I’ve given up on bothering with the Elhafnawy piece any more. As Jim Bennett notes:
Why would anybody take Elhafnawy seriously? His representation of both the market-oriented space side of the argument and what he defines as “conservatives” are wildly atypical of either community.
It particularly strains credulity that he would represent Nicholson Baker, a whackadoodle pacifist with serious perception-of-reality problems, as any kind of “conservative.” There’s the definition of conservative that’s been in use in the English-speaking world for the past century or so, which is to say, preserving the values that support a constitutional representative political system with a market economy, and then there’s Elhafnawy’s definition. Elhafnawy should just invent a word, maybe (typing at random, here) “dhziuueybdcnma” or ” uaygsrabsjdbue” to represent whatever he is using the word “conservative’ to describe, and let the rest of us use the words of the English language as they are generally understood.
Not only “wildly atypical,” but completely unsubstantiated. If this were an academic paper, given its anecdotal quality (except it only has one actual anecdote, with an unnamed source), it would be tossed out. One has the feeling that he wanted to do a Diane Fosse thing, a sort of “spacers in the mist,” but couldn’t be bothered to actually document his observations. At least Fosse and Jane Goodall named names.
But for the two or three people who are on the edge of their seats, here’s my thesis.
It’s genetic.
OK, not quite that simple, but it’s true. I was born to think space is important. Now I don’t mean that it’s genetic in the sense that my whole family, or even any of my ancestors share my views, and passed them on to me. They didn’t and don’t. If they did and do, that would in fact be more of an argument that it’s environmental (we were all brought up to believe this) but we weren’t. I wasn’t. I was born this way, as surely as I was born an extreme heterosexual. I know other spacers who are the same way — no one else in their family is into space, no one taught or told them they should be, and yet they are.
Thus, it’s some weird recessive, or a mutation.
Which makes sense, given that there aren’t very many of us. There aren’t very many explorers in general. If everyone was out exploring all the time, nothing else societally useful would get done.
This is my explanation for “progressives” (such as Ferris Valyn or Bill White) who betray their ideology by supporting human expansion into space. đ
Now, having said that, there is a political component, and a reason why there are an inordinate number of libertarians in the space movement (and space enthusiasts in the libertarian movement, with a significant overlap). I discussed it years ago, back in the early days of this weblog (no need to follow the link — I’m reposting in entirety):
As a follow up to today’s rant over our “allies” in Europe, over at USS Clueless, Steven den Beste has an excellent disquisition on the fundamental differences between Europe and the U.S. They don’t, and cannot, understand that the U.S. exists and thrives because it is the UnEurope, that it was built by people who left Europe (and other places) because they wanted freedom.
I say this not to offer simply a pale imitation of Steven’s disquisition (which is the best I could do, at least tonight), but to explain why I spend so much time talking about space policy here. It’s not (just) because I’m a space nut, or because I used to do it for a living, and so have some knowledge to disseminate. It’s because it’s important to me, and it should be important to everyone who is concerned about dynamism and liberty.
And the reason that it’s important is because there may be a time in the future, perhaps not even the distant future, when the U.S. will no longer be a haven for those who seek sanctuary from oppressive government. The trends over the past several decades are not always encouraging, and as at least a social insurance policy, we may need a new frontier into which freedom can expand.
Half a millenium ago, Europe discovered a New World. Unfortunately for its inhabitants (who had discovered it previously), the Europeans had superior technology and social structures that allowed them to conquer it.
Now, in the last couple hundred years, we have discovered how vast our universe is, and in the last couple decades, we have discovered how rich in resources it is, given will and technology. As did the eastern seaboard of the present U.S. in the late eighteenth century, it offers mankind a fertile petri dish for new societal arrangements and experiments, and ultimately, an isolated frontier from which we will be able to escape from possible future terrestrial disasters, whether of natural or human origin.
If, as many unfortunately in this country seem to wish, freedom is constricted in the U.S., the last earthly abode of true libertarian principles, it may offer an ultimate safety valve for those of us who wish to continue the dream of the founders of this nation, sans slavery or native Americans–we can found it without the flawed circumstances of 1787.
That is why space, and particularly free-enterprise space, is important.
And current events are not very encouraging with regard to the direction of the country. A significant number of people (though not, I think, despite the recent election results, a majority) want to Europeanize us. If it happens, there’s nowhere to go but up.
[Update early afternoon]
(“Progressive”) Ferris Valyn is soliciting ideas for a(nother) Netroots Nation discussion on space over at Kos (he really should get his own site). I find the “more progressive than thou” food fight in comments pretty amusing.
[Friday afternoon update]
I have a follow-on post here for anyone interested.
Edward, I agree – no one forces you to move in to a suburban development with a restrictive covenent just as no one would force you to move into a space habitat. My point is that a libertarian probably wouldn’t enjoy living in a space habitat, because of what I assume will be their restrictive nature. But if anyone can explain why it won’t seem restrictive to live in space, and moreover, give an account of how a libertarian space habitat would operate, I think it would make for very interesting reading, and I think it would appeal to a wide audience of space enthusiasts.
Finally, an interesting thread returns to Rand’s site. Excellent to see and a nice change from the ODS stuff it’s been focused on.
My $0.02, I can’t think of a way to make self contained Space Colonies with essentially closed life support cycles particularly libertarian. The very nature of the them will involve restrictions and controls on consumption of “commons”, reproduction, behaviour and a bunch of other stuff.
You have things easier on essential open cycles (i.e. human habitable planets). However, even if we ignore the problem of local governments laying claim to areas (i.e. Siberia) – there isn’t much of a rush of people to live there, even with economic incentives.
Rand might have a better imagination than I, so I would love to see his outline for a McMurdo designed by Libertarians and how that would work.
These topics are routinely done to death by panels at events such as the World Science Fiction convention and typically end up in stand up fights between the mostly American Libertarian fan/writers and the rest of the attendees.
Bob, the point you miss is that no one forces you to move into a development. You are not bound by such covenents unless you agree to accept them, usually in writing.
