Anyone who thinks they know is going to absolutely hate this answer.
Entropy is a measurement of how much work, with current human knowledge, can be extracted from a system. It is a measurement of all potential energy that is yet untapped, combined with a theoretical maximum of "useful" work that can be extracted from this energy. It is a useful fiction, but it is still a fiction. So is the second law of thermodynamics.
In truth, entropy has the potential to change with every change in human knowledge.
If we discover a new force - say, a subtle attractive force far weaker than gravity, but attenuating far less quickly - the entropic values of all systems change. You can use this information to extract slightly more energy from the system by building an engine that somehow takes advantage of this new source of potential energy.
In more down-to-earth terms, suppose we just discovered fire today. Suddenly the potential energy that can be extracted from coal increases enormously - previously, we could just extract whatever energy we could get from its falling, much as we extract enormous energy from the gravitational potential energy in water. We have to rewrite all of our entropy tables, which previously just concerned themselves with height relative to, say, sea level.
Fortunately for the industrial revolution, we already discovered fire, so we already had enormous amounts of potential energy to extract - although never as much as we would have liked, which produced our obsession with calculating exactly how much energy we -could- extract. Entropy is an engineer's concept which arose from that obsession.
Entropy is really just an elaborately-dressed up way of saying that time flows in one direction - that the physical processes flow in one direction. Coal burns; carbon dioxide doesn't draw heat in and convert itself into coal, raining down upon us. If the reverse were true - carbon dioxide drew heat in and converted itself into coal, it would be an endothermic, instead of exothermic, reaction - these kinds of processes do in fact exist in real life. If it did -both-, we couldn't extract any useful energy from the process, because as we "burned" coal it would re-consume the energy and re-precipitate carbon - these kinds of processes -also- exist in real life, they're called reversible reactions.
Now, it sounds like a compound like this would be really useful, and you'd be right. It's exactly what water does - absorbs heat to evaporate, then gives off heat to re-precipitate. If coal behaved as I described, you'd require a heat source to re-precipitate the carbon dioxide after you've extracted work - and thus heat - from the system, since it would require that energy to re-bond. (Actually, coal -sort of- works as I described - exposed to the right sort of energy and conditions, it -does- re-precipitate, which is part of what plants do when they convert carbon dioxide into carbon.) The difficulty is that managing the boundary conditions to make the process cyclic requires something -else- be providing useful work.
Entropy, as a concept, is made much more mysterious than it really is. In its shortest form, the second law of thermodynamics is just stating that all the laws of physics -continuously- apply. Time flows in only one direction.
The fiction is in the implication - that a given amount of energy can ever only do some finite amount of work before it is spent for good. There's nothing we have yet discovered in the laws of physics that says you can't have a perpetual motion machine, or that you can't extract an infinite amount of usable work in a closed system. There's just nothing in the laws of physics we have yet discovered which -permits- an infinite amount of usable work to be performed in a closed system.
It's an important distinction, because there's a -lot- we haven't yet discovered.
Sunday, December 14, 2014
Lossy Transformations and Mathematics
I'll lead with a question: What is X divided by X?
The immediate and obvious answer is "1", but this is, in fact, incorrect. The answer is, roughly, "1 except where X equals 0". This is both pedantic and important - 0 divided by 0 isn't 1, it's "Undefined". 5 times 0 is -also- 0. "Undefined" in this case really means something like "Every answer simultaneously."
Division, as it is typically defined, is a lossy transformation - you have the potential to lose information in performing the operation. So is multiplication - the equation "5 = 3" can be "made correct" by multiplying by zero, a conceptually valid operation.
Squaring numbers is too. 5^2 is 25 - but once you've done this, you can no longer determine, from the current properties of whatever it is you're working with, whether you started with five or negative five. You've lost information about your starting configuration by performing what we usually consider a perfectly valid operation. Reversing the operation doesn't give you what you started with.
The issue is one of simplification. There isn't one single zero. There are an -infinite- number of 0's. Zero apples isn't the same as zero oranges - they're different zeros.
Squares are similar; a rectangle five feet long and four feet wide has twenty square feet, but it's not the same square feet as from a rectangle ten feet long and two feet wide. A square value doesn't maintain information about its constituent parts - this information is simplified away.
Division, again, is similar; 5 / 5 equals 1. Is it the -same- 1 as provided by 4 / 4? No. They're different 1's, but once we've reduced to a single number, that information is lost to us.
This simplification is great, if you don't need that information, and terrible, if you do.
Every mathematical operation results in a loss of information. Again, this is helpful, if you're looking for a simple result, and worthless, if you end up needing that information. Knowing that the combined length of two walls is 10 doesn't tell you anything about the individual length of the individual walls - you lost that information when you added the two numbers together.
The purity, the cleanness, of mathematics is an illusion, produced by rules which encourage you not to notice the information that goes missing with every step. Mathematics, in truth, is a very messy process, the process of crossing out information until you're left only with the information you think you need. The erasure is intellectually satisfying, but it is wholly the act of hiding complexity to make the complex -seem- simple. The complexity is still there, and knowing the square footage of a room you're tiling tells you next to nothing about the number of tiles you need to cut, and how.
The immediate and obvious answer is "1", but this is, in fact, incorrect. The answer is, roughly, "1 except where X equals 0". This is both pedantic and important - 0 divided by 0 isn't 1, it's "Undefined". 5 times 0 is -also- 0. "Undefined" in this case really means something like "Every answer simultaneously."
Division, as it is typically defined, is a lossy transformation - you have the potential to lose information in performing the operation. So is multiplication - the equation "5 = 3" can be "made correct" by multiplying by zero, a conceptually valid operation.
