Get in the ring

13 rounds of argumentation with Billy Beck. The topic: voting.

Beck:

I don’t see how one can be a libertarian and vote for anybody at all, period. Look: I don’t have a right to get together with my friends and determine with them how to dispose of your rights. Any sensible person would call that a conspiracy. Nobody has that right

So I tell him what I think, and back and forth it goes. We end up just about where we started, in disagreement. Oh well. (Like I thought he would change me or vice-versa. You never know, though.)

A good argument. I feel a bit bad about hijacking the UO thread like that, but the argument was more or less on topic. It is reasonable to hash out whether or not voting is morally acceptable, and if so, what sort of voting strategy is moral, before proceeding with any sort of libertarian-democratic entente.

I'm quite certain that voting to prevent or mitigate an already-existing rights-violation is morally acceptable. What I'm still thinking about is whether there's any way to stretch the notion of defensive voting to a strategy of voting for gridlock.

Watching the Watchers

In anarchy as it is typically described by anarchocapitalists, many protection agencies compete for customers. One of the protests I often run into about this, especially for those first encountering the idea, is what keeps the agencies "nice"? Why can't they just violate their customers' rights?

I often see other anarchists emphasizing "exit" as the means for the customers to control the agencies. The analogy into our world of markets is good, but not great. You can see how, if the agency is somewhat nice to begin with, this would work. And in fact, if you're the sort of person that anarchy appeals to, you'll be immediately attracted to the idea of wielding that sort of power over your government. But... this still assumes the agency is nice enough to let you exit.

What if your agency is not nice? What if it turns rogue, and enslaves you? They've got the guns, right? What about company towns?

One answer to this is simple: in the real world you can't truly guarantee anything. If you set up an anarchy “wrong”, then abuse can happen. But this is not a problem unique to anarchy; states also have the seeds of tyranny in them. Even seemingly nice democracies, like Weimar Germany.

However, let us take some hope from the world of states. Consider all of the inventions men have invented to rein in the state. I would argue that none have been fully effective, but some have had real effect. I am thinking here of these:

• democracy
  
• human rights
  
• civil rights - habeas corpus, trial by jury, etc.
  
• constitutionalism
  
• armed people/militia
  
• federalism
  
• separation of powers
  
• church/state separation
  

And there's probably others I'm not recalling just now. These are the stuff of the basic civics class.

OK, so here's my big idea: all of these state-limitation techniques could be applied to anarchic protection agencies. None of them rely on the state being a state per se; that is, none of them require a monopoly on legitimized violence. Rather, they could be applied by any “government”.

Put another way, the agencies in ancap are weaker than states. Any institution which serves to rein in the state, must also serve to limit ancap agencies, unless somehow it relies on the monopoly of coercion. Furthermore, in ancap you add a brake that is far, far more powerful than any of those above: exit. Exit alone won’t do the trick, I don’t think. But exit, along with all of the sorts of nice-state tricks we’ve invented so far, will.

In my opinion, ancap has not worked thus far for several reasons, not least of which is it is hard to get going. I analogize it to an arch: very stable once set up, but not likely to just happen. Rather it requires “scaffolding”, and states by their nature won’t allow the “scaffold” to be kicked away.

However, there may be another reason why ancap hasn’t taken over yet: it requires a certain level of technology. I think, at minimum, it requires technologies only invented during the Enlightenment - those listed above.

My Offerings

I did a week of guestblogging over at Unqualified Offerings. I supposed I should link the writing I did, so's I can find it later if I want:

• a post on Cuzan's idea that we're always in anarchy
  
• a metareview of Derb's review of POD
  
• a snit at the tendancy to ignore genetics and extrapolate from correlation to causation
  
• a comment on a Rothbard article, suggesting that it be read mindful of Free Software
  

You might also look at the week in general for other postings' comments, since I was pretty active in jumping into many of the threads.