But Ed, this is an example of a strawman. No, you are not forced into moving into a development, anymore, than you are forced into living in the USA. However, access to better schools, nicer surroundings and better facilities makes people give up freedom in exchange for community services which, however banal, are better than the alternatives.
I will concede that the US is one of the few countries that expects it’s citizens to tithe and follow certain laws when they are no longer resident. But they are also one of the few countries which expects the citizens of other countries obey their laws when not resident too. i.e. the arrest of the CEO of an online gambling site when he was changing planes in the US while going on vacation in the Caribbean.
Bob, I’ll take a whack at the pinata. I’m just going to channel one of the masters of this sort of fantasy, Heinlein.
I own a tiny modular habitat in orbit, Phamton, ha ha. You are invited to join my tiny village anytime you like. Not for free, of course. You have to buy your way in. For me, the owner of the major structure itself, you are required to pay one (1) external shell of a living module, built to my specs, which will be welded onto the backbone at a place of my choosing — although I will accept bribes to put it where you want it. You can put whatever you want inside that shell. You also must pay me a sum which, with interest at normal rates, will pay for your return ticket to Earth at any time in the future. (This is just because I’m humane, and if you become a total deadbeat or inveterate violator of other peoples’ rights I prefer to deport you rather than push you out the airlock.)
Then you may also want to pay the other existing inhabitants, because you will be requiring certain neighborly services (e.g. the right to exhale near them at the diner. What they’ll charge, and on what basis they’ll set the price, I have no idea, and I don’t mess with it. You can refuse to pay one or all inhabitants, if you feel you can afford to incur their ill will. I don’t care. Once you pay me, I’ll weld your hab onto the backbone.
Once you get here, you will be incurring additional expenses from me, or my subcontractors, who pipe air and water and such to and from your module. You can negotiate whatever rates you like, and pay on whatever schedule and in whatever form you can reach agreement on. Of course, if you don’t reach agreement, you won’t be getting any O2 or water.
You can conduct any transaction you like with any other person anywhere, on or off the hab, except that I enforce property rights, by violence if necessary. (I employ armed guards for that purpose. You can be armed, too, but I always make sure my guards have enough firepower to win.) So if you reach agreement with Jim to install a noisy pipe full of poisonous gas between his hab and yours, along the interior hallway, you’ll need to reach agreement with me, too, since I own the hallway and every square foot of the exterior of the hab (you inhabitants own everything from the skin in inside your modules).
If you trespass on my property against my will, I’ll enforce my rights, as I said with violence if necessary. If you trespass on someone else’s property without her will, e.g. you get drunk and won’t leave Betty Boop’s Most Excellent Restaraunt Module, then I enforce herproperty rights, with violence if necessary. I also enforce personal rights of guests (e.g. other inhabitants) on my property (e.g. in the corridors). If you propose to rape Betty in a darkened corridor, Betty is free to kill you with her gun (vida infra), but if she prefers to rely on (or has paid for) my tiny flying camera eyes and armed guards, she can.
There are no jails; the possibilities if you need to be corrected are (1) you get restricted from various people’s property, including possibly mine (meaning the door out of your hab won’t open), or (2) you are deported (if at all possible), or (3) you are killed (if there’s no way to safely deport you instead). There’s only one ultimate judge, me. I make all the decisions about whether it’s (1), (2) or (3) that happens. Other inhabitants are free to bribe me to try to influence my decision, and you’re free to counter-bribe. (That is, you can propose to pay a fine instead of get deported or confined to your module. I may or may not accept, depending on your offense and the size of the bribe.)
As part of your initial immigration orientation, I will solemnly swear to you that you can always choose (2) to happen instead of (3), by cooperating fully with the process of deportation. If you’re deported, you retain all your rights to property you still own here. You can deputize another inhabitant to exercise them, or you can hire me to. If you refuse to do either, I’ll exercise them by default, charging against the value of your property whatever fee I feel is reasonable.
You and every other inhabitant also have an unlimited right to self-defense or your person and property, including via violence using any weapons you please. Naturally, I reserve the right to interfere or judge subsequently, if I think violent actions were not taken in self-defense, but rather aggressively. I also can’t guarantee that if you get in a firefight I can fulfill your urgent sudden request to be deported fast enough to save your life.
Oh, about “commons” and so forth: there are none. Nothing is “owned in common.” Everyone owns the inside of his module, or any additional modules he pays me to install for his use. I own the basic structure, interior corridors, station-keeping rockets, main power arrays, et cetera. (If you want extra power, for your own use or to sell to others, you can rent space for more power arrays on the main structure for the purpose.)
“Safety rules” are merely negotiated agreements for the use of someone else’s property (perhaps mine, if you want to take a spacewalk on the solar power arrays), and are enforced as normal property rights. You’re free to allow your visitors at a drunken party to bring guns and do target practise in your module, even if they might puncture your window and decompress your module. However, I might restrict them (or some of them) from passing through my corridors with weapons of sufficient caliber to puncture your door and decompress my corridors.
What’s left to explain? What else do you want to know? Hopefully you’re not shocked that there’s no trace of democracy here. Democracy is madness. There must be governance, and it’s legitimate as long as it’s ultimately based on the consent of the governed. In this case, you consent by living here, and I’ve set it up by making sure if you stop consenting you can leave, any time. My principle of governance is to enforce individual rights, including rights to your person and property, and interfere in no other way. But the only actual check you and the other inhabitants have on my power is to leave and take your money and contributions with you, ensuring my hab fails and I am bankrupted, or die when I have no one to help with a meteor strike.
If you don’t like the principle that I’m an autocrat, even though you have no objection to the actual uses that I make of my power, then I’m sure there’s a Dreamer Theoretician hab just for you, where principles and theories are more important than actual acts. You can start it yourself if you like!
Would I live in such a place? Well, if I was the owner, sure, I think so. There are probably enough reasonable people in the world to fill my little village without causing me endless administrative headache. (But maybe not, I don’t know.) What if I was not the owner? Then the question can’t be answered in the abstract. It depends on the character, trustworthiness, et cetera of the owner.
