Vote with your Feet and Join a Club of your Choice
The Blind Watchmaker - the only game in town
Nobody knows ... Bishops, Princes, Generals & Bureaucrats didn't know, they had no privileged access to know how ... but with ever more diversity ... ever more complexity, change, conflict & scarcity ... somewhere, sometime, some folk were certain to discover a better alternative ... that was how folk survived that was how the giraffe's long neck was designed. Persisting with current games always diverted scarce resources from the experimental endeavours which were certain to discover & accumulate better survival aids ... for certain, otherwise they wouldn't survive?
From simple beginnings a copy/vary/select process built immense complexity. Such Darwinian ideas were powerful enough to explain everything ... a complex adaptive system ... a continuity ... layer upon layer of hierarchical interactivity & emergence - 4 forces 12 particles, 2nd law of thermodynamics, energy, matter, chemistry, biology, immunity, neural circuits, instincts, emotions, language, social behaviour and culture.
Changes at any level were naturally tested for survival against competing alternatives.
Everything effected everything else, self consistency was guaranteed
... that was natural selection ... differential survival.
In this way human behaviour itself was embedded in a deep historical trajectory of a nested
set of sets ... a whole shebang & caboodle.
Brian Cox
after Frank Wilczek -
'Occam's Razor; ideas simple to state but surprisingly difficult to implement in everyday life. Don't overcomplicate things, the complexity of the world can be explained by a small number of simple natural laws because at its heart it is orderly and simple. The scientists job is to strip away the complexity and uncover the simplicity.
Four forces act on 12 fundamental particles to build
everything in the
world we can see. The sun, moon, planets, solar system, stars and our own
bodies. This all constitutes an astonishing simplification of what at first
glance appears to be an almost infinitely complicated universe.
The
complexity of human brains and the products of the powerful synthesis
between consciousness and the dexterous skill that we glimpse outside our
windows (including the Boeing 747!) mask the underlying simplicity and elegance of nature'.
In 2000 at The Open University we defined Evolutionary Economics -
'A process of technological & institutional innovation was unleashed involving the generating & testing a diversity of ideas which discovered & accumulated more survival value for the costs incurred than competing alternatives. The evidence suggested that it could be adaptive efficiency that defined economic efficiency'.
Uneconomic growth was an oxymoron. Economic growth was the business of business ...
Moral Sentiments - worms in
the head
Charles Darwin -
'I fully subscribe to the judgment of those writers who maintain that of all the differences between man and the lower animals, the moral sense or conscience is by far the most important'
As if deep down in the human skull there lurked an independent spirit relentlessly seeking the discovery & accumulation of 'survival know how'; the synergies of specialisation & scale. Everybody knew from simple introspection that such emotions existed ... we all felt them ... love & hatred, fear & excitement ... no wonder folk saw a God behind every tree ... worms in the head.
The human brain evolved ... and from the flip flopping emotions of excitement & fear emerged moral sentiments ... a universal human survival aid. Why else did these 'worms' evolve?
In the same way as the genes worked in teams to build organisms, so too folk worked together in groups to build institutions & cultures. Folk were social animals. In this way the human gene pool built an ever expanding network of interdependences which benefited the whole ... not only kith & kin, but also friends & associates ... and even strangers ... in an ever expanding circle of cooperation.
An inseparable part of the one whole evolving shebang & caboodle was the human gene pool and the brains the genes constructed ... from which emerged consciousness, self consciousness and imaginations ... and Adam Smith's 'moral sentiments' and Charles Darwin's 'moral sense'.
Essential Diversity
- the girls danced backwards
Folk striving for survival 'know how' fed a ground swell of suspicions about the impositions of Bishops, Princes, Generals & Bureaucrats ... who all claimed they had privileged access to 'know how' but all had different ideas about what was best for the survival of folk.
Diversity was both the outcome of evolution and necessary for the process of evolution ... OK that might be a tautology? ... but clones just couldn't evolve, one size could never fit all ... think about it?
Darwin called it natural selection; adaptations were the surviving outcomes of interactions ... and by definition it was cooperative synergistic outcomes that differentially survived as zero sum compromises died out.
Nobody fathomed out a way to stop evolution ... diversity was reality ... so different folk, at different times, in different places, had different ideas and behaved differently.
Wot a mess. There was no such 'thing' as society ... society was different folk with different ideas disagreeing. Listen in to the gossip in the pub.
But all was not lost as folk learned how to cooperate and love differences ... it was not compromise ... it was a celebration of differences. If the girls didn't dance backwards there would be no dancing ... no cooperation, no dancing, no babies ... and the boys and girls both fancied dancing.
Survival Know
How - cooperative synergies of specialisation & scale
So no cooperation, no deals, no customers, no jobs, no growth, no survival? This evolutionary process was all about the discovery & accumulation of survival know how. It was the way of the world, the way of folk and the way of business. No one 'saw' the failures of the past, they were dead, ignominiously discarded ... everything folk 'saw' was a success by evolutionary definition ... and consequently successes had all the appearance of 'intelligent design' ... and folk were easily conned and confused. The here & now was the only place to start ... and the striving for something better was all about where folk were going. What happened when the pole star dropped below the horizon?
In the absence of knowledge about the future, it was the cycles of excitement & fear that inevitably drove trial & error evolutionary progress. The evidence was in history; relentlessly the booms were bigger than the busts as economic interactions, 'know how', our knowledge base of science & technology ... the whole shebang grew at 3% pa compound.
Problems became opportunities with cooperation not compromise ... the words have different meanings look 'em up.
Adam the Smith not only cottoned on to the 'moral sentiments' which underpinned social interactions but also explained the beneficial 'synergies of specialisation & scale' which resulted from such interactions in his Pin Factory. Of course grappling with Synergies, Comparative Advantage and Total Factor Productivity was far from easy ... and bipartisan consensus a myth ... the scientists and economist thrived on disputes ... remember Copernicus and his sun?
Economic growth 2+2 can equal 5.
Trial & Error Learning - empirical failure not intelligent design
Folk were all ignorant about the future ... no one could intelligently design 'success' everything was too damned complicated, always changing and full of conflict ... we hadn't a clue ... but Darwin's insight explained exactly how folk could learn and contribute to know how by experimental trial & error.
Not only Albert Einstein but also Thomas Edison and Winston Churchill got it right, we learned by failure not by design ... we fail our way to success. The intentions of 'the powers that be' ... and everybody else ... were mere experiments. Wot else could they be?
Richard Dawkins 1988, 'The Evolution of Evolvability' -
'Evolution has no foresight. But with hindsight those evolutionary changes which look as if they were planned with foresight are the ones that dominate successful forms of life. It is cumulative selection that is evolutionarily interesting for only cumulative selection has the power to build up new progress on the shoulders of earlier generations of progress and hence the power to build formidable complexity of life'.
Behavioural interactions always involved the different responses of different others, making the unfolding of the tale unknowable.
Bishops, Princes, Generals & bureaucrats, like everybody else, behaved in the same way. They tried and tried 'intelligent design' but failures were legion, reality was experiment and learn. And there's more ... when the powers that be employed physical & spiritual violence their imposed experiments were big big ... enormous ... and the failures were similarly enormous. And there was more more ... imposition reduced the diversity necessary for evolved benefits that nobody had ever thought of.
The Greeks called the trial & error experiments heuristics.