Squaring numbers is too. 5^2 is 25 - but once you've done this, you can no longer determine, from the current properties of whatever it is you're working with, whether you started with five or negative five. You've lost information about your starting configuration by performing what we usually consider a perfectly valid operation. Reversing the operation doesn't give you what you started with.
The issue is one of simplification. There isn't one single zero. There are an -infinite- number of 0's. Zero apples isn't the same as zero oranges - they're different zeros.
Squares are similar; a rectangle five feet long and four feet wide has twenty square feet, but it's not the same square feet as from a rectangle ten feet long and two feet wide. A square value doesn't maintain information about its constituent parts - this information is simplified away.
Division, again, is similar; 5 / 5 equals 1. Is it the -same- 1 as provided by 4 / 4? No. They're different 1's, but once we've reduced to a single number, that information is lost to us.
This simplification is great, if you don't need that information, and terrible, if you do.
Every mathematical operation results in a loss of information. Again, this is helpful, if you're looking for a simple result, and worthless, if you end up needing that information. Knowing that the combined length of two walls is 10 doesn't tell you anything about the individual length of the individual walls - you lost that information when you added the two numbers together.
The purity, the cleanness, of mathematics is an illusion, produced by rules which encourage you not to notice the information that goes missing with every step. Mathematics, in truth, is a very messy process, the process of crossing out information until you're left only with the information you think you need. The erasure is intellectually satisfying, but it is wholly the act of hiding complexity to make the complex -seem- simple. The complexity is still there, and knowing the square footage of a room you're tiling tells you next to nothing about the number of tiles you need to cut, and how.
Saturday, December 6, 2014
Obvious Things Part 3: Entitlement
I don't think anybody -likes- an entitlement mentality, it's just that none of us can agree on exactly what this means. Loosely speaking, entitlements are just expectations to things we personally don't agree should be expected. Remember, however, that your position in society is dependent entirely upon your conformance to others' expectations - entitlements, therefore, are most injurious to the upper classes, which is exactly why entitlements are fomented by those who oppose the stratification of society.
Entitlements are fomented as a form of political brinkmanship, by either those who have power and intend to make power to difficult to aspire to, or by those who don't have power and seek to push those in power out. This is obvious if you think about it for a moment - that's exactly what political promises -are-, the setting of expectations, of entitlements.
The difficulty, however, is that this is a ratchet, a one-way process that keeps going until everything destabilizes, until the promises exceed the ability of those in power to fulfill them. I can point to several eras in history where exactly this happened - the result is never pretty, although it does generally do a pretty good job of resetting everybody's expectations.
Because there is always a benefit to some party of creating expectations - of creating entitlements - I suspect this process is inevitable, and social stability cyclical. Of course, as time has gone on, the ability of powerful people to meet promises has increased, producing longer and longer periods of stability - and with technology, it's possible the cycle may be broken already, as ever-increasing productivity ensures the ever-increasing promises of the powerful can perpetually be met.
There's thus an incentive for those seeking power to destroy the advance of technology. The question, of course, is whether they realize it. I suspect some have, given the degree of effort taken towards precisely that goal.
Consider that in a Democracy, the public is ultimately in charge. The Party Leaders are jealous of this. Consider what this means in the long term.
Tuesday, November 18, 2014
Obvious Things Part 2: Hats
I've encountered a -lot- of people who comment on the funny hats in religion.
Y'know the weird thing? Nobody comments on the fact that hats play a role in -every- religion. They also play huge roles in official government positions.
"Well, yeah," you might say, "they're part of the costume, part of the uniform; it helps define people's expectations of who you are and what you represent."
That's true, of course; that is part of the role of a hat. But see, you're underestimating the cleverness of some people who lived a very long time ago.
Why, pray tell, are non-clergy men traditionally forbidden from wearing hats in religious gatherings - and why are women frequently permitted them? Why are hats traditionally forbidden in schools, government buildings, and the home? Why do clergical hats typically lack a brim?
Do you think your personality is different on a sunny versus a cloudy day? Outdoors, versus indoors?
Hats - brimmed hats in particular - have a -huge- impact on your mood and personality. I don't say this because I've read a study - I don't have to. A hat doesn't just darken your face - it darkens your mood. It makes you less empathetic, less vulnerable, more insular. You know the person who refuses to ever take off their hat? It's because removing it leaves them exposed and vulnerable; it's probably the only thing that lets them comfortably interact in public.
A brimmed hat can easily turn 10-20% of your field of vision into utter darkness. What do you think that does to a police officer wearing a hat?
What do you think it's done to our society that hats have vanished from common dress over the past sixty years?
And trust me, this isn't a unique insight. Social engineering can be as simple as popular figures no longer wearing a hat, setting fashion, and thus social, trends for decades to come.
Y'know the weird thing? Nobody comments on the fact that hats play a role in -every- religion. They also play huge roles in official government positions.
"Well, yeah," you might say, "they're part of the costume, part of the uniform; it helps define people's expectations of who you are and what you represent."
That's true, of course; that is part of the role of a hat. But see, you're underestimating the cleverness of some people who lived a very long time ago.
Why, pray tell, are non-clergy men traditionally forbidden from wearing hats in religious gatherings - and why are women frequently permitted them? Why are hats traditionally forbidden in schools, government buildings, and the home? Why do clergical hats typically lack a brim?
Do you think your personality is different on a sunny versus a cloudy day? Outdoors, versus indoors?
Hats - brimmed hats in particular - have a -huge- impact on your mood and personality. I don't say this because I've read a study - I don't have to. A hat doesn't just darken your face - it darkens your mood. It makes you less empathetic, less vulnerable, more insular. You know the person who refuses to ever take off their hat? It's because removing it leaves them exposed and vulnerable; it's probably the only thing that lets them comfortably interact in public.