My point is that a libertarian probably wouldnât enjoy living in a space habitat, because of what I assume
I doubt that most libertarians care what you assume. đ
You seem to assume that your assumptions are laws of nature.
But Ed, this is an example of a strawman. No, you are not forced into moving into a development, anymore, than you are forced into living in the USA.
Yes, Dave, that’s an excellent example of a strawman. You might win first prize at the county fair. đ
No one is forced to live in the United States but everyone has to live *somewhere.* There is no place on Earth where a person can practically live without being subject to the jurisdiction (and regulation) of some government.
There are plenty of places where a person can live without being subject to restrictive covenents. I don’t know how common such convenents are in England but in the United States, I’d estimate they effect maybe 5-10% of all residences.
So, “government regulation” = impossible to avoid. “Restrictive covenent” = easy to avoid. Not the same thing at all.
But they are also one of the few countries which expects the citizens of other countries obey their laws when not resident too. i.e. the arrest of the CEO of an online gambling site when he was changing planes in the US while going on vacation in the Caribbean.
Er, how does that prove your point? I’ve never heard of gated communities arresting non-residents at the airport.
Ed: Shhhhhhh. I’m standing in awe of Carl’s essay. Will you join me? Lets have a moment of reverence and appreciation.
Carl, I’m actually going to need a more than a moment. That was terrific. Really terrific. Bravo!
My first reaction, however, is to say that your scenario is much worse than what I was envisioning — rather than just chafing under necessary safety restrictions, I’m going to be subject to tyranny from whoever is in your role, and extortion from my neighbors. The conflict resolution method seems terrible – exactly the sort of environment where I wouldn’t want to live or do business. I’m going to pause and think over your essay and then I’ll try to come back with examples. I hope other people react to your scenario – I’d be interested in whether they’d want to live there.
But again, I’m wowed by your essay. However wrong it is, it is still very impressive!
Well, Bob, when you do come back, let me make a suggestion, based on my passion for empiricism over theory.
Instead of imagining all the evil that could, theoretically, happen under such a system — because, my friend, you will find no system of government anywhere under which infinite evil cannot theoretically happen — let me suggest that you simply ask what would actually happen under circumstances X or Y. Then you can decide if it sounds nice or horrific.
My advantage in this discussion is that I can give you perfectly reliable responses, since we’re assuming I’m running the habitat, and I know what I think about stuff.
To be sure, my answers will tell you zero about whether you want to join someone else’s libertarian paradise orbital habitat, e.g. Rand’s or Brock’s or Karl’s. You’ll have to ask them the same questions to find that out.
Which is…mmm, kind of the point. You will — or would, assuming we all really were running orbital habs — have a pretty amazing range of free choicies for the rules under which you’d like to live. That’s the best we can do for individual liberty, at least in this life.
My point is that a libertarian probably wouldnât enjoy living in a space habitat, because of what I assume will be their restrictive nature.
Why? If it were all about dodging “restrictions”, then why don’t libertarians all live in lush tropical places where the environment puts almost no demands on you? A number of them live in hostile places like Alaska or Montana.
All I can guess is that you somehow think that restrictions imposed by government are just as necessary for survival as restrictions imposed because you can’t breathe vacuum. This obviously is not so. Consider the widespread violation of speeding laws globally. Same goes for recreational drugs or prostitution. Excise taxes (and the occasional effort to dodge them) are another example.
Government routinely passes laws that do not impact your survival directly. Maybe someone thought it was a good idea (and maybe for some regions it is), or maybe someone got bribed. But under a government you have to obey those laws anyway. These are the restrictions that libertarians chafe under.
“My point is that a libertarian probably wouldnât enjoy living in a space habitat, because of what I assume will be their restrictive nature. But if anyone can explain why it wonât seem restrictive to live in space, and moreover, give an account of how a libertarian space habitat would operate, I think it would make for very interesting reading, and I think it would appeal to a wide audience of space enthusiasts.”
What, no mention of Heinlein’s The Moon is a Harsh Mistress ? It’s only a 40+ year old novel, not a classic of the genre or anything.
Carl, for the most part, we can forget outer space when considering your essay. Your scenario is the same in almost every respect if your cleverly named “Phamton” is a neighborhood on private land here on Earth, with the modules serving as houses, and the hallways and corridors are streets. Getting sent back to Earth is just getting exiled from the community, except it costs more and possibly exerts greater stresses on the body. The only differences seem to be the greater need for life support. It isn’t clear to me whether you will own the utility companies, or if some of the residents will own them (subject to your rights of way), but either way, O2 and other life support hookups isn’t that different from more typical earthly utility hookups, except that their absence will kill you.
So my first reaction is leftist: what about the needs of the least fortunate or least able to fend for themselves. For example: Suppose my wife and I join your village. We have kids in the privacy of our spacious module, and you don’t even realize it. We become deadbeats, and you decide to deport us. There is no money for deporting the kids. Do you throw somebody out the airlock? Say I’m not a deadbeat at all, but my wife and I get killed, and it turns out we unknowingly failed to properly provide for the kids. What happens to them? Does the community have a responsibility? Say I get old and senile, but I keep paying my bills (automatic bill pay) and I don’t want to leave – what then? What if I’m permanently disabled and my insurance company goes belly-up? What if sending me back to Earth will kill me? In general, I haven’t (yet) seen any indication that the overall community or you personally has any responsibility for the weak and defenseless.
Of course, you could say that the above scenarios could be covered by contracts that we’d agree to in advance. But how does contract law work in your society?
It seems to me that you, Carl, as the owner of the space colony, will not take any interest in any contract I enter into with another module owner. So, it is really just between me and the other owner. There doesn’t seem to be any recourse to a court. There might be possibly be an intervention by you, but that’s it. And you may not be impartial, you’ve already made it clear that you’re interested in bribes…. …Furthermore, what about contracts between me, a module owner, and you, the owner of the village? What if we disagree? You’ve already stipulated that you’ll have the most firepower. What if you screw me over?