There was more more ... it was physically impossible to exclude out of the whole shebang our genetic & memetic inheritance ... empirical scientists began to grasp the twin realities of experimental failures -
different others ... somebody somewhere was doing a different experiment that worked better
risky failures ... very few experiments worked better
The giraffes long neck was the result of the death of short necked giraffes.
Hard Work, Honesty & Thrift
- Empirical Science & Liberal Democracy
Ingenious folk learned that hard work could create eddies of survival opportunities in the face of the relentless 2nd Law. Folk were resilient and always tried for longevity and had a go for lots of thriving youngsters. They did their deals and discovered their synergies. They nurtured more & larger cooperative associations as they went for economies of scale ... more & more synergies of specialisation & scale.
But no one said it was easy and no one could do it on their own; hard work, honesty and thrift were necessary for the discovery & accumulation process; the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics saw to that.
Richard Dawkins explained much in 'Evidence for Evolution', 2009 -
'Imperfections make perfect sense in the light of evolution. An intelligent creator might be expected to have designed entire ecosystems; nature and planned economies, carefully designed to eliminate waste? Its not like that. The natural economy is solar powered. Plants use solar energy to drive 'up hill' chemical syntheses, manufacturing organic fuels, primarily sugars (photosynthesis). Sugar can later be burned in a 'downhill' reaction that releases the energy again to do useful work (mitochondria). At every stage some energy is lost, no energy transaction is perfectly efficient. This brings us face to face with the difference between a designed economy and an evolutionary economy. In a designed economy there would be no trees, trees are a waste. But the natural economy is not planned. Trees grow far taller than any planner would recommend. Not indefinitely taller however. It is the balance of costs and benefits to the individual tree that finally determines the height. The limit is set at the height where the marginal cost of growing more outweighs the gain in photons from growing more'.
An insightful description of how economies work. Richard Dawkins did not suggest human economies were unnatural. He did suggest that 'planned' economies would always die out ... 'cos there will always be one tree mutation which grows a little taller, thus gaining a competitive advantage ... and always one tree mutation which costs more than any benefit.
As unnatural designed economies died out, natural evolved economies were the surviving economies. In this way Darwin himself suggested that -
'light will be thrown on the origin of man and his history'.
It was the interactive deals of folk that grew the cultural institutions which evolved from the failures of the alternatives ... not from intelligent design ... all intelligent design ever did was to design experiments in the imagination which were tested against the rigours of reality.
Winston Churchill told the people,
'Liberal Democracy is the worst form of government apart from the alternatives that have been tried from time to time'.
Lord Melbourne told the Queen,
'for Gods sake leave well alone'
But Melbourne was not promoting idleness & sloth but rather, this was a plea for the freedom to beaver away with family & friends; a plea for unhindered hard work, honesty & thrift.
Left to get on with their cooperative synergistic deals folk always tended to discover & accumulate survival know how ... and also discover prices & values which cleared markets ... 'cos nobody was happy to pay for the expensive inefficiencies of gluts & queues.
Globalisation of the synergies of free trade & fairness of market prices brought abundant mutual economic benefits from simple behavioural rules of thumb ... hard work, honesty & thrift.
Experiments and learning new tricks, innovation, required hard work, honesty & thrift.
Enter the Parasites & Predators
- as soon as there were stocks there were thieves - Immunities from Treachery?
But ... and it was a big but ... don't get all this wrong ... there was always a sting in the tale of experimental enterprise.
As soon as there were stocks of goodies from the hard work of cooperative synergies there were opportunities for parasites & predators. Stocks created a new survival niche for these thieving beasties as they also were good at the 'evolution of evolvability' ... 'diversifying, opportunistically filling niches as they became available' ... just as folk had always done. The parasites & predators belonged to a different evolutionary club and had different behaviours and different ideas ... and such gene & meme pools, of course, themselves evolved ... it was an arms race!
Throughout the ages parasites & predators not only thieved stocks but they even had a go at stealing folk ... and lo ... was it possible to steal ideas ... and cultures?!
Intellectual property theft became an intellectual challenge?
It seemed to some that 'money' was perhaps the most flexible goodie of all ... and 'money' proved to be easier to thieve than stocks or folk or ideas -
'why do you rob banks, Mr Willie Sutton?',
'that's where the money is, Sir!'.
Thieves survived, and always will, but wot a risky deal ... it seemed folk instinctively didn't like thieves? ... and stealing the measuring system rather than the stocks would surely knacker the measure? ... and there was a mind bender ... how can you steal trust?
Larger groups of cooperating folk delivered economies of scale and more goodies ... but there was more ... larger groups led to improved defence against predators ... but, alas, yet more opportunities for theft as the arms race continued?
But all was not lost, those organisms, rules of thumb & institutions which provided some immunity from parasites & predators, differentially survived -
differential survival in physics, chemistry, biology and in gene pools produced organisms
differential survival in organisms produced immune systems
differential survival in neural networks, instincts, imaginations & memes produced behaviours & institutions with more immunity from treachery which further helped survival
differential survival of behaviours & institutions produced groups of cooperators with group cultures which themselves differentially survived?
The searing emotions of 'Fairness of Shares' and 'Resentment of Cheats', which all folk feel, were essential for cooperation and synergies ... and survival. The dice were loaded ... we backed Homo Sapiens ... and evolving economies ... and evolving Liberal Democracy. We would say that wouldn't we?
In earlier days the terrorists threw their evil weight around and death & destruction was commonplace ... but later the law courts and the ballot box provided cost effective alternatives to violence and slow slowly the culture of liberal democracy emerged.
But as fast as cultures emerged from empathies and cooperation, the parasites & predators played them at their own game -
'turkeys never voted for Christmas' ... the 'powers that be' were locked into their attempts at intelligent design ... what else could they do ... would anyone vote for them if they admitted ignorance?
'if it's free put me down for two please' ... economic immigrants and free riders sought welfare insurance benefits without paying the premium ...
There existed in the hierarchy of natural selection some institutions of civil society ... the churches, the clubs, the associations, the companies ... law courts and parliaments ... such had their own immunities from treachery ... folk could vote with their feet and join a club of their choice ... clubs without such immunities didn't survive.
But power corrupted and absolute power corrupted absolutely and slow slowly institutions with their associated immunities were eroded as the parasites & predators infected & infiltrated the hierarchy and the 'powers that be'.
In the absence of 'immunities' ... Liberal Democracy itself easily became a licence for 51% to screw 49%.
Expert
Ignorance - Disagreement
- 51% screwed 49%?
A A Milne got the shenanigans of the Bishops, Princes, Generals & Bureaucrats spot on -
The King asked the Queen, and the Queen asked the
Dairymaid: 'Could we have some butter for the Royal slice of bread?'
The Dairymaid said, ‘Certainly, I’ll go and tell the cow, before she
goes to bed.'
The Dairymaid she curtsied, and went and told the Alderney: 'Don’t forget
the butter for the Royal slice of bread.'
The Alderney said sleepily: 'You’d better tell His Majesty that many people nowadays like marmalade instead.'
Brilliant ... the corruption of the powers that be!
Nothing stood still and some of the 'checks & balances' and 'separations of powers' and 'Bills of Rights' were subverted by -
arrogant hubris of 51% of the 'representatives' who won but still had obligations.
panic & knee jerk hysteria of 49% of the 'disenfranchised' who lost but still had rights.
