Cybernethics / Cybernéthique

I will be in Warsaw on June 28th and 29th to speak at the Libertarian International 2008 Spring Conference.

Since I don't want to preach to the choir what they already know or will soon know anyhow, I chose to tackle the topic I think is most missing from such conferences. That's why I announced the title of my future speech to be The Art of Living Free.

Now I have to find a great speech to put under this great title.

In a democracy as such, the total feedback control from the governed to the ruling is in the order of a few bits per year at most. Certainly, any process to satisfy millions of people with diverse preferences requires much more information than that. What is worse, the ruling class itself largely gets to define what those bits encode. And what damns the whole system, the individual incentives are for the ruled to not acquire such costly useless (to powerless them) information, and for the rulers to spread propaganda that will extend their power.

In other words, the powerful are pretty much out of control of the citizens. Certainly, a few bits per year of information might sometimes be better than none at all. But not for long, since the meaning of those bits is soon to be controlled by some variant of a two party system. The knobs controlled by those few bits will never allow to change the one thing that matters mosts: the irresistible growth of the power exerted over you, the fact that whoever is likely to be elected is a power hungry bastard backed by an organized predation system. Preserving and extending the power of politicians and bureaucrats upon citizens is a bi-partisan issue.

Inasmuch as some democratic societies work and others don't, it isn't due to democracy as such, but to other institutions completely independent of democracy, disconnected from it, and actually slowly but surely corrupted by it and destroyed by it as well as by any other form of political power: individual rights (as opposed to collective claims), common law (as opposed to statute), the rule of law (as opposed to the arbitrary power of politicians and bureaucrats), a culture of honesty (as opposed to having to weasel around imposed regulations), widespread self-reliance (as opposed to a sense of entitlement), and other personal moral values (as opposed to compulsory submission to "moral" rules edicted by others). These are the institutions of a market society, one where each one earns his living out of mutually voluntary cooperation.

Toleration as a political norm is demonstrably invalid because it is obviously self-defeating: must we tolerate the intolerant who attack peaceful dissenters? if muslims threaten and kill those who dare criticize their religion, and some people say won't tolerate it, are you to tolerate the former or the latter? Effectively, you cannot tolerate the deeds of one party without approving intolerance towards the other party.

That said, there is indeed a political system that promotes toleration as a general phenomenon, and this system is Capitalism, not Socialism. And obviously so, because Capitalism is a system where everyone can create a domain where he can live according to his ideas unimpeded by others, namely his property, whereas Socialism (and after it the lesser forms of Statism) assumes communal domains where everyone is the victim of whoever manages to temporarily or permanently seize political power.

Instapundit supports and regularly reports the current efforts to eliminate pork from Washington. Larry Lessig announced that he's going to focus his work on fighting corruption. But corruption isn't the problem. It is the symptom. The problem is political power.

Do you prefer the untouchable political commissar who'll send you directly to a death camp, or the shady official who'll look away if you pay him?

Most Statists like to claim against libertarians that men are naturally at war with each other and that a situation without a central overseeing Government inevitably leads to the war of all against all in which the most brutish wins. What they believe and want us to believe under threat of death is that Government is a supernatural entity outside of Society. But what their claim REALLY amounts to is that in fear that a war might happen and that the most brutish might win, we should actually grant a diploma and a license to some entity that is precisely characterized by being the most brutish. Once again, it's all about enforcing the certainty of the worst as a claimed cure to the fear of an uncertain bad. Somehow, supporting the worst case scenario that would happen in the darkest depiction of what Anarchy could lead to -- namely the State -- transforms said brutishness and oppression into the supernatural "will of the people", transforming the oppressors into friends. Call William the Bastard "King" or Saddam "President" and he is not a tyrant but a protector. Magic! Yeah, and the respective US and French bureaucracies are justified because the citizens preferred Bush to Kerry, and Chirac to Le Pen? Yeah, right.

The fact that most people in each country do not try to kill each other, that most countries are not at war with each other despite the absence of world government, that in national as well as international relations, policing and justicing are the exception and not the norm, whereas oppression and killings are the norm and liberty the exception wherever Governments are involved -- completely evade the firmly believing Statists. They live in fear and denial, project their wishful dreams of what they fancy should be onto what is an actual nightmare they refuse to study for what it is, and call their opponents utopians and irrealists. OK -- who can sum that up neatly in a concise aphorism?

My hands are in a sorry state that prevent much further typing, which partly explains my limited activity on this blog. As they get slightly better, however, I cannot avoid writing this essay, prompted by a recent debate on Utopia. I explain the absurdity and intrinsic totalitarianism of Utopia stricto sensu, several ways to fix the invalid concept into valid, useful ones, and at the intersection of them, Extropianism, that intentional projection into the future of mankind.

