If the initial reaction is that these ideas are too far-fetched, I'll acknowledge that that is a natural stance. But let me counter that anarchists of various flavors are often taken seriously, and that they offer much more radical reforms than anything I offer here. I do not seek to abolish armies or privatize the courts, nor do I seek massive expansions or contractions in property rights.
First, the generalities. We need to set course away from egalitarian democracy. A lot alt-rightists sum up their preferred state as a republic, in preference to an empire or a democracy. I offer a clarified vision: we seek to create a res adsiduorum - a thing not of the public but of the taxpayer. To this end we demand, not an end to elections, but an end to heartbeat suffrage, to be replaced by a measured franchise of net taxpayers and military personnel. (More about that later.)
In addition to res adsiduorum, we seek both decentralized government in the form of a federation or confederation, and constitutional government.
Runaway expansion of individual rights is a hallmark of leftism, to the point that others consider radical autonomy to be the soul of leftism. I consider the problems of laughably overextended conceptions of rights to merely be a symptom of modern degeneracy, one that is paired with growing collectivism in thought and centralization in governance. Individual rights, as well as group rights, can and should continue to be protected constitutionally. Alt-rightists who disagree can consider where our forum would be if the government could ban "hate speech".
More specifically, the res adsiduorum is built as much as possible on familiar constitutional terrain. Several provinces compose the confederation. They create a power structure of institutionalized jealousy in which, as much as possible, they lend personnel to the federal government, while at the same time creating small institutions of nationwide character.
Power flows from the provinces to the confederation largely through the congress. First we resurrect and old US idea and represent every province with an equal number of senators in the upper chamber. The senators serve longer, staggered terms and are elected by the provincial legislatures.
Second, we create a common, optional set of election rules for the provinces. Provinces which play by these rules can send a number of trustees to the lower chamber, with the provinces represented in proportion to their numbers of eligible voters. The rules specify that participating legislatures be elected exclusively by net taxpayers and military personnel, with each citizen's subsidies (welfare, contracts, scholarships, civil service pay, etc.) totaled and subtracted from direct tax paid. Furthermore, participating legislature must be elected by approval voting with no partisan role in nominations and no party affiliation listed on the ballot, which must be secret. From legislatures elected this way, trustees are selected at random and sent to the congress. (Provinces which opt out, for example using universal suffrage or partisan voting, send no trustees to the congress.) Ordinary sessions of congress and the legislatures are each six months, at opposite times of the year.
Rather than abandon the independent judiciary, a pillar of constitutional and limited government, we limit the power of activist judges by refining how judges are selected, and by narrowing the scope of the laws that they interpret. The lowest levels of judges is selected by a competitive examination analogous to a civil service exam or a bar exam, but one in which candidates are graded on their ability to apply textualism alone to answer questions. Higher levels of judges are chosen by the congress. Judges have mandatory retirement ages but beyond that they can only be removed by impeachment.
The confederation's executives are small in number and independent of one another. Executives with limited policy scopes (such as highway or oceans) serve at the pleasure of the congress. I see no reason they should number more than five. Congress also elects three executives to fixed terms: a president, with responsibility over the military and foreign policy, a chancellor, who guides fiscal policy, and an attorney general. No person who fancies himself an expert on all policy areas will be attracted to this branch of government.
Under these executives is a civil service, no member of which can serve the central government for more than five years out of any ten. A modern high-tech society simply could not govern itself with a civil service selected on the spoils system, but rotation in office is completely compatible with meritocracy.
I offer a raft of traditional and innovative measures to limit government and strengthen national civic life.
The power of the central government vis a vis the provinces is circumscribed by:
- a constitutional provision similar to the 10th Amendment, limiting the federal government to enumerated powers,
- a list of enumerated powers basically boiling down to Article I Section 8 minus the interstate commerce power, the power to coin money, the power to pass legal tender laws, and the power to establish post offices, plus the powers to levy a tax on limited-liability business, to pass laws to protect the natural environment (but see (1) in the next section), and to ensure safe transportation by air, interprovincial highway, and major waterway,
- the omnipresence of provincial personnel in the legislative branch and their heavy representation in the civil service,
- limits on the types of taxes the central government can levy (i.e. tariffs, excise taxes, and corporate income taxes only),
- a two-year limit on any appropriation (similar to the limit the US constitution places on appropriations for the army),
- a supermajority requirement for bond issues and all other forms of borrowing, and
- an independent judiciary selected by textualist examination and by provincial trustees.
