

The Quiet Coup (2009) - nkurz
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/print/2009/05/the-quiet-coup/7364/

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kiba
Well, my perspective would say that the system is corrupted(Fractional reserve
banking a fraud, etc). Regulators sleeping at the wheels are probably in bed
with the bankers. The hubris of the federal regulatory system and the people
who manages it, thinks that they can manage the economy yet at the same time
be non-corrupt. Then there are the big hubris of corporations that thinks they
can manages risks with mathematical models and financial engineers.

Many of the same ideas is said in the article.

However, I propose a different, radical solution. Get rid of the banking
regulatory framework, stop bailing out corporations, and get rid of legal
tender law. Do nothing. Let the big guys fall. Let the economy readjust
themselves to the fact of reality.

At this point in our economic development history, the interventions were so
vast and deep that we don't know which way is up and which way is down.
Democratic governments have produced thousands of new laws that complicated
business dealing. Then lobbyists can sneak some laws in that prop up
industries. When an intervention does goes wrong, another intervention is put
in place to solve it. If there is an urgent social problem, the solution is to
make new laws to solve it.

Wouldn't life be better with a few simple business laws that everyone can
understand and follow?

Yet, those government people and their special groups managed to mess it up by
padding taxation code, punishment for firing union workers, and punishment for
alleged racial discrimination.

The more complicated a system of rules is, the more potential for corruptions,
opportunities for conflict of interests, and regulators getting away not doing
their job.(Hence the saying, "when a law is made, the first thing that will be
brought is the law.")

I don't think the solution is more democracy. Voters are not really rational,
nor will they have much interest in defending themselves from the myriad of
special interest groups that permeates and compete in the democratic
institution. Political and economic education is hard when you have million of
citizens worrying about their own lives and competition within their section.
Now they have to worry about what the local government, the state government,
and the federal government is doing with these mega-corporations. Then they
got to worry about the local regulators with their code, and finally have to
face an IRS audit every once in a while. At that point, it become rational to
become ignorant because of the cost of educating oneself is higher than the
potential benefit would provide.

Is there a solution? I don't know. But I am content to let the system fall
apart since political will is not going to acknowledge the reality about the
many deficiency in economic policies(Which cause mass distortion of incentives
in market actors), and the system of perverse incentive that exists within the
government itself.

However, I am pretty excited about emerging technologies and the effort of
libertarians to look for non-political means to solutions, especially the
"anti-capitalistic free marketeers" varieties.(No, it does not involve
warfare, or election of officials, and you don't have to worry about rioting)

I would say it involves a lot of makerbots, creativity, entrepreneurship. It
is building a better economic foundation that isn't found on lot of debts,
lies, and kickback. From there we can build a new framework of rules that's
very strong on the basic. A framework that doesn't suffer from the mass
confusions of laws added every years. Eventually, an alternative society would
emerge out of a network of entrepreneurs, their connection with the community,
and their customers. That alternative society would co-exists side by side and
seamlessly with the other society at large.

But it requires a lot of stratagems and making a right of exits unknown or
seemly nonthreatening to officials. It's a difficult problem to solve.

On the other hand, we could try to found a new country on the ocean sea, which
is known as seasteading. It is probably a pipe dream, but the seasteading
movement got some very realistic and pragmatic people. These individuals look
for economic efficiency and business models in their seastead. They aren't try
to build huge utopias complete with casino, strip club, and all the
extravagances.

Again, seasteading and new countries are seen as a threat. Countries get
nervous when there is a new neighbor on the scene. They will try to destroy
the threat. It will require a brilliant amount of political stratagems and
common sense on the behalf of the seasteaders to fend off nervous nation-
states.

If the seasteading movement succeeded, no longer will we be restricted to an
industry of 200 governments, many of them are not any good, and the best is
mediocre at most. There would be a thousand governments, and that mean real
competition. Terrestrial government now have to improve services and
efficiency or face mass migration from their citizens to thousand of little
nations on the high sea. We might not even need that many, as evidenced with
the appearance of Firefox, opening up and intensifying the competition in the
browser market.