Alas 'the powers that be' often sought to command & control economic activity 'as if' they had access to survival know how ... 'as if' they had a divine right or tablets of stone which revealed 'the truth' ... but the problem was that the experts disagreed and failure was anathema to experts ... they were 'expected' to know ... otherwise they wouldn't be experts would they?
The problem was not that 'folk had had enough of experts' ... the problem was that the experts disagreed ... as expected.
So why did the 'experts' always disagree?
Science - observation, mathematical theory, provable hypotheses, experimental validation, peer review - settled many disagreements by getting at the evidence ... the facts under the conditions of the test.
Evidence of simple facts came from science and controlled repeatable experiments. But out of the laboratory in the real world the experts often couldn't 'control' their experiments as the changing environment interfered with the action. Other different experts could always dispute the initial assumptions before start of play ... and then, infuriatingly, during the dispute the numbers changed. Beliefs trumped disputed facts ... and the 'truth' was that Newton's Laws didn't work too well in black holes. This, of course, did not invalidate Newton's reliable expertise it merely motivated Einstein to work harder at a new paradigm.
Scientists found it very humblingly difficult to explain uncertainty & unknown unknowns and why future outcomes were unknowable in advance ... after all they were supposed to be experts who believed that 'God does not play dice' ... and they knew an awful lot about an awful lot. But scientists, of course, were certain that evidence was only the facts that had not yet proved to be false. The explanation of such ignorance, freely admitted, was not because of immense complexity but rather because -
diversity & mutations had to be 'random' for evolution to work and nobody knew which? where? what? who? when? or how?
nobody could foresee the 'emergent' novelty of the dynamic, contemporaneous & interconnected & interactive & interdependent happenings and associated intended nor unintended consequences
nobody knew how their 'flip flopping' emotions would respond to interactive happenings ... and more ... nobody knew how the 'flip flopping' emotions of other folk would respond to their interactive happenings
And then there were always new fangled ideas coming along to muddy the waters. 'Theory of Mind' ushered in a golden age of ignorance when it was discovered everything depended on everything else and it proved impossible to 'forget about the Chinese' ... we hadn't a clue ... 'I know that she knows that he knows that I know that he knows that she knows that others know that I know the truth' ... so brains can't cope with 'Theory of Mind' ... can they?
But who, how many, 'got it'? All too often if you didn't agree with me and my mates ... you were lying. Lying about the future?
No wonder there were so many dodgy dossiers, so much fake news and alternative facts and post facts ... and even the judges and the referees could be 'enemies of the people'? Scare mongering and conspiracy theories were easy to propagate especially when Twitter gained easy access to brains and the 'reputable' BBC and New York Times lost their balance to the highest bidder. Some even suggested that the Supreme Court was up for sale?
Everybody got excited about cause & effect but few could cope with the fear of effects that were also causes.
The greatest idea was simple ... when the penny dropped ... Darwin's process of
natural selection was underpinned by science and the 2nd Law of
Thermodynamics.
Empirical Scientists were rooted in observation and ... ignorance.
Richard Feynman (1918-88) - 'Science the Satisfactory Philosophy of Ignorance' -
'Science is the belief in the ignorance of experts.
Our freedom to doubt was born of a struggle against authority
People search for certainty. But there is no certainty. We grapple with
problems to live but not know. We do what we can, learn what we can, improve
solutions and pass them on.
It is our responsibility to leave the children of the future a free hand.
Impetuous youth can make grave errors that can stunt growth for a long time.
This we will do if we say we have the answers, if we suppress discussion.
Great progress as scientists is the fruit of freedom of thought, proclaim
the value of this freedom, teach how doubt is not to be feared but welcomed
and discussed, and demand this freedom as our duty to all coming
generations.
Because of doubt, scientists propose looking in new directions for new
ideas.
I don't think the problem is capitalism or socialism but rather free ideas
or suppression of ideas.
The writers of the Constitution of the USA knew of the value of doubt.
The Constitution was developed under the idea that nobody knew how to
govern. The result was to invent a system to govern when you don't know how.
Permit a system wherein new ideas can be developed and tried out and thrown
away. Science had already developed far enough to show the possibilities and
potentialities that are the result of having uncertainty, the value of
having the openness of possibility'.
For sure, everybody was different, democracy was not never about voting so that 51% could impose their taxes & regulations on 49% but rather democracy was about the protection of folk and minorities from bureaucratic kludge, parasites & predators, tyranny & oppression, bribery & corruption so that 100% of everyone could be free to pursue their lawful experiments ... some of which may even turn out to be useful?
So counting the 'votes' never worked to resolve disagreements over fugitive facts. And worse still the majority always believed last year's paradigm ... even though, by evolutionary definition, next year's paradigm always started off as a random experiment albeit with a path dependency ... confusingly the path dependency trend had lots of support from the sages ... but the new experiment was new new ... without any support at all!
Wot a mess. Some were biased & frit ... and some were biased & excited ... and some believed there was an alternative to the pap of intelligent design served up by the Bishops, Princes, Generals & bureaucrats ...
Had Natural Law and Empirical Science lost their clout as alternatives to violence?
Authoritarian Creep -
Intelligent Design of Natural Selection?
Moral Sentiments, Essential Diversity, Survival Know How, Trial & Error Learning led to Hard Work, Honesty & Thrift and the evolution of Empirical Science & Liberal Democracy. But Parasites & Predators and Expert Ignorance led to Authoritarian Creep.
As Joe Sixpack beavered away the Bishops, Princes, Generals & Bureaucrats and the many intelligent designers perpetrated all manner of impositions rooted in the zero sun game of 16th century Mercantilism -
Restraints on Trade
Restrictive Practices
Vain hubristic attempts to -
avoid risk - risk associated with inevitable failures ...
legislate wealth - ridding ourselves of inevitable parasites & predators ...
The mantra was justified by myths -
trade was nonviolent alternative to theft, the objective was to accumulate gold (or money? or wealth?)
trade was a zero sum game as gold (or money? or wealth?) was not created but transferred from losers to winners
trade was amoral, a matter of negotiation not trust, compromise not cooperation
tariffs protected minorities from competition as voting and elites solved problems
The arrogance of intelligent designers never suggested that interventions were nothing more than 'experiments' ... they were always described as 'improved designs' ... such more than likely delivered nowt but polarisations, distortions and imbalances.
In this way the ‘Restraints of Trade’ and ‘Restrictive Practices’ from above invariably threw the baby out with the bath water and inhibited the lawful freedoms of Joe Sixpack and his mates to go about their business and discover their own innovations & improvements.
Natural Law and Liberal Democracy could never have evolved to impose unknowable solutions on the populations. Natural Law and Liberal Democracy evolved to protect the freedoms of minorities to go about their lawful business ... read Thomas Jefferson.
Free & Fair Trade -
Meanwhile Joe Sixpack, beavering away at the coalface, suffered a double whammy from above as 'the powers that be' got busy, often through a rigged system of violence, corruption & waste -
taxation - power & resources were derived from the 'legal' confiscation of other folk's property ...
regulation - top down 'command & control' from the 'legal' hubris which distorted & impeded the bottom up business of business.
But some believed business solved problems 'cos if business
didn't solve problems business would go bankrupt ... that was unless there
were turned into Zombies and bailed out.