A brimmed hat can easily turn 10-20% of your field of vision into utter darkness. What do you think that does to a police officer wearing a hat?
What do you think it's done to our society that hats have vanished from common dress over the past sixty years?
And trust me, this isn't a unique insight. Social engineering can be as simple as popular figures no longer wearing a hat, setting fashion, and thus social, trends for decades to come.
Obvious Things Part 1: Social Freedoms and Class
This is the first part of a sequence I'll contribute to irregularly, discussing things most people grok without ever actually knowing. Everything I intend to write in this sequence is something which is so obvious we never even notice it - although, trust me, many of our historical elites -have- noticed these things, which has granted them subtle power over our lives we never even notice.
Do you know the difference between our upper classes and our lower classes? It's not, as one might immediately think, power, or money. These things don't change your station in life. Your station in life is determined by one thing and one thing only: The expectations of other people. This is well-understood in the East, and formed the explicit principles by which Imperial China was governed, in the written teachings of Confucius, but here in the West we tend to try to ignore it. We tend to see things like ritual suicide as honorable but ultimately barbaric practices, not seeing the way these practices tie into civilization itself.
Western media has increasingly tended to portray the enforcement of social rules as a bullying behavior, and we have in recent years begun to strongly discourage this enforcement. I'm a staunch individualist - but I'm also a rationalist, and I recognize a self-destructive attitude when I see one. I also recognize a particularly insidious form of social engineering - a re-stratification of society. Because, you see, classes have always, and everywhere, been divided first and foremost by adherence to social law. The upper classes have -far- more expectations heaped upon them; expectations of dress, behavior, accent and verbal tics, dinner manners, how to stand, how to walk, how to address people - the upper classes have etiquette drilled into them from birth. You think this is an accident of fate? More, you think it is an accident of fate that our upper classes are telling the lower classes that none of these things matter?
Clothing, to pick one example, is -always- a uniform. It -always- tells other people who you are. Who do you think gets the job in an interview - the lower-class person who shows up in jeans and a t-shirt because they think the people who insist that a suit and tie are important are just bullies, or the upper-class child who wears a suit and tie because they've been taught the important of a good uniform since birth? It's not money, nor connections, that guide children from birth to remain in the social standing they began it in - it's knowledge, knowledge that is being carefully and deliberately sabotaged by those -claiming- to be standing up for the disadvantaged even as they make their disadvantage permanent.
The upper classes don't have more freedom - this is an illusion. They have far, far less freedom, because while their station in life theoretically grants them greater privilege, they only enjoy that privilege so long as they do not actually exercise it. Quite a lot like money, actually - the rich man is only rich so long as he doesn't spend his money, after all.
Li is the path to power. Appear the fool, and be treated as one. Appear to be a person to be taken seriously, however, and you will be.
Not that I advise anyone to pursue this course, any more than I would advise others to become misers so that they might become rich, and for precisely the same reasons. However, while I would not advise miserliness, I -would- advise careful consideration of purchases and the establishment of a financial reserve - and likewise I would advise the careful evaluation of social expectations.
Bullies, as anybody who tries to teach social rules is now being labeled, are teachers of a lesson which needs teaching - gone are the days when "bully" referred to the teenager who picked on the elementary school student, now the "bully" is the teen who makes fun of the one teen who doesn't wear deodorant, or who dyes their hair an unnatural color. The question, of course, is which social class is hosting the backlash against "bullies", and why.
Do you know the difference between our upper classes and our lower classes? It's not, as one might immediately think, power, or money. These things don't change your station in life. Your station in life is determined by one thing and one thing only: The expectations of other people. This is well-understood in the East, and formed the explicit principles by which Imperial China was governed, in the written teachings of Confucius, but here in the West we tend to try to ignore it. We tend to see things like ritual suicide as honorable but ultimately barbaric practices, not seeing the way these practices tie into civilization itself.
Western media has increasingly tended to portray the enforcement of social rules as a bullying behavior, and we have in recent years begun to strongly discourage this enforcement. I'm a staunch individualist - but I'm also a rationalist, and I recognize a self-destructive attitude when I see one. I also recognize a particularly insidious form of social engineering - a re-stratification of society. Because, you see, classes have always, and everywhere, been divided first and foremost by adherence to social law. The upper classes have -far- more expectations heaped upon them; expectations of dress, behavior, accent and verbal tics, dinner manners, how to stand, how to walk, how to address people - the upper classes have etiquette drilled into them from birth. You think this is an accident of fate? More, you think it is an accident of fate that our upper classes are telling the lower classes that none of these things matter?
Clothing, to pick one example, is -always- a uniform. It -always- tells other people who you are. Who do you think gets the job in an interview - the lower-class person who shows up in jeans and a t-shirt because they think the people who insist that a suit and tie are important are just bullies, or the upper-class child who wears a suit and tie because they've been taught the important of a good uniform since birth? It's not money, nor connections, that guide children from birth to remain in the social standing they began it in - it's knowledge, knowledge that is being carefully and deliberately sabotaged by those -claiming- to be standing up for the disadvantaged even as they make their disadvantage permanent.
The upper classes don't have more freedom - this is an illusion. They have far, far less freedom, because while their station in life theoretically grants them greater privilege, they only enjoy that privilege so long as they do not actually exercise it. Quite a lot like money, actually - the rich man is only rich so long as he doesn't spend his money, after all.
Li is the path to power. Appear the fool, and be treated as one. Appear to be a person to be taken seriously, however, and you will be.
