Category: Politics, Power, and Governance

THE ASSUMPTION THAT WE CAN CREATE A MONOPOLY POLITY IS FALSE.

Peter Boettke

(Revisiting your post after some contemplation)

The assumption upon which your argument rests, progressivism rests, libertarianism rests, and conservatism rests – in all their forms – because that assumption is common to all enlightenment visions, of all classes, from all societies, is that the universalism of domestic religion, can be achieved in domestic government (the production of commons), just as the left’s vision is that universalism of domestic religion can be achieved in the market (the production, distribution, and consumption of goods and services).

But what does the evidence tell us? And what can we operationally hypothesize are the reasons for that evidence?

Evidence is that religions are intolerant, that commons production is only slightly less intolerant, that markets are the least intolerant, but that religion, commons production and market production are all intolerant. But why?

Well in religion we have relative equality of costs (normative) all of which are voluntary – all costs are exitable. In commons, we have asymmetric costs (material and normative), some are relevant or irrelevant, and some are exitable, some are not exitable. The material, inexitable, and relevant costs create conflicts. The market is highly demanding of normative and material costs, is not just relevant but necessary, and is no longer exitable unless you’re a village farmer in the temperate latitudes.

What we see happening is the worldwide realization that the promise of monopoly that we see in norm and religion is not possible with government – and only silly people (Marxist utopians and their descendants) assumed it was with market.

And we have all lost faith with the ability to convert others to our preferences. Why? Because both our moral intuitions and our voting patterns are little more than expressions of our reproductive strategy, reflecting our reproductive, cooperative, and associative desirability.

So we have post-monopoly choices now in the production of commons:

(1) evolve the government to include a market for commons, and create a mix of economic orders fulfilling the needs of the different classes. or (2) divide into smaller states which can retain monopoly processes yet provide a diversity of economic and political orders.

(3) Restore the central object of policy to nation, tribe, and family, under which we seem to naturally create redistributive orders that appeal to all members of all classes, (4) return to authoritarian imperialism (russia/china/islamia) to suppress differences between the classes at the expense of corruption in all its forms.

Now, the problem is, that the various models are deterministic in their outcomes: if we do not treat reproduction (the organization of reproduction) with the same relative value as production and consumption (the voluntary organization of production), then the future is a pretty clear one: South American/Hindu castes and favelas, or chinese/russian master-tribe imperialism, European manorialism, Jewish/Muslim perpetual tribalism.

The fundamental flaw under the western Christian aristocratic liberal (classical liberal) model, is that man was oppressed and able to join the middle class with aristocratic virtues.

The data started coming out more clearly last year, but it’s been obvious to conservatives (western aristocracy) intuitionistically forever: mankind was not oppressed, it was forcibly domesticated against the reproductive interests of the lower class through a continuous process indifferent from how we domesticated our animals, our plants, and our territories.

And every individual at the bottom is more costly than every individual at the top is beneficial. We cannot maintain a condition of liberty unless Pareto rules: the 80% of the capital in the hands of 2-% of the population must be sufficient to construct a voluntary organization of production out of a hierarchy of incentives each of which must be marginally different enough for individuals to choose to act productively rather than parasitically.

Liberty is the product the use of common law to create limited inequality of genetic value expressed as demonstrated productivity in reproduction, production of goods and services, or in the production of commons.

It’s just math. There isn’t any way out of it. Liberty is, like it’s more honest conservative (aristocratic egalitarian) parent, the product of eugenics: domestication of man producing a superior product: subsequent generations.

Curt Doolittle

The Propertarian Institute

Kiev, Ukraine