Defending government by pointing out things they provide is fundamentally flawed - of course we all get utility from public goods, it's unavoidable.
The argument is not that the government doesn't provide utility, it's about recognising the possibility that there may be other, better ways to deliver the same or better. Ways that do not, for example, divide societies by political leaning; lead to absurdities like irrevocable entrenchment of power in one guy in a big white house; give rise to further insanity such as giving the power to write anti-corruption laws to those most at risk of being corrupted.
This is the best way to build roads? Really? This is the best way to do anything??
The argument is not that the government doesn't provide utility, it's about recognising the possibility that there may be other, better ways to deliver the same or better.
You are free to make that argument, but asserting the conclusion and asking leading questions isn't an argument.
FWIW, we've already, extensively tried the idea of not having a State with a monopoly on force and instead managing the world through private property rights and contractual relationships without the State imposing limits on such relationships to address power imbalances, etc., it's called feudalism.
At no point in this thread - or anywhere else for that matter - have I advocated anarchy, feudalism, feudal anarchism, or anything of the sort. Centralisation is inevitable to an extent. However to say that our options are binary - the status quo vs feudalism - is absurd. There exists a whole set of improvements and new solutions. Parliamentary democracy is intrinsically flawed for many reasons, and I have given some, but fundamentally it's a machine whose original raison d'etre was to be a solution to an information problem. The views, concerns, and opinions of the uneducated, illiterate population were to be distilled into a smaller, more manageable, representative subset who held the power to affect change as per popular will.
One thing we - especially us on HN - have excelled at these past decades is the manipulation of information. This system was designed when paper was a luxury and literacy a specialist skill; we solved democratic decision-making the day we cracked UIDs and radio buttons.
Governance is like software: it takes information (capital, data, views, problem definitions, etc) in, transforms it, and spits information out (capital allocations, laws, etc) out. Tasked with rewriting the current, proprietary, overly ceremonious, deeply coupled, trillion line leviathan that only runs on a single ancient hardware architecture and has a man page that is not only out of date but is purposely deceptive...would we declare it perfect and go home? Would we dare be so arrogant as to keep it closed source and prescribe our opinions on the world?
Or would we open source it, and see what amazing shit starts to happen?
Comments
Defending government by pointing out things they provide is fundamentally flawed - of course we all get utility from public goods, it's unavoidable.
The argument is not that the government doesn't provide utility, it's about recognising the possibility that there may be other, better ways to deliver the same or better. Ways that do not, for example, divide societies by political leaning; lead to absurdities like irrevocable entrenchment of power in one guy in a big white house; give rise to further insanity such as giving the power to write anti-corruption laws to those most at risk of being corrupted.
This is the best way to build roads? Really? This is the best way to do anything??
You are free to make that argument, but asserting the conclusion and asking leading questions isn't an argument.
FWIW, we've already, extensively tried the idea of not having a State with a monopoly on force and instead managing the world through private property rights and contractual relationships without the State imposing limits on such relationships to address power imbalances, etc., it's called feudalism.
At no point in this thread - or anywhere else for that matter - have I advocated anarchy, feudalism, feudal anarchism, or anything of the sort. Centralisation is inevitable to an extent. However to say that our options are binary - the status quo vs feudalism - is absurd. There exists a whole set of improvements and new solutions. Parliamentary democracy is intrinsically flawed for many reasons, and I have given some, but fundamentally it's a machine whose original raison d'etre was to be a solution to an information problem. The views, concerns, and opinions of the uneducated, illiterate population were to be distilled into a smaller, more manageable, representative subset who held the power to affect change as per popular will.
One thing we - especially us on HN - have excelled at these past decades is the manipulation of information. This system was designed when paper was a luxury and literacy a specialist skill; we solved democratic decision-making the day we cracked UIDs and radio buttons.
Governance is like software: it takes information (capital, data, views, problem definitions, etc) in, transforms it, and spits information out (capital allocations, laws, etc) out. Tasked with rewriting the current, proprietary, overly ceremonious, deeply coupled, trillion line leviathan that only runs on a single ancient hardware architecture and has a man page that is not only out of date but is purposely deceptive...would we declare it perfect and go home? Would we dare be so arrogant as to keep it closed source and prescribe our opinions on the world?
Or would we open source it, and see what amazing shit starts to happen?