The power of the central government vis a vis the public is circumscribed by the above, plus:
- an easy-repeal clause regarding restrictive legislation (any law preventing a citizen or business from doing something), which requires three-fifths of each chamber to vote in favor for passage, but only a simple majority voting to repeal, and
- a bill of rights similar to relevant American and Canadian law.
That is res adsiduorum in a nutshell. I will provide more details if I scrape the time together, including an actual geographical setting for the project, locations of capitals, names of departments, etc.
15 comments:
But surely nobody will risk suffering or death for the implementation of this idea?
Indeed, my observation and experience is that people will not sacrifice anything at all to support sensible secular right wing policies.
Many Christians voluntarily give up a lot of time, effort and ten percet of their income to the Church - Mormons even more so - some religious people will kill themselves (and others).
The secular right agenda is so lukewarm - we *know* that none of it will ever happen - people will sell out as soon as they get a sniff of power, as soon as anyone offers to buy them off or they get threatened.
I'm not even sure the average post-racial American would risk suffering or death to keep their neighborhood from being overrun by cannibals. They certainly show little sign of it right now.
When/if the time comes, it won't be anyone's choice whether to risk their lives or not. The ordinary functioning of government will go away, the armed men (currently) in uniform will not. (Some of them may not come back; for all I know some will get left in Afghanistan or wherever.)
I certainly hope that when/if the fight is on for the remnants of Western civilization (fights that will probably be fought in the northern United States, Canada, Australia, and central Europe) that people will not blindly try to reëstablish the status quo ante.
At the very least I hope they will bid farewell to universic suffering, or universal suffrage or whatever it's called. The other reforms (easy-repeal clauses, approval voting, separation of executive functions, etc.) are fine-tuning.
I'll stick with neocameralism. It is clear what it is and how it should work. There is also at least one clear path to it, namely, via a military coup and dictatorship, and subsequent IPO. And there may be some "reset" sort of path, ala Moldbug, although I am still skeptical.
Your reforms here are impractical because they cannot happen in democracy, and even if they did, they'd be reversed or subverted. You are aware, I hope, that in most state in early America only property owners could vote.
More generally, you are still stuck in the model of designing institutions towards your functional goals. This fails in politics because the designs do not take account of the humanity of their human cogs. Unlearn that.
I've never quite sufficiently emphasized that I envisage this system coming to pass not in a democracy, but in a state of chaos.
Early America erred in a couple of ways, which I see the above system correcting. Most imporantly, states were free to open the franchise as much as they wanted, with those changes propagating through to the levels. There was also the lack of an independent judiciary under the articles of confederation, which was hypercorrected to a Presidentially-appointed judiciary under the constitution.
But I fear I'm preaching to the faithful of a different church. Incidentally, I slapped together a little apologia on neocameralism (more precisely, on the patchwork) here at Mangan's. (Oh gee, re-reading the thread I see that Anonymous's main objection seemed to be caused by her/his confusing tenants with shareholders. Ooops.)
Anyway, I could have used someone who likes (and presumably understands) neocameralism better than I to help out. Honestly I never could add up Moldbug's royalism/legitimism with his corporate-governance approaches.
Is there a reason the reforms in the OP couldn't come as the result of a military coup?
Well, in theory a military coup might bring about any change. Presumably there is one general in charge (or a junta, no real difference). Well, he is sovereign. Whatever quirky thing he wants, he does. So yeah, it is just possible he decides to make a new, reformed USG along your lines.
You do have some good ideas. But there are two problems I see. One is a fundamental. The other is a sort of "devil in the details" one.
The details matter, and I don't think your ideas would stay as you envision them. I see many, many loopholes one could drive a commerce clause through. Or a Cathedral. For example, nobody can "apply textualism alone" in any absolute sense. All text must be interpreted. Who writes the test that junior judges "apply textualism alone"? Or: how is your civil service really any different than ours? Yours have to go work for the industries they regulate half the time, true. But this makes them more, not less, dependent on their regulatees. Or: I thought they 10th Amendment was plain enough. But it isn't; now you say you're gonna make a super-duper 10th++ that the judges will really take seriously?
But the more fundamental problem is one that I've seen no system solve except neocameralism and anarchocapitalism. It is the problem of coherence. To have stable government, you must achieve unanimity among the sovereign man or sovereign group, as to the goals of the state. If you do not do this, democratic ideology will inevitably chip away the sovereign group. Factions will form, and they will always have the incentive to expand the group to allow in new allies. So the sovereign group always expands, until once again you have unlimited, full franchise democracy.
