Breaking Things

A great comment over at Foseti's place from one "GP":
The bug-eyed reaction [Derb] describes to his ’round em up and deport them’ solution is familiar. I get the same thing when I point out that Apartheid worked fine for about three decades.  
A notorious progressive said ‘you can’t make an omelette without breaking a few eggs’.  But the current progressive fallacy is more along the lines of: ‘There is not, and never has been, any such thing as an omelette. Look, there are only chickens.’
It is hard for us to imagine what we have not personally witnessed.  This is why it is so important for a reactionary to read history: to have a grasp of what is possible for human institutions.  History is full of examples like Operation Wetback, where they did in fact "round 'em up and deport them".  Or WWII, where the USG did in fact conquer both Japan and Germany (and England, France, etc. as well) in just ~five years, almost starting from nothing.

Jim on Monarchy

Jim posts a long and interesting Moldbuggian disquisition on monarchy and theocracy:
The job of a king is [to] reign, which means that by simply existing and being King, he prevents the negative sum struggle for power from destroying the wealth of the Kingdom and possibly getting lots of people killed. His job is to deny political power to anyone and everyone that wants it.

The job of a king as head of the official Church is to prevent a negative sum theocratic struggle for power, to prevent people from advancing their political ambitions by being holier than thou. By preventing a theocratic struggle for religious authority, he prevents religion from being perverted into an instrument of power, and thus prevents morals from being corrupted by those who most loudly proclaim their greater holiness.
I mostly posted this because that first para in particular is very good, almost aphoristic. But the whole piece is a good read.

As Jim points out, God is dead, so the potential for theocracy as such (that is, involving belief in God) is pretty much null. (In the West, anyway.) On the other hand, the potential for atheocracy is as high as ever. So a secure state must either be able to ignore belief entirely, which assumes very strong state security, or it must occupy the job and prevent atheocratic capture. This strikes me as something that will happen without effort for a neocameral regime, but I'll have to think on that.

Technology reduces the homocide rate

There's no question that modern technology saves lives. Getting a victim to a hospital as fast as possible is vital. People are helicoptered to trauma centers. It seems like these sorts of technological advances must be affecting the murder rate; but how much? The homicide rate has been pretty flat for a long time, even as other sorts of crime have exploded since the 60s. Here's a paper, Murder and Medicine: The Lethality of Criminal Assault 1960-1999, which characterizes the effect:
In three analyses of lethality trends, over time, by type of weapon and across counties, we have garnered considerable support for the hypothesis that advances in emergency medical care have greatly and increasingly reduced the lethality of violent assaults, with observed annual drops in such lethality ranging from 2.5% to 4.5%.
Over the 40 years they studied, the total reduction in homicide from better technology was roughly a factor of 4; see figure 1. Thus, there is strong evidence that the homicide rate is not a sign of a more peaceful society, but rather a richer one.

Drug Laws are a Solution to the Problem of Policing a Liberal Society

In a comment to Sonic Charmer's post, It’s Important To Understand Why ‘We’ ‘Need’ The Drug War, If We’re Ever Going To Be Able To End It, Steve Johnson writes:
The progressive Supreme Court has made crime legal (well, more accurately, they made it impossible to actually enforce the law) as a result, criminals have full protection when committing actual crimes against people. Mug people? No problem – just have your confederates waiting outside the court when the witnesses against you are leaving. Beat a few of them into comas and voila, no more witnesses will testify! All crimes against people have the same flaw.

The reaction to this, of course, hasn’t been to challenge progressive “reforms” but to simply try to route around the damage. People pay loads of money to live in segregated neighborhoods to avoid being around high risk people (i.e., black people). Security cameras are everywhere. Why? Because you can’t intimidate a tape into not testifying. People don’t carry cash. When the thought of carrying cash is brought up people think “it’s too dangerous to carry cash” without ever directly thinking that criminals make it too dangerous to carry cash.

Most importantly, law enforcement has completely shifted to an area where you don’t need witnesses. Did that guy have crack on him? Well then it doesn’t matter if he can scare the hell out a witness – the only witness to that crime is the arresting officer. To get out of that crime he’ll have to kill or threaten a cop Pablo Escobar style. The state still has enough health that someone who does that will die pretty quickly (Pablo Escobar getting killed by a Delta force sniper, frex). In fact, the state can never decay so badly that the cops will be unwilling to protect their own – when you reach that state of progressive decay the cops won’t fear the state enough to not simply turn into another gang – one that simply executes criminals.