Now, you can say “well, it won’t come to that. We like each other, and we’ll have a good business relatinoship”. Sadly, this is where I draw on my personal experience. I went into a business venture with someone I considered a friend for 15 years, and while I’ll spare you the details, he tried to steal $27,000 from me. It was the worst anyone has ever betrayed me. It was the threat of a lawsuit that helped me eventually recover a majority of the money.
Your scenario is basically saying that I’ve got to trust you, and there will be no opportunity for restitution (just revenge) if you screw me over. And considering how much power your scenario gives you, I’m worried it will corrupt you. Say I don’t agree with your judgment – there is no recourse for me, except perhaps to bribe your hired goons, or maybe foment revolt among the other owners. In the US system, I’d have the threat of a lawsuit and if it came to that, I’d have my day in court. Why should I prefer your system?
As for policy-making, I also see no reason why “democracy is madness” – I think democracy, checks and balances, and a court system would be superior to your system.
Finally, your system doesn’t seem libertarian – you are acting as the government, with a laissez-faire attitude toward business but with the power of a tyrant with no checks and balances. I think a libertarian scenario would eliminate your role – there would be independent modules that would interact with each other, without an overall property owner.
I do understand the argument that says “If you don’t like it, you can leave”, but that leaves me wondering why anyone would like it.
There is a completely separate argument to be made for why space is more difficult than Earth for libertarianism, but a) that’s enough for now, and b) it is even more interesting to examine how a libertarian society would work regardless of setting.
Karl, why don’t libertarians set up libertarian communities? Other than taxes, they could avoid statist requirements and live as they please on private land in the US or another free country. Do they ever do it? If so, how did it work out?
Awright! Bob steps up to bat. Here we go…
First, your complaints about my arbitrary power are certainly predictable. I made that power — my essential tyrannical power — very in your face obvious, because I wanted you to confront the essential problem about a fondness for individual liberty and individual rights I mentioned further above: who guarantees those rights, given that they are rights against the will of the majority?
That is, it’s no good appealing to Congress (for example) to protect your right to have your private contract providing for a $1 million bonus respected, if the great public believes it should be otherwise. You can’t ask the majority to protect your right to free speech if the majority doesn’t think you should have it. Don’t believe me? Ask Southern blacks in 1880. Their right to free speech, habeas corpus, et cetera et cetera was on the law books, fair and square. Didn’t do a lick of good, did it?
As Philip K. Dick, poor mad soul, said in one of his short stories, law is the mechanism by which society defends itself against the individual — but what defends the individual against society? Most libertarians start mumbling when it gets to this point. I give kudos to Heinlein for squarely confronting the problem, and realizing there are no options for guaranteeing individual rights against the majority other than tyrannical power. And the only check on tyrannical power that doesn’t involve endless regression (czars watching kings keeping an eye on Presidents…) is the power of the masses to revolt or emigrate, because a tyrant all by his lonesome is no threat at all.
So that’s the system I set up. You profit by my tyrannical power because I can guarantee your individual liberty and rights against the majority of your fellow citizens. If you’re a Jew and a wave of anti-Semitism sweeps my hab, I can prevent Kristallnacht. No democratic government could. If you and everyone else is a homophobe, but then you suddenly realize your true identity and Come Out, I can enforce your right to be treated exactly equally, even in the face of implacable opposition by everyone else in the hab. No democratic government could.
And the check on my tyrannical power is the power of the hab’s inhabitants to emigrate, to abandon my regime as cruel and thereby leave me in space alone (which of course means my own emigration, hence demotion, or death, since as you’ve pointed out it’s impossible for a person to survive alone in space). Long term, the only guarantee of my own personal survival and prosperity is to demonstrate to you, my villagers, that my rule is preferable to any other, arbitrary power and all. I have to prove that I only use that power for good. Otherwise, you vote with your feet and leave. The fact that emigration is a pain, and most of you have to leave for the check to be effective, gives me “breathing space” to take momentarily unpopular action (preventing your neighbors from spacing you because you fart too much in the elevator) in the hopes that calmer thought over time will allow everyone to see I’m right.
The right to emigrate is meaningless if there is no other place to go, or even if there are too few other places to go. Hence the true libertarian’s ideal is a society composed of many small village (or even family-sized) tyrannies, over which there is no overarching government at all, more or less a true federalism. (The only solution to the destructiveness of war and empire building in this context is to also spread the small groups over such a huge volume, with big natural barries — oceans, mountains, millions of miles of empty space — so that it’s physically impossible to hold an empire together.)
This, as I’ve said, is what the United States looked like from 1680 to 1860, roughly, in it’s libertarian heyday. From the c-liberal’s viewpoint, it’s been downhill along the statist path ever since, with the occasional small reverse. Keep in mind that up until the Civil War, the power of Congress and the President to really reach into Joe the Farm Boy’s life and mess with it was very limited. Joe’s life was far more governed by his parents, relatives, and neighbors, and that power was, for the most part, pretty arbitrary, because there was no effective central authority to check it. Fortunately, it was also geographically constrained, and if Joe became persona non grata and was in danger of being lynched, he could usually flee in the dead of night, start over somewhere else more congenial to, for example, horse thiefs or Mormons or Jews or whatever put him at odds with his neighbors. Indeed, to avoid notoriety the citizenry might choose to ride him out of town on a rail rather than kill him, thus effecting the same solution.
Now on to your specific queries, Bob.
First, what happens to the unfortunate? This is an easy one. Clearly, it depends first of all on the situation at hand. Are we under “lifeboat” conditions? Is the hab desperately short on oxygen and food, under bombardment by gammas from a solar flare and the shelter won’t hold anyone else? If it’s not possible for the collective wealth of the hab to support individuals who can’t contribute — well, you know what happens. What always happens, either in cities starving under siege, or on the deck of th sinking Titanic, or in the triage center of a hospital after an overwhelming earthquake. Horrible choices.
Would I make the ugly choices? Probably. Not because I wanted to. I’d much rather delegate my authority to a jury, a blue-ribbon committee, a Congress, a firing squad where one guy has a blank — some collective in which the guilt and responsibility can be diluted, so each individual can pretend it wasn’t he that pulled the trigger, forced the clinging fingers to let go of the gunwhale before they capsized the lifeboat.