Not that I advise anyone to pursue this course, any more than I would advise others to become misers so that they might become rich, and for precisely the same reasons. However, while I would not advise miserliness, I -would- advise careful consideration of purchases and the establishment of a financial reserve - and likewise I would advise the careful evaluation of social expectations.
Bullies, as anybody who tries to teach social rules is now being labeled, are teachers of a lesson which needs teaching - gone are the days when "bully" referred to the teenager who picked on the elementary school student, now the "bully" is the teen who makes fun of the one teen who doesn't wear deodorant, or who dyes their hair an unnatural color. The question, of course, is which social class is hosting the backlash against "bullies", and why.
Tuesday, July 8, 2014
Game Theory and Naivety
Game theory can teach some very curious lessons.
Perhaps the most important is that the obvious solution is frequently the wrong solution. In order to create an environment where cooperation is possible, you have to create an environment where profitable defection isn't.
The naive solution is always "Let's cooperate". In an environment of people who -always- cooperate, defecting is a -very- powerful tool, and very attractive. "Always cooperate" as a strategy rewards defection.
In order to foster a truly cooperative environment, you have to be willing to defect, and most specifically against those who have first defected.
Naive anarchism or communism is the belief that "Let's just work together" is a viable strategy, that you can rely upon goodwill. Even I'd defect in that system, if for no other reason than resentment of a system that doesn't punish defection.
We can't reward cooperation enough to make defection unattractive - we have finite resources, and defection is, in any system, the gaming of the system to get disproportionate reward. The only real option is to make defection less attractive.
Government is one mechanism of punishing defection; it is a universal agent, with whom cooperation is paramount, and whose defection is lethal. There's just one issue with the use of government in this manner: It permits a grander scale of defection, that of false accusation. Government becomes the arbiter of grudge, rather than law. Coyote Blog comments on one example. It's hardly the only.
Belief in government as a reliable arbiter isn't -quite- as naive as "Let's just work together", but still makes the same mistake: Assuming cooperation and defection can be made infallible. They can't. That's the metagame. Then there's the third level of naivety - the belief in a solution to this mess. There is no end solution - whatever rules you use, there's a metagame that will defeat them.
The Cure...
...is surprisingly simple: It's a sledgehammer.
Our existing government is made up of masons; the legislative branch exists to build new walls, the Supreme Court -at best- exists to make sure the walls are in the right places, and the Executive branch mans the walls.
We need a branch whose purpose is to knock walls down. Our government is fundamentally constructivist - it needs a deconstructivist element. A branch devoted to knocking down the things the legislature builds.
The courts have kind-of sort-of fulfilled this role in the past, but only for the most egregious cases. The legislative branch has this power, but rarely if ever uses it; they're elected to fix problems in society. Knocking down parts of the government just makes it harder for them to do their job.
So break the legislative branch's powers up. One branch to construct, one branch to destroy. Hell, even give them the power to send the bills back to the legislation with notes on what needs to be adjusted and why - they can't propose new legislation, but they can remove legislation and suggest changes.
And give them a reason. Put a cap on the total pages of law in the government. Is a single person's life even long enough to -read- all the laws on the books right now, after all?
Our existing government is made up of masons; the legislative branch exists to build new walls, the Supreme Court -at best- exists to make sure the walls are in the right places, and the Executive branch mans the walls.
We need a branch whose purpose is to knock walls down. Our government is fundamentally constructivist - it needs a deconstructivist element. A branch devoted to knocking down the things the legislature builds.
The courts have kind-of sort-of fulfilled this role in the past, but only for the most egregious cases. The legislative branch has this power, but rarely if ever uses it; they're elected to fix problems in society. Knocking down parts of the government just makes it harder for them to do their job.
So break the legislative branch's powers up. One branch to construct, one branch to destroy. Hell, even give them the power to send the bills back to the legislation with notes on what needs to be adjusted and why - they can't propose new legislation, but they can remove legislation and suggest changes.
And give them a reason. Put a cap on the total pages of law in the government. Is a single person's life even long enough to -read- all the laws on the books right now, after all?
Wednesday, July 2, 2014
Politics Today...
...is largely the process of millionaires spending inordinate amounts of money in an attempt to convince people that -other- millionaires are spending inordinate amounts of money convincing them of things.
It's not even grounded to anything anymore; this is the postmodernist era of the political art, full of abstract pieces that don't mean anything but that's okay because the whole "meaning" concept is conceptually oppressive, man.
I've seen Democrats -literally argue to me- that Hobby Lobby only protested in the first place because they hate Obama because they're racists. There are Republicans who -legitimately believe- this is all an attack on religion. And six months from now the arguments will be completely different, based on completely different principles, and everybody will behave as if this is the way it's always been.
Which means, in a curious roundabout way, that politics is fundamentally about -fashion-. Which shouldn't surprise me, but does anyways, and explains so very much about how society got to where it is.
It's not even grounded to anything anymore; this is the postmodernist era of the political art, full of abstract pieces that don't mean anything but that's okay because the whole "meaning" concept is conceptually oppressive, man.
I've seen Democrats -literally argue to me- that Hobby Lobby only protested in the first place because they hate Obama because they're racists. There are Republicans who -legitimately believe- this is all an attack on religion. And six months from now the arguments will be completely different, based on completely different principles, and everybody will behave as if this is the way it's always been.
Which means, in a curious roundabout way, that politics is fundamentally about -fashion-. Which shouldn't surprise me, but does anyways, and explains so very much about how society got to where it is.
Thursday, May 22, 2014
Pistocracy
What makes theocracy dangerous? What -is- theocracy, truly?
The word translates as "Rule by God." This is a curious way for an atheist to refer to a religious government - what is a more accurate way of referring to a theocracy?