One minor little story about the UfOing worth telling. I like to know who's writing what I am reading before I start. UO (and many blogs) don't do that automatically. It's fine for a solo blog (like this) to elide bylines; there will never be a guest blogger here unless I find myself strangely being read enough to matter. But in a group blog (as UO was, for a week) I find it annoying to have no bylines. In my first post, I explained this, and I posted my name at the top. Without any further prompting (from me, anyway), my co-bloggers for the week adopted the practice! Anarchy in action.

Music similarity networking

Pandora! This thing is ... I want to say frickin' awesome... no. It's wonderful. Go find yourself some new music!

An icon for Unruled

Blogger now allows uploading of images. I am trying to use it to add a favicon to this blog. A favicon is one of the cute little pictures you see in your browser next to a webpage's name or address.

Here's mine:

Update: it worked. Unfortunately it appears the file I uploaded (a png) got automatically jpegged, and the parameters used were not favorable. Hence the non-smooth background. Have to fix that.

An Environmentalist Exchange

There's an interesting exchange between environmentalists Bjorn Lomborg (author of The Skeptical Environmentalist), and Carl Pope (executive director of the Sierra Club), on environmentalism. Lomborg argues for realism and prioritization. Pope resists both, but can't help but acknowledge some of Lomborg's points, responding quite lamely to perhaps the most important one:

[Lomborg:] You return to the 1,300 scientists and their report on the world’s ecosystems. What their results show is that when people are starving, lacking clean drinking water, getting poisoned from indoor air pollution, and dying from easily curable communicable diseases, they let the environment get ravaged, too. Your solution is to deal with the environment first. But shouldn’t we, morally and practically, help them gain wealth first, so they can take care of the environment too?

[Sand:]Bad human decisions, not inescapable reality, make the environment appear to be a “trade–off” with prosperity.

It's a bad human decision to be born in a poor country!

Firefly

Good times for the scifi fan. Galactica is backtica, and it is good. Not too much to say about it; obviously trying times for Colonel Tigh but beyond that, things are rather slow. One thing that does bug me is they've cut back on the intro/theme, that was formerly so evocative. Pity.

The big scifi news for me: Firefly. I'd heard good things about this show, and I like Joss Whedon, so, I've had a "firefly" item set to record on the Replay for over a year now. It's playing now, and to judge by a single hour (half of a two hour episode) seen, it is tremendous. I've just seen "Serenity" (half of).

Galactica is good, but it is still TV aimed at the average viewer, or at least, average scifi fan. Which is to say, that it's easily graspable with a single viewing. I've rarely rewatched any BSG episode, and never more than twice. Firefly is... well, let me put it this way. I watched this episode five times, skipping some 30 second chunks in later viewings, but still mostly five times. I "got" it on the first time, in terms of what happened. One time was deeply satisfying. But there was so much there.

I've posted exemplars of how particular other scifi series hooked me: a smart scene, good dialog will do that. For Farscape, the scene about enslaving horses. For BSG, the cancer diagnosis scene. Well, "Serenity" had that scene for me two minutes in. Malcolm (Our Hero) has been abandoned, and ordered to surrender. He watches as the enemy Alliance forces land in the valley he's been fighting to hold for weeks. It was all for nothing. He stares in shock and disbelief at the huge Alliance ships landing. The noise of the battle fades as all he knows is the end: of his army, of his cause, of his faith. The man watching next to him is shot dead. (Classic Joss.) Fade scene, and we see him again, "six years later", in a spacesuit, upside down. Symbolism! Yes, the world has been turned upside down for poor Mal.

But that's just the first scene that grabbed me. I could go on; five, maybe ten. Wow. Here's a review from one C. A. Bridges that meets my approval.

a veteran of the losing side of a galactic civil war must find a way to survive on his own terms under the government's radar. With a small, quirky crew and a small, quirky ship, Captain Malcolm Reynolds takes on whatever job, legal or otherwise, that he can get.