But I consider that a disgustingly cowardly act. If your dog needs to die, you need to shoot him yourself. If I accept the job of tyrant, it’s my job to make the hideous decisions and accept the consequences. (Which, if the hab subsequently prospers, probably consists of all you survivors building statues to me and rewriting history and your memories to emphasize my heroism, and if it collapses, forming a mob and murdering me.)
Enough of that. Let us assume, as is usually the case, that the hab can easily afford to support a few complete parasites, e.g. your unfortunate children, someone who is disabled on the job but foolishly forgot to buy disability insurance, et cetera.
In that case, the answer is charity, as it has been all through history. Would I personally be the charitable one? Probably, if no one else stepped up to the plate. After all, even leaving aside the fact that I am a nice person, very fond of children in general, it’s certainly in my long-term interest to do so: it burnishes my image among the hab’s inhabitants and prospective immigrants. If you want me to guarantee my charity, you can (1) cut a business deal with me, pay me a certain amount of money, i.e. take out insurance, or (2) you can simply ask me sometime before it becomes necessary. I might do it, I might not, depending on your value to me. Maybe you’re my resident genius, and I’ll do nearly anything to keep you happy. Or maybe you’re a real irritant, a slacker and cutter of ethical corners, and I’d actually like to encourage you to leave.
But assuming none of that happens, would I even need to be personally charitable? I doubt it. Almost every organized form of humanity spontaneously forms charitable societies, in response to humane impulses and, of course, for the practical purpose of re-assuring members that if they are stricken by bad luck, they’ll be treated with charity and kindness. So I expect there’ll be some charity group on the hab, established and run by your neighbors, who will take care of your children until they reach adulthood. If there isn’t, or I feel they’er being too stingy, I’d probably chip in, too.
What may worry you is there are no guarantees, that no one is declaring an inalienable responsibility for your children. (Assuming, that is, you haven’t thoughtfully contracted for one, by, for example, joining a church or neighborhood book club that has some explicit contract for orphan guardianship as one of its membership benefits.)
Well, that’s life. Remember, a responsibility the majority solemnly assumes can be just as solemnly abandoned if it feels like it — because there’s no one to enforce its prior promises. It’s like Congress passing a law that they’ve got to balance the budget every year (which they’ve done many times). Doesn’t do a damn thing, because they can just revoke it any time they want. There are no guarantees in any system.
Besides, the explicit uncertainty you experience by being unable to delude yourself that a law passed in a democratic government guarantees your childrens’ welfare is useful. It’s strong motivation for you to take sensible steps like taking out a life insurance policy when your first child is born, in case something like this happens, and contracting with someone you trust to be your childrens’ guardian (with the money from the insurance to ease the burden) if you meet with untimely misfortune.
I like that motivation. I like mechanisms that force people to confront reality and deal with it rationally. Bad luck may be unpreventable, but that doesn’t mean the rational man just gives up and does nothing to prepare for it. If I try to eliminate the risks of bad luck for you, I fear you will quite rationally stop preparing for it, and that way lies statist disaster, where I simply eventually assume all the risks of life for you, and you become dependent subhuman wards. Even if you like the idea, I don’t.
OK, on to contracts, Bob. Whew! This is hard work.
Yes, I enforce contracts. If you have a contract with your neighbor and he defaults, you bring the contract to me and I’ll enforce it, by violence if necessary.
Of course, if I do that for free, you’ll all be bringing me every single tiny dispute you have, and I’ll be overwhelmed in no time flat. So, I charge you a fee for enforcing your contract. I raise the fee until the number of contracts I am asked to enforce drops to something I consider reasonable. Depending on the size of the hab, that fee could become enormous, if I have to (say) prevent all but 1 out of every 10,000 disputes from coming to me.
This will, of course, set up a good market demand for “lower level courts,” people willing to enforce contracts for much lower fees. (Since there will be many more of them, they can handle the load, collectively.) They can’t enforce contracts by violence (unless I contract with them to do so, which I might at some point, but would prefer not to do).
But what happens is that they function the way “binding arbitration” works now. Before you or anyone reasonable is willing to sign a contract, you insist on an arbitratration clause in which you both agree to hire one of these lower level courts and abide by their decision. Then you take out an insurance policy from someone else that will pay the fee for your preferred court. Unless you’re very litigious or very unlucky, the insurance premium will be much smaller than the fee itself.
Maybe you take out another insurance policy that will pay my fee if you want to appeal from the decision of the lower court. The size of that insurance premium would depend on how often losers appeal from that court, which in turn depends on how often I “reverse” the lower court, i.e. how consistently the lower court does what I’d do anyway, how “fair” their judgements are seen to be. The courts are going to compete for the perception of fairness, even among losers, because that allows them to raise their fees, since people can reduce their total cost by paying more for the “fairer” lower court and less for the appeal fee insurance premium.
You could of course take out an insurance policy that just pays my fee directly, but that’s probably more expensive than the two-tier policy that forces you to go to the lower court first. Or, you could just take out a policy that makes you whole if your neighbor defaults on the contract and give up enforcing it at all. Probably the’ll be some “contract credit” agency that springs up, like all those “Rate My Professor!” websites, where you can warn others if your neighbor defaults on his contract, ruin his ability to make contracts with others without paying exorbitantly.
And so forth. You can see that the basic idea here is that in principle you can get any contract, no matter how trivial, enforced if you’re willing to pay my costs to do so. But that situation — the fact that it costs lots of money — strongly encourages you explore various options for settling your disputes by negotiation with various people, starting but by no means ending with your contract partner, instead of appealing immediately to the force that I can bring to bear.
I like that. I think disputes should be settled largely by compromise and negotiation, not force. Settling them by force all the time makes for an inflexible, litigious population who specialize in arguing their own point of view, and neglect the talent of seeing the other guy’s, a necessary skill for reaching good compromises. Which has been the way American culture has been evolving as the power and reach of the judicial system grows, curiously enough.
