On 27-Jun-06, at 9:50 AM, Eugen Leitl wrote:
Dictatorship is the best
possible organization form with the right person at the helm,
Not at all. This assumes that one person (or a small group of people)
can
possibly know the "one true way" to prosperity and happiness for all.
The
most well-intentioned dictator can nevertheless end up killing millions
through lack of detailed knowledge of the millions of cause and effect
relationships that make up the market, and human society.
Such knowledge is however perfectly harnessed and utilized in a
free market, with millions of well-informed micro-decisions auto-
correcting
at every step, through the price mechanism, and the co-operative and
emergent intelligence of free agents engaging voluntarily in mutually
beneficial relationships.
This is why laissez-faire capitalism is not only the most natural and
moral form of organization in human society, but also the most humane,
just and productive one.
That kinda sucks, and this is why we're stuck with this
particular suboptimal configuration.
I assume by this you mean democracy. However democracy not limited
by absolute respect for individual rights is nothing more than disguised
dictatorship (and not of any enlightened person, but simply of a mob,
whose decisions asymptotically approach total mindlessness as the
numbers of its members increase).
As Benjamin Tucker has said:
"What is the ballot? It is neither more nor less than a paper
representative of
the bayonet, the billy, and the bullet. It is a labor saving device
for ascertaining
on which side force lies and bowing to the inevitable. The voice of
the majority
saves bloodshed, but it is no less the arbitrament of force than is
the decree of
the most absolute of despots backed by the most powerful of armies."
Co-operation is a function of agent intelligence however, so a
society of people++ will be far more bottom-up. Meaning,
enlightened people will tend to anarchies, with very little
centralism and top-down. An alternative development branch
goes towards a surveillance state, which eventually leads
to a hive society.
Which is inherently contradictory, non-adaptive and will inevitably
collapse, as
human beings are NOT ants, no matter how desperately tyrants would want
them to be. The hive society will be wiped out or rendered unworkable
by the
first crop failure, new virus, or other unexpected, un-planned-for
occurrence to
come along, precisely as they have been in the 20th century.
If your society algorithm is killing people, your society algorithm
needs debugging.
Any coercive top-down decision structure will end up killing people,
because the
top doesn't know or care about the "ants" that must be sacrificed to
build the "perfect
hive". Nor is the top in possession of magically perfect information
on how to care
for the people whose welfare it is responsible for (even if it had
the best of intentions).
Micro-decisions made by those with most to lose (or gain), on the
other hand, work
very well, as can be seen from the success of the bazaar model vs.
the cathedral in
software development.
There's this major domain difference though: In software when you
develop in cathedral
mode, you simply risk having more buggy code. In society, when you do
the same, you
risk killing millions of innocent people.
In fact, many dictators, including Mao and Jong-il, actually did/do
believe that they're
looking out for the best interests of the people. That the people
refuse to behave as
ants and do as they're told is a constant source of frustration and
puzzlement to them.
And when millions die, they figure that their grandiose (and foolish)
plans aren't working
because the people aren't "putting their hearts into" making them
work. Purges and
more killing inevitably follows, "for the common good" of course.
As to robbing, you need to expand a bit.
What is coercive taxation?
I'd really love to hear an answer to this from a supporter of
democracy. I've posed this
question before on silk, but have never seen any answer posted, only
the regular
ad hominem crap, which gets old fast.
Actually this is a silly question, but I'm assuming you genuinely
don't know.
I really do not. Nor do I understand your assertion that it's a
"silly question".
#!