Libertarians are damned fools for even thinking about drug legalization until we solve the more important problem of crime legalization.
This is astute.  Sonic Charmer replies:
on reflection, it doesn’t seem like a coincidence that the drug-war really gained steam at around the same time that Miranda Rights, patients’ rights etc. hamstrung (wrongly or rightly) law enforcement.
We have a drug war as a backdoor way of imprisoning criminals. I think there's a strong element of truth here.  Still as I wrote over there, that's still pretty repulsive. Also, USG has criminalized far more stuff than it needs to for this cryptic mission of locking up criminals. We could easily decriminalize marijuana and opiates, for example, and there would still be plenty of ability to get at criminals via cocaine and meth. And personally, I’d much prefer the underclass to spend its leisure time (ab)using demotivating drugs than alcohol or motivating ones. An effective state would not need drug laws at all.

National Debt Considered Stupid

Devin Finbarr makes an astute point about national debt:
there is almost never a need for a country to go into debt. Debt is useful for entities that have a life cycle. People go into debt when young to buy a home, and then pay it back as they age. Companies go into debt to buy capital, and then pay it back as they mature. But a country (should) never die. There is no reason to pay for tomorrow what can be paid for today. The only reason ever to go into debt is if you have a tremendous, one time expense, that is large in relation to current income. Buying a home or a factory qualifies. But countries almost never have single one time expenses that are large in proportion to GDP. Thus they should never go into debt. Even a highway should be an operating expense for a country. The only time a country should go into debt is during war.
This observation can also be applied in reverse. If you know a state has debt, then either (a) it is in a war, or has just come out of a major war (5-10 years), or (b) it is irresponsible and poorly run.

Aphorism for ABB

On an island of unarmed people, the one armed man is king. -- Ilkka

Selling Citizenship: Monetizing the Rule of Law

Via Darth Moldbug, I've converted to the Sith. I am resigned to the inevitability of the state, at least insofar as given humanity as it now is, statism is a necessary and unskippable stage on the way to anarchocapitalism. (Perhaps more on this in another post.) That said, it is worth thinking about how to run a neocameral state, or any state. (My post on improved democracy was in this spirit.)

So what sort of immigration should a profit-maximizing state run? Certainly nothing like USG's current policy. USG has a monopoly on US citizenships -- restricting the supply is what all rational monopolists should do. USG should set a restrictive quota and sell immigration rights. Use an auction to fetch top dollar.

One immediate consequence of selling citizenships is that illegal immigration would be seen in an entirely new way. Current illegals do cost USG something, but they also pay taxes, so it is hard to say exactly whether or not they are a good deal or not. In a regime where citizenships have a market value, illegal immigration is tantamount to stealing directly from the treasury. As such, the state will not put up with it; you'd see real enforcement almost immediately. Yes, even from Democrats -- would they rather enforce immigration law, or cut education spending?

How much money could be raised for the US Treasury in this fashion? Quite a bit, is my estimate. The economic value of being in America is huge for most immigrants: they get access not only to America's capital, but to the rule of law (which is far more important than capital).

By my very rough estimate, the lifetime value of immigration to America even for unskilled labor is on the order of $1 million for people coming from places without the rule of law. How did I compute that? The annual disposable employment income per worker in constant 2005 international dollars for USA: 31,410. Mexico: 5,837. Difference: $25k/year. $25k/year over a working life of 40 years is $1 million. To be clear, I don't think the average person in the Mexico or the world would get a $25k raise by moving here. (Though I would point out that Mexico is not poor nor distinctly disfunctional, by world standards.) That's not the question; rather, it is can .14% of the world population per year command that raise? I think so.

Of course most immigrants would need credit to raise $1 million, or something loan-like: i.e. immigrants pay an income surtax for N years. And USG would have to make legal provision for this, by making "citizenship loans" be unbankruptable, like student loans. Without unbankruptable citizenship loans, the market would be relatively tiny. With them, though, practically anyone in the world might be able to afford America.

To cut off the obvious exploit of getting a loan then going on welfare, USG should do two things. First, require a "trial period", akin to current green-card status, where the immigrant is on the path to citizenship, but does not have it yet. Second, require some downpayment on loans. Perhaps 10% -- $100000 or so -- from the immigrant. The downpayment is also a bond, to be forfeit if the immigrant acts sufficiently badly (i.e., criminal acts while in green-card status).

So, USG should be able to extract something on the order of $1 million per immigrant, so long as we keep the numbers relatively low. How low? It is hard to say for certain, but USG should be able to work out the demand curve for citizenships pretty well by increasing and decreasing the monthly quota of citizenships sold. See what the market will bear.