Neocameralism achieves coherent government by its joint stock design. The stock must be salable. When it is, it is an investment. Any stockholder who comes to value anything else more than his dividend has the incentive to sell his share to someone who is valuing it strictly as an investment. Thus, human greed is harnessed. The focus of the state on maximizing revenue is never lost. Democratic degringolade never starts.
For example, nobody can "apply textualism alone" in any absolute sense. All text must be interpreted.
Okay, well the Constitution mandates that the exam be created using a textualist philosophy. The designers can ignore that if they want. In any case, the examination will deliver up a general collection of lawyers with high standardized test scores. If opinion-laden concepts like judicial realism sneak into the questions, the people making the test will have more trouble agreeing on an answers. Textualism is not going to generate as much friction, and will basically allow the commissioners to go home sooner.
Who writes the test that junior judges "apply textualism alone"?
I left out that detail to shorten the presentation. (I left out a lot of others.)
The examination is created by the Federal Examinations Commission. It serves a three-year term. It consists of four members appointed by the provincial governments. Provincial law states what authority within the state does the choosing, but each of the eight positions on the Commission requires a different background.
One member is a retired provincial judge
One member is a practicing attorney-at-law from the state
One member is a law professor
One member is a citizen, neither judge, professor, nor lawyer, with experience and/or published work on human resources in the legal sector.
States rotate through the list, with a state choosing the first member one year, the second member three years later, etc. (The four-member judicial examinations panel above is paired with another four-member panel responsible for creating civil service examinations, and I ballparked eight statesfor the detailed version of the above proposal.)
Or: how is your civil service really any different than ours? Yours have to go work for the industries they regulate half the time, true. But this makes them more, not less, dependent on their regulatees.
This is another symptom of my having ruthlessly cropped my proposal for readability. Apologies.
The goal was to limit the amount of time someone would spend in the federal civil service. The rest of the time they are assumed to rotate back to their provincial civil service. People from outside the provincial civil services can apply, but only test scores and government experience count in their favor, due to a general principle of separation of business and state. So people from industry and straight of school will be at a disadvantage relative to people the provinces are lending to the central government. (Law would require that such officials keep their rank and tenure with the provinces, for when they return.) States would have to deal with the problem of entrenched bureaucracy on their own.
Or: I thought they 10th Amendment was plain enough. But it isn't; now you say you're gonna make a super-duper 10th++ that the judges will really take seriously?
I'd copy the Tenth pretty much verbatim. "Realist" judges could ignore it if they wanted just like ours do now, but they would be judged by a Congress structured to be more loyal to their states than to the central government. Textual interpretations are easier to explain to skeptical, anti-centralist, pro-subsidiarity members of Congress than realist ones are.
To have stable government, you must achieve unanimity among the sovereign man or sovereign group, as to the goals of the state. If you do not do this, democratic ideology will inevitably chip away the sovereign group. Factions will form, and they will always have the incentive to expand the group to allow in new allies. So the sovereign group always expands, until once again you have unlimited, full franchise democracy.
Moldbug has written similar things.
I anticipate the universal suffrage ideology will remain in spite of its proven flaws. I just don't see (A) states being willing to give up representation in Congress, (B) warriors and net taxpayers being willing to dilute their own voting power. States that adopt universal suffrage (or even enfranchise any civilian who pulls in more subsidies than s/he pays in taxes) lose representation in Congress, which can still tax them. Logically, a lot of them would probably prefer just to secede (which is fine by me).
Do you think we'll say a 16-year voting age pretty soon? Why or why not?
It is the universal suffrage ideology that is the problem. So long as it remains, and you do not have any way to deal with it (which you evidently don't), it will dominate and destroy the state.
Neocameralism deals with it by formalizing voting rights as salable (and thus valuable) entities.
As for your (a) and (b), they are disproven in US history. People do dilute their own voting power to capture power; i.e., woman suffrage, which obviously diluted by practically 50% the vote of each man. Secessionism is also an ideology disproven by our history.
I do see the logic of 16 year olds voting, if we assume that they disproportionately favor one party or the other. I don't see that happening right now (unlike 1971), so there is no big push. In any case the progressives have a much better new votebank to expend their political capital on: immigrants.
Any political structure has a few big rules that are commonly held as legitimate and very hard for the powerful to violate, and hundreds of smaller rules that easily degrade.
For instance, the big details of the American system have maintained stable (Presidents don't arbitrarily lock up citizens, politicians who lose a vote leave peacefully, etc). But everything else will be tossed out if the powerful find it convenient (the enumerated powers clause, hate speech laws, etc).