Anyway, enough talking for me. The solutions if anything, is probably going to
be hard to implement. It's probably deceptively simple. It will probably make
the population mad. It might be something completely unexpected, even to me.
But there is one thing that I am pretty sure, democracies doesn't work.

(Sorry for the wall of texts)

~~~
joe_the_user
I think you've missed the point of the article.

There are many conceivable solutions to our present problem. But any of these
would have to be put in place or at least tolerated by America's ruling
elites.

The problem is that the ruling elites today have thrown their interests in
with the financial elites. They don't get that the game is over. Until that
happens, we'll have the same old game supported by more federal intervention.
You notice for example, that the crisis intervention were _exactly the same_
under Bush and Obama.

The scary thing is that the US has more resources than any other country in
history so this country's rulers can and probably will play the losing game of
financial manipulation till things are really, really screwed up for the world
(as now wasn't bad enough - now is bad but not bad _enough_ ). This last
crisis was the dot-com crash writ large. The NEXT crisis will be this crisis
writ large indeed...

~~~
kiba
Jesus, do I have to quote from my own post?

 _I don't know. But I am content to let the system fall apart since political
will is not going to acknowledge the reality about the many deficiency in
economic policies(Which cause mass distortion of incentives in market actors),
and the system of perverse incentive that exists within the government
itself._

~~~
cicada
It was too long. For instance, I missed that quote which I would have replied
to:

What exactly is meant by letting the system fall apart? The economy is the
system that _keeps you fed_. You as in yourself. As in your family. As in your
friends. As in the people who live near you who will also be driven to
desperation. As the solutions you pondered had intended, we have to minimize
the human cost of fixing our problems -- as we are those humans.

~~~
kiba
It simply means that I am not going to play any political game with the
system. I am not going to try any intervention into their system. The rules
are too rotten. It's futile.

Authorities don't like to be challenged. They don't like their rules to be
questioned. They don't like people to make their own "right of exit". To them,
not following the "rules of society" is a threat.

If you understood that, than you see that I don't see the government as a
vital machinery of some sort. It exists by force. It's the _modus operandi_ of
all governments.

All the solutions that I proposed is exactly opposite of that. My first
solution is counter-economic on a purely voluntary scale. Seasteading moving
to a location where you won't be harassed by authorities. It's non-violent,
and non-coercive.

That's an _ideology_ in itself.

But I do not expect governments to sit idle. They will certainly will not
approve of a voluntary charter city created by libertarians. They did it in
the past and will do it again.

Think of _Snow Crash_. In there, they have various enclaves and franchise area
such as "Mr. Lee's Greater Hong Kong". But the US government itself is rotting
away. Inside, jobs are mere make-works. They have surrendered much of their
terrority to various entities and corporations. Then they just get ignored by
everybody.

I want them to make ineffective government systems irrelevant, or at least co-
existing, and competing. I want a world where rules are being optimized,
instead of become a source of corruption.

Then, we can finally escape the dangerous race of technology versus government
decay. Either technologies elevate us to singularity status, or the government
causing systemic collapse and we're back where we started, or worse, nuclear
annihilation.

~~~
joe_the_user
_Either technologies elevate us to singularity status, or the government
causing systemic collapse and we're back where we started, or worse, nuclear
annihilation._

Well, I'd kind of agree with that last part .... it's race.

But keep in mind that what we have to do is navigate the very dangerous in-
between-times that are coming ... keep in mind that _novels_ can make the
process of decay and collapse seem OK. The reality can much more horrific.
Ever research the things that happened at the end of WWII. Whole nations
(Poland, say) uproot and moved, with a fair portion of the people DEAD as a
result. The end of the Roman empire wasn't pretty and people much less
dependent on really large scale structures like _food distribution networks_
then (food ... survival, as gp said).

I mean, unlike _in a novel_ , the US government has not become less
controlling as it has become more corrupt. Just the opposite...

------
euroclydon
_Of course, some people will complain about the efficiency costs of a more
fragmented banking system, and these costs are real._

How bad can it be with the types of technologies available today?

