In the ancient world, people tended to see rival nations as ruled by illicit tyrants, while their nation was ruled justly by a king. Two centuries ago when religion was first declining, many predicted that crime would greatly increase as a result. It was mainly fear of God, they said, that kept most from committing crime. But then crime came down.
The US did, in fact, attempt to conquer Canada (war of 1812) and succeed in conquering much of Mexico (Mexican war of 1844), not to mention annexing Native American territory all around. Just before the Civil War pro-slavery forces pushed hard for the military annexation of Cuba and more of Mexico, including semi-official efforts like the Lopez expedition (1850), which attempted to recruit Robert E. Lee as its commander . The Spanish-American war (1898) was also fought heavily for territorial aggrandizement.
Washington's great strength as a leader was his ability to step away from power. He did it right after the revolution and then as president. He was so revered that it took 140 years for another president to think he was above giving up power.
Regarding the actions of a "for-profit government" (which needs more definition; who are the shareholders for example?), I don't see it as a question of order vs chaos. It's a question of incentives. For-profit corporations are autonomous agents that maximize returns to shareholders, full stop. That's an incredibly powerful engine BUT you'd better be sure it's pointed in the right direction before you let it loose. The path to hell can be very orderly indeed.
Empirically, corporations have never handled complex goals well; look at the recent infighting at OpenAI. How to make a corporation achieve a goal like "the mutual betterment of society"? We have no experience building corporations with complex, nuanced goals like this.
I will repeat yesterday argument: profit is a natural guiding principle for a firm in a society where property rights are something given. In that context your profits signal your productive efficiency, and given strong property rights, profit show social value.
But for the organization whose main role is to secure property rights, what do “profits” mean? To some extent, the natural thing to maximize profits if you are the government is to reallocate property rights to yourself, and maximize profits.
Central banks do not have the objetive of profit maximization, but price stability. There is an strong reason for that… that is even bigger for government. I really like the idea of objective governance indicators, but profits? I don’t even know what it means for the government…
I also don't think that there's good historical evidence of non-nation state rule of things like colonial territories being superior to "standard" centralized government control -- quite the opposite. There were a lot of joint-stock companies given authority over colonial areas, and many turned out to be outright scams that crippled the economies of the nations where the investors came from (Mississippi Company, South Seas Company, Darien), and the ones that actually governed didn't exactly do a sterling job running their territories (c.f. Parliamentary hearings on the British East India Company). The African territory that was the personal fief of a monarch (Belgian Congo) had it a lot worse than places which were run by a government. Etc.
Hi everyone. I did enjoy Robin's historical examples given early on in the blog post. But, his conclusions about what "people" presume may be specific to people and scholars in his circle. Regarding: "people seem to presume that order is naturally rare" and "their reasoning is like that in the above cases: the usual human condition is selfish depravity, from which our current world is a fragile rare exception." Psychologists and anthropologists do not believe these things. Instead, order is not seen as a mystery, but a consequence of diverse aspects of evolved human sociality, such as evolutionary selection for cooperation (Henrich, Secret of our Success) and close attention to social norms (Gelfand, Rule breakers, Rule Makers).
"And why don’t government treasurers now steal our money, our militaries now take over our governments, or our elected leaders now refuse to step down at term end?"
Rampant inflation, a continuous stream of money funneled to the military-industrial complex, and the existence of the deep state all suggest that the answer to these questions is that "They do precisely that!"
The American in me wants to say all kings are illegitimate tyrants, but the local ruler has better propaganda. But I recognize that is merely plausible not convincing.
So something convincing: being for profit doesn't guarantee efficacy. Boeing and IBM are ostensibly for profit, but are too big to fail, despite crashing for decades. Big tech companies like Google and Microsoft don't innovate like they did when smaller. Big companies are less efficient than small ones, and already share problems governments have. Yet for profit seems to mean buy up the competition, aqui-hire all the people driven enough to challenge you, get bigger, and safer if less efficient.
So, uhh, if you could curb those problems to the point where they are not as bad as current govt pork barrel stuff, then sure. I don't think making money sacred would make those problems better, just make us accept them. (A lot of investors already do! Do they think money is sacred?)
I do think politicians would do better to be graded on some results based metrics, not just popularity metrics that charisma shortcircuits so well.
While I disagree with you, you made me think through why, so thanks.