The trick is to design the fewest number of rules that alone will incentivize the rulers to act in the interests of the general population. By keeping the rules few and clear, the population can actually rise up in protest if the rules are violated. But if the rules are many and unclear, the powerful will have no problem figuring out complicated schemes to fleece the people. Big block groups - like the general public - can only take coordinated action to exercise power if they have the clearest of Schelling points to rally around.
The best example of effective simple rules in governance is the joint stock corporation - stock goes down CEO gets fired, stock goes up CEO can cash out stock options. Thus even a very ambitious and closed oligarchy of corporate executives generally works in the interests of shareholders (although corporate governance could certainly be greatly improved).
So I'd ask you, what is the core of the proposal, that if violated, the public should rise up in pitchforks to prevent?
I fear that in your proposal too much relies on the details of the implementation, details which can easily get ignored or changed without protest from the general population. I can imagine the competitive exams gradually get changed so that only judges who belive in some critical theory (or some future equivalent) pass the tests. I can imagine a destructive, covert tuf war being fought by the executives, until one executive ends up on top (see how Stalin leveraged his position as secretary of the party to gain full control, since that position controlled the flow of information, or Hitler used his position as chief of internal security to gain control of Germany).
I agree with Leonard that the two biggest problems that need to be fixed with the political system is a) ending factional/party fighting and b) providing real accoutability to government (bad departments get cut, bad civil servants fired, good ones rewarded). I don't see how this proposal helps with either problem. The no party affiliation on the ballot helps a tiny bit, but doesn't alter the fundamental nature of election campaigns, which is to build alliances among voting blocks to gain 51% of the vote.
I also agree with Leonard that limited suffrage is not stable in a system with political factions. One faction will always have the incentive to broaden the suffrage to gain votes. If that faction ever gains power they will expand voting. Once expanded, those voters now vote, so rolling back the voting rights is nigh impossible. I do not expect 16 year olds to be allowed to vote since 16 year olds do not reliable support one of the parties. But I do see the lax enforcement of illegal immigration and the opposition to IDing voters as near-deliberate policy of importing Mexicans to vote Democratic.
A few suggested improvements: for the Senate and House, why have representives at all? The state government could simply send an agent (it could be the state governor or a proxy) who votes as the state government instructs. That way the national legislature is even less likely to cede power from the states to the federal government. For the national executive, it seems like it would be better for them to be hired/fired at will, like a normal CEO, rather than elected for a term.
BTW, a little while ago, I wrote up my own grandiose proposal for a city-state government on my blog. It is a softer form of Moldbug's ideas, that is designed to work even in the absence of crypto-weapon locks. I'd love to hear of either of your thoughts on the proposal.
Devin Finbarr -
I agree with your overall point about a small number of rules being enforceable by habit/will/culture on the part of the public.
So I'd ask you, what is the core of the proposal, that if violated, the public should rise up in pitchforks to prevent?
The most important one is that no state using univeral suffrage gets representation in the Congress.
The competitive exams should be protected by the legislatures, who, from the correct side of the veil of ignorance, would be natural allies of meritocracy. Really I think the best type of exams for federal district judges and civil servants alike would be IQ tests, more or less, though they could dress them up if they liked.
I'm glad I've attracted neocameralists here. I'll reply more after I put the baby to bed. In any event, I could have used you guys during my not-well-informed apologia for neocameralism here. I'd like to see if you could answer Anonymous's questions better than I did.
I can imagine a destructive, covert tuf war being fought by the executives, until one executive ends up on top (see how Stalin leveraged his position as secretary of the party to gain full control, since that position controlled the flow of information, or Hitler used his position as chief of internal security to gain control of Germany).
I hear you. I don't believe any system could help any country with an intensely, deeply sick political culture like post-1918 Germany or Russia. Are you suggesting the rule by common-stock security corporations run by people with the mentality of the Gestapo or NKVD would have been free of destructive power struggles?
Is there something about the mere existence of executives in a system with elections that makes the system prone to turf battles? If Congress wants to write vague laws that leave in question which executive controls an aspect of policy, I suppose they can, but I don't know why this couldn't be settled by the courts at least as well as it is now. Are there destructive turf wars between the Energy Regulatory Commission and the Department of Energy?
I agree with Leonard that the two biggest problems that need to be fixed with the political system is a) ending factional/party fighting and b) providing real accoutability to government (bad departments get cut, bad civil servants fired, good ones rewarded).
(A), see below.