...

You won't feel stupider afterward.

Regular television consumption will leave you with the inescapable conclusion that everyone in the world is a moron. People say stupid things, make stupid assumptions, and consistently fail to see obvious solutions because then the show would end 52 minutes too soon. You can actually feel your brain freezing up from vapor lock

The folks in "Firefly," good and bad alike, tend to do the same things you usually scream at television people to do, before you think to scream them, except when they're doing something even better. As it turns out that doesn't always help, but at least then you've got no one to blame but yourself.

...

You may notice I've said little about the characters. I haven't mentioned Mal's frightening pragmatism, Zoe's loyalty, Wash's sense of humor, Kaylee's sunny nature, Jayne's cheerful violence, Book's wisdom, Inara's sensuality, Simon's sacrifice, or River's peculiarities, and that's because trying to label any of them with a single description is useless. You really should meet them yourself.

So, now's your chance. See the shows as they were meant to be seen -- in order (!), with the three unaired episodes -- and enjoy a truly great science-fiction show.

I'll be watching. Bonus: libertarian applicability!

Coerced Testimony

I post a lot at Unqualified Offerings. A reader over there asked the following question, which I think I'll address:

[me:]In anarchy, some agencies will, and some won’t, have laws allowing compelled testimony. This strikes me as the best possible solution.
.
How is that supposed to work? If you don’t want to testify, I can shop around for an “agency” that will lock you up until you do? Hey, maybe if I pay them enough they’ll even torture you.
.
Rules of evidence have to constrain third parties. You can’t create an Autonomy Zone around yourself and demand that nobody make you a witness to anything without your consent. And without testimony (not necessarily compelled testimony), nobody knows who’s committing “aggression or initiation of coercion” and who’s not.

First things first: the standard disclaimer about anarchy. Anarchy is a system that is defined by what there isn't -- a state -- not by some specification of the society that will result. Thus, any notion I propound, although it's probably a good guess, is just that: a guess. Anarchy is what anarchy does, and I may be wrong.

OK, so how does it work? Well, first let's posit that coerced testimony is useful from the POV of achieving high-quality justice. (If it isn't, then there won't be much coerced testimony in anarchy, because the market won't produce many worthless services.) Given that it is helpful, then I think most people would agree to allow themselves to be coerced in order to be member of an agency that coerces. Of course, this is not coercion in its bad sense, since it is agreed to. It's just a contract, where the party agrees to testify freely and truthfully, with coercive sanctions if he fails to do so.

So most people will end up being governed by an agency which has coercive testimony, at least for internal disputes (between two customers). It is very likely that the agencies will extend that to disputes between customers of different agencies (which both allow coercion), since the same utility applies.

What of the minority that doesn't want to be forced to testify? If there are enough of them, and/or they have enough wealth, they can set up their own agency. Perhaps the rules will allow coercion within, but not without. Or perhaps no coercion at all. In either case, there is a mismatch with outside agencies.

Now, it might happen that in any given dispute, a person who can't be forced may agree to testify anyway. But of course, that doesn't solve all disputes.

In others, a person (let's call him Joe) will refuse to testify (and his agency will back him), and a foreign agency will want him to testify.

The first thing to point out here is that if the second agency is libertarian, it will not coerce Joe because to do so would violate his rights. But remember that this is not a libertarian minarchy, it is anarchy. The agency is not limited by libertarian ideas, and may threaten to coerce in spite of it being aggression. So what next? It threatens to coerce, and the second agency will defend its client. This turns into the standard agency conflict scenario. I've discussed it long ago (here), so read that.

The upshot of agency conflict is, typically, that they can foresee it, and if it is likely at all, they'll have negotiated it out long ago. War is incredibly costly, and bad for business; a last resort. In a case like this one, where a minority wants something that is reasonable, the likely outcome is the minority agency pays the other agencies, and they agree to apply the minority rule in conflicts. Thus, Joe ends up paying more to his agency (so it can pay others), but his right to not testify is upheld.

