DECENTRALIZED DECISIONS ARE BEST WITH AUTHORITY ONLY HELPFUL WHEN QUESTIONS ARE

DECENTRALIZED DECISIONS ARE BEST WITH AUTHORITY ONLY HELPFUL WHEN QUESTIONS ARE OTHERWISE UDECIDEABLE.

(from Eli Harman )(worth repeating)

I like markets and all – if suitably tempered by prohibition on what is demonstrably harmful.

Offers and prices are the way of communicating positive values in the marketplace, with payment the authentication made that such communication is accurate.

Threats are the means of communicating negative values in the marketplace with initiation of violent hostilities the authentication that such communication is accurate.

Prices may be reckoned in money, or in blood.

But either way, decentralized methods of decision making are generally best, with authority only better in select cases, and those too, vetted and delimited by decentralized means.