fitness counselors, aerobics classes and the latest in cardiovascular training technology.

Finally, we'll hire an $80,000 administrator with a $40,000 secretary because - well, I don't know exactly why, but we always have.

This budget leaves a razor-thin reserve of just $216,703 or $1,204 per pupil, which can pay for necessities like paper, pencils, personal computers and extra-curricular travel. After all, what's the point of taking four years of French if you can't see Paris in the spring?

The school I have just described is the school we're paying for. Maybe it's time to ask why it's not the school we're getting.

I added:

It’s this kind of thinking that exposes the problems with equating money spent with performance.  The educational bureaucracy eats away at the resources supposedly intended for students.  And strangely enough, we have become so used to the problem that something like this seems radical, strange and wild-eyed.

Just pretend that the previous school infrastructure was eliminated in a series of freak accidents.  Strangely selective tornados demolished all of the school buildings.  The teachers all got on Survivor X, Sierra Leone.  The superintendent was run over by a gas truck.  The principals were all convicted of barratry and loitering.  Nothing survived, and in two weeks, the dear little kiddies have to have a new school system.  Think about it - if you were in charge with creating from scratch a school system, wouldn’t you do something similar?  You wouldn’t even have to worry about providing sinecures for superfluous educrats.  Just provide a safe and confortable place where learning could take place.

This is another situation where the existing system is so out of whack that pouring money on the problem won’t accomplish a damn thing.  Even structural reform is unlikely to be successful given the entrenched interests.  And that is why so many people are home schooling - in the millions, now.  And why inner city families want vouchers to send their kids to private schools.  And why the teacher’s unions are so desperate to prevent it.

There is no sane reason why we fund the educational bureaucracy to the tune of billions of dollars per year.  Every parent who is disturbed by the public education system - zero tolerance idiocies, indoctrination, incompetence, waste - is paying for this nightmare.  And if they want to send their children to private schools, or homeschool, they are going to be paying twice.

This, more than anything I have ever experienced, makes me want to want to dig a hole and pull it in after me.

Watch the first minute or so, if you can, and then jump to 3:54.

Sheesh. I need more guns.

[wik] Ashton Kutcher as the face of the new order of the ages. Along with the obvious horror, a secondary horror is the staggering historical ignorance this little piece of unintentionally Orwellian theater demonstrates in its art design.

[alsø wik] Ashton Kutcher, I have always felt, represented something evil. I just wasn't sure until today what it was.

[alsø alsø wik] I for one would like to be among the first to welcome our Stepford Hollywood Elite Overlords. Non servium.

[wi nøt trei a høliday in Sweden this yër?] My wife just suggested Non Servium would make a nice tshirt. So as not to implicate myself as a Satanist, we'd need to add a picture of Obama. Maybe done up Che-style, but I think the socialist realist depiction from that video would perhaps be most apropos.

[see the løveli lakes...] And really, wi nøt trei a høliday in Sweden this yër? Sweden seems almost Republican now.

Too, too funny. This election, I'm feeling like the GM.

So, the economy is in the pits, and if I listen to the media, I will be lead to believe that at any second, the earth will split open and suck us all into a vortex of poverty and anarchy.

Here's the thing ...

My kneejerk reaction to the massive bailout is "Hell no! Screw those companies! Where's the help for the middle class?"

However ...

I realize that, as is the case of most kneejerk reactions, my feelings only scratch the surface of a much larger issue. I'm 32. My husband and I do not possess large 401Ks or IRAs whose continued existence depends on the performance of the markets. No one's taking away my retirement fund at the moment. My parents, however, are nervous, as they're sitting on quite a few pension/retirement bucks that they're worried could disintegrate in the wake of a spectacular economic implosion.

I'm aware that my parents' retirement could very well be contingent upon the success of a bailout. Yet, on the other hand, I despise that our economic livelihood is largely debt-driven. Some debt is inevitable, yes, but is it smart practice to provide a solution that simply enables business as usual?

Part of me wants to watch Wall Street burn and let our economy rebuild itself by forcing us all to become more fiscally responsible. Everyone gets screwed in the short-term, sure, but at the end of what will certainly be a long recession no matter how Congress decides to vote, would we find ourselves among a nation of people who only buy what they can afford without the help of extraneous credit and without the need for a subprime market? I'm not necessarily saying we should all start paying cash for huge purchases like homes and cars, but what about those who charge plasma TVs when their old tube set could easily suffice?

Talk to me, smart people! Educate me, people-who-understand-economics-better-than-I-do! What's the answer? Is there a right answer?

Among her many sterling qualities, Republican veep candidate has a charmingly uh, let's say, eccentric way with the baby names.

If you want to get in on that action, Politics Tsk Tsk Tsk has helpfully provided this handy dandy Sarah Palin baby name generator.

If Sarah had been charged with naming me instead of my dear own mom, I would have this rockin' monicker:

Knife Pile Buckethead

And if I asked her to name my kids, they'd be Strangle Thicket, Quarter Pipe, and Sack Panther. (In descending order of age.)

My next kid would be Meat Notgay, which really makes a statement, I think. That kid wouldn't grow up to use 9mm like GeekLethal.

Upon receiving the following informative missive from the Cuyahoga Board of Elections, I was initially excited by its cover. "Instructions for New Optical Scan Voting System Inside," it promised, and I thought, "The BOE is going to SCAN MY RETINAS to figure out who I'm voting for." Then I considered the fact that any such equipment was probably manufactured by Diebold, and that meant that my eyeballs could be hacked by anyone with an iPod, some jewelry wire, and an old dog-eared copy of Electric Company magazine, and I instantly felt dubious.

