So is it accurate to say that full-franchise democracy is a disaster, we need to limit who gets to vote, and at the same time people can have representation, but those representatives need to be negotiating with each other within the bounds of reciprocity, not violating reciprocity? Anything you would change or add to that statement?
The only thing I would add is that it’s not clear at all that our experiment in expanding the franchise has been valuable at all. It’s pretty clear from the historical record that monarchies did a better job of governance at far lower costs, and thats partly by denying people access to political power used to circumvent the market, and instead, forcing them to obtain status in the commercial and aesthetic market.
The fact that the middle class had to struggle to modify government as economics returns changed from land to industry and from aristocracy to burgher was simple a rational failure of the people of the time to understand the macro level of the transformation. All that was necessary was adding another house to the government. And this is the general trend we should have followed. More ‘houses’ rather than parties.
Access to political power in the via-negativa provides defense against a state with policies coherent or not. Access to political power via positiva eliminates the suppression of the use of government for non-market functions, and creates a war of all against all. The mistake in history is that inclusive government should consist of via positiva rather than via-negativa (veto) or juridical (Assent or Veto) rather than the construction of policy. The problem is via positiva franchise must and dose create opportunity for corruption and deceit which is what we have seen throughout the democratic era.
The ability for nations to compete by the use of the state to produce commons of internationally competitive value.
Direct production of commons by the people by economic vote does put tremendous pressure on institutions that provide public services, just as privatization of public services provides incentive. What we have seen however is that privatization of public services – namely prisons and transportation, do not work as anticipated, since the state is as bad a customer of services as it is a vendor of services. However, we can change the market such that the people economically vote for institutions that are not institutions within the domain of insurer of last resort, but preferential or those that provide customer services.
Intellectual work prior to the majority democratic era is not pseudoscientific of sophist, while intellectual work after the majority democratic era is far superior, because the market for deceits in politics doesn’t exist.
Worse we have lost the ability to use the market for suppression of parasitism against out politicians, judges, and enforcement personnel. While at the same time making a policeman’s job almost impossible.
The more obvious solutions depend on the caliber of the population and The classes.
It’s not even clear we need a single market economy. There is no reason we don’t have a socialistic economy for the working and laboring classes, a market economy for the middle and upper classes, a venture economy funded by the state for the research classes, and a gratitude economy funded by say a monarchy for the artistic classes. We hae element of these already but they are all half truths. The problem is one of conducting trades, and doing so by a full accounting of costs and returns. If people knew the returns on investment in military technology for example, they would have no problem funding it. They don’t tho. Most states retain the wealth of their innovations. We give it away to entrepreneurs. There is no reason we do that. We can just retain some small interest in the profits of entrepreneurial ventures, as returns on our research and development gambles – it’s all gambling.
So the general rule of political orders is that the franchise increases in either:
– via positiva choice of commons by equalitarian vote, where majoritarian rules of some percentage pass (monopoly model)
– via-positiva egalitarian vote of economic contribution, where any funded proposal will pass (market model)
– via-negativa veto or assent of any given proposal by the state. And via positiva dissolution of the state (meaning the board of directors, or in the case of the state the cabinet).
I have also suggested that we could return to antiquity and create a juridical via negativa government, and a commons producing via positiva government, and a via positiva social insurance government and let the market the commons and the insurance compete for people’s resources. This would come closest to restoring the judiciary and the market, the state and the military, and the church and the masses. Anything at all to restore the markets and eliminate the monopolies.
But all of these permutations are contingent upon the suppression of falsehood and ir-reciprocity in public speech. And of course the only limiting factor we have is christians – which is our only material problem as an ethnicity. The christians will not tolerate constraint on public speech to the public (even though they are so constrained today) even in exchange for a monopoly on religion, and return to political control of family, education and welfare. Which was my hope. But the christians apparently want to fail along with the catholic church by not separating the spiritual from the material in public speech.
For the united states I’ve proposed one in which in limited form restores the british empire, which is the optimum choice for western civilization, devolves the federal government to functions of insurer of last resort – eliminating it from social policy, re-organizes the states by converting all cities over 300k people to city states, leaving the choice of state formation to the counties, since counties already have governments,,and the voluntary choice of the districts on a district by district level, to join existing counties or form new ones. This process guts both the federal via-positiva bureaucracy, and the state via-positiva bureaucracy. The result of which is converting the USA to old europe, and probably successfully ending the attempt of europe to convert into a strong central government like the USA. My hope is that between the monarchies of europe and the size of the us-british military, and the british, american, canadian, australian, and new zealand collective bargaining on military and trade matters, that we would reverse the great crime of the 20th century which was the fall of the british empire for failing to grasp that the ascent of germany into continental dominance was a defense against the east, and south. This would give english speaking europe greater power than even the chinese, maintain american interest in bearing the cost of blue water navies, and leave western europe exposed as a weak peninsula, forcing either the horrid french or the virtuous germans to reinvest in security. I do not see much value in via positiva politics under this model, (nor did the british monarchy). But there is value in via-negativa politics, requiring approval. A monarchy can easily pull talent from around the world to work for it.
This would perform military and trade at the highest level, insurance betlow that, preserve local custom (‘liberty’), and give precedent to local custom over regional and national except where in conflict with truth and reciprocity. In other words, as long as it’s true and reciprocal anyone can do it, and that just means all local policy is constructed as a contract of exchanges rather than issued commands.
Assuming that taxes are paid to local, state (National), and federal(imperial) levels, then we have restored the marketplace of political systems in which we compete for people we want to live with and work with.
This would restore our ancestral strategy of the church as a weak judiciary over a large set of small homogenous nation states, but this time with a military capable of power projection across the empire and insurer of last resort services to vast numbers of people. Meanwhile individual states producing those commons most suitable to their populations and their cultures and their traditions producing identities we all crave, in small enough populations that none of us is too far distant from power (power distance and status are related). There is no model superior to the swiss so to speak.
Every other alternative is some variation of this strategy with less ambitious objectives.