La question de la peine de mort divise les libéraux. Voici ma réponse à un lecteur du QL qui s'enquiert de la position libérale sur le sujet, au titre de mes réflections approfondies sur le Droit libéral.

I pay homage to Ayn Rand, for how she helped me live better. Not just me, but millions of readers. She was not my prime inspiration: my first libertarian author was Hayek, and my favorite was and remains Bastiat, through another lover of which I discovered Ayn Rand. But my! an inspiration she was, in the literal meaning: not so much for ideas that I already knew, though she certainly helped me articulate them like I wouldn't otherwise have, but more so for the lofty ideal of the self to which she raised me. How glad I am she wrote what she did write! I never ascribed Rand any kind of infallibility, and I see no reason why she should be either held or rejected based on such an absurd standard, even though she may have claimed such a standard for herself amongst her followers. I admire her, and that doesn't require me to follow her blindly. Actually I think you can't fully appreciate an author if you're unable to partake in that dynamic critical conversation with her work, by which you see her deep failings as well as her lofty genius, that only appears greater by contrast.

Take Swiss Cheese, the variety that comes with holes (technically known as eyes). There is a clear correlation between holes and cheese: the more cheese there is, the more holes there are. If you purchase twice as much cheese, you'll get a volume of holes twice as big. Since correlations are symmetrical, this also means the more holes there are, the more cheese there is. If you purchase enough cheese to double the volume of holes, then you have purchased twice as much cheese. Thus, a static mind satisfied with correlations may conclude that a good way to increase the total quantity of cheese is to increase the total volume of holes -- which may be achieved quite simply by drilling holes in the given supply of cheese. Of course, this means fails, because it changes the proportion of holes to cheese, whereas the measured correlation upon which the reasoning stands crucially depends on this proportion being a constant. Yet that's exactly how macroeconomic regulation by government works: find some existing correlation between some kind of wasteful government spending and a measure of general welfare, and then forcefully increase the spending in the hope to increase welfare...

Quand une personne est outrée en voyant un vol ou une agression commise contre un tiers, elle fait un premier pas dans le libéralisme.

Quand une personne reconnaît le droit de protagonistes de s'adonner à des transactions volontaires qu'elle déteste, avouant que ce n'est pas son affaire, elle fait un deuxième pas dans le libéralisme.

Quand une personne voit une tierce personne empêcher deux protagonistes de se livrer à une transaction volontaire et proteste contre cette intervention, elle fait un troisième pas dans le libéralisme.

Quand une personne voit le gouvernement ou une entité collective interférer dans la vie d'autrui et déclare que ledit gouvernement sort du domaine légitime de ses activités, elle fait un quatrième pas dans le libéralisme.

Quand une personne tente d'établir les limites des attributions du gouvernement et les libertés laissées aux individus, elle fait un cinquième pas dans le libéralisme.

Quand une personne s'aperçoit que les attributs légitimes d'un état sont fort limités et que les états actuels agissent largement là où ils n'ont pas de légitimité et nuisent plus qu'ils ne font de bien, elle fait un sixième pas décisif dans le libéralisme (et sort de l'infra-libéralisme).

Quand une personne s'aperçoit qu'un vol n'est pas moins vol parce qu'il est fait au nom de l'état, que l'intervention d'un tiers contre des transactions volontaires n'en est pas moins illégitime parce qu'elle est effectuée au nom de l'intérêt général, elle fait un septième pas dans le libéralisme.

Quand une personne s'aperçoit qu'il n'y a pas de force au-dessus de la société et extérieure à la société, mais seulement des forces internes à la société, sujettes à la dynamique universelle d'incitations responsables ou irresponsables, elle fait un huitième pas dans le libéralisme.

Quand une personne s'aperçoit de la différence conceptuelle entre État comme organisation de la force et État comme comme monopole de la force, et comprend que le monopole institutionnalise le pouvoir de parasites sans scrupules sur les faibles et honnêtes gens, elle fait un neuvième pas dans le libéralisme.

Quand une personne s'aperçoit que l'État n'est pas plus incarné que la Nation ou Dieu, qu'il n'y a au fond que des individus qui puissent posséder des droits, que les collectivités sont des entités fictives et qu'on ne peut déléguer ou céder qu'à d'autres individus, que des droits que l'on possède individuellement, elle est pleinement libérale.

NB: article publié simultanément sur mon blog et sur Liberty.li.

Some people think that legislative decrees are like miracles, whereby angels come from the sky to realize the wish of the rulers. But that ain't what happens. Legislative decrees means that workers will have to pay so that the least entrepreneurial citizens may be constituted in a bureaucracy headed by professional crooks, who will oppress those they claim to help into following stubborn counterproductive regulations. Workers are made poorer by paying taxes. Helpless people are tread upon by laws. Lawful citizens lose their souls by becoming bureaucrats. Devils profiteer by orchestrating the chaos. And legislative power becomes the goal and means of a war of all against all. This, is what legislation really amounts to, whatever pretense of good intentions hides the real consequences. Sacrilege televised.

