Its the nature of the academic to try to avoid embarrassing ones self by exposing a premature idea. I am, however, trying to beat that back inorder to gain the insights of the blogosphere.
Here is just a simple data point in the direction of my thesis. From NYT
It is hard to find a tax cut that Congressional Republicans dislike. Unless it is a tax cut pushed by President Obama.
In a turning of the tax policy tables, Democrats are increasingly hammering on Republicans who oppose the president’s proposal to extend for a year a payroll tax cut passed last year with bipartisan support.
. . .
A spokesman for Grover Norquist, who as leader of Americans for Tax Reform is the author of a no-tax-increase pledge that scores of Congressional Republicans have signed, expressed ambivalence about the cut.
“One could argue that therefore allowing it to lapse was not a tax hike,” said John Kartch, a spokesman for the group. “But safer to either continue the lower rate or cut some other tax rate by the same total amount so that any change was revenue neutral.
One could say that this exposes the fact that Republican opposition to taxes is really an opposition to Progressive taxation. I say that it exposes the fact that Republican opposition to taxes is opposition to President Obama.
This is not to say the GOP is packed full of nihilists or such Obama hating rage that they will cut off their nose to spite their face. It is to say like all things they are the product of evolution.
In a Republican Democracy political parties survive and thrive because they are good at winning elections. That necessarily means they are good at causing other people to lose elections.
Importantly – from an evolutionary standpoint – it doesn’t matter what the election is over or who the other is. It only matters that you win.
Over time this will produce parties who simply do whatever is most convenient to win with no regard for any long term ideology. We are not quite there yet but we are moving in this direction.
Moreover, I reject the notion that what people want is their dignity as human beings respected by the political system. I think this is what the intelligentsia wants but as Tyler Cowen reminds us – envy is local.
What people want is to be respected by their friends and neighbors. To have children who are regarded with high status and who are protected from hunger, disease and exposure. Democracy is not necessary for any of this to happen.
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Friday ~ August 26th, 2011 at 10:54 am
Curt Doolittle
Well, I”m going to try something here that’s probably as futile as your railing against the trends of the day. But maybe it will help you if I chant it often enough. God knows I am trying:
RE: “What people want is to be respected by their friends and neighbors. … Democracy is not necessary for any of this to happen.”
Exactly. People pursue STATUS. They pursue money if it gains them status. They pursue economically and politically counter-intuitive policy at times, because it’s status tat they want. STATUS. Locally, globally.
THE NECESSITY OF STATUS
The fact that it is EPISTEMELOGICALLY NECESSARY for humans to pursue status (which is constructive) or it’s inverse, envy (which is destructive) is not necessarily obvious. But just as money and prices are necessary for economic planning and coordination in the extended order of cooperation, it is necessary for individuals to pursue STATUS in the local order of cooperation. Humans couldn’t make choices and plans without status signals, any more than they can make economic choices without money and prices.
Apes will forgo food to watch alphas. So will humans.
FURTHERMORE : Status cues within group are more highly valued than across group. This is why people will continue to be “racist, culturist, religionist, sexist and generationist”.
If you fix prices, people wil develop black markets, or rebel. If you fix status, people will develop black markets or rebel. Any behavior humans demonstrate toward prices will likewise be demonstrated toward status.
DEMOCRACY?
As for your thoughts on democracy, you’re catching up. You have the right basic thesis. But you haven’t put together the logic behind it yet. And when you do, you’ll see that the Austrians had worked much of it out — before the libertarians appropriated the framework for radical purposes.
The scholastics had natural law figured out a long time ago. You can bend it but you can’t break it. Because to break it will break the polity. And it will break the polity because it will break the status system. Just as socialism would break the economic system.
THE MACRO BIAS
Modern macro is a means of measurement. It is a good means of measurement. Solving the twin problems of artificial scarcity of money, and mutual reinsurance is a significant human achievement that makes fiat money and monetary policy viable. However, monetary policy as a means of altering the economy is too dull a tool for making changes to an economy that depends upon cooperation from a polity. Because all monetary policy by necessity is UNCOMPENSATED transfers. If status were the compensation for these transfers it would not be a problem in the polity. But use of the state eliminates the status compensation that people traditionally obtained in exchange for transfers.
YOU AND YOUR DEVELOPMENT
it is possible that during your current phase of intellectual development, that you might choose totalitarianism as a means of justifying your sensibilities that have come from the study of macro. Rather than studying individual industries, and human nature, and therefore industrial policy, and more complex forms of government. Ideas that might provide alternatives to your thinking.
I have been following you, (because you’re a moral person) and you are currently headed upon a path that will take you to admiring totalitarianism – simply because you understand the authoritarian macro tools better than the alternatives. Both democracy and totalitarianism rely upon ‘discretion’ by elites. But there are two other technologies one can rely upon: 1) privatization and small states, 2) large states and better ‘calculative institutions’ in concert with better ‘cooperative institutions’ that rely upon fixed rules. (there is no reason that we cannot have an economic constitution like we have a legal constitution).
Republican government, as you suggest, is a way of spreading out the labor to more parties during periods of rapid expansion in knowledge and opportunity. But it is limited by the sensory apparatus (the calculative institutions) that provide information to the representatives. And further, as an economy increases in it’s division of labor, the number of priorities that the representatives must choose from becomes incomprehensible. Third, the means of obtaining their office requires that they are supported by intrest groups. These intrest groups seek privileges which increase the complexity of the priorities, especially since once a group is possessed of a privilege it becomes impossible to remove it unless they lose all political power. At some point it is more valuable to compete in the political arena than in the market, and the society devolves from market pragmatic to rational and ideological.
IT IS NOT A CHOICE BETWEEN DEMOCRACY AND TOTALITARIANISM. There is a third choice. That is, to create both the information and the rules needed so that neither democracy or totalitarianism is required. And the propertarians, which yes, you are right, are surrounded by silly people, but despite being surrounded by silly people, they do understand this third choice: ALL cooperative advances in human history are increases in CALCULABILITY (in the heuristic sense.) The virtue of property is that it makes economic calculation and therefore incentives, possible.
Once you grasp that democracy has failed, you do not need to retrench into totalitarianism. You can make use of the third way – improving institutions by increasing their calculability. To remove discretion from the process of government. To remove bureaucracy from the process of government.
The problem for any intellectual is that his sensibilities guide his reason. You, Karl, have the ‘right’ sensibilities to be a great thinker. Perhaps an innovator, and a moral one. But it’s propertarianism not totalitarianism that makes the world calculable. Democracy is just a means of ensuring we rotate elites. Unfortunately without privatization we cannot rotate the bureaucracy only the representatives.
I’m sure you ignore me by now, but you shouldn’t.
Friday ~ August 26th, 2011 at 7:31 pm
Spandrell
Lose elections.
Loose your shoelaces
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