Incidentally, when you say you have no recourse if you don’t like my decisions, I don’t see why that’s true. You always have recourse to your treasured democracy, you know. You can always organize a “legislature” and “judicial system” among the other inhabitants, get them all to agree to abide by its decisions, implement policies amongst you that I think are nuts, including progressive taxes, whatever welfare agencies you choose, wealth transfer payments, yadda yadda. I’m not going to stop you. Why should I? So long as you don’t damage my property interests, or threaten my or my family’s personal interests, why do I care? I don’t. More power to you, if that’s what you’d like, and you can persuade lots of people to go into it, too.
The only requirement I do enforce, however, is that it must be voluntary that someone becomes part of your glorious subsystem, and they can always opt out if they stop liking it. What we’d be talking about, in essence, is your setting up a competing form of government in the hab. Kind of like the way Muslim immigrants in Britain set up Sharia courts unsanctioned by the state.
Go for it. I would encourage the experiment, because I believe in the end you’ll find only a minority of inhabitants prefer your system to mine, and you’ll be educated. Or, maybe you’re brilliant and correct, and when I see your system in operation, even I like it, and adopt it as my own. Could happen! That’s the nature of liberty. Anything can happen, and has a chance to thrive.
Will the power corrupt me? Well, personally I think not, because in actual fact I absolutely loathe exercising power over others. I really have to get a grip on myself to ground my teenagers when they need it. I hate giving commands to my subordinates at work. I’m always questioning myself how do YOU know so much? Put yourself in his or her shoes, would you like this? Is it really necessary? Can’t you persuade, not command? And so forth.
Really, I’m not so sure I’d like this job at all, except that it might be the only way for me to live in a place that works by rules I like. I’d probably hope strongly for some protege to come along — a padawan I can turn to the Dark Side — whom I could trust to run things by my rules, or by rules I like even better, and then I could sell him the hab and become an ordinary resident.
But what if I do become drunk with power and start implementing obnoxious policies? Again, Bob, you vote with your feet. I don’t see why you fear that possibility so much. Doesn’t it already apply to most situations in your life? If you don’t like the policies at work, you generally can’t sue to get them changed, or stir up a mob to kill the CEO, your only recourse is to quit and find a better job. If you don’t like your wife, you can’t have her killed or fined for being a bad wife. Your only recourse is to leave her and start over (and you’ll have to pay royally for that right — at least I wouldn’t charge you alimony to leave my hab!) If you don’t like the way Albertson’s cashiers treat you, or you think Microsoft’s EULA sucks, or your cable company is run by dickheads, or your neighbors are noisy and rude, or your gated community is filled with racist morons, again, for the most part your only option is to go somewhere else.
And yet you survive pretty well, don’t you? These remedies for the most part work well, and let you sort yourself out into the situation — job, residence, wife, neighorhood, favorite blogs — that suit you best. So why do you suddenly distrust this remedy when it applies to my orbital village? You’re willing to run your family or your place of business this way — but not your village? Instead, you want some even higher and less personal, more sphinxishly inscrutable authority to stand over the village? You’ll only be happy living under my rule if my power can be checked by a Superpham, and his in turn by a Superduperpham, and so on until….what? Where is the ultimate authority that defends you against mob rule?
And you worry about trusting me — but you trust Superpham, so it’s OK if he monitors me? Or, no, wait, it’s Superduperpham you really trust, who checks Superpham and me…or is it? Where does your trust finally reside? It seems to me you don’t fully know. that it must reside in some poorly-defined, constantly-shifting combination of strangers (judges, lawyers, Congressmen, Supreme Court justices). And it’s easier to decide to trust that shadowy cabal than to decide whether to trust one man you know well, and hence whether to live in his village?
Maybe it’s just a quasi-religion, as Heinlein proposed humorously (e.g. in Friday). If there is enough superstructure of power looming mistily over the people who actually exercise power over your daily life (wife, boss, neighbors) you are vaguely comforted, as an early Christian is comforted by believing the Caesars would, in turn, be judged by God when they came before His seat of glory.
Carl, since you put so much into those posts, I just want to let you know I hope to reply in greater depth, after my work for today is done. On my first read-through, I’m struck by the problems that occur when a judge has a profit-motive — some functions need to be non-profit & principled, and I’m struck by the problems of concentrating power in one person rather than distributing it in a congress or a jury. Taking a more narrow view, I’m also unclear on whether extortion is allowed or not in your village — what did you mean when you said that my neighbors could charge me for the right to exhale near them at the diner? Returning to the grand themes, I think you are ignoring some of the specific benefits of the US system when you call it a quasi-religion or equate the Federal government to superduperpham or a shadowy cabal, and I think you are also ignoring the history & culture of the US (which is hardly accidental) when you talk about mob rule.
Okey dokey, Bob. I’m flattered you’re willing to play along.
The response to your quick takes is this:
(1) Stop hearing your aged Puritan (or Jewish) grandmother whispering dirty filthy money when you hear “profit,” and instead ask yourself what profit really is. What is it? Well, it’s money, and money is (as the Marxist’s never tire of pointing out) the stored labor of others. If I give you $5, I am in effect donating the most precious thing I have — $5 worth of my labor — to you. What else is profit? It’s voluntary. Anything you squeeze from me by force is named something else — loot, taxes. Only profit comes from money I voluntarily give you.
In short, profit is the voluntary contribution of their labor to someone by his neighbors and fellow citizens. It is the clearest and most serious possible affirmation of his social utility, of the fact that what he does is of great value to others. The man with the largest profit is, as a rule, he who contributes the most to his neighbor’s well-being. So let us not mindlessly disparage “the profit motive.”
(2) Even leaving its mythological sleaziness aside, nothing (aside from sex) is nearly as motivating as the promise of fat profit. So if we want to really motivate our judges to do a good job — to be, as you say, principled and objective, what we want is to use the most powerful motivation we have. Profit. Instead of threatening to impeach them if they go wrong, we set up a situation where they are rewarded directly and promptly and very satisfyingly if they do right. To do otherwise is to be kind of wilfully inefficient. It would be as if your wife in courting you deliberately dressed like a bag lady, so as not to use her dazzling good looks to influence your behaviour in the way she wanted it to go (and thought it should go, for both your future welfares). That’s nuts.
