We have three different kinds of reasons to favor others: friends, factions, and status. First, we favor those to whom we have relatively direct connections: friends, family, co-workers, neighbors, sport teammates, church-mates, etc. Second, we favor other members of our self-promoting groups, where each such group makes up a substantial fraction of our relevant society. Such as groups who share gender, ethnicity, education level, or religion. Third, we favor people we see as having prestige or dominance, and are thus accepted by most everyone as being better than others.
This is a good post under which to shill Contingentative Capitocracy. Capitocracy is where the government becomes a corporation of shareholders who hold and trade stateshares. One share equals one vote. There are also privileges given only to those who own enough stateshares (eg owning a vehicle can require you to collateralize 100 stateshares first, owning a jet a 1000, a tank 10000, etc). Also, promotions in the state (military, bureaucracy etc), would require a certain amount of stateshares by the official to be locked away first. This ensures everyone in the state is sufficiently invested into the state such that their incentives align. Optimally, the stateshare requirements for each level of official position would be calibrated such that everyone in the state would care more about the marketprice of the stateshare (and therefore their own (non-liquid) net worth) than about their own income or rent from their respective positions.
The 'Contingentative' part of Contingentative Capitocracy extends this concept not just to the state officials (where every official must be invested into the state before their induction into said state) but to everyone in the entire country (the geographic area where the state has the monopoly on force). This includes citizens, residents, immigrants, tourists, foreign diplomats, etc. The held stateshares must be locked away (collateralized) to above a certain minimum number depending on the privileges that person wants to have access to. Optimally, everyone in the country would have enough stateshares invested in the state which rules them such that every person within the borders would care more about the market price of the stateshare (and therefore their own (non-liquid) net worth) than about their own personal/private property such as corporate stocks, land, intellectual property, etc.
Under this system, the government will become a for-profit that seeks to return a dividend to its shareholders. How the government gets a revenue can be from taxes like we're familiar with, or through foreign efforts that are profitable ;)
'The opposing faction now mainly retains control l sorts,.... and of professions like construction, engineering, and the military wherein they still proudly apply professional norms of factional neutrality.'Where empirical demonstration is necessary, coincidence?'The main thing I can see that could derail this fast strong train is factional infighting'There is a non-PC term for this, something about firing squad geometry.
1) Don’t political factions always “make a bid for status,” in that they claim to greater virtue (wisdom, justice, etc.) than the opposing faction or factions? And their members believe the claim, at least sort of.2) You don’t give a name to the faction that is currently managing to move towards *status*; would ‘woke’ serve? What seems to be holding this faction back from complete victory is that it alienates most low-status people, who are numerous enough to constitute a stumbling block, especially in a democracy. The woke faction is having trouble grasping that it needs a broader tent to win more elections.
you wrote:"The founders of US democracy worried a lot about democratic polities splitting into factions"
actually, the founding plutocrats were worried about "an excess of democracy", whereby the faction of the workers would tax the faction of the rich plutocrats...so they solved that problem by writing a constitution that would create the USA and thereby enlarge the voting districts, thus increasing the number of factions in each voting district (more towns etc), thereby making it harder for the workers to unite and organize against the plutocrats...using the 'divide et impera' principle, as described in madison's letter to jefferson ...see Dr. Woody Holton's book "Unruly Americans" for proof of this...
1) Robin, I agree that the silencing of others' opinions (sentence #1 in your next-last paragraph) is a serious concern. But I think your concern in the *preceding* paragraph (which appears to be that claims to moral superiority threaten faction-neutrality norms) represents a category error: To the extent that such claims are invalid, they should be directly argued against; to the extent that they are valid, they should inform our moral choices. Neither of these need impact faction-neutrality, which neither requires nor justifies moral blindness.2) Nit: Your intro would be clearer if you clarified that your 3 kinds of reasons are not an exhaustive list (e.g. another important kind of reason that one person might favor another is the latter's inherent qualities).
This is a good post under which to shill Contingentative Capitocracy. Capitocracy is where the government becomes a corporation of shareholders who hold and trade stateshares. One share equals one vote. There are also privileges given only to those who own enough stateshares (eg owning a vehicle can require you to collateralize 100 stateshares first, owning a jet a 1000, a tank 10000, etc). Also, promotions in the state (military, bureaucracy etc), would require a certain amount of stateshares by the official to be locked away first. This ensures everyone in the state is sufficiently invested into the state such that their incentives align. Optimally, the stateshare requirements for each level of official position would be calibrated such that everyone in the state would care more about the marketprice of the stateshare (and therefore their own (non-liquid) net worth) than about their own income or rent from their respective positions.
The 'Contingentative' part of Contingentative Capitocracy extends this concept not just to the state officials (where every official must be invested into the state before their induction into said state) but to everyone in the entire country (the geographic area where the state has the monopoly on force). This includes citizens, residents, immigrants, tourists, foreign diplomats, etc. The held stateshares must be locked away (collateralized) to above a certain minimum number depending on the privileges that person wants to have access to. Optimally, everyone in the country would have enough stateshares invested in the state which rules them such that every person within the borders would care more about the market price of the stateshare (and therefore their own (non-liquid) net worth) than about their own personal/private property such as corporate stocks, land, intellectual property, etc.
Under this system, the government will become a for-profit that seeks to return a dividend to its shareholders. How the government gets a revenue can be from taxes like we're familiar with, or through foreign efforts that are profitable ;)
'The opposing faction now mainly retains control l sorts,.... and of professions like construction, engineering, and the military wherein they still proudly apply professional norms of factional neutrality.'Where empirical demonstration is necessary, coincidence?'The main thing I can see that could derail this fast strong train is factional infighting'There is a non-PC term for this, something about firing squad geometry.
1) Don’t political factions always “make a bid for status,” in that they claim to greater virtue (wisdom, justice, etc.) than the opposing faction or factions? And their members believe the claim, at least sort of.2) You don’t give a name to the faction that is currently managing to move towards *status*; would ‘woke’ serve? What seems to be holding this faction back from complete victory is that it alienates most low-status people, who are numerous enough to constitute a stumbling block, especially in a democracy. The woke faction is having trouble grasping that it needs a broader tent to win more elections.
you wrote:"The founders of US democracy worried a lot about democratic polities splitting into factions"
actually, the founding plutocrats were worried about "an excess of democracy", whereby the faction of the workers would tax the faction of the rich plutocrats...so they solved that problem by writing a constitution that would create the USA and thereby enlarge the voting districts, thus increasing the number of factions in each voting district (more towns etc), thereby making it harder for the workers to unite and organize against the plutocrats...using the 'divide et impera' principle, as described in madison's letter to jefferson ...see Dr. Woody Holton's book "Unruly Americans" for proof of this...
1) Robin, I agree that the silencing of others' opinions (sentence #1 in your next-last paragraph) is a serious concern. But I think your concern in the *preceding* paragraph (which appears to be that claims to moral superiority threaten faction-neutrality norms) represents a category error: To the extent that such claims are invalid, they should be directly argued against; to the extent that they are valid, they should inform our moral choices. Neither of these need impact faction-neutrality, which neither requires nor justifies moral blindness.2) Nit: Your intro would be clearer if you clarified that your 3 kinds of reasons are not an exhaustive list (e.g. another important kind of reason that one person might favor another is the latter's inherent qualities).
The historically normal response to this kind of thing is a military coup. Yet that seems unlikely to me. The ratchet might just keep tightening.