There is no such thing as a clash of Civilizations. For one, there are no Civilizations. There is only one Civilization, and it is universal: The West.

But whereas its name, Occident, tells from which shore of the Hellespont it took flight, The West unites people from all ethnic or cultural origins in a common peaceful cooperation through the respect of individual rights. The Japanese robot-maker, the Indian software engineer, the Senegalese phone operator, the Chilean wine-maker or the Israeli gardener, all partake in our Occidental Civilization, that knows no limits and no discrimination except those of human accomplishment: one is what one creates.

Wretchard illustrates an essential principle sorely missed by all the beautiful souls who hate seeing evil so much that they'd rather put their head in the sand than do something, and take such pride out of it that they feel they can despise those who actually go out and fight evil. And I mean quite a lot of so called liberals, and also much too many libertarians. Law considered without law enforcement is a chimera. And neglecting law enforcement as trivial and subordinate to law is but rationalizing the previous case. Law enforcement has a cost; it has consequences; the means required to enforce law induce severe constraints on what law can effectively be in reality, as contrasted to what it purports to be in its official declaration; the consequences of a law are the effects its actual enforcement have, not the wishful cover stories displayed by whoever lobbies for the law. Confusing a human edict for a godly edict, thinking that some kind of formal utterance transubstantiates human words into divine words and change the very essence of the world... that's an anerism. Justice without Police, Peace without the means of War, social order without self-defense... they are the same delusionary principles, that in reality mean only one thing: the claim of the inalienable right of criminals to successfully attack their victims.

Mon paternel réagissait il y a quelques temps à mon commentaire sur l'académie. Tonner contre - mais en faire partie si l'on peut, me rappelait-il -- définition que Flaubert donne de l'Académie Française dans son Dictionnaire des idées reçues. Si on m'offrait un poste dans cette académie, refuserais-je? Sans doute pas. Cautionné-je pour autant l'existence de cette institution? Certes pas. Et vu que je consacrerai plus d'énergie à dénigrer cette institution qu'à briguer mon accession à icelle, j'imagine assez mal qu'on m'y invite.

Arnold Kling identifies what Intelligent Design means in Political Economics (Cám ơn Palⁿ). This is quite in line with what Don Boudreaux writes about Social Creationism, Social Deism, & Social Atheism. As usual, it's all about having Faith in the Godvernment.

Am I deriding all beliefs as silly? No, just like Razib, I believe. In Science. Not in fake consensus science issued by an Establishment backed with political violence. In the science that emerges out of the rationally competing views expressed on a free market.

... would smell as bad. And here, the name for black magic is the propensity to resort to Type M arguments, as opposed to Type C arguments: Type C arguments explore consequences, Type M arguments question Motives. Another great piece by Arnold Kling. (Cám ơn Patri)

Often, some people will argue that democracy requires citizens who are informed, educated, and able to reason, so that they may vote properly. Damn right it does require people who can argue. But it produces people who can't.

And I've explained why in my essay Government is the Rule of Black Magic, section The Law of Eristic Escalation.

Logical reasoning is the product of civil liberty, and not its premise. Civil liberty is a state of mutual respect for each other's life, liberty and property. When civil liberty reigns, you cannot extract benefits from other people by force or fraud, and you have to resort to persuasion. Because people constantly try persuade each other and to not be persuaded against their own interest, they develop the critical skills that help them filter the bad arguments, and the creative skills that help them create good arguments: they learn logical rationality.

On the other hand, political power destroys reason. Political power is the power to force other people to do what you want, whether they like it or not. It is the opposite of civil liberty. When people have to obey anyway, and suffer when they object, they unlearn the skills of logical argumentation; they focus their intelligence and energy on where these can actually be useful -- like finding how to maximize benefits and minimize burdens given the current laws and masters (which becomes a prevalent concern as political power expands). But whether or not the government is making the best decisions, and what precisely the government should or shouldn't do -- that's a skill that's of no matter to them, since they cannot decide any of it, and can only suffer by disagreeing.

You don't argue between slaves and masters. You only argue between tradesmen. Peaceful argument is the fruit of the institution of voluntary cooperation: the market. In a democracy, citizens qua citizens are not tradesmen; they are mutual masters and slaves. They are ordinarily slaves to a government the decisions of which they hardly ever influence: once every so many years, they can each tip the results by one vote out of millions toward the least evil (according to each of them) between the two (or three) most probable candidates; and in as much as they are a decisive part of political lobbies that may indeed control the decisions of governments, they become masters who don't have to argue with whichever political minorities they are able to exploit.