Well, there is a word. Pistocracy. "Rule by beliefs," or perhaps "Rule by believers." Epistocracy, "Rule by knowledge", or, as David Estlund translates, "Rule by the knowers", is just pistocracy in which the pistocrats assume they're correct.
Pistocracy, as a concept, is much more broadly applicable than theocracy; it is not limited to those governments run on beliefs written in ancient books. It describes any government which enforces a particular belief structure on its participants - these beliefs need not be religious. They can be philosophic - the belief that the community must come before the individual, for example.
The elements which make theocracy dangerous make a pistocracy dangerous as well - you do not need god to have heretics. Trotsky was a heretic of the Soviet pistocracy - an individual who shared the same basic beliefs but disagreed with the orthodox interpretation of those beliefs.
The danger in a pistocracy is -in- the orthodoxy, in established beliefs the challenging of which marks one as a heretic, an apostate, or a pagan. (We have a word for pagans even in science, which should be better than that - crank, or crackpot. "Denier" has become part of the parlance as well, at least in more politicized sciences.)
Beliefs aren't limited to beliefs about the world-as-it-is, either. Beliefs include the world-as-it-should-be. Every argument for free college education, for food stamps, for welfare in the general case - these are arguments for a pistocracy based around a set of beliefs about how the world operates, and how it should operate going forward. No concern or consideration is given for those whose beliefs differ - indeed, those who believe differently become The Enemy. Heartless, evil, cruel, selfish - whatever invectives can stick, to label the Unbeliever a heretic whose opinion is not worth hearing.
This is an elaborate work-up to a single point: A secular government isn't a free government. It can still fight and suppress philosophies, and indeed ours does so, on a scale that puts many theocracies to shame. We live under a government in which certain philosophies are, for all intents and purposes, illegal to practice. Not that I'm fond of racists, but the machinery that exists to crush them isn't limited in the scope of its application, and there has been a slow creep in that application, to the point where, today, the government attempts to crush even philosophies as basic as that it's better if workers manage their own health insurance, rather than relying on their employer to pick appropriate insurance programs -for- them.
The word translates as "Rule by God." This is a curious way for an atheist to refer to a religious government - what is a more accurate way of referring to a theocracy?
Well, there is a word. Pistocracy. "Rule by beliefs," or perhaps "Rule by believers." Epistocracy, "Rule by knowledge", or, as David Estlund translates, "Rule by the knowers", is just pistocracy in which the pistocrats assume they're correct.
Pistocracy, as a concept, is much more broadly applicable than theocracy; it is not limited to those governments run on beliefs written in ancient books. It describes any government which enforces a particular belief structure on its participants - these beliefs need not be religious. They can be philosophic - the belief that the community must come before the individual, for example.
The elements which make theocracy dangerous make a pistocracy dangerous as well - you do not need god to have heretics. Trotsky was a heretic of the Soviet pistocracy - an individual who shared the same basic beliefs but disagreed with the orthodox interpretation of those beliefs.
The danger in a pistocracy is -in- the orthodoxy, in established beliefs the challenging of which marks one as a heretic, an apostate, or a pagan. (We have a word for pagans even in science, which should be better than that - crank, or crackpot. "Denier" has become part of the parlance as well, at least in more politicized sciences.)
Beliefs aren't limited to beliefs about the world-as-it-is, either. Beliefs include the world-as-it-should-be. Every argument for free college education, for food stamps, for welfare in the general case - these are arguments for a pistocracy based around a set of beliefs about how the world operates, and how it should operate going forward. No concern or consideration is given for those whose beliefs differ - indeed, those who believe differently become The Enemy. Heartless, evil, cruel, selfish - whatever invectives can stick, to label the Unbeliever a heretic whose opinion is not worth hearing.
This is an elaborate work-up to a single point: A secular government isn't a free government. It can still fight and suppress philosophies, and indeed ours does so, on a scale that puts many theocracies to shame. We live under a government in which certain philosophies are, for all intents and purposes, illegal to practice. Not that I'm fond of racists, but the machinery that exists to crush them isn't limited in the scope of its application, and there has been a slow creep in that application, to the point where, today, the government attempts to crush even philosophies as basic as that it's better if workers manage their own health insurance, rather than relying on their employer to pick appropriate insurance programs -for- them.
A Radical Departure... Marx, Part III
So, why did Marx's roadplan fail as miserably as it did? What were his actual goals?
His actual goal was the elimination of class, and he spent a -lot- of time talking about "rentier" classes. Libertarians, this should immediately call to mind a phrase we use quite frequently in regard to anti-free market behavior: Rent seeking.
I'll spare you the Socratic dialogue in which I try to make you come to the conclusion yourself: Marx apparently failed to recognize that rent is a fully generalized phenomenon.
Marx recognized land as a rental property. Did he recognize that a bureaucratic job working for the central state-owned bank deciding who gets and doesn't get credit is a rental property as well? That the people responsible for assigning transportation routes and communication lines had power over those who had to request things from them?
We can talk about Stalin and Lenin, but they aren't really the issue with Marxism; they demonstrate one potential way the implementation can go very, very wrong. What they don't demonstrate is that the implementation Marx laid out is itself very, very wrong.
Government power is rental power. A centralized credit agency is staffed by a rentier class by virtue of the fact that they staff a centralized credit agency. What strangles Marxist states isn't just the dictators, it's the millions of petty bureaucrats who become the new bourgeois, the new rentier class - there's a reason bribery becomes standard in such societies, it's the best way the rentier class has of extracting rent for their rental property.