My feeling on the demand for immigration to the USA, even at $1m per, is far higher than than the current citizenry is comfortable accepting. (Currently, immigration is about 1 million legal immigrants per year, plus another 500000 illegal.) So I might guess that under a more restrictive monopolistic regime, USG would accept 1 million immigrants per year. 1 million immigrants per year, fetching $1 million each for that privilege, is a cool $1 trillion per year. That, by itself, would almost eliminate USG's current budget deficit.

So, what sort of consequences do I foresee if such a policy were enacted?

First, it would be very hard to undo, once it was running even for a year. The state would find it very, very hard to replace $1 trillion per year.

Second, it would change the immigrant mix drastically. It is hard to know exactly how the mix would change, but it is fairly certain that immigrants would be higher skilled, since higher skilled people would be more likely to have the downpayment required, and to be able to repay their loans. The mix would also change away from Mexican peasants to a more even mix of people from all over the world, because given a high price and reasonable enforcement, proximity would cease being such a decisive factor.

Readers are invited to put their predictions in comments.

Some scenarios in anarchy

On a thread at UR, Nick Szabo gave a series of specific questions regarding the functioning of anarchy, so I thought I would answer him. Before jumping into it, let me clarify two things.

First, I am no prophet of AC. Perhaps you ask David Friedman, you get different answers. Perhaps neither of us is farsighted enough to exactly predict what would happen. Again, as I have said before, anarchy is defined not by the function but the form: market provision of protection services, including competition among agencies with overlapping territory.

I usually discuss AC for simplicity using what I have found in Friedman and elsewhere: protection is provided by protection agencies (PAs) , which are a sort of cross between police agency and insurance company. Adjudication is supplied by separate corporations specializing in it. Everyone has an ongoing relationship with one PA (or maybe more if needed). But is it possible for the system to work without having existing "insurance" client relationships? I think it would be... and that might even be general. It is just hard to say what sort of forms would happen in a free market, because it is so different than what we have now. (If you want some taste of weird arrangements of governance, then hie thee over to Nick's blog and read about jurisdiction as property.)

Second, there is a general property of in anarchy that is worth reiterating, since I have not seen any anarchists making this point other than me. PAs are weaker than states. Therefore, any institution which serves to rein in the state, must also serve to limit PAs, unless somehow it relies on the monopoly of coercion that define the state. Thus, any of the numerous techniques people have invented to moderate the badness of states will also work on PAs. (I discuss this more here.) Because of this, I expect the normal PA (and/or its adjudication agency) to have a constitution (that it actually follows!), an extensive bill of rights, perhaps some sort of limited democracy, etc. Honestly: would you submit yourself to a PA that promised you nothing of that sort, if you could at little or no additional cost, submit yourself to a PA that did? I wouldn't.

Anyway, here are answers to the specific questions Nick asked, which do serve to bring out some of the functioning of anarchy, as I see it.
A factory under the protection of one PA emits pollution, which probably causes extensive damage to the value of properties of hundreds of people, customers of several dozen different protection agencies, downwind.
Probably? Well. Let's just assume it is damaging. So, the aggrieved parties get together and take the factory-owner to court. Presumably some settlement is reached. Then, further assuming that the decision goes against the factory-owners, the PA enforces it on them if they do not comply.

Why should a PA enforce laws against its own paying customers? Profit. I picture every PA as existing in a state of bilateral treaty or contract with every other PA which it might interact via conflicts of customers. This treaty might be explicit (written), or implicit. Either way, for the PA to unilaterally pull out of its treaty with any other PA is to throw its honorable reputation in doubt. This alone seems strong enough that a PA would rarely be tempted. But beyond mere reputation is the potential for collective action by other PAs. They could embargo the PA in many ways that would damage its profits. For example, most obvious would be to declare all judgments going against customers of the PA in question to be voided or in abeyance until it submits.

Trade sanctions are not effective in the state system, because there is no way to pressure the ruling elite enough without drastic effects across the society. And also, because the elite are not motivated by money, but power. Most ACs picture PAs as corporate (as I do), so they are motivated by profit. And their "interstate" trade is orders of magnitude higher.

A PA security officer suspects that a person he sees driving away from the scene of a burglary probably committed that crime, but is not at all sure. The officer arrests the suspect and locks him in prison. A week later the real criminal is found and the suspect is released. But meanwhile the suspect is fired from his job because he failed to show up to work that week.
I doubt this would end up in any way other than what currently obtains. But it is true that states are far more arrogant in power than I picture PAs being; so there is some chance that a victim of such high-handedness might be able to sue and collect damages.

