Small Thoughts
In old cartoons, you'd often see a character beset by a moral dilemma have a little angel and demon appear, one over each shoulder to argue the merits of the case. For me, thinking about politics, I have three.
I have a little Aretae, a little Foseti, and a little Bruce Charlton. To me, at least, these three each represent an aspect of truth - the sort of truth that is not to be found in the mainstream. But they don't exactly agree with each other.
- I agree with Aretae almost entirely, with the simple but large caveat that I don't think his thinking applies as well to people who are not very bright libertarians. I would like to live in a society composed of people like me, Foseti, Bruce and Aretae. We could have a minarchist system with free trade and cookies and skittles. But, sadly, the world is inhabited by people with different levels of abilities, and different time horizons, and different propensities for violence.
- I agree with Foseti almost entirely as well. The reactionary model of politics we both got from Moldbug is powerful. It explains much. But as we've seen with Moldbug's attempts, it is not exactly prescriptive. Coming up with a new model reactionary system would either fail immediately, or soon fall prey to the same flaws that are dooming our current system. I mean really, a new reactionary system? How can that really work?
- I agree with Bruce slightly less, but the fault is mine and not his. He is a convert to Orthodoxy, as am I, but I feel pretty sure that his conversion was rather more thorough than mine. But the questions he asks are important ones, and ones for which the perspectives represented by Little Aretae and Little Foseti on my shoulders have no answer - if they even consider them at all. Faith, tradition - you could call it culture, but that's not what it really is - it's what is missing.
I keep thinking that there's some synthesis of all this. But maybe it's nothing more complicated than economics should approach as much as possible what Aretae recommends, politics aim more toward Foseti, and that in the end it won't really work unless the people believe in something, together.
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Thanks for these kind words.
To clarify my 'conversion' to Orthodoxy. I am not a practising Orthodox, I am not Chrismated, I am not even formally a Catechumin. I merely believe that Orthodoxy is true. I have not yet found a way to live by it nor a place of regular worship. It really would be hard to over-emphasize how feeble is my spiritual progress. Its lynch pin is repetition of the Jesus Prayer, and a few other short prayers from the Orthodox tradition. These are - I think - extremely valuable; but they are clearly not enough, and I ought to be doing much more.
Synthesising Aretae's ideas into Moldbug's and Foseti's is easy, Moldbug himself does it.
Essentially Minarchist Libertarianism is a special case of Praxeology. More of a sub-field. Given that you have:
1. Secure borders,
2. The Rule of Law and
3. The protection of private property;
Libertarianism makes sense and works. Regrettably providing these three things turns out to be -- as Patri Friedman pithily put it -- "the hard part."
Or some classic Moldbug:
The traditional areas of dispute between Libertarians and Formalists are easily resolved when it is explained to the Libertarian that the Formalist is merely proposing that there might be certain negative externalities associated with (say) unemployment, that makes pro-employment policies a net benefit even if they make production less efficient.
Integrating Bruce Charlton into Aretae-Foseti is a little trickier, but possible. The religion aspect is perhaps easiest, for Vladimir has already done it (not to mention Vox Day); God, if He exists, is The Sovereign, The Primary Property Owner, The Authority and whether we agree or disagree, we are bound to obey His Word, because it's His game and His rules.
Eh, this is already longer than I'd intended, and integrating the rest of Charlton is harder than I'd thought. Left as an exercise to the reader :P
@Bruce Charlton - I can only…
@Bruce Charlton - I can only say that despite having been catechumen, chrismated, and attended liturgy irregularly for over a decade, my spiritual progress is very likely much feebler. I have great difficulty viewing religion's benefits in anything but an intellectual way - I appreciate the beauty of the liturgy (very much), and the iconography, the community, the sensibility of the orthodox tradition, and the historical continuity of the faith.
Yet, when I go to Liturgy, I feel... better. At peace, satisfied, it's hard to describe. So maybe there is some spiritual progress.
@sconzey - sure, Moldbug…
@sconzey - sure, Moldbug thinks that. But Aretae doesn't, so he gets to float over my shoulder, arguing. My sense is similar, but the time I spent as a vaguely libertoid creature leaves my unwilling, I guess, to dismiss completely Aretae's arguments against being subsumed into a subset of a formalist methodology. I would argue that along with the three items you mentioned, it might also require a moderately homogenous population, and a certain level of IQ. It's great, except when it isn't.
The other thing, broadly speaking, is culture, hence The Bruce. Imagining a religiously informed or dominated authoritarian/formalist state is not difficult - we have countless models in the past. What is difficult is to imagine how we in this place and time could get to one.
@Buckethead - By the time I stumbled across Moldbug I was well into the Anarcho-Capitalist end of Libertarianism, and Friedman-esque utilitarian anarcho-capitalism rather than Rothbard-esque moral anarcho-capitalism to boot. I was already okay with the idea that a for-profit government might have some degree of territorial monopoly having smoked a fat blunt of Seasteading.
He was just polishing off the Patchwork essays and I remember having no trouble subsuming Patchwork states into my worldview as being cognate with anarcho-capitalist protection agencies. I'm surprised this gives other people so much trouble.
In fact, the only time Moldbug has explicitly criticised Anarcho-capitalism is to say that he thinks it's militarily unstable.
It's always been the stuff about immigration/free trade/multiculturalism I've had trouble with. :P Being a Brit, I'm intimately familiar with how immigration, free trade and cultural cross-pollination made us an epic power upon which the sun never set ( bitches ;) ). With that said -- as a Brit and an avid player of the Civilization franchise -- I'm also familiar with how the colonial administrators had no qualms about wiping out malignant memes and how often cultural conquest is as important as military conquest...
Sure there's a synthesis. Here's how you start: List everything you know is false and crazy about the Left, Liberals, Progressives, etc. Call that list "The Blue Orthodoxy". List the equal and opposite propositions you prefer. Call that "The Red Antithesis".
The essential features of Blue Orthodoxy that are religious in nature is the denial of the reality of human nature, a belief in the possibility of Utopia, and a warped material-reductionist conception of "justice".
Have fun ... see you at the end of the rainbow..
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