An incomplete list of rental properties:
Land
Intellectual Property
Education/Skills/Talents
Capital goods
Social connections
Social power
Beauty/height
Gender in a genuinely sexist society
Reputation
Occupational power/discretionary power
A rental property can be either stable or transitory, replicable or non-replicable, transferable or non-transferable.
Communism in its most extreme Harrison Bergeron implementation is the complete elimination of -all- forms of rent. A more reasonable communism is just the minimization of certain kinds of rent - eliminating stable, non-replicable, transferable rental properties. Land, (some) forms of intellectual property, occupational power, for the big three that share this deadly trio of properties. The inclusion of capital goods is a mistake for precisely the same reason as the inclusion of education would be a mistake - it's a replicable rental property. As long as replication isn't unduly constrained, at least.
Every implementation of Marx to date has -omitted- attention paid to occupational power, because Marx himself does little to address the potential harm, and has become overrun by bureaucrats.
But once we consider the deadly trio of properties - aren't these precisely the things libertarianism as a whole has been incapable of coming to conclusions on? Intellectual property ownership of, for example, a book isn't a problem - you weren't going to write -that- book anyways, you were going to write a completely different one. We'd need to fill the universe with nanobot authors before this actually started to become an issue. However, owning -process- -is- a problem; there are a finite number of ways to feasibly manufacture penicillin. Intellectual property laws have historically solved this dilemma by eliminating -stability- from this aspect of intellectual property; you have a finite amount of time to capitalize on your patent before it ceases to be functional. (In today's society, that amount of time is probably too high, since a better something will probably come along long before the patent expires, but that's another discussion entirely.) Modern society, however, has begun to -copyright-, rather than -patent-, process. Witness the massive intellectual capital wars happening between major corporations right now.
I, on great consideration, define communism to be, quite simply, a special case of the general case of libertarianism. (Yes, Marx hated libertarians, but libertarian in his day meant anarchist; anarchism now being considered one of -many- different ideologies in the very broad category we loosely refer to as "libertarian"). Existing implementations of communism were not in fact implementations of communism, but implementation of a deeply and fatally laid out -process- by which to -arrive- at communism, which ultimately exacerbated the very classist society they sought to eliminate.
Communism isn't incompatible with the free market. The modern left isn't Left; they're the same bourgeois that they've always been, and their support of the already-shown-to-be-flawed Marxist -approach- to -arriving- at communism, combined with their opposition to libertarian philosophy more broadly, demonstrates their desire to perpetuate the classist society we live in. (Not that this is unexpected from a group of people who generally take -pleasure- in being referred to as "elitist.")
The goal is the elimination of class. This is not an inherently anti-libertarian concept; we take great issue with class, we just don't generally call it that.
His actual goal was the elimination of class, and he spent a -lot- of time talking about "rentier" classes. Libertarians, this should immediately call to mind a phrase we use quite frequently in regard to anti-free market behavior: Rent seeking.
I'll spare you the Socratic dialogue in which I try to make you come to the conclusion yourself: Marx apparently failed to recognize that rent is a fully generalized phenomenon.
Marx recognized land as a rental property. Did he recognize that a bureaucratic job working for the central state-owned bank deciding who gets and doesn't get credit is a rental property as well? That the people responsible for assigning transportation routes and communication lines had power over those who had to request things from them?
We can talk about Stalin and Lenin, but they aren't really the issue with Marxism; they demonstrate one potential way the implementation can go very, very wrong. What they don't demonstrate is that the implementation Marx laid out is itself very, very wrong.
Government power is rental power. A centralized credit agency is staffed by a rentier class by virtue of the fact that they staff a centralized credit agency. What strangles Marxist states isn't just the dictators, it's the millions of petty bureaucrats who become the new bourgeois, the new rentier class - there's a reason bribery becomes standard in such societies, it's the best way the rentier class has of extracting rent for their rental property.
An incomplete list of rental properties:
Land
Intellectual Property
Education/Skills/Talents
Capital goods
Social connections
Social power
Beauty/height
Gender in a genuinely sexist society
Reputation
Occupational power/discretionary power
A rental property can be either stable or transitory, replicable or non-replicable, transferable or non-transferable.
Communism in its most extreme Harrison Bergeron implementation is the complete elimination of -all- forms of rent. A more reasonable communism is just the minimization of certain kinds of rent - eliminating stable, non-replicable, transferable rental properties. Land, (some) forms of intellectual property, occupational power, for the big three that share this deadly trio of properties. The inclusion of capital goods is a mistake for precisely the same reason as the inclusion of education would be a mistake - it's a replicable rental property. As long as replication isn't unduly constrained, at least.
Every implementation of Marx to date has -omitted- attention paid to occupational power, because Marx himself does little to address the potential harm, and has become overrun by bureaucrats.
But once we consider the deadly trio of properties - aren't these precisely the things libertarianism as a whole has been incapable of coming to conclusions on? Intellectual property ownership of, for example, a book isn't a problem - you weren't going to write -that- book anyways, you were going to write a completely different one. We'd need to fill the universe with nanobot authors before this actually started to become an issue. However, owning -process- -is- a problem; there are a finite number of ways to feasibly manufacture penicillin. Intellectual property laws have historically solved this dilemma by eliminating -stability- from this aspect of intellectual property; you have a finite amount of time to capitalize on your patent before it ceases to be functional. (In today's society, that amount of time is probably too high, since a better something will probably come along long before the patent expires, but that's another discussion entirely.) Modern society, however, has begun to -copyright-, rather than -patent-, process. Witness the massive intellectual capital wars happening between major corporations right now.