Did anyone believe in the evolutionary function of bankruptcy? Bankruptcy
sifted and fed economic growth by weeding out failures -
valuable resources were released for alternative profitable experiments and
some immunity was provided from 'rent seeking' parasites & predators who couldn't pay their bills ...
For certain amongst all the angst and intrigue and disagreement there were many many folk who voluntarily purchased technological solutions from profitable businesses ... and purchased them again ... but only if they worked and satisfied customers? Customers voted with their shillings and their feet ... it proved impossible to stop them ... such folk even managed to find their way through an iron curtain. The iron curtain, no doubt, stopped trucks but always had difficulty in stopping the movement of determined folk and had no chance when it came to stopping ideas.
The key -
BUSINESSES created wealth - Synergies of Specialisation & Scale - Stick to the Knitting
TECHNOLOGY solved problems - Voting cannot Solve Problems - 51% screwed 49% -
Because of synergies, the dice of natural selection were loaded against the parasites & predators ... deep down in the skull the moral sentiments of Adam the Smith, the innate feelings 'resentment of cheats' and 'fairness of shares' pushed human behaviour towards economic cooperation, towards the synergies of specialisation & scale and positive sum activities rather than a downward spiral of beggar thy neighbour and the compromise of zero sums ... read Richard Dawkins' Chapter 12 'Nice Guys Finish First'.
The sifting out of the parasites & predators in business was played out with endless competition & bankruptcy. It was profitable to cooperate and profitable businesses had great difficulty screwing customers ... of course, licensed state monopolies managed to screw customers for longer periods ... but later or sooner the wall collapsed.
It was 'as if' the genes did cost/benefit analysis.
The unknowable outcomes of evolution were not always characterised by 'nature red in tooth & claw' but rather by a better description ... 'the evolution of evolvability' ... as social interactions discovered and accumulated cooperative synergies.
Don't get your knickers in a twist of misunderstanding ... parasites & predators survived but couldn't 'win' zero sum games indefinitely when they were up against those who learned from positive sum games ... those who dealt in synergies had more surviving babies ... the dice were loaded ... and lots of parasites & predators survived in the end by cooperating ... the poacher often turned gamekeeper to survive.
Totally dependent on the synergies of others ... in the same way as others were totally dependent on the synergies of others ... one great chain of being? A whole shebang & caboodle ... the genes & memes survived by 'cooperating' ... uncooperative DNA had no chance.
Intelligent design of evolution was always an oxymoron but evolution could be speeded up ... Did morality itself have a direction? ... think about it?
The
Nature of Clubs & Companies - Vote
with your Feet and join a Club of your Choice
Different folk, in different places, at different times, with different behaviours, interact differently with different people producing different results.
Diverse Clubs with their own rules seek to discover synergies from specialisation & scale through 'natural cooperation'.
Characteristics -
voluntary membership - like minded folk join the club of their choice, pay their subscriptions, accept the rules & exit possibilities. Parasites & predators are excluded by ostracism & expulsion providing some immunity from bureaucratic kludge, parasites & predators, tyranny & oppression, bribery & corruption and bribery & corruption. Prior acceptance of rules is the effective way of minimising the costs of disputes, squabbles, disagreements and bloody violence.
rules of procedures - constitutions define the umpire and procedures for changing the rules ... and if the umpires decision is not acceptable there are always alternative clubs
trust & exit - contracts are impossible to fully specify long term. Slippage, backsliding & drift in the rules demand 'amendment' possibilities.
Every club had rules, synergies and defence systems otherwise they couldn't survive. Some clubs played a zero some game and chose not to trade specialised skills and suffered low wages and unemployment as prices were fixed and production regulated to produce gluts and queues.
The vast majority of associations in civil society can be
rivalous & excludable & hence the 10th Amendment and subsidiarity. Very few activities apart from
defence of territory need to be 'public'. The principle of 'subsidiarity' keeps the size of the group
in line with the size of the public good.
However the nature of the state, as the custodian of the power to defend territory, although voluntarily mandated initially ... such power in the end corrupted and monolithic defensive Leviathans started to impose their arbitrary rules on the diverse clubs of choice.
In this way the elites began to use the Jefferson
elections to circumvent the 10th Amendment and fight over revenues as 51% lorded it over 49%.
Tax
revenues were seized over and above the legitimate needs of the Commander
in Chief and his army. Elections became
'uncontested', as one elitist faction fought with another elitist faction, and
the associations of civil society became sidelined as 'interest groups' were
bribed to join the 51% with taxes raised from the 49%.
Darwinian diversity and associated liberty suffered when faced with such intelligently designed inequality.
Natural Selection of business & market failure == bankruptcy == competitive differential survival.
Intelligent Design of State mandates & monopoly failure == price fixing & regulation == survival of zombies.
And there was more -
In 1785 The Marquis de Condorcet wrote about a 'Voting Paradox' as rational individual preferences could be impossible to turn into group preferences
In 1972 Kenneth Arrow received a Nobel Prize for his 'Impossibility Theorem' as he explained how voting in liberal democracies couldn't solve problems and disagreement were rife
... but such was little more than the ancient adage 'de gustibus non disputandum est' ... 'there's no accounting for tastes' ... an adage no Liberal Democrat should ever forget.
1st Amendment free association ... so many words for a club -
alliance - association - consortium - coalition - union - league - guild - syndicate - corporation - federation - confederation - confederacy - conglomerate - cooperative - partnership - amalgamation - merger - body - group - ring - circle - trust - company - organization - affiliation - society - club - band - brotherhood - fraternity - sorority - clique - cartel - consociation - sodality
The Case
for Business - torts, trade & technology - Devolution, Subsidiarity, Privatisation, Trade Synergies, Market
Prices &
Balanced Balance Sheets
Evolutionary Economics describes the unleashing of a process of technological & institutional innovation involving the generating & testing a diversity of ideas which discover & accumulate more survival value for the costs incurred than competing alternatives. The evidence suggests that it could be adaptive efficiency that defines economic efficiency.
The natural selection of trade synergies.
The case for business rests on the science of evolutionary economics and based on evolved natural law and evolved diversity of free trade. Business activity involves mutually beneficial deals with others ... no compulsion ... choosing cooperation within natural competitive alternatives.
Businesses 'work' only because businesses that don't 'work' go bankrupt.
Lawful free trade involves simple economic principles -
Natural Law of the Land will tend to be fair based on universal emotions of 'fairness of shares' and 'resentment of cheats' ... businesses can't survive under arbitrary law.
trade between consenting adults and their companies of choice will tend to be lawful free trade based on avoiding costly distortions, imbalances and gluts & queues ... businesses can't survive as licensed monopolies.
Lawful free trade is justified by two fundamental ideas of economics -
synergies from specialisation & scale == comparative advantage == everyone can participate - David Ricardo
market prices minimise costs == supply & demand == men of system cannot calculate prices - Adam Smith
The Institutions of Liberal Democracy, as evolved systems, emerged from diverse lawful free trade deals and must offer some immunity from parasites & predators ... protecting both -
synergies of specialisation & scale from trade & associations and
individual human rights and the choices of folk & minorities
The necessary diversity for the natural selection of businesses results from the experiments of cooperating folk as they vote with their feet and join a club of their choice.
Thriving businesses always interact with different others and environments including the Institutions of State which always became restlessly involved -
Torts - Laws of the Land, Common Law
- morality & cooperation
emerged from biological & cultural inheritances rather than from the arrogance
of intelligent design, political correctness & regulatory distortions.