(B) I got no magic wand to deal with incompetent / lazy bureaucrats. There are already provisions in US civil service law allowing bureaucrats to theoretically be fired for incompetence; everyone says they don't work, and I believe them, though I don't really know why they don't work. (I've heard the purely cynical answers but I like detail.) Lazy personality types may be drawn by the prospect of unlimited tenure, which doesn't exist under this system. The limited scope of central government limits their number, at least. As far as departments getting cut, I did give the chancellor a line-item vote power. There is no real possibility of any permanent iron-triangle arrangement in a system in which the whole fiscal lawmaking body (the federal assembly) evaporates every two years.
I don't see how this proposal helps with either problem. The no party affiliation on the ballot helps a tiny bit, but doesn't alter the fundamental nature of election campaigns, which is to build alliances among voting blocks to gain 51% of the vote.
It is my belief that approval voting makes ordinary alliance-building my-opponent-is-bad-for-your-group campaigning quite ineffective.
I also agree with Leonard that limited suffrage is not stable in a system with political factions. One faction will always have the incentive to broaden the suffrage to gain votes.
Yes, I hear you. Believe me, I digested this critique three years ago at Unqualified Reservations. It is part of why I created the rules above. I run into the same problem any designer does--supply too few details and you leave loopholes; supply too many and the reader gets fatigued. One detail I would like to "push" a little is that if a state departs from the common franchise (warriors and net taxpayers only) it gets no representation in the central legislature. It's the key to the system (the others being 10th Amendment, free movement of citizens between states, and the random selection of legislators), but I haven't gotten any direct comment on it other than Leonard being convinced it won't help. (We may have to agree to disagree here.)
A few suggested improvements: for the Senate and House, why have representives at all?
I feel it is important for provincial loyalists to focus on federal issues (foreign policy, defense budget, selecting judges, pollution of interstate waterways) for months at a time. As to the Senate, I believe states needs serious experts to push their interests in a complex political environment. Smart amateurs can take you pretty far, especially if you're asking them to tax their people and give credit to someone else (when you really want them to save money), but only so far, which is why there is a Senate to look skeptically at bright ideas. I regard the indirectly-elected US Senate as a success, more or less.
The state government could simply send an agent (it could be the state governor or a proxy) who votes as the state government instructs.
Not a terrible idea, but in the area I envisage this would mean there are only eight voters controlling national policy.
That way the national legislature is even less likely to cede power from the states to the federal government.
Unlikely, certainly, but we're talking about already-powerful state-level professional politicians who are pretty sure they are going to be powerful at the federal level as well for the near future. This would degrade their skepticism of central power. Furthermore, I'd be worried they could use their influence to gain positions executing powers that they ceded to the central government. This force seems to be at work with the European Union.
For the national executive, it seems like it would be better for them to be hired/fired at will, like a normal CEO, rather than elected for a term.
Most of them are. The exceptions are:
President - serves a fixed term because foreign policy should be much more stable than that guaranteed by a parliamentary system (e.g. France in the run-up to either World War). Ditto for military affairs.
Chancellor - serves a fixed term because his line-item veto is going to make a lot of members of Congress mad.
Attorney General - needs to be allowed to pursue cases to the end without political pressure. (Note that my AG doesn't supervise any law enforcement officers, only lawyers.)
The rest serve at the pleasure of Congress:
Secretary of Oceans & Waterways (anti-piracy, anti-overfishing, anti-marine spill)
Secretary of the Interior (habitat protection for critical species, anti-pollution, anti-epidemic)
Secretary of Commerce
Secretary of Transportation (interstate highway, aviation safety)
The Secretary of Commerce doesn't do any promotion of commerce because I don't think that's a necessary role for government. That official's job really concentrates on anti-fraud--in a free banking system, someone is still going to have to catch counterfeiters. Counterfeiting could be considered an intellectual property matter under free banking, so I'm not completely against IP law (I also support protection of trademarks though I'm mostly against patents and I'm ambivalent about copyrights). Finally, if the framers wanted to put bankruptcy law in the federal arena, I'm willing ton consider they may have been right although I know little about it.
So there you have it--my system includes a bunch of departments Ron Paul would abolish but I like him anyway. (But don't read too much into the names of these departments; they still can't do anything outside of my slightly-narrowed answer to Article I Section 8, and restrictive laws that they enforce are easier to repeal than they are to pass.)
In conclusion, I acknowledge that this system relies on its details. Our current electorate is full of people who think, e.g., that the President passes appropriation laws unilaterally, or that the Constitution bans state religions, or that Social Security is a private program that Congress is always on the verge of "taking over". Poor materials to build a system on.
I'm not a neocameralist, so the ideological gulf may simply be too wide here. The UR faction has a studied mistrust of elected government that I share somewhat; I have a strong mistrust of corporations the UR faction may not share at all.
Post a Comment