Or, it may be that the right not to testify is sufficiently unpopular that the equilibrium ends up with the minority being bent to the will of the majority. Joe will have to testify. But note that in this case, it's likely that his right is "bought out" by the agencies that want it. Also note that Joe still doesn't have to testify against other customers of agencies which don't coerce. This may seem a small thing, but it would allow a minority to effectively achieve their goals, at the cost of cutting themselves off from the majority (so that conflicts don't happen).

So, getting back the my interlocutor's questions. Yes, you might be able to shop for a venue to force Joe to testify, or you might not. Depends. Either way, I don't see a huge problem.

There is nothing in anarchy that defines there as being no official torture. However, I predict there won't be any, because it is not very productive and it is anathema to all decent people. The tiny minority who would want it is like the minority that want to murder freely. If they did start and agency that allowed it, all the other agencies would band together and annihilate them.

As for an "autonomy zone", well, that's exactly what you can do. Judith Miller is doing it. Anyone can. Because you control your tongue. I see no reason whatsoever that any agreement between third parties constrains me. If they want my agreement, let them negotiate with me (or my proxy).

Political Orientation and Heredity

There's an interesting paper discussed a bit in the blogosphere that is basically twin studies done on political positions. Politics: complex; must be environmental, right? Wrong. It's heritable, about as much as most other traits. Best discussion I've seen on the web is not the NYTimes piece, which was pretty ignorant, but this one:

The authors do not argue that genetics makes one a Republican or Democrat. Indeed, people like me who are Libertarian with Republican leanings may not fit at all into the study if such were the assertion. Rather, they base the study on the notion that certain character traits are to some extent inherited. Character traits such as openness in turn are translated into social attitudes. These social attitudes are then transformed, to some extent, into political attitudes and later into political behavior. The genetic component, they predict, should be an important factor but certainly not the only one or even the most important one.

Well, it's quite important for at least some traits, i.e., American's position on school prayer.

Not really that new or unexpected if you keep up with what modern science is discovering about heredity. One of the reasons I love Sailer is he keeps up with this stuff religiously so I don't have to.

The wisest remark I've seen on this thus far: the Derb:

The subtext here is the assertion of determinism -- that what we are, WHAT I AM, is not as much a product of my free will as I should prefer to think it is. All the science on human nature is tugging in that direction, the determinist direction; all our instincts and preferences and faith tug in the other direction.

Science will win, of course -- it always does. We shall find out that our cherished beliefs about the Self are largely illusions, and we shall come to terms with that somehow -- but we'll protest every inch of the way there.

Science is cold.

I thought of that paper when I saw an item on a new libertarian blog, hosted by the Catallarchy guys. One of the liberty belles ("Lea") is taking up the old chestnut, why are there so few libertarian women?

I posted briefly there, and thought I would expand a bit here. My theory is by no means a total explanation, but partial. It's very simple: libertarianism is an ideology that appeals primarily to high IQ people. As Larry Summers won't tell you openly any more, there are more high-IQ men than women. This is a result of higher variability in the normal distributions of male IQ as versus female. More stupid men, more smart men. As a logical consequence, we should expect a disproportion in the number of libertarian men vs women.

The size of the imbalance depends on several things: the difference in average IQs for men and women (if any), the difference in the standard deviation of these two populations, and the correlation between IQ and libertarianism. From observation, I'd guess the ratio of male:female libertarians is something like 4:1.

Here's some more predictions from this theory. First, there should be relatively few libertarians. Imagine a simple model where everyone above a certain IQ has a N% chance to be a libertarian, while everyone below the cutoff has none. To get a 4:1 difference in men:women with two bell curves that are very similar, we'll need to go out a standard deviation or so. But this means the total number of people who might possibly be libertarians is only ~15% of the population. If we imagine N to be perhaps 20% we get a pretty good estimate of the number of libertarians as registered in opinion polling and voting.