Reason may be the requisite of a functioning democracy, but democracy, like any political power, destroys reason, and thus destroys the prerequisite of its own functioning properly. This is why any democracy is doomed. Any democracy will see rational debate disappear faster as political power grows, until the regime is a cleptocracy headed by an establishment of droning parasites, and there is no meaningful rational debate left; then the country goes downhill and ends up being conquered by an inside dictator or an outside invader.

Democracy is yet another example of the self-defeating concepts defended by people who indulge in static thinking and who are incapable of reasoning in terms of dynamic consequences. And sadly, humans seem to be genetically predisposed to be victims of such black magic thinking.

Nice pictures, nice actors, but my, what a heap of leftist nonsense.

Note: 4

To an individualist, society does whatever anyone does. To a collectivist, society does whatever everyone does.

Thus, when he says something could or should be done, an individualist says that someone should do it, and he may not mean anyone in particular but himself: he is actually saying he is ready to contribute to the thing happening.

When he says something should be done, a collectivist says that everyone should be contributing to that thing happening, and he means about everyone but himself: if he sees his role anywhere, it's in telling others who to do, bidding them into subservience by the magic power of his words, helped by the compelling use of public force; in no case does he mean that he himself should contribute any of his own resources.

"How many libertarians does it take to change a lightbulb?"
A- "None, the market will take care of it."
B- "Every one of them and non-libertarians too, because we all are the market."
C- "I'll do it, for a dollar."

J'espère que vous aussi, vous en profitez bien, hein! Par ce que ça serait quand même assez comique de leur imposer ça pour des prunes. (Cám ơn, Copeau) T'inquiètes pas, mon gros bêta, c'est pas perdu pour tout le monde... Et puis, c'est pas grave, hein, puisque les autres font pareils!

PS: En fait, l'estimation précédente sous-estimait la dette par un facteur 1,8! Dépensez, mes petits, l'intendance suivra, i.e. les moujiks paieront. Ou pas. Petit conseil: liquidez vos avoirs en République Fromagère avant la faillite. D'ici quelques années, on va assister à une belle partie de patate chaude...

On parlait beaucoup, en juin dernier, de l'annulation de la dette des pays pauvres. Belle imposture intellectuelle et morale! Une occasion de relire mon article de 2003.

On pourra relire aussi la malédiction de l'aide au développement, par Pascal Salin, texte paru dans la revue Géopolitique Africaine n° 13, hiver 2003-2004.

Et si vous voulez l'avis d'un des premiers concernés, demandez donc à Ousmane Sane: Annulation de la dette, et après ?, texte paru dans le Journal de l'Économie (Dakar), 21 Juin 2005.

Non, ce dont l'Afrique a besoin, ce ne sont pas des sous, c'est avant tout la liberté: se débarasser des dictateurs sanguinaires qui confisquent les sous et usurpent le pouvoir, des fanatiques qui oppriment et génocident, des bureaucrates parasites qui maintiennent la population dans la pauvreté, des socialistes qui sapent le fondement même de tout développement économique, la propriété.

Si vous voulez aider l'Afrique, aidez les libéraux africains, et commencez par abaisser les barrières protectionnistes et réglementaires qui empêchent ces pays d'exporter leur production vers l'Europe et l'Amérique.

Since I'm processing the backlog of my blog notes, here's one piece about a topic that has been at the center of several scandals this year yet surprisingly little open public discussions: genetic differences amongst human beings.

In his latest article on immigration, A Simple Libertarian Argument Against Unrestricted Immigration and Open Borders, LewRockwell.com, September 1, 2005 (see also this followup), Stephan Kinsella admits that though the government is illegitimate, there are things that are more or less good for it to do, and that in particular it must use its force for various things it has claimed monopoly upon, instead of being passive, until it eventually recedes. He even admits the criterion according to which the state does best when it acts according to the preferences of those it has robbed from their property.

Well, the government has claimed monopoly upon war with foreign dictators and terrorists. Waging war with foreign dictators and terrorists is a legitimate activity, that many americans -- including the majority of voters -- prefer to inactivity. Of course, it would be better if government would let us do the war efficiently, instead of wasting lives and resources doing it badly. But it's still better that it should do things badly rather than badly fail to do them. Clearly, Kinsella uses the same argument as we do, albeit in a different instance. Could he possibly begin to see the light?

Note: this article was originally posted on the forum of the Imperialist Libertarians.

La démocratie, c'est quand la majorité des représentants a tout pouvoir pour disposer de la vie de quiconque au nom du bien commun. Le libéralisme, c'est quand même des ordures totalitaires ont le droit de s'exprimer librement, tant qu'ils ne sont coupables ou complices d'aucun crime. Le procès de Socrate (possiblement une ordure, à juger par les dits et actes de ses disciples fascistes Platon et Alcibiade) nous indique qu'Athènes était bien une démocratie, et pas une société libre.