NB Malarkey & tomfoolery of the 'powers that be' == arbitrary command & control of
human moral behaviour
Don't get it wrong ... business is not laissez faire ... 'moral sentiments'
evolve. Folk are free to choose but not free to harm others.
Businesses and clubs enjoyed the
lawful protection of Liberal Democratic institutions, constitutional checks & balances
and separation of powers 'to make the world safe for diversity' and arrest backsliding
into deliberate, rational, purposeful, intentional, plans.
Backsliding was an
arrogant drift from the humble Classical Liberalism of Jefferson to the hubristic
Modern Liberalism of Hamilton. With diversity Levianthan 'to protect ourselves from ourselves'
was unnecessary.
Freedom to lawfully
experiment secured economic growth which trumped orchestrated equality of outcomes. The law of the land turned out to be a better alternative
than violence for settling differences but technology solved problems.
Trade - Opportunities for Profitable Projects
-
bottom up discovery & accumulation
from trial & error processes of wealth creation in commercial cities.
Specialisation grows from subsidiarity & initiative == 'survival know
how' grows @ 3% compound as a science knowledge base, a growing launch pad
for further growth == compounding opportunities as a positive sum game ==
'jobs, jobs, jobs' == 'education, education, education' == exchange trade ==
economic growth == high value job vacancies == immigration of high value
skills
Scale grows from families, to clubs & companies, to countries & states, to
UK & USA == tax revenues from the synergies embedded in hard work, honesty &
thrift fund the 'civilised' Welfare State.
NB Malarkey & tomfoolery in business == bankruptcy.
Don't get it wrong ... business learns from mistakes not
from intelligent designs. Vested interests, cartels, trade unions are free
to choose but not free to harm others.
Businesses and clubs practiced both free & fair trade, deals free
trade across barriers and fair trade
at market prices resulted in undistorted discovery & accumulation of global synergies
of specialisation & scale.
Trade, comparative advantages, market prices.
Technology - Institutional Immunity from Parasites &
Predators - top down impositions of costs & regulations
from Bishops, Princes, Generals & bureaucrats and rent seekers & free
riders are parasites & predators == confronted by
constitutional/institutional checks & balances on 'powers that be'.
NB
Malarkey & tomfoolery of Bishops, Princes, Generals & bureaucrats ==
corruption and rigged elections from bribery of interest groups for
votes with tax revenues from others is an arbitrary zero sum game
will tend to fail
as 'excess burdens' reduce output and reduce real wages.
But don't get it wrong ... we're biased ... as soon as wealth stocks appear, parasites & predators
also appear and must be confronted ... otherwise stocks don't survive. Cooperative synergies of specialisation & scale load
the dice.
Businesses and clubs required lower taxes, less regulation and mutual
benefits as
deadweight burdens were removed = more output, more investment, less cost and less waste == 3-4% growth in
'know how' == real jobs.
Why tax business? Businesses can't pay taxes, tax was a cost to business,
only folk can pay tax? ... think about it?
Foreign Policy - Promoted Global
Markets. Rice doctrine
encouraged institutions of Liberal Democracy, businesses and clubs for
mutual benefits and confronted clubs threatening
terrorism.
Cultural tit for tat nurtured cooperation.
Education, Health Care & Energy
- Promoted Mutual Benefits. From diversity and choice but not subsidies and price fixing which produced
expensive gluts & queues.
Technology provided solutions; subsidies resulted in distortions and imbalances.
'If it’s free put me down for two please', health & education & clean
air gluts & queues.
Emerging Policy
= It's The Economy Stupid!
Structural Reforms - torts, trade & technology - Devolution, Subsidiarity, Privatisation, Modularisation, Trade Synergies, Market Prices & Balanced Balance Sheets
Mergers, Acquisitions & Bankruptcies - Simple Behavioural Rules of Thumb
The unleashing of a process of technological & institutional innovation involving the generating & testing a diversity of ideas which discover & accumulate more survival value for the costs incurred than competing alternatives. The evidence suggests that it could be adaptive efficiency that defines economic efficiency.
Don't get it wrong this was not luck - it was all about synergies (not greed), and liberté (not égalité) - opportunity & participation - hard work, honesty & thrift.
But don't get it doubly wrong synergies & liberté were never inevitably successful - it was all about discovering & accumulating local improvements which survived better than competing alternatives.
The process involved diversity and the natural selection of outcomes. Many alternative 'clubs' were necessary for diversity.
Business experiments were bottom up subsidiarity as competitive businesses with healthy Balance Sheets wrestled with the discovery & accumulation of survival know how ... the synergies of specialisation & scale.
Some clubs played positive sum games and chose hard work, honesty & thrift and secured benefits and rainy day funds for the education & health of family & friends ... and the gene pool ... as strange newcomers and immigrants flocked to join the party and find the jobs.
But there was polarisation and crowd trouble as emigrants abandoned the ship ... there was no alternative to education, education, education ... and jobs, jobs, jobs ... things were tough.
The uncowed bankers and the businessmen very occasionally spoke up, Jamie Diamon and Steve Forbes -
'America, one of the most bureaucratic, confusing, societies in the planet, an embarrassment being an American citizen listening to this stupid shit we have to deal with. We been rolling along at 1 and a half-2% in spite of stupidity but American business is powerful and strong is going to grow regardless. People want to get up in the morning and feed their kids. We have to get our act together otherwise we won't do what we're supposed to do for the average Americans. It is not for the benefit of corporations, competitive taxes are important for business growth which is jobs and wages. We should be ringing alarm bells every time we talk to clients'.
'We're not the problem, we'll do OK under any system, it's Joe who will suffer, fewer real jobs & lower real wages'.
Simple Behavioural
Rules of Thumb
Folk and businesses learned from Rules of Thumb ==
In this way cooperation evolved and institutions gained from synergies and found some immunity from treachery.
But the parasites & predators were relentless ... an arms race ...
Intelligent designers had an impossible task with top down command & control but bottom up solutions were the business of business -
don’t vote for them it will only encourage them ... avoid top down, imposition of arbitrary prices & regulations ...
vote with your feet and join a club of your choice ... try bottom up, voluntary experimental initiatives of clubs ...
The economics of competitive business major on the principles of subsidiarity & innovation and the imperative of survival by provision of solutions which satisfy customers.
The economics of the alternative of state corporatism major on economies of monopolistic scale in the public interest. But licensed monopolies have little immunity from bureaucratic kludge, parasites & predators, tyranny & oppression, bribery & corruption ... and the public interest doesn't exist.
Customers & Suppliers did deals and shook hands for mutual benefits.
End Note
-
Historical Rhymes
= tax, borrow & print monopolies, regulatory burdens
& price fixing imbalances
Evolution shaped the word as Sumerian agriculture, sea cargoes, the desert silk roads, the Mediterranean ports, the spies, the slaves, the plagues, science & technology, the new world, finance & limited liability, empire, industrialisation, globalisation ... all thrived on the synergies of trade.
The evidence was in history. From Sumer to the Battle of Seattle, which still continued in 2017, free & fair trade fed economic growth if tariff burdens were removed and prices which cleared markets were discovered. The dice was always loaded against the Bishops, Princes, General & Bureaucrats who ceaselessly tried to slow things down and retain their privileged positions through various and many 'restraints on trade' and 'restrictive practices'.