The default moral stance of government is evil. Governments are as evil as they think they can get away with, bearing the next election in mind. This requires painting rivals as being more evil.
I’m not sure that the form of the corporation does enough to convince the public of their sacredness. One could imagine some kind of cap on economic returns to owners and limits on executive compensation. These might be persuasive. But (a) that would tend to disincentivize positive risk taking (moon-shots) and (b) limits like that have to be imposed through highly detailed prohibitions, which are often open to gamesmanship. So any such limit would need to be enforced by an institutional mechanism, rather than a legalistic one.
The OpenAI case is relevant here. It had a dual structure to allow it to pursue public benefit (preventing doom) and private gain. One reading of that situation is that the institutional mechanism failed when it was called on. Another is the opposite: that the ability of people to leave put constraints on abuse of the institutional mechanism. If we want to sacralize for-profit activities, we should be studying that case.
I take exception with the concept that we have never tried to take over our neighbors. At least twice we tried to take Canada (still British at the time. We made several forceable efforts to get Florida. But then we successfully took over half of Mexico away from via conquest.
We're seeing some aspects of "for-profit government" emerging at the state level in the US. Oregon for example now gives a tax rebate every other year to return unspent government funds to the people. This is a far cry from a full for-profit organization, but does begin to create incentives for elected officials to use money wisely. Every voter likes to see a big rebate. The rebates are timed to coincide with election years for state governor.
The US did, in fact, attempt to conquer Canada (war of 1812) and succeed in conquering much of Mexico (Mexican war of 1844), not to mention annexing Native American territory all around. Just before the Civil War pro-slavery forces pushed hard for the military annexation of Cuba and more of Mexico, including semi-official efforts like the Lopez expedition (1850), which attempted to recruit Robert E. Lee as its commander . The Spanish-American war (1898) was also fought heavily for territorial aggrandizement.
Washington's great strength as a leader was his ability to step away from power. He did it right after the revolution and then as president. He was so revered that it took 140 years for another president to think he was above giving up power.
Regarding the actions of a "for-profit government" (which needs more definition; who are the shareholders for example?), I don't see it as a question of order vs chaos. It's a question of incentives. For-profit corporations are autonomous agents that maximize returns to shareholders, full stop. That's an incredibly powerful engine BUT you'd better be sure it's pointed in the right direction before you let it loose. The path to hell can be very orderly indeed.
Empirically, corporations have never handled complex goals well; look at the recent infighting at OpenAI. How to make a corporation achieve a goal like "the mutual betterment of society"? We have no experience building corporations with complex, nuanced goals like this.
I will repeat yesterday argument: profit is a natural guiding principle for a firm in a society where property rights are something given. In that context your profits signal your productive efficiency, and given strong property rights, profit show social value.
But for the organization whose main role is to secure property rights, what do “profits” mean? To some extent, the natural thing to maximize profits if you are the government is to reallocate property rights to yourself, and maximize profits.
Central banks do not have the objetive of profit maximization, but price stability. There is an strong reason for that… that is even bigger for government. I really like the idea of objective governance indicators, but profits? I don’t even know what it means for the government…
I also don't think that there's good historical evidence of non-nation state rule of things like colonial territories being superior to "standard" centralized government control -- quite the opposite. There were a lot of joint-stock companies given authority over colonial areas, and many turned out to be outright scams that crippled the economies of the nations where the investors came from (Mississippi Company, South Seas Company, Darien), and the ones that actually governed didn't exactly do a sterling job running their territories (c.f. Parliamentary hearings on the British East India Company). The African territory that was the personal fief of a monarch (Belgian Congo) had it a lot worse than places which were run by a government. Etc.
Hi everyone. I did enjoy Robin's historical examples given early on in the blog post. But, his conclusions about what "people" presume may be specific to people and scholars in his circle. Regarding: "people seem to presume that order is naturally rare" and "their reasoning is like that in the above cases: the usual human condition is selfish depravity, from which our current world is a fragile rare exception." Psychologists and anthropologists do not believe these things. Instead, order is not seen as a mystery, but a consequence of diverse aspects of evolved human sociality, such as evolutionary selection for cooperation (Henrich, Secret of our Success) and close attention to social norms (Gelfand, Rule breakers, Rule Makers).
This feels underrated in AI discourse. What if AIs will be orderly too.