The economic tradeoff that it comes down to is this: customers want more rights, but more rights cost profits. So, ceteris paribus a PA with a policy of "you can sue us" will get more customers. If the average man is willing to pay for the extra dollop of protection he gets, then the whole thing is viable and you see it. (Probably widely, since people's desires are not that variable.)

Note that such economic tradeoffs are of no interest to a state, which has every incentive to declare itself sovereignly immune. What, are you gonna move?

Repo man working for a bank under PA2 repossesses a car owned by customer of PA1 who is late on his payments to the bank. Security officer from PA1 believes he sees a theft in action and arrests and imprisons the repo man.
Again, this sort of thing can happen now within a state. I.e., a repo man from one jurisdiction gets caught by some other. This is an example of where there is almost certain to be some sort of adjudication already in place. So, after some delay perhaps to check up on the repo man's authenticity, he is released. Again, whether or not he can sue the PA for mistaken arrest is not clear, and may vary by PA.

A murderer, belonging to PA1, which forbids the death penalty, is caught and convicted by PA2 that liberally applies the death penalty. PA2 executes the murderer over the strong objections of PA1.
Easy: he's dead. But you said that. Really, this outcome assumes there is already agreement between the two (which again, there almost certainly would be), and that the terms worked out by PA1 and PA2 allow PA2 to kill convicted murderers.

Continuing the above example, PA1 in retribution disavows its contracts with PA2.
Then they are edging towards war. Perhaps a bit much for a murderer. But surely possible. In any case, highly unlikely given that they are profit-maximizing, as in the first example. Their trade with PA2 may be minimal and worth sacrificing to score points with their own customer base. But their trade in general, with all other PAs, is probably not minimal. Therefore, PA2, if they can, would be advised to seek out collective action to get PA1 to back down.

But what if nothing happens? Then, unless PA1 are willing to go to war, which is unlikely for any profit-maximizing body, then that is that. PA1 may well advise its customers who want to murder people that they should check to see if the victims are PA2-people first. I kid. The point here is that unless the customers of PA1 are truly fanatical in their anti-death-penalty stance, then it is unlikely that they are willing to pay the costs necessary to prosecute a war or even lose the trade possibilities with PA2-people. (I don't know of anyone that fanatical, not even progressives at their worst.)

A customer takes the opportunity to leave his protection agency. In retribution, the protection agency kills him, and threatens any other customers who leave with a like fate, although one can still leave the PA voluntarily after paying a 50% wealth tax as a final payment for services rendered. To justify these acts, only recently implemented, the PA cites a long-ignored passage, obscurely worded and in fine print in the 500-page PA contract but absent from all other PA materials describing their services, by which the customer agreed to give the PA a number of powers of legal procedure "and all other sovereign powers" over the customer.
Great profit opportunity for other PAs here. Collectively, or individually, they sue in whatever means seem presentable, perhaps "class action". The point is that the PA is a fraud, and just murdered a man. But they need not wait for the law's wheels to grind. Rather, they announce their near-certainly of the outcome, and that they are willing to go all the way to war against the PA if it attempts any such thing on any other customers that wish to defect. Perhaps this is backed with something like an injunction, which they can get in short order.

The next day, the PA has no customers left. Perhaps the CEO hangs. He did, after all, kill an innocent man and attempt to semi-enslave his customers. But more likely, the threat of mass abandonment by jealously free customers would make all PAs with any significant competition think more than twice about any such slaving scheme.

PA2, armed with nuclear weapons, seizes an important oil field owned by the customer of nuclear-free PA1, claiming, PA1 officials and the owner believe falsely, that the owner reneged on an obscure pledge in the fine print of his mortgage regarding religious practices.
Back to court, and the first scenario. In this case, I think Nick is hinting at the idea that if a crime is profitable enough, perhaps it would be worthwhile to sacrifice relations with every other PA, and lose most of your customers over it. (Or perhaps you just form a mercenary army and forget about being a PA as such.) Well. Then you might possibly organize the rest of the world against PA2, and refuse to buy their oil or do any other trade. Could the blok hold? I don't know. What this boils down is a state forming. It would not be a nice state, at all. Who would want to live in a hermit nation? But it is at least possible that AC might end up with slavers sitting on particularly valuable resources, at least so long as the resources hold.