In 2008 William Bernstein brilliantly described some of the evolutionary developments.
History had to be reinterpreted in the light of learning and current 'know how' from Empirical Science.
But always remember Politicos were seldom Scientists
Politicos persistently peddle personal possibilities
Scientists discover & accumulate effective evidence
Could free & fair trade be 'managed'?
Could politicos 'protect' national champions from global competition?
Why the endless agonising over free & fair trade?
Was the WTO a club?
Could the WTO stop the hubris of price fixing? Could the WTO embrace subsidiarity and be built from the bottom up?
How to blow things up and drain the swamp?
Why not vote with your feet and join clubs of your choice? Why not!
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Subsidiarity - Historical Evidence = torts, trade & technology = hard work, honesty & thrift
Delegation, Devolution, Privatisation = Trade Synergies, Market Prices & Balanced Balance Sheets
Subsidiarity - an organizing principle - matters should be
handled by the smallest, lowest or least centralized competent module.
Higher orders should not interfere with lower order lawful endeavour,
central authorities perform only those tasks which cannot be performed at
local level - defence, human rights, law of the land? ... defence,
health, education?
UDHR caveat.
Evolutionary Economics described the whole shooting match of history as natural selection of know how jostling with complexity, change, conflict & scarcity as the essential diversity for innovations which discovered synergies of specialisation which vied with economies of scale which accumulated larger group cohesion.
Evolutionary Economics explains the unleashing of a process of technological & institutional innovation involving the generating & testing of a diversity of ideas which discover & accumulate more survival value for the costs incurred than competing alternatives. The evidence suggests that it could be adaptive efficiency that defines economic efficiency.
History rhymed as the outcomes of diversity were hitherto unconnected connections which trumped the outcomes of imposition which provided no immunity from treachery and inevitably led to crowd trouble and bribery & corruption ...
Think natural selection in the context of complexity, change, conflict & scarcity -
genes do cost benefit calculations
there was an optimum size for the giraffes neck, and the trees in the forest and
an optimum size for all 'cooperative clubs'
too small and there were no economies of scale
too big and one size fits all red tape destroyed cohesion and innovation
Endless examples -
eukaryotic cells & autonomous development in a local environment
neuropsychology & decentralised nervous systems & decentralised immune systems ... no Cartesian Theatre
political science & break up of Empires & Nation State bureaucracies & federations not only problems of economic inefficiency but also opportunities for everyone ...
cybernetics & modular software ... no one person but rather decentralised self contained modules
management & OSC delegation
military command & squads regional regiments,
City States Greece - City States in North Italy (Genoa, Florence, Venice, Papal States)
Roman Empire - East / West Christianity
Roman Empire - Edward Gibbon and the fall
1648 Thirty Years War - Westphalia and sovereign nation states
1707 United Kingdom
Reformation & proliferation
1789 Tocqueville French Revolution - break up of the Bourbon bureaucracy ... started with decentralisation but finished with centralisation
1814 Waterloo - Napoleon's overstretch
1865 USA - Constitution - 10th Amendment - Civil war
1914 Austria Hungary and 'Balkanization'
1916 Easter Rising and the Six Counties
1922 Pope Pious XI Catholic Church subsidiarity
1945 Empire & Commonwealth
1947 Partition India Pakistan
1948 UDHR Article 30 'Nothing in this Declaration may be interpreted as implying... any right to engage in any activity... aimed at the destruction of any of the rights and freedoms set forth. There is nothing in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights that justifies any person or state doing anything that undermines the rights to which we are all entitled'.
1958 Distributism ... socialism controlled by force/imposition ... laissez faire capitalism controlled by top down command ... or Adam the Smith's evolved 'moral sentiments'?
1980 Privatisation
1989 Soviet Union
1991 Subsidiarity - encyclical Centesimus Annus - Pope John Paul II & the Cardinals + Ceritas Eteric +
1992 Maastricht Treaty - EU subsidiarity
2016 EU Brexit Brussels bureaucratic red tape
India - Michael Wood
China - Mao, Deng, Xi, Tiananmen, Hong Kong, Taiwan ...
Imposition doesn't work, happenings get in the way; complexity, change, conflict & scarcity. Events are random, survival is natural selection (not supernatural). Write the C.P. don't pass the buck. Tell me where I'm going wrong, you sound like a broken record. Voting for the other one won't solve problems. Follow your gut, follow the evidence.
Tommy Jeffers was clear about Liberal Democracy political independence, autonomy & human rights.
Declaration of Independence
-
'We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness'
Article I, Section 9, of the Constitution of the USA -
'No tax or duty shall be laid on articles exported from any state. No preference shall be given by any regulation of commerce or revenue to the ports of one State over those of another: nor shall vessels bound to, or from, one State, be obliged to enter, clear, or pay duties in another'.
But Jefferson didn't even convince Alexander Hamilton ... 'Leviathan' backsliding was rife from the start ... as the 10th Amendment -
'The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people'.
confronted the 14th Amendment -
'No State shall deprive any person of life, liberty, or property without due process of law, nor deny any person the equal protection of the laws'.
Differences remain, backsliding continues -
Xenophanes - 'A woven web of guesses'.
Plato's conundrum - 'Mob rule and emasculation of the wise' - ‘who will guard the guardians?'
Moral Sentiments & Wealth of Nations - Adam the Smith & The Scottish Enlightenment explained all about innate 'moral sentiments', 'resentment of cheats' and 'fairness of shares'. This 'inner light' of the Quakers, like the 'bad conscience' of the Jews was a universal human emotion; a survival aid, evolved over aeons from the abject failures of alternatives. There was a moral duty to make any unavoidable taxes ... simple, and easy to collect & understand.
Power Corrupts - Beware of Soothsayers and Bishops, Princes, Generals, bureaucrats and 'the powers that be'. One of the many who grasped the ubiquitous vulnerability of top down encyclicals was Lord Acton, 1887,
'all power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely'.
To 'Win' the patronage, inheritance, promotion or the election overwhelmed freedom and opened the door to bureaucratic kludge, parasites & predators, tyranny & oppression, bribery & corruption.
The Dilemma of Democracy - 2nd Viscount Hailsham, 1976,
'instead of Liberal Democracy we have an elected remote dictatorship'
51% screw 49% and polarisation.
Centesimus Annus - Pope John Paul II, encyclical 1991,
'Welfare States contradict the principle of subsidiarity by intervening directly and depriving society of its diversity & responsibility. This leads to a loss of human energies and an inordinate increase of public agencies which are dominated more by bureaucratic ways of thinking than by concern for serving their clients and which are accompanied by an enormous increase in spending'.
Historical evidence - Edward III in 1345 learned all about fickle fate as everywhere happenings rhymed ... take a little time to understand this memorable example of unpredictable shenanigans.
Since then, and before, claiming the moral high ground for their own, Bishops, Princes, Generals and bureaucrats have continued, relentlessly, in their attempts to manipulate innate moral sentiments and cultural inheritances from the top down ... and always got it all wrong. Repeated violation of human rights by 'the powers that be' who seized unwarrantable jurisdiction over us as they imposed taxes & regulations without consent. This folly of 'restraint of trade' and 'restrictive practices' was all imposed in the name of 'the general will' which never existed.