I, on great consideration, define communism to be, quite simply, a special case of the general case of libertarianism. (Yes, Marx hated libertarians, but libertarian in his day meant anarchist; anarchism now being considered one of -many- different ideologies in the very broad category we loosely refer to as "libertarian"). Existing implementations of communism were not in fact implementations of communism, but implementation of a deeply and fatally laid out -process- by which to -arrive- at communism, which ultimately exacerbated the very classist society they sought to eliminate.
Communism isn't incompatible with the free market. The modern left isn't Left; they're the same bourgeois that they've always been, and their support of the already-shown-to-be-flawed Marxist -approach- to -arriving- at communism, combined with their opposition to libertarian philosophy more broadly, demonstrates their desire to perpetuate the classist society we live in. (Not that this is unexpected from a group of people who generally take -pleasure- in being referred to as "elitist.")
The goal is the elimination of class. This is not an inherently anti-libertarian concept; we take great issue with class, we just don't generally call it that.
A Radical Departure... Marx, Part II
Ok, setting aside the whole "Which party is more proletariat/bourgeois" thing, let's get into the bolts of what Marxism was really pursuing.
Marx wasn't opposed to capitalism, per se, but rather a state of economic affairs such that classism is supported or arises. In -particular- he was pissed about the "rentier" class.
While most of what he actually wrote about wasn't communism - the end goal - but rather the -mechanism- by which he thought to get there, let's evaluate the list of "common elements" of a Marxist society that was trying to evolve into communism, forwarded first by a quote:
"Of course, in the beginning, [the revolution] cannot be effected except by means of despotic inroads on the rights of property, and on the conditions of bourgeois production; by means of measures, therefore, which appear economically insufficient and untenable, but which, in the course of the movement, outstrip themselves, necessitate further inroads upon the old social order, and are unavoidable"
1. Abolition of property in land and application of all rents of land to public purposes.
2. A heavy progressive or graduated income tax.
3. Abolition of all rights of inheritance.
4. Confiscation of the property of all emigrants and rebels.
5. Centralisation of credit in the hands of the state, by means of a national bank with State capital and an exclusive monopoly.
6. Centralisation of the means of communication and transport in the hands of the State.
7. Extension of factories and instruments of production owned by the State; the bringing into cultivation of waste-lands, and the improvement of the soil generally in accordance with a common plan.
8. Equal liability of all to work. Establishment of industrial armies, especially for agriculture.
9. Combination of agriculture with manufacturing industries; gradual abolition of all the distinction between town and country by a more equable distribution of the populace over the country.
10. Free education for all children in public schools. Abolition of children’s factory labour in its present form. Combination of education with industrial production
And let's analyze each of these:
1.) I'll respond to this with Marx himself: "We by no means intend to abolish... personal appropriation of the products of labour, an appropriation that is made for the maintenance and reproduction of human life, and that leaves no surplus wherewith to command the labour of others. All that we want to do away with is the miserable character of this appropriation, under which the labourer lives merely to increase capital, and is allowed to live only in so far as the interest of the ruling class requires it."
Keep in mind the social conditions in the society Marx lived in; half-feudal, with remnants of the old noble classes still hanging around; in many places, the old nobility were the only ones able to afford factories in the first place, initially cementing their power structures further.
Compare this to modern nations, and ask yourself: Do free-market capitalists -really- disagree with the notion that Europe defends its old elite against competition? Isn't that what protectionism, which we oppose, -is-? Do we really disagree with the complaint Marx predicated this upon?
His implementation is shit. We'll see this repeatedly. I'll get to the -why- in the next post, but for now, let's just acknowledge he was addressing a real problem in a clumsy way.
2.) This is probably the dumbest item on the list. Marx chose income tax over wealth tax... why? Why did he choose to tax -production- rather than -rent-? In actual implementation, income tax has advantaged old wealth over new wealth, by depleting new wealth's influx of said wealth. (Hint: Marx thought he could eliminate rent, and rentier classes, thereby preventing this problem in the first place.)
3.) What Marx would not foresee is the proletariat acquiring sufficient wealth that these laws would disadvantage them even worse than it would the bourgeois, who could rely upon social connections and trust-funds-through-charities to avoid this. The bourgeois don't -need- inheritance, they have -much- subtler ways of sending their wealth through generations.
4.) Well this couldn't go badly at all.
5.) Remember how much Marx hated the rentier classes. Again, we'll get back to this item in the next post, and why it is a complete and total failure.
6.) Ditto.
7.) Like farming in Nevada deserts? Well, we've been there, we've done that, we're having water supply issues. It really wasn't that good an idea.
8.) This is a nice way of saying "Mass slavery." Marx thought the proletariat were already slaves, so in his mind, he was just extending this status to the bourgeois. This is one of those "despotic inroad" things.
9.) Well, capitalism already beat him to the first thing. As for the second... well, honestly I don't understand why he thinks it matters. Perhaps, in an era without instantaneous communication, it did.
10.) "Combination of education with industrial production." Heh.
So, that's kind of a loose roadmap of what Marx thought the revolution would look like.
So... why did this roadmap fail? Changing technology may have been part of it, a misunderstanding of free-market capitalism another, and the fact that Marx's vision for the proletariat was never the proletariat vision for the proletariat; indeed, Marx is favored primarily by the bourgeois, who see Marxism as an escape from their own inevitable decline into the proletariat. They're terrified of the uncertainty of free-market capitalism, in which they can succeed - or fail.
The proletariat, on the other hand, look at what Marx proposed as a roadmap to communism, and recognized it for what it was: Not a change in their own living conditions (Mass slavery, anyone?), because they're a pipe welder, and pipes need to be welded in any society - all of that work is still there, waiting to be done, but under Marxism, there's never an escape.