For Neocameralism, Against Morality

Morality, a consistent morality, was one of the reasons that I long ago became a libertarian, and then an anarchist. I took the precepts of morality as I received them, and pushed them hard. Thus, I accepted (and I still accept) the libertarian argument that taxation is theft. If taking property by force is wrong, then voting about it does not make it right. You can see such arguments widely in the libertarian ideosphere; I am certainly not alone. (I would guess that most libertarians are highly intelligent moralists, usually self-educated.)

There is a big problem, though, with morals as a foundation for politics. It is this: it may be that a moral society cannot last. That is, that there is a "tragedy of the commons" with morality itself. It may be the case that a consistently moral society cannot compete against immoral societies. One example of this is the common idea that a anarchic protection agency would not be able to effectively defend territory against state incursion. Another example is the conservative idea that civilization itself is created by patriarchy. If that is so, then a progressive civilization is not possible in the long run. Yet another is the idea that the welfare state is not compatible with free immigration.

To take a case I know I have written about some years ago: taxation. To many people, it seems commonsensical that that a state that will not tax will be beaten militarily by other states not so squeamish. But here is me, 15 years ago:

[Q:] How do libertarians feel about taxes?

The state must initiate coercion to tax. As such, taxes should be abolished.

[Q:] I'm for cutting taxes, but as a practical matter, how do we do it?

This is not a practical FAQ. Morally speaking, we should end all taxes first and figure out how to solve the resulting economic mess later.

[Q:] Aren't you going too far?

For those in the statist mindset? Yes. But you see, they DON'T BELIEVE in one of our basic moral axioms.

For us? No. Once you identify what is moral -- what is acceptable and not -- then logic compels you to accept the social and political effects of your morality.


I became an anarchist, in part, because anarchy offers a partial solution to the problem of suicidally moral government. Anarchists conceive of protection agencies as government-like, but still corporations subject to market forces, including most particularly competition. So, they can have policies, which would be immoral if forceable imposed. The moral objectionableness is reduced, at least, because the affiliation of the customer with the agency is (to some degree) voluntary.

Of course, there are still moral problems, even with anarchy. For example, what if a customer only has one protection agency to choose, or two, even. Two does not seem like much choice -- might be a choice between "pay 30% income tax" and "pay 31% income tax". And of course, there is the lingering concern that anarchy itself is unstable; that the agencies would not be able to defeat a protostate because they are hamstrung morally.

With relatively modest moral assumptions, neocameralism offers us a way out of this conundrum. Note that the defining feature of democracy, including the chimerical "limited government", as well as anarchy, is that government is based on the will of the governed. Thus, it is transparent to the morals of its citizens or customers. That is, there can be no unpopular law. (This is in the abstract. In the real world, "friction" of various kinds means there can be unpopular law down to a certain minority level of support. However, abstractly at least, the principle applies.)

By contrast, in neocameralism the source of state power is not the subjects; it is an earlier conquest. The end of power is profit to the stockholders. Note two things. First, both of these are invariant. Because they are stable (unlike popular opinion), the law will also be stable. Second, note that neither the justification for power, nor the ends to which it is put, are derived from moral reasoning. They simply are. They bear no relationship to morality at all.

Thus, it is possible for a neocameral society to have laws that are not possible in democracy or in anarchy. This would be any law which is profit-enhancing, but which is immoral. Obviously, if people are unanimously against the law, it will be abolished; but even a minority who support would be sufficient to uphold it so long as the sovcorp's owners wanted it. Or, alternatively, if it was not sufficiently immoral that men would refuse to enforce it.

For example, consider laws controlling immigration. It is certainly possible to be against them in the abstract while nonetheless enforcing them, or supporting their enforcement, as upholding the rule of law. That is, while they may be objectionable, at the same time, it is even more objectionable to have a body of unenforced law.

Thus, it is possible for a neocameral society, even composed of entirely moral men, to implement laws that no person holds as moral!

Now, most of us intuitively sense this, at least in the case of bad laws, immoral laws. This is our progressive education speaking: cherchez la genocide, it whispers. What, the state can fire up the ovens, and nobody can stop it?? Well, yes, it can. (That it has incentive not to -- well, progressive education does not teach anything about incentives and their effects.)

But I think few us consider the case of good laws, or at least, necessary laws, which are nonetheless hard to square morally. In progressive terms, the category is empty; it's oxymoronic, because the law and righteousness (social justice) are one. As anti-progressives, we should reject such reasoning, and look at the case with fresh eyes.
Mencius Moldbug on the financial crisis. Pithy quote amuses me:
Accounting is boring. Or at least, it should be boring. If it's not, something is probably up.
(Hear, hear.)