Pure Theory of Local Expenditure - Charles Tiebout, 1956, suggested an elegant improvement -
'Vote with your feet and join a club of your choice'
Endogenous Growth Theory - Paul Romer in 1986 demolished the chorus of objections to Tiebout and suggested increasing returns resulted from know how ... discovered & accumulated from interactions in cities and companies ... more diversity, more trade, more ideas, more technology.
Stephen Hawking - optimistic in 1988 -
'Some individuals are better able than others to draw the right conclusions about the world about them and act accordingly. These individuals will be more likely to survive and reproduce so their pattern of behaviour and thought will become dominant' ...
Evolving Liberal Democracy - Cultural Obsolescence
Darwin's explanation of happenings didn't appear until 1859 but Social institutions always evolved. Prior to 1859 Liberal Democracy was all about how to erode the problems of Plato's Conundrums & Democratic Deficits -
mob rule and emasculation of the wise?
who guards the Guardians?
Darwin's insight suggested Liberal Democracy was an evolving institution of custom & practice, a self organising system of adaptation, not the best but better than alternatives which had been tried from time to time ... not anarchy not laissez faire but social deals underpinned by -
moral sentiments embedded in Universal Declaration of Human Rights which confronted the 51% who screwed the 49% ... 2 - 2 = 0
synergistic cooperation embedded in all social institutions which nurtured survival from mutual benefits ... 2 + 2 = 5
Liberal was never the opposite of conservative (as in polarised)
Liberal was always the opposite of dictatorship (as in John Locke & Thomas Jefferson) - Freedom, the opposite of slavery. Free to choose?
Liberal Democracy Caveat - there was never ever no freedom to harm others in a zero sum game of 2-2=0 compromise but rather all was about the freedom to cooperate with others with positive sum synergies 2+2=5 -
Freedom to vote with your feet and join a club of your choice as local components sorted it out amongst themselves and institutions of custom & practice emerged ... 'it must run on our machines'!
Those who say 'it can't be done' were overtaken by those already doing it ... we can all be both consumers & producers & citizens & members ... we can all discover & accumulate cooperative social synergies and join or friends ... for sure we all have freedom of imaginative choice ... Benjamin Franklin -
'a man convinced against his will
is of the same opinion still'
It was impossible to tax ideas ... back to unimpeachable basics ... E=mc2 ... folk were excited about cures for cancer and fearful of parasites & predators
Why not ... a discernable evolving trend? -
diversity - ignorance & immunity from treachery ... nobody knows, so keep your options open
innovation - progress ... trial & error learning through experimental weeding out of failure
experimental innovation - Empirical Science ... dwarfs standing on the shoulders of giants
subsidiarity - partition, devolution, modularity
privatisation - global commercial businesses & bankruptcy
intellectual property - know how ... diverse, dispersed, tacit, incomplete
personal responsibility - good behaviour ... social empathy ... moral sentiments
feet voting - joining clubs of your choice without harming others
Why can't ... the Dissenters & Scot Nats & Brexiteers & Remainers, Wallonians ... Texas & San Francisco & Heathrow & Gatwick & Amazon & Apple & Genentech & Unilever & Moorfield Hospital & King's Chester & the Khan Academy ... why can't they all choose for themselves and cooperate with their mates ... and get on with their own lawful business?
Check it all out ... you never know?
Read Richard Dawkins 'The Selfish Gene' Chapter 12, 'Nice Guys Finish First'.
Then try some Nobel Laureates & evolutionary economists - James Buchanan, Gene Farmer, Elinor Ostrom and Paul Romer.
There maybe an alternative to the 51% who screwed the 49%?
(e.g. 50/50 polarisation was not represented in the UK 'sovereign' parliamentary political parties and not represented with the 'civil law' derived democratic deficit in Brussels 27/1.
Westminster AND Brussels AND Washington remained oblivious to the Democratic Deficits as bureaucrats perpetuated parasitic & predatory happenings which overwhelmed the immune systems from the earlier successful mutations ... such doomed the bureaucrats shenanigans had fading relevance to global economies as global businesses stuck to their knitting, minded their own business and got on with the job?)
The Law of the
Land
Jonathan Sumption, a Supreme Court judge and Medieval Historian, went back to basics in his theme for the 2019 Reith Lectures -
'the decline of politics and the rise of law to fill the void'
Plato's democratic conundrums -
'Mob rule and emasculation of the wise'
'Who guards the guardians'
1. Growth of Leviathan ... lawful overreach penetrated into every corner of human life.
Political debate & discussion in representative parliaments & political parties have failed to settle inevitable differences of viewpoints in 'society' resulting in unresolved 51% v. 49% polarisation.
Authoritarian Creep inexorably followed as the established generally accepted legitimacy of the Law as an economic alternative to violence filled the void.
How did we end up here?
The Pecking Order was a beginning - complexity, change, conflict & scarcity were resolved by brute force
Natural Law evolved underpinned by universal moral sentiments of Homo Sapiens, 'do to others as you wish they would do to you' ... evolving instincts of 'fairness of shares' and 'resentment of cheats' were survival aids
Direct Democracy evolved in Greece as 'all citizens had their say' and collective decisions were taken by majority voting
Civil Law evolved in Rome as codified 'top down' principles which were imposed throughout the Empire
Common Law evolved in England as generally accepted 'bottom up' custom & practice, lawful precedent of Judge & Jury '12 good men & true' protected persons, property, ideas, deals, associations & liberty 'provided others were not harmed', 'no taxation without representation', legitimacy came from 'survival in the local environment' otherwise it would not have 'survived' the imposition of Roman Law.
Sovereignty of Parliament evolved as inevitable differences of opinion about essential collective decisions were legitimised by discussion & debate not violence.
Liberal Democracy and Bills of Rights evolved as protected freedoms for everyone to discover & accumulate synergies of cooperation trumped coercive compromise, the system became 'legitimate' & 'lawful' 'not the best but better than alternatives which had been tried from time to time'
State Leviathan emerged following public pressure for 'compassionate' outcomes ... 'fairness of shares' and 'resentment of cheats' ... demands for -
conformity
risk reduction and
moral judgments
Such physical impossibilities became lawful State aspirations.
Rising expectations of mass voters demanded state provision of security, amenities and regulated economic activity which resulted in an avalanche of voluminous statutes as laws & lawyers penetrated every corner of human life.
Innocents suffered a loss of liberty as expectations grew that diversity, failures & accidents and bad behaviour could be 'avoided' by legislation. Demands of democratic majorities for state action became profoundly objectionable, even oppressive, to some individuals & to whole sectors of society.
Parliament was blamed for the chaos at the hustings as politics declined and law filled the void.
2. Taming Leviathan ... liberal democracy
Legitimacy of Parliament came from reconciling differences for collective decisions not from 51% screwing 49% as -
responsible representatives secured the long term 'public interest' to 'balance' short term greed of constituents
political parties secured cooperative coalitions of 'broad churches' of political differences
legislation defined individual rights & obligations and 'level playing field' social interaction
Such institutions failed to reconcile differences as polarised parliaments led to gridlock and little demand for economic cooperation -
Participation (hard work, honesty & thrift)
Coasian Bargains (ownership rights) and
Pareto Optimal Deals (no harm to others) ...
Such hindered the copy/vary/select process of 'natural selection' because of reduced -
diversity (ignorance ... nobody knows, so keep your options open)
innovation (progress ... through experimental failure) and
personal responsibility (good behaviour ... social empathy)
The Law failed to protect inalienable rights and became politicised, a 'catch all' which drew lines & imposed compromises.