(3) The only reason to distribute power among many is to weaken it. There are cases where it should be weakened, and other places where that’s dumb. You wouldn’t suggest we replace the general of our armies in the field with a committee, would you? You wouldn’t suggest that you and your wife share child-rearing decisions with all your neighbors, would you? On the other hand, by creating this vast cumbersome Congress, judiciary, separate branches, semi kinda sort federallism and a cryptic Constitution, the Framers distributed — nay, scattered to the four winds centralized power in the United States. To weaken it, of course.
But they certainly did not suggest (as the Marxists later did) that the weakening should proceed right down to the ground level, that families should also be dissolved and the power of parents and marriage partners made weak, or that all firms should be run by vast unwieldy committees, so their ability to get things done quickly and effectively was severely compromised. In short, that all fuedal bonds between men should be severed, except that of each man to the abstract State (which in practice mean the Dear Leader, of course).
No, there’s a scale issue here. The Founders feared centralized power. They did not fear local power, with a very limited geographical and demographical scope, the power of the family, the church, the tiny artisan shop, the small village.
I’m just going them one further. Rather than merely weaken the central authority, I’m completely destroying it. Above my small village, there is no authority at all! It’s not anarchy (which is nuts), because local authority remains. So you get the benefits of governance, which men need, while avoiding the pernicious tendencies of far-off central government, with its detachment from actual real people, its tendency to treat those it governs as columns of numbers instead of actual men and women, and its suppression of the moral and ethical “open range” on which all kinds of metaphorical (or real) small villages can prosper, offering each individual the greatest possible choice in governance.
(4) Of course I don’t allow extortion. That’s threatening you or your loved ones with physical harm to get you to pay up. Not Allowed. No physical violence of any kind is allowed, except in defense of your person or property.
What I meant by my original statement, that present residents of the hab might send you, the new immigrant, a bill is simply that to which I alluded in a previous post, that almost certainly there will arise organizations among the residents that take over many, if not most, of ordinary “public service” functions, that sell insurance or personal security guards or fire-suppression service, that arbitrate disputes, that educate children, plant pleasant gardens in the corridors, supply extra power, et cetera and so forth. (The only rule I impose on them is that residents are free to join them and free to leave.)
Well, when you announce you’re immigrating, I expect they’ll take an interest. After all, you will interact with them, and you can be asset or a burden to your neighbors. Similarly, you’ll taken an interest in them. You’ll want your children educated, you may want to contribute to the pleasant gardes in the corridors, and so forth. It may be that therefore they ask you to pay something to come on board, and you pay it, to acquire the good will and various services they offer. Of course, it’s also possible — I should have mentioned this — that you are so desirable to them that you demand to be paid by them to immigrate, and they pay gladly. Maybe they need you to help them understand the joys of democracy, so they can talk me into experimenting with it. Depending on how persuasive you are, I may get in a bidding war with my own village, they offering to pay you if you come, me offering to pay you if you stay away.
Fortunately, you have contempt for mere profit, and will turn us both down, making your decision on pure golden principle. That will save me a lot of money, so I think it’s great.
I have no contempt for profit (gotta go work right now), but I do have contempt for bribing a judge in a court case, and I would avoid a system which encourages it.
So, âgovernment regulationâ = impossible to avoid. âRestrictive covenentâ = easy to avoid. Not the same thing at all.
Well sure Ed, but we’re also talking about the hypothetical space colony scenario in this thread too, so there needs to be some slack in terms of analogies.
As Carl points out, if you break the covenant, he can space you or cart you back to Earth to live… well… where exactly? Carl’s “uptopia” (sorry Carl) only works if you have somewhere to stick people who disagree with your rules and what you’ve set up. Likewise if you want your kids in a nice school in a good area, you’d better live with the gated community rules or send them to the crapier school outside.
In other words you’re presenting people with the illusion of choice and free will.
Carl, I’ll be honest and say I have to tip my hat to you for posting all that.
Of course, most of it has been so thoroughly debunked elsewhere and over many years, especially the arguments about insurance and private courts, that I don’t know where to start and won’t clutter up Rand’s blog with it. (http://world.std.com/~mhuben/discuss.html) is a good place to start.
The short answer is yes. If you want to set up your Tyranny like that, go for it. Good luck in finding takers.
Debunked theoretically, Daveon, I have little doubt. Har de har har. Got some hot credit-default swaps to sell, too, do you?
Now if anyone ever proposes clean, rigorous experiments — e.g. these many wonderful small orbital habitats without overarching rules that enforce uniformity — then I’d be very interested indeed.
Good luck in finding takers.
Goodness, I wouldn’t depend on luck, or on theoretical persuasion. Indeed, I would be reluctant to take anyone who is convinced by mere theoretical argument. Not a very grounded person.
No, I’d rely on demonstrated success, which is always liberty’s greatest weapon. Folks would find that immigrants to my hab, forced as they are to put up with my arrogance and absolutism, nevertheless were happy and wealthy, far more so than those in the nearby Worker’s Socialist Paradise hab, or the Athenian Democracy hab, where one spends 25% of his time and energy debating politics and must vote on initiatives and elections and recalls and impeachment proceedings and plebiscites and polls every 60 days or so.
That won’t attract the purists, of course, but a surprisingly large chunk of humanity is very practical, and doesn’t really give a damn what his government looks like, so long as it mostly leaves him alone and he has no trouble becoming as well off as his efforts merit.
After all, it’s worked for the United States for 300 years. We keep being denounced as benighted racist volatile insufferably arrogant simpletons with a horribly dysfunctional drug-gang style government — but they keep coming and coming to our shores, jamming the ENTRANCE doors and digging a few unofficial entryways of their own.
Carlâs âuptopiaâ (sorry Carl) only works if you have somewhere to stick people who disagree with your rules
Oh come on, Daveon. Can we avoid rushing instantly to the extreme? If your teenager gives you some backtalk when you ask him to take out the trash, you straightaway lock him in the cellar? Drop him off at a Nebraska hospital? Give him a one-way plane ticket to Nome?