About Fnargocracy

I've been pretty active over at Moldbug's place. But I had this old essay I wrote up about one of his old posts, which explains neocameralism via our old friend Fnargl. So I thought I would post it to use a springboard for more general discussion about neocameralism.
...let's assume that the dictator is not evil but simply amoral, omnipotent, and avaricious.

One easy way to construct this thought-experiment is to imagine the dictator isn't even human. He is an alien. His name is Fnargl. Fnargl came to Earth for one thing: gold. His goal is to dominate the planet for a thousand years, the so-called "Thousand-Year Fnarg," and then depart in his Fnargship with as much gold as possible. Other than this Fnargl has no other feelings. He's concerned with humans about the way you and I are concerned with bacteria.

You might think we humans, a plucky bunch, would say "screw you, Fnargl!" and not give him any gold at all. But there are two problems with this. One, Fnargl is invulnerable - he cannot be harmed by any human weapon. Two, he has the power to kill any human or humans, anywhere at any time, just by snapping his fingers.

Other than this he has no other powers. He can't even walk - he needs to be carried, as if he was the Empress of India. (Fnargl actually has a striking physical resemblance to Jabba the Hutt.) But with invulnerability and the power of death, it's a pretty simple matter for Fnargl to get himself set up as Secretary-General of the United Nations. And in the Thousand-Year Fnarg, the UN is no mere sinecure for alcoholic African kleptocrats. It is an absolute global superstate. Its only purpose is Fnargl's goal - gold. And lots of it.

In other words, Fnargl is a revenue maximizer. The question is: what are his policies? What does he order us, his loyal subjects, to do?

Well, I don't think taking control is exactly that easy, although it depends on details. But let's ignore that.

What would Fnarglocracy be like? Well, I think Moldbug is right in that it would have strong private property. Fnargl's interests are aligned with ours in some ways, one of them being preventing wastage from violence, theft, and most of what we think of as crime. Economically, assuming Fnargl has reasonably finite computational power and/or limited abilities to gather information, he'd want a free market.

Fnargl would certainly not want a gold standard. Monetizing gold encourages saving it, including cacheing it and wearing it, both of which may result in lossage. Rather, he could set up a nearly perfect currency: fiat, with no dilution. If he came now, he'd probably just use dollars for this: new bills would be printed only to replace old; the Fed would be closed down, or at least open-market operations would be. This is what taxes would be collected in, so that it is what the world would have to use (not to mention it being superior even to gold as a store of value). Then Fnargl would use taxes to buy gold, which he would store in a heavily guarded pile somewhere. (How exactly he would do this is an interesting question, but I am ignoring it.) The price of gold would go sky-high, as a means to get humans to mine it assiduously. In this manner, Fnargl would use the free market to channel as much human effort as possible into gold mining.

I think it would probably be safest for Fnargl if he created propoganda (see discussion below) that there was a vague sort of gold backing for his money. This would be useful to justify state gold-buying and to explain the existence of the gold-pile, which otherwise might cause people to wonder why Fnargl is so interested in the stuff. If it is seen as just "backing up our money" in some vague and esoteric way, nobody will think much about it, just as nobody currently makes anything of the huge gold pile the USA has stashed away.

In other ways, Fnargl's interests are opposite ours and not libertarian in the
least. For one, he wants to extract the maximum possible tribute from us, so he'd tax us at nearly the Laffer maximum. He does want investment, to increase the size of the economy. He'd probably mandate high forced savings. But he'd let us run our investments ourselves, for the same reason he'd have a free market -- to let the market work to allow us to best motivate ourselves.

For a few other ways in which Fnargl's interests are not the same as ours, read on. What these boil down to is that Fnargl is not liberal -- he does not see the point of our lives as we do. Liberals agree that our lives should be for us to live; the specific lives we choose vary widely. To him, though, our lives are simply means by which gold is to be extracted, refined, and moved into his stockpile. These are very different goals. Our subordination to him allows him to align them, but only so long as we are productive as possible right now, or will be in future. This is not exact alignment. In particular, goals are different at the extremes of our lives.

Before we exist, we don't have goals, whereas Fnargl does. He wants only the most productive bacteria. Once we are alive, we very much value our own life, for its own sake, whereas Fnargl values it only if we produce. Otherwise, he'd prefer us dead, ceterus paribus. Also, we tend to value ourselves as we are, not in some alternate form. (We do change ourselves to a degree, but this is self-chosen, and usually minimal.) Fnargl may envision radical changes to us, and it certainly does not matter to him whether we would want these changes. Consider this simple question: do you think it would be a good idea to amputate your hand and replace it with a shovel? Probably not. Fnargl, however, might consider that worth doing if it speeds your ability to dig for gold.