3. Universal Human Rights ... inalienable rights
A moral sense evolved in Homo Sapiens as inherited through the immutable laws of nature, not by the largesse of the state, not by the forbearance of fellow citizens, not a matter of opinion but from another source of legitimacy ... originally from God and the tablets of stone but later from the insights of David Hume & Adam Smith; 'moral sentiments'.
Reasonable introspective people all agreed a universal 'conscience more or less existed -
fairness of shares
resentment of cheats
Such emotions were 'felt' to varying degrees because feelings existed as brain chemicals ... dopamine, oxytocin, serotonin, endorphins ... just like excitement & fear -
Human Rights evolved as independent 'obligations' to protect the liberty of folk who disagreed but didn't harm others. Overreach 'devalued' inalienable rights as everything became a 'right' and was up for grabs.
Article 8 Protection of Private & Family life ... authoritarian creep started to define contentious 'good behaviour' as the Law became politicised ... abortion was not in the Constitution, and was contentious.
Liberal Democracy messed up -
inevitable differences for collective decisions and could not be resolved by -
voting nor by
judges who disagreed 5 to 4 ...
Darwin's insight gave hope for evolutionary change & moral progress ... mutations incompatible with the survival of the whole shebang & caboodle will tend to die out -
shared values can be protected from parasites & predators by -
diversity - ignorance ... nobody knows, so keep your options open
innovation - progress ... trial & error learning through experimental weeding out of failure
experimental innovation - Empirical Science ... dwarfs standing on the shoulders of giants
subsidiarity - partition, devolution, modularity
privatisation - global commercial businesses & bankruptcy
intellectual property - know how ... diverse, dispersed, tacit, incomplete
personal responsibility - good behaviour ... social empathy ... moral sentiments
feet voting - joining clubs of your choice without harming others
Everyone believed their very own moral values were inalienable but others disagreed; 'there was no such thing as society', 'the Englishman's home was his castle' but was the Englishman harming others by not paying his taxes?
Question not the good or bad outcome but rather what is the better way of taking decisions?
4. 1776 Thomas Jefferson ... inventing a nation of immigrants
To protect against overreach the Judiciary, Legislature and Administration were set up as an independent and competitive balance, but early on Alexis de Tocqueville suggested the Judiciary in America was on the rampage and an elite right up to the Supreme Court were settling all the inevitable political differences.
Separation of Powers, Checks & Balances, Term Limits and Constitutions were the alternatives to violence -
Codified Rights identified inalienable rights & obligations. Life, liberty & the pursuit of happiness were inalienable rights to escape violence and secure diversity ... freedom of expression, assembly & association to escape dictatorship and enable cooperation ... written or unwritten?
Politics protected minorities involved in collective decisions
Law protected everyone equally from violation of inalienable rights & obligations
But Constitutions of Liberal Democracy became eroded as 'rights' grew like Topsy without agreement on associated 'obligations' ... the passing arbitrary whims of Bishops, Princes, Generals & bureaucrats ... and Parliamentarians and Judges.
US Supreme Court became supreme in the arena for settling differences
UK Parliament became supreme in the arena for establishing the law
A varying mixture of folly & wisdom so why bother to count votes at all?
Legitimacy came not from violence nor elites nor dynasties but from -
moral sense of universal rights (real 'moral sentiments' - 'do unto others')
autonomy of we the people ( real 'inheritance, diversity, natural selection' - 'who are you?')
Forget the flawed concept of 'supreme know how' from top down right answers to moral dilemmas that don't exist and focus on the flow of 'know how' and betterment from bottom up Empirical Science and go for the best chance of accommodating inevitable differences.
Constitutions agreed how we participate not how we determined outcomes. We the people, active citizens, tried to pass the buck to -
unelected elite judges
elected representatives of political parties and
But the problems of change, complexity, conflict & scarcity remained and contributions from everybody were required. The law simply had no solution to the problem of elitist majoritarian tyranny. The only effective constraint on the abuse of democratic power was politics which wasn't working -
'In a society so riven that the spirit of cooperation
has
gone no Court can save,
in a society where that spirit flourishes, no Court
need save' - Learned Hand
How to avoid the Authoritarian Creep of the European Convention of Human Rights and enable participation & contribution?
5. New UK Constitution? ... passing the buck
There were no legal solutions to political problems. Passing the buck from Dictator to Dictator, or Monarch to Parliament, or Parliament to Supreme Court can never be a sustainable success; a pipe dream.
There is no blank sheet of paper, no opportunity for a written constitution after a successful UK island history ... Industrial Revolution, Adult Suffrage, Empire Independence, Two World Wars, Privatisation, Devolution -
unwritten constitution
sovereign parliament
custom & practice constraints
government in parliament
Flexible for incremental adaptation? A foundation of parliament & law as the custom & practice of cooperation in the community.
The real problem has always been within ourselves, as a social species our evolving institutions are tools for cooperation -
innate differences were nothing new
'copy/vary/select'
institutional laws became a knee jerk a cop out
'don't pass the buck'
cultural memes in existing institutions of custom & practice were beyond the reach of law
'a man convinced against his will is of the same opinion still'
Active citizenship involves participation & contribution, hard work, honesty & thrift, which secures synergies of specialisation & scale which benefit everybody.
Stable democracy requires a minimum level of engagement with the political process ... but there has been disillusioned disengagement? High expectations from the auction of promises at the hustings and misunderstanding the top down intentional power to effect change ... such blamed others for failure -
incompetent execution and
lies about the future
Political parties were captured by extremists and resulted in paralysing polarisation. Resentment, even hatred, of political elites set in. Maybe irrelevant during exciting economic growth but frightening during the business cycle down turns ... hubris, nemesis, catharsis. Authoritarian Creep was easy policy for 'strongmen' during 'catch up', but the evolution of technological innovation demanded diversity ...
... and Proportional Representation? ... and much more ...
'for every complex problem there exists an answer which is clear, simple, easy and wrong' ...
The Blind Watchmaker - the only game in town
Moral Sentiments - worms in the head
Essential Diversity - the girls danced backwards
Survival Know How - cooperative synergies of specialisation & scale
Trial & Error Learning - empirical failure not intelligent design
Hard Work, Honesty & Thrift - Empirical Science & Liberal Democracy
Enter the Parasites & Predators - as soon as there were stocks there were
thieves - Immunities from Treachery?
Expert Ignorance - Disagreement - 51% screwed 49%?
Authoritarian Creep - Intelligent Design of Natural Selection?
Free & Fair Trade -
The Nature of Clubs & Companies - Vote with your Feet and join a Club of
your Choice
The Case for Business - torts, trade & technology - Subsidiarity,
Privatisation, Trade Synergies, Market Prices & Balanced Balance Sheets
Emerging Policy - It's The Economy Stupid! - Structural Reforms - Devolution
- Subsidiarity - Privatisation - Modularisation - Mergers, Acquisitions &
Bankruptcies - Simple Behavioural Rules of Thumb
End Note - Historical Rhymes - tax, borrow & print monopolies, regulatory
burdens & price fixing imbalances
End Note - Who spoke up for Business? - Sally rowed for England
End Note - Evolving Liberal Democracy - Jonathan Sumption
back to evolutionary economics