But no, alas, there will be no Sci-Fi-Channelesque machine that says "Access Granted" in a soothing feminine robot voice. Instead, we here in the rustbelt will be employing the skills we mastered in 1982 while taking the Iowa Test of Basic Skills. Evidence these instructions:

So, apparently, I am to fill in the circle? When I cast my vote for George Washington? Isn't he that dude who hangs out on the stoop down the street and asks me for loosies every time I walk by on the way to the bodega? Huh. I didn't even know he was running for office.

Yesterday, Mrs. Buckethead and I went into town to register to vote.  And, as is the case whenever we both leave the house, our passel of youngins came with us.  My oldest, Sir John-my-cup-runneth-over-with-questions, wanted to know what was up.

John: What are we doing?

Me: Registering to vote.

John: Why are registering to vote? 

Me: So we can vote.

John: Can I vote?

Me: No.

John: Why can't I vote.

Me: Because I said so.

[wife hits me in arm]

Me: And because you're not old enough.

John: So you and mommie will vote?

Me: Yes.

John: What is voting?

Me: A magical process whereby criminals become annointed by God.

[wife gives me evil eye.]

John: Dad, are you joking me?

Me: Strangely enough, no.

Happily, we got to the voter registration office before that conversation deteriorated any further.  My response was off the cuff cynicism, which should surprise no one who knows me.  But pondering it further as we drove to the courthouse (John: why are we going to the courthouse? Me: To pay mommie's ticket.  John: what's a ticket? Me: A means by which the government extorts money from the innocent.  John: So the government is going to pay us money?  Me: Not in this lifetime.) it occurred to me that my earlier comment was exactly true, if in a larger sense uninformative.

Why do we feel that divine and inestimable principle, DEMOCRACY, is of such great value?  If 50% + 1 of the population of eligible voters who have bothered to register to vote and make the additional effort to actually, you know, vote, agree on anything, then that thing is not merely agreed to.  It gets more than that.  That thing is divinely sanctioned, and it becomes heresy to argue the result.  Even if it results in something like Hezbollah getting control of the Palestinian government.  Or only slightly less bad, some egregious asshat like, say, any president over the last century or their opponents getting to be leader of the free world.

It has been said, most famously by Winston Churchill, that democracy is the worst system of government devised by man, except for all the others.  We're measuring our system of government on the bad scale, which can't be a good thing.  "Jesus this sucks, but at least we don't live in a Islamic theocracy." 

"Jesus!" we might also say, "this generic spam from the black striped can tastes like ass, but at least we're not eating dog food."

Shouldn't we be thinking about inventing some fine French cuisine, or at least McDonalds?

I think that there is a fundamental disconnect between our notion of freedom and liberty, and the notion of democracy.  Or more to the point, I don't think we mean what we think we mean when we say these words.  We conflate the idea of living in a democracy with living free, with liberty.  The one must naturally lead to the other.  But does being able to select, with a few of your buddies, the town second assistant dogcatcher make you free?  Or the president?

I've commented on this blog, long ago, that I think one of the true wonders of life in America is that so few things are really political, and almost none that matter.  We have removed so many things from the political sphere, and this is good.  Where you live, whether you live; where you work or whether you work are not questions of politics.  Did I support the right candidate?  Oh, shit, the Democrats took power and now I won't be able to get work cause the registered Democratic plumbers will get all the jobs.  Oh, the humanity!

Or, oh shit, the Republicans are in charge, and it's the reeducation camps for all the performance artists, gender studies professors and community organizers. 

Hey, not a bad idea...

Anyway, that's not how it works here, thank god.  Nor does it work that way for most anything.  Politics does not effect most of what we do, except at the edges.  Which is not to say that the government doesn't have a huge effect on our daily lives - but politics, partisanship, that polite and largely gunless civil war, does not.  We should cherish this.  And to extent we do, every time we decry "partisanship" and "the politics of personal destruction" and the like.  We have a sense that that sort of thing is squalid, furtive, and somehow... dirty.  And we feel that way for the very simple reason that it is.  Politics is a zero sum game, and for you to win, I must lose.

So why do we feel that our quadrennial reality show makes us free?  The federal and state bureaucracies are not accountable to our elected officials, let alone ourselves.  Hell, governors and presidents can't even fire people, the way any CEO can.  The civil service is responsible for writing the tens of thousands of pages long federal register, that has only a passing resemblance to the laws passed by Congress, and is itself responsible for enforcing them, and can be fully as selective as it likes.  Just ask Martha Stewart. If we stopped choosing, how would our lives change?

In this country, I can live where I want, work where I want, talk to whomever I choose, write what I want, marry any woman who will put up with my shit, with a level of freedom that compares favorably with the Soviet Union if not the America of a hundred years ago.  I can be somebody!  I can do what I want, so long as I don't run afoul of any line from the five hundred pound federal register, in which case I have paramilitary law enforcement officers doing a no-knock entry on my house and shooting my dog.

They always shoot the dog.

If I build a treehouse and fail to file a environmental impact statement, or pay $500 for a building permit, or or hire a union electrician, or ...

And god forbid that I smuggle nail clippers onto a plane, or joke about bombs in front of a TSA agent.

Voting for Obama or McCain will not improve my life.  The only question is whether one of them might be able to make it worse, which is the only significant power remaining to the Presidency in the 21st Century.

Why do we think that voting makes us free?