Conversely, there are people who kill themselves that Fnargl would probably want alive. In Fnarglocracy, suicide would be a crime, just as it was in monarchy, and for the same reason. You're depriving the state of your production! The difference is, human moral sentiments revolt against hurting innocents to punish a suicide. Fnargl would be happy to visit punishment on anyone near and dear to you. Now, he may or may not -- this depends on whether or not he feels the downside (him being seen as a meanie) would be more demotivational for survivers than the upside would be. Hard to say. But it is certainly a possibility.
will Fnargl allow freedom of the press? But why wouldn't he? What can the press do to Fnargl?
It can determine how people view him: God or devil. Benevelent and lovable? Or evil and greedy? It can also determine how people view working for him. This will determine other things. How likely it is that people close to him attempt to attack him or the regime? How willing are people to work for him? How much does he have to pay to get good help? He needs an apparat, just like any other state. Money helps when hiring, and he will certainly use it to get the best and brightest. But fanatical devotion can also be useful sometimes.

If Fnargl is invulnerable, why should he fear attack? Well, there are some attacks that might work, depending on the exact details of his powers. For example, Moldbug describes Fnargl as immobile. So, one way to deal with him might be to drop him in a deep hole or desert somewhere (perhaps he sleeps), and run for it. Or, perhaps you can't run: still, a sufficiently motivated suicide squad may be found to do this. Alternatively, you create a desert where he is -- perhaps via a thermonuclear attack. (Fnargl himself is invulnerable, by assumption. But it would clear out all nearby people and equipment, so that Fnargl is now isolated and cannot exert any control.)

Is it nitpicking to think of ways to attack Fnargl? After all, he's an imaginary alien. But he is supposed to stand in for Moldbug's preferred state owners --shareholders of a sovereign corporation. And they can be attacked, perhaps in ways analogous to attacking Fnargl. For example, they might be rendered unable to actually communicate with the CEO, which is analogous to stranding Fnargl in a desert. If the CEO is faithful, he'll find a way to reconnect. If he isn't, he may decide it's time for neocameralism to evolve into monarchy.

By controlling the press, and other information-transmitting institutions, Fnargl can ensure that he himself is loved by humanity. He should not tell them the truth (that he is here only for gold, that he cares for us not at all, and would happily blow up the planet if it secures more gold). Rather, he should tell us that his enlightened species has taken a benevelent interest in us, and that he has been sent to help us rule ourselves, to prevent our self-destruction (which his people's advanced social sciences have determined to be inevitable on our own), and to bring us into a golden age of freedom, equality, and righteousness. He should definitely hold elections, so allow us to endorse his rule. (Of course he should not allow any legislation which would significantly impair our gold extraction operations.) That is, he should coopt the existing progressive memeset and consent-manufactories to his own advantage. The more we love him, the more we consent to his rule, the less likely it is that anyone manages to bring off any serious attack against him or his state. As Moldbug himself said elsewhere: "Once people even start to see you as powerful, rather than responsible, a crack has appeared in your armor. You have enemies. And who wants enemies?"

Even after Fnargl manages to securely set himself up as god-king, there is still the problem of people being unproductive. They can steal from each other, for example. They might engage in intra-human politics or warfare to grab stuff. They might engage in strikes, or slow-downs, in ways that cut production. Or, they may simply not work hard. They might devote their lives to esoteric stuff that humans care about, but Fnargl doesn't -- the pursuit of as much sex as possible, for example. All of these things are more reasons why Fnargl will want a press that is not objective. Rather, the press should instill the correct values.

Hard work is one such value. I've read that in Japan, when a man is unhappy with his job he works harder, to attempt to shame his superiors into giving him a promotion or more pay. This is a memeset Fnargl wants, not the memeset where when you are unhappy you quit, slack off or strike. What else? Well, Fnargl certain does not want people idling away their lives on selfish pursuits, meaningful only to themselves. Sex and drugs, to take the most salient examples. But also writing poetry, gossiping, entertainment -- anything except work and reproduction. He will tolerate our distractions to some degree, I think, because they make us happy, and Fnargl wants us to have rewards so that we have a reason to work hard. But I think his press will discourage the more self-centered life. And he may well decide to keep laws against really addictive and disabling drugs.

What other values will Fnargl want? Law abidingness. Peacefulness, even pacifism. Docility. The brotherhood of man. Do these values sound familiar? Well, yes -- they are the values of progressivism! Again, Fnargl will do well by coopting this memeset, not by letting it die. He certainly does not want every bit of progressivism, but he does want some of it.