Next: we should expect to see disproportionately many Jews in the movement. (See the previous post.) We should expect to see very few black or hispanic libertarians until those populations close the IQ gap.

Finally, and back to the paper mentioned at the beginning, we should expect that libertarianism is quite heritable. A great example of that is the great Friedman line: Milton, David, and now Patri.

What if I'm right? Well, here's one consequence: engaging in majoritarian politics is largely a waste of time for us. We'll never get more than perfect saturation of those able to grasp the ideas, say, 15% or so. At least until we engineer humanity to all be higher-IQ. The only hope here is intentional concentration, ala the Free State Project.

Second, we need to focus efforts to recruit that 15%: high IQ people. Right now I'd say the left still dominates there (look at the universities), but there's no reason why we can't fight for that demographic and win it. As socialism continues to fail, as it will, and capitalism keeps rolling, we'll see continued success in converting people.

Ashkenazi Jewish IQ and disease

Here are two curious facts about the Ashkenazi (European-derived) Jews. As a group, the Ashkenazim:

• average higher IQs than the European norm, by a standard deviation
  
• have much higher incidence of certain nasty genetic diseases. The persistence of these diseases in the population is something of a puzzle due to their simple genetic character but drastic effect on fitness. For example, Tay sachs, happens in homozygotes for a single damaged gene, and kills all of them by age 5. The incidence of a damaged copy of this gene in the Ashkenazi population is something on the order of 3%.
  

Are these two facts related somehow?

Yes, according to a new paper by Greg Cochran, Jason Harper, and Henry Harpending:

Our general hypothesis is that high IQ test scores of Ashkenazim, along with their unusual pattern of abilities, are a product of natural selection, stemming from their occupation of an unusual social niche. All the required preconditions low inward gene flow and unusually high reproductive reward for certain cognitive skills, over a longenough period did exist. These preconditions are both necessary and sufficient, so such a selective process would almost inevitably have this kind of result. The pattern of high achievement among Ashkenazi Jews and the observed psychometric results are certainly consistent with this hypothesis.

Our more specific prediction is that some or most of the characteristic Ashkenazi genetic diseases are by-byproducts of this strong selection for IQ. ... We predict that heterozygotes for the sphingolipid storage mutations should have higher scores on psychometric tests of verbal and mathematical abilities than their non-carrier sibs.

It appears the internet is breaking the logjam in the popular press in discussing politically incorrect ideas like this one. The NYT, to its credit, ran with this story. However it is not getting wide coverage in the MSM, which is a pity since it is solid science, fascinating history, relevant to our lives, and even better if it turns out to be correct.

Not only that, but important for the general populace to understand the truth here. Groups are not all the same. This contradicts the "uniformatism" of the PC worldview, where all groups are the same. No group is any smarter than any other group, nor does any group excel in any way that might result in differential "success", however defined.

Within the uniformatist worldview, there can be no explanation for underrepresentation of a group in any particular profession, other than chance (which is not believable if the group and profession size is large), prejudice, or conspiracy. But the same must also be true of overrepresentation. It must be chance, prejudice (favoratism), or conspiracy.

Well, Jews in the USA are almost all Ashkenazim. They are smarter, on average, than the average American. Jews are overrepresented in practically every high-visibility profession there is: doctors, academics, lawyers, money men, hollywood, you name it. How can Jews be 10% or 20% of the top professionals when they are only 3% of the population?

To a person who knows the truth about IQ, the answer is simple enough. The top professions require high IQs, and a disproportionate number of the really high-IQ people in America are Jews. That is, the Jewish representation is merited.

To a uniformatist, it can't be merit. So, it's a CONSPIRACY! This is the genesis of at least some antisemitism.

Comments

I turned them on a while ago, but did not put them into my template. Well, now they're on. Have fun. Usenet recreated small.