An even broader point :-) is that democracy doesn’t scale well.
There are lot of things which might work well in some 4,000-people towns and don’t have a snowball’s chance in hell in a political unit with many millions of people in it.
There is a well-known anti-statist blog, popehat.com, and one of the guys writing for it, Clark, is not shy at all about expressing his dislike for the government. And yet...
A few weeks ago I was visiting a much less urban area of the country and ended up reading a transcript of a town meeting. Officer Fred from the police department wanted $90 for ammo to practice with. Bill from the Department of Public Works wanted $1,200 for a new liner for the skating pond, and noted that they already had $940 in the savings account. All five women on the historical committee agreed that they should open the local museum on a Saturday.
Reading the transcript I had a really weird feeling, and it took me a while to figure out what it was.
I eventually did.
You know how progressives love to say things like “‘government’ is just a word for things we all do together”? And you know how I mock that with additions and ammendations such as “…like use drones to kill Afghani children!” ?
I realized what was so odd about this small town’s town government.
It really was just a bunch of people.
I don’t know if it’s sheerly because of the limited budget, or because the number of people involved is close to the Dunbar number, or because there’s greater transparency, or there’s some step function where any government under a certain size operates categorically differently from bigger governments.
…but I had the very weird experience of seeing a government and not having my extreme hair-trigger anarcho-capitalist / voluntaryist hackles raised. I thought to myself “yeah, the skating pond probably does need a new liner”.
I swear to God, I even thought “$90 isn’t much – the cops really should get some more ammo to practice with”.
With out exaggerating, this is the first time in my life that I saw a government that seemed reasonable to me, and I’m still slightly in shock at the idea and reverberating at bit in response to it.
“An even broader point :-) is that democracy doesn’t scale well.
There are lot of things which might work well in some 4,000-people towns and don’t have a snowball’s chance in hell in a political unit with many millions of people in it.”
I’m cognizant of that, and am proposing we learn something from what engineers do when trying to create an entirely new thing: Start with a tabletop model, and see how and to what extent it can be scaled. In finding how it can be scaled, the concept is likely to evolve considerably.
Start with a tabletop model, and see how and to what extent it can be scaled.
The problem is that running the test—adjust—test—adjust… cycles requires not just speculation about what the result might be, but actually throwing the model into reality and looking at how it does.
That’s… difficult when we are talking about adjustments to political processes :-/
I wouldn’t take it so literally, and I’m not trying to put the world on my work table—just casting a meme upon the waves.
Something like this “scaling up” occurred when in the late 1770s and early 1780s, former colonies tried many models of state constitution, and the results were, according to some historians, beneficial to the design of the U.S. constitution. Maybe some 1775-6 pamphleteer could be said to have been somewhat in my position when he wrote “here’s something we might try...” (and maybe he was ignored and I will be too).
Well, if all I did was remind you of that story so you could tell it to us, this has been a worthwhile conversation (referring back to “A few weeks ago I was visiting...”).
I still think the trouble with anarchy is that power vacuums always get filled with something, and the only viable plan is try to get democracy to work, not eliminate it, or reduce it to “merely” having the monopoly on the legitimate use of violence.
I’ve been listening to criticism and have reworded it quite a bit.
RE “you are assuming nice, homogenous, reasonable, sane population to start with. That’s not a realistic assumption.”
I’m assuming only that somewhere in America there might be such a town, and if the project succeeded, there might be more.
An even broader point :-) is that democracy doesn’t scale well.
There are lot of things which might work well in some 4,000-people towns and don’t have a snowball’s chance in hell in a political unit with many millions of people in it.
There is a well-known anti-statist blog, popehat.com, and one of the guys writing for it, Clark, is not shy at all about expressing his dislike for the government. And yet...
A few weeks ago I was visiting a much less urban area of the country and ended up reading a transcript of a town meeting. Officer Fred from the police department wanted $90 for ammo to practice with. Bill from the Department of Public Works wanted $1,200 for a new liner for the skating pond, and noted that they already had $940 in the savings account. All five women on the historical committee agreed that they should open the local museum on a Saturday.
Reading the transcript I had a really weird feeling, and it took me a while to figure out what it was.
I eventually did.
You know how progressives love to say things like “‘government’ is just a word for things we all do together”? And you know how I mock that with additions and ammendations such as “…like use drones to kill Afghani children!” ?
I realized what was so odd about this small town’s town government.
It really was just a bunch of people.
I don’t know if it’s sheerly because of the limited budget, or because the number of people involved is close to the Dunbar number, or because there’s greater transparency, or there’s some step function where any government under a certain size operates categorically differently from bigger governments.
…but I had the very weird experience of seeing a government and not having my extreme hair-trigger anarcho-capitalist / voluntaryist hackles raised. I thought to myself “yeah, the skating pond probably does need a new liner”.
I swear to God, I even thought “$90 isn’t much – the cops really should get some more ammo to practice with”.
With out exaggerating, this is the first time in my life that I saw a government that seemed reasonable to me, and I’m still slightly in shock at the idea and reverberating at bit in response to it.
I’m cognizant of that, and am proposing we learn something from what engineers do when trying to create an entirely new thing: Start with a tabletop model, and see how and to what extent it can be scaled. In finding how it can be scaled, the concept is likely to evolve considerably.
The problem is that running the test—adjust—test—adjust… cycles requires not just speculation about what the result might be, but actually throwing the model into reality and looking at how it does.
That’s… difficult when we are talking about adjustments to political processes :-/
I wouldn’t take it so literally, and I’m not trying to put the world on my work table—just casting a meme upon the waves.
Something like this “scaling up” occurred when in the late 1770s and early 1780s, former colonies tried many models of state constitution, and the results were, according to some historians, beneficial to the design of the U.S. constitution. Maybe some 1775-6 pamphleteer could be said to have been somewhat in my position when he wrote “here’s something we might try...” (and maybe he was ignored and I will be too).
Oh, no problems with that. But the ocean is vast… :-)
Well, if all I did was remind you of that story so you could tell it to us, this has been a worthwhile conversation (referring back to “A few weeks ago I was visiting...”).
I still think the trouble with anarchy is that power vacuums always get filled with something, and the only viable plan is try to get democracy to work, not eliminate it, or reduce it to “merely” having the monopoly on the legitimate use of violence.