Do the values above remind you a bit of sheep? Well, no surprise -- wild animals are far more unruly than our domesticated breeds. We've bred certain behaviors out of them. Establishing progressivism as his state religion is one means by which Fnargl will domesticate humans. But then there is literal domestication, too. Why should Fnargl let us breed as we choose? He should not. Rather, he will want to control our breeding, so as to achieve several ends.

One important end would be to rapidly increase the total population of the Earth to near its carrying capacity. More people equals more production. Fnargl would want to stabilize the population only once there were enough people so that marginal human life was at zero gold(tax) production, that is, just scraping by. He's not concerned with our average quality of life: he's concerned only with total production. Given variable harvests, I don't think it unlikely that he'd let us go beyond the carrying capacity for a while, during years with good harvests, then let us starve back to it in bad years.

But there's more than just numbers here. Fnargl always will want to increase our productivity, and not only via capital investment (the current means), but also by cultivating better people. Eugenics! He'll want to increase our intelligence and decrease our time-preference, both of which are known to be correlated with (and most likely causal of) productivity. He'll certainly want us healthier, and probably also physically smaller (fewer calories per worker). And he'll probably want to increase our docility, law-abidingness, hard workingness, and general disinterest in selfish pleasures. How would Fnargl do these things?

Some of his eugenics could be done more or less in a free market way. I.e., Fnargl would probably subsidize reproduction, enough to make pregnancy and child rearing more lucrative than some work, at least for people whose traits he likes. Remember that he's got all the taxes he needs to do pretty much whatever he wants. Children pay out in the long run for Fnargl, but may not for us. From his POV, this is a market failure that he'll want to correct.

After he filled the world to the quantity of people desired, which would take a few generations I'd guess, then he'd start in with the harsher stuff. Once you've got sufficient quantity, then you start working on quality. (Increasing the supportable amount of humans would also be a goal, but the free market would handle that just fine; Fnargl doesn't need to invest in that himself.)

Some of the eugenics would be... less than free. Three generations of imbeciles would be way too much for Fnargl -- I doubt he'd even allow one. I don't see him allowing morons to live off the state, that's for sure. He'd probably let them live, so long as they are sterilized and paid for privately -- this goes in the category of "let them have rewards to keep them working". But without someone else paying their bills? Euthanasia. (The progressive consent-manufactories would be kept busy for quite a while with this one.)

With the world at its carrying capacity, Fnargl would want to start replacing the least productive people. This would be people with low intelligence, high time preference, and few skills. Some of them might accept being worked to death, but some might revolt or turn to crime, or otherwise cause problems instead of dying peacefully. This is an example of a situation where interests are not aligned -- our genes tell us categorically "do not die"; Fnargl cares not. These criminals he would kill if he caught them, perhaps having them disassembled for organs if possible. (He might also attempt to squelch the crime of desperate men by harsh measures: punishing their families.) I could also imagine Fnargl learning that working people to death was not cost-effective, and perhaps preemptable. I can imagine him clearing whole countries at a time via his snap, if he didn't like their average genetics and/or culture. Then he could resettle using people who were more to his taste. For PR reasons, he would probably try to justify his genocides, probably by manipulating a group he had decided to genocide into warring on a neighbor. His progressive PR organs would clarify these occurances to make sure that the world understood things correctly.

Fnargl would enforce breeding limits against people with all sorts of genetic problems. How would he do that? A caring (but steely) progressive bureaucracy. Every person would be genetically tested prenatally, and perhaps also at birth, with abortion/euthanasia for those found wanting. Further testing would be done later in life for personality and intelligence, with sterilization for the worst cases. License to breed granted conditionally. Justification? Overcrowding, and of course "the good of the children". Again, here's a situation where progressivism is vital: how else can Fnargl create millions of dedicated eugenecists and their staffs, the informers, the voluntary compliance to something as illiberal as this?

I also tend to think he would want focused inbreeding programs on small groups of people, to attempt to fix certain traits for general propagation. This is how we artificially select animal strains, and I see good reason for Fnargl to desire it. 1000 years is plenty of time to spread desirable traits to everyone living. Women (even girls) might be encouraged to reproduce using state-sponsored sperm donors, perhaps via very large subsidies. Or perhaps they'd just be forced, if not enough of them were volunteering. Droit de seigneur, indeed. Perhaps they'd call it "being drafted" and it would be highly praised as "doing your duty" and "serving humanity".