"And why don’t government treasurers now steal our money, our militaries now take over our governments, or our elected leaders now refuse to step down at term end?"
Rampant inflation, a continuous stream of money funneled to the military-industrial complex, and the existence of the deep state all suggest that the answer to these questions is that "They do precisely that!"
What's your thesis here? People are just naturally good to each other and don't need rules?
Sometimes we assume depravity to pump ourselves and our status quo up, sometimes it's because we've seen a lot of depravity in the status quo. http://www.threepanelsoul.com/comic/paperclip-maximizer
The American in me wants to say all kings are illegitimate tyrants, but the local ruler has better propaganda. But I recognize that is merely plausible not convincing.
So something convincing: being for profit doesn't guarantee efficacy. Boeing and IBM are ostensibly for profit, but are too big to fail, despite crashing for decades. Big tech companies like Google and Microsoft don't innovate like they did when smaller. Big companies are less efficient than small ones, and already share problems governments have. Yet for profit seems to mean buy up the competition, aqui-hire all the people driven enough to challenge you, get bigger, and safer if less efficient.
So, uhh, if you could curb those problems to the point where they are not as bad as current govt pork barrel stuff, then sure. I don't think making money sacred would make those problems better, just make us accept them. (A lot of investors already do! Do they think money is sacred?)
I do think politicians would do better to be graded on some results based metrics, not just popularity metrics that charisma shortcircuits so well.
While I disagree with you, you made me think through why, so thanks.
The default moral stance of government is evil. Governments are as evil as they think they can get away with, bearing the next election in mind. This requires painting rivals as being more evil.
Hi Robin, I'm curious what you think about Russia invading Ukraine and Hamas' actions against Israel recently? Do you count that as order?
Perhaps benefit corporations have a role to play in sacralization of for-profit activities. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benefit_corporation
I’m not sure that the form of the corporation does enough to convince the public of their sacredness. One could imagine some kind of cap on economic returns to owners and limits on executive compensation. These might be persuasive. But (a) that would tend to disincentivize positive risk taking (moon-shots) and (b) limits like that have to be imposed through highly detailed prohibitions, which are often open to gamesmanship. So any such limit would need to be enforced by an institutional mechanism, rather than a legalistic one.
The OpenAI case is relevant here. It had a dual structure to allow it to pursue public benefit (preventing doom) and private gain. One reading of that situation is that the institutional mechanism failed when it was called on. Another is the opposite: that the ability of people to leave put constraints on abuse of the institutional mechanism. If we want to sacralize for-profit activities, we should be studying that case.
I take exception with the concept that we have never tried to take over our neighbors. At least twice we tried to take Canada (still British at the time. We made several forceable efforts to get Florida. But then we successfully took over half of Mexico away from via conquest.
Lessons from our 96% kin.
A big chimp may overreach. But lesser males have learned to cooperate against tyranny; a clever leader with a strong partner (1).
This is how humans may have tamed themselves, turning reactive aggression into proactive, collective violence (2).
Chimp groups compete for resources. When one troop is twice as big as another, the larger will kill or drive off the smaller (3).
Men are both highly cooperative and fiercely competitive, thus achievements like the Panama Canal, and wars so frequent they must be numbered.
Self-taming is how we balanced the conflicting drives. Neither depravity nor altruism alone, suffices.
The same is true for individuals. Enough temptation may lead astray even the most upright ordinary man.
As noted in an earlier post (4), politicians are mostly irredeemable, well on their way to a separate species (5).
(1) https://www.nationalgeographic.com/animals/article/how-animals-choose-their-leaders-brute-force-democracy.
(2) https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2019/03/how-humans-tamed-themselves/580447/.
(3) https://www.science.org/content/article/why-do-chimps-kill-each-other.
(4) https://open.substack.com/pub/overcomingbias/p/why-not-for-profit-govt?r=22y2ke&utm_campaign=comment-list-share-cta&utm_medium=web&comments=true&commentId=49713297.
(5) https://evolution.berkeley.edu/evolution-101/speciation/defining-a-species/.
We're seeing some aspects of "for-profit government" emerging at the state level in the US. Oregon for example now gives a tax rebate every other year to return unspent government funds to the people. This is a far cry from a full for-profit organization, but does begin to create incentives for elected officials to use money wisely. Every voter likes to see a big rebate. The rebates are timed to coincide with election years for state governor.