Just as in, you know, real life as we actually live it, there are a host of more modest resolutions of “disagreements.” There’s negotation, mutual education, mutual tolerance and respect, compromise, maintaining a distance. You will object that I, the tyrant, am not obliged to do these things, so why would I? Well, of course for the same reason you do in your daily life. Because we are all human beings, and we have strong instincts to get along, to be social, and because it’s just such a draining pain in the ass to be fighting with people all the time over ilttle bitty stuff.
I’ve no doubt there would occasionally be profound disagreements that cannot be accomodated. In that case, we have a no-fault divorce, and you the resident move out, find somewhre more congenial. Why does that seem hideously cruel? You wouldn’t want to live there anyway. You’re not losing any of your property. You’re not being charged alimony. Where’s the inhuman cruelty?
Now, you’re certainly exactly right that there has to be somewhere else to go, otherwise exile is inhuman — indeed, my whole tyrannical set up is inhuman. But that’s my point. The freedom to leave, and the existence of meaningful alternatives, the more the better, is essential to your liberty. What I’m arguing here is that your liberty is guaranteed far more reliably by a freedom to leave and the existence of alternatives than by the existence of any largely theoretical (and demonstrably ineffective) guarantees of it by a powerful majoritarian government, even though they’re written down in fancy script on real parchment.
It’s a disease among libertarians to waste time and energy thrashing about arbitrary power. Those bastards! Telling me I can’t toke in my living room! ‘Course, I don’t like dope, but THAT”S NOT THE POINT. It’s The Principle Of The Thing. Oy vey. Talk about a lack of perspective. Part of what I’m saying here is that true libertarian principles might be better served by obsessing less over “arbitrary power” and thinking more about freedom of choice among governing systems, some of which, yes, may involve “arbitrary power.”
I do have contempt for bribing a judge in a court case, and I would avoid a system which encourages it.
Well, so would I, Bob. But I think you missed what I said. In my system, since the judge’s pay depends entirely on fees from litigants, plus (indirectly) on the cost to those litigants of appeal fee insurance, he is strongly motivated to be as fair and incorruptable as possible — because that’s how he earns the highest pay.
If he starts taking bribes, no one who can’t afford a bribe is going to agree to hire him as a judge, so his pay would disappear. Contrast that to our marvelous justice system, where the judge is paid the same whether he’s a good judge or a bad judge — or even whether he’s consistent and usually upheld on appeal, or a whackjob who’s reversed every other ruling. Plus the litigants have no choice about being in his courtroom, so if one party offers a bribe and the other can’t afford one, the poorer guy has no option. In my system he can just walk out of the courtroom.
Interesting judiciary you’ve outlined, Carl – is the tyrant of the hab the only person who can be a judge, or is it open to anyone on board?
(and I think Karl has the name spot-on; “Uptopia” has a pretty good ring to it I think)
(sorry Daveon, wrong credit where due – “Uptopia” is all yours I see)
Of course anyone can be a judge, R. You can be anything you want. The only rules are you need to persuade people to pay you for your services — no threats, no physical violence, no trespassing on other people’s property without their permission under any circumstances whatsoever, nor any interference with their personal space except in self defense. It’s a giant sandbox. You’re not allowed to hurt anyone or steal from them, but other than that, you do what you want to do, and what you can persuade others to join you in doing.
Start up a courtroom, and go into the legal Dr. Phil business, trying to actually settle with justice and empathy the disputes people have. Newsflash here — I suspect most people with disputes would rather actually come to some reasonable agreement that leaves at least a thin thread of human connection between both parties. They’re not thrilled with the modern winner kills and eats losers’ heart extreme partisan version of American justice. So if you really could sit down and talk to people, hear them out, help them towards a sound and reliable common solution, I bet you could earn hefty fees.
Or start a resistance to the Evil Tyrant (me) movement. Make speeches, accept donations, organize strikes in which you all refuse to behave the way you think I want you to. Stop being courteous, laugh at cripples, institute voluntary wealth-transfer programs and diversity training sessions. It’s all fine with me, so long as you pay your bills and don’t interfere with my enjoyment of the stars. If your resistance movement becomes big enough to make it absurd for me to continue, I just sell out — possibly at a loss! possibly to you! — and go start another hab, and you have the moral satisfaction of having driven the snake out of Eden. Our yourselves. (Sometimes it’s hard to tell.)
I’m finding Daveon’s link to critiques of libertarianism (http://world.std.com/~mhuben/libindex.html) deeply distracting…. …thanks Dave!
I see now that this all happened before and it will happen again.
Daveon and Bob, I looked over that site and couldn’t find a link to a genuine rebuttal of libertarianism. There were a few broken links allegedly to rebuttals of propaganda techniques by libertarians, but even if they worked, that would be a different beast. Elsewhere on the site, the situation was similar though most links worked.
Going to the main page for this site, I’m struck by the misguided nature of the argument. For example, the non-Libertarian FAQ deals solely with how to counter Libertarian arguments. Think about that for a moment. It’s not a coherent argument against libertarianism, but a point by point rebuttal of particular arguments, some greatly flawed, in favor of libertarianism.
I can put together a similar list for any sufficiently large belief system. There’s going to be slothful people who haven’t thought things through and absolutely nutty people too. Hence, there will be a number of lazy or crazy arguments in favor of the belief system. Providing a counter argument to everything on that list isn’t a very effective critique.
Imagine if you will, that there’s disagreement on whether the universe is expanding via “dark energy”. What’s more useful to you? Going over the experimental evidence, the physics models, and reading a thorough argument one way or another based on that? Or listing 100 evangelistic arguments of the dark energists with corresponding rebuttals? Shouldn’t debate be more than a list of talking points and rebuttals?
It’s not a healthy way to argue. Having said that, I found this page on philosophical criticisms Of libertarianism to be by far the most useful part of the site.
Minor correction, I did manage to find proper arguments on that site in the last links, but it shouldn’t have been that hard.