A FALSE DICHITOMY IN CHESTERSON CLARIFIED. —“You can be guided by the shrewdne

A FALSE DICHITOMY IN CHESTERSON CLARIFIED.

—“You can be guided by the shrewdness or presence of mind of one ruler, or by the equality and ascertained justice of one rule; but you must have one or the other, or you are not a nation, but a nasty mess.”–G.K. Chesterson.

He makes the mistake of confusing republican rule of law, with monarchical discretion. And he does not know enough about his past to identify market government as the third option instead of there being only two. Nor does he seem to grasp that whether we possess one decision maker, or many, or a market, that all three must regulate by rule of law, or none can produce good, and all will produce ill.

But I am criticizing him for a point he does not make. He is merely saying that there must be rule. whether it is pure rule of law and competing commons (market government), rule of law with representative decision makers producing monopoly commons, or a monarch bound by rule of law, but with sole discretion over the production of commons, rule of law is a constant, and the means of decision making over the production of commons is simply a matter of the heterogeneity (republicanism) or heterogeneity (market and monarchy) of the interests of the population.

My preference is to treat these three methods of decision making as a distribution of labor, and to say that the king must make decision on war, and hold veto (act as judge), the senate must make decisions on commerce(revenues/production), and the common people must make decisions on commons (insurance and consumption). And that if none can find legal means of veto then the measure should pass as a legitimate contract between the classes.

Curt Doolittle

The Propertarian Institute

Kiev, Ukraine