Next, I'll consider what Marx actually wanted, as opposed to how he proposed we get there. In this, we'll be able to see precisely why Marx's roadmap failed as miserably as it did.
Marx wasn't opposed to capitalism, per se, but rather a state of economic affairs such that classism is supported or arises. In -particular- he was pissed about the "rentier" class.
While most of what he actually wrote about wasn't communism - the end goal - but rather the -mechanism- by which he thought to get there, let's evaluate the list of "common elements" of a Marxist society that was trying to evolve into communism, forwarded first by a quote:
"Of course, in the beginning, [the revolution] cannot be effected except by means of despotic inroads on the rights of property, and on the conditions of bourgeois production; by means of measures, therefore, which appear economically insufficient and untenable, but which, in the course of the movement, outstrip themselves, necessitate further inroads upon the old social order, and are unavoidable"
1. Abolition of property in land and application of all rents of land to public purposes.
2. A heavy progressive or graduated income tax.
3. Abolition of all rights of inheritance.
4. Confiscation of the property of all emigrants and rebels.
5. Centralisation of credit in the hands of the state, by means of a national bank with State capital and an exclusive monopoly.
6. Centralisation of the means of communication and transport in the hands of the State.
7. Extension of factories and instruments of production owned by the State; the bringing into cultivation of waste-lands, and the improvement of the soil generally in accordance with a common plan.
8. Equal liability of all to work. Establishment of industrial armies, especially for agriculture.
9. Combination of agriculture with manufacturing industries; gradual abolition of all the distinction between town and country by a more equable distribution of the populace over the country.
10. Free education for all children in public schools. Abolition of children’s factory labour in its present form. Combination of education with industrial production
And let's analyze each of these:
1.) I'll respond to this with Marx himself: "We by no means intend to abolish... personal appropriation of the products of labour, an appropriation that is made for the maintenance and reproduction of human life, and that leaves no surplus wherewith to command the labour of others. All that we want to do away with is the miserable character of this appropriation, under which the labourer lives merely to increase capital, and is allowed to live only in so far as the interest of the ruling class requires it."
Keep in mind the social conditions in the society Marx lived in; half-feudal, with remnants of the old noble classes still hanging around; in many places, the old nobility were the only ones able to afford factories in the first place, initially cementing their power structures further.
Compare this to modern nations, and ask yourself: Do free-market capitalists -really- disagree with the notion that Europe defends its old elite against competition? Isn't that what protectionism, which we oppose, -is-? Do we really disagree with the complaint Marx predicated this upon?
His implementation is shit. We'll see this repeatedly. I'll get to the -why- in the next post, but for now, let's just acknowledge he was addressing a real problem in a clumsy way.
2.) This is probably the dumbest item on the list. Marx chose income tax over wealth tax... why? Why did he choose to tax -production- rather than -rent-? In actual implementation, income tax has advantaged old wealth over new wealth, by depleting new wealth's influx of said wealth. (Hint: Marx thought he could eliminate rent, and rentier classes, thereby preventing this problem in the first place.)
3.) What Marx would not foresee is the proletariat acquiring sufficient wealth that these laws would disadvantage them even worse than it would the bourgeois, who could rely upon social connections and trust-funds-through-charities to avoid this. The bourgeois don't -need- inheritance, they have -much- subtler ways of sending their wealth through generations.
4.) Well this couldn't go badly at all.
5.) Remember how much Marx hated the rentier classes. Again, we'll get back to this item in the next post, and why it is a complete and total failure.
6.) Ditto.
7.) Like farming in Nevada deserts? Well, we've been there, we've done that, we're having water supply issues. It really wasn't that good an idea.
8.) This is a nice way of saying "Mass slavery." Marx thought the proletariat were already slaves, so in his mind, he was just extending this status to the bourgeois. This is one of those "despotic inroad" things.
9.) Well, capitalism already beat him to the first thing. As for the second... well, honestly I don't understand why he thinks it matters. Perhaps, in an era without instantaneous communication, it did.
10.) "Combination of education with industrial production." Heh.
So, that's kind of a loose roadmap of what Marx thought the revolution would look like.
So... why did this roadmap fail? Changing technology may have been part of it, a misunderstanding of free-market capitalism another, and the fact that Marx's vision for the proletariat was never the proletariat vision for the proletariat; indeed, Marx is favored primarily by the bourgeois, who see Marxism as an escape from their own inevitable decline into the proletariat. They're terrified of the uncertainty of free-market capitalism, in which they can succeed - or fail.
The proletariat, on the other hand, look at what Marx proposed as a roadmap to communism, and recognized it for what it was: Not a change in their own living conditions (Mass slavery, anyone?), because they're a pipe welder, and pipes need to be welded in any society - all of that work is still there, waiting to be done, but under Marxism, there's never an escape.
Next, I'll consider what Marx actually wanted, as opposed to how he proposed we get there. In this, we'll be able to see precisely why Marx's roadmap failed as miserably as it did.
A Radical Departure... Marx, Part I
So, I've been reading me some Marx. With a deliberate purpose, this time around: I was trying to divine Marx's fundamental principles.
See, I encountered this concept called the "Lumpenproletariat", which is essentially a derogatory term for the welfare class that Marx used. "Wait," I thought, "Wouldn't Marx be -for- the welfare class?" So I started reading.
Long story short: Nope. Marx regarded the welfare class as class security for the bourgeois. He expected them to be counter-revolutionary and vote for bourgeois socialists, who he describes thusly:
"The Socialistic bourgeois want all the advantages of modern social conditions without the struggles and dangers necessarily resulting therefrom. They desire the existing state of society, minus its revolutionary and disintegrating elements. They wish for a bourgeoisie without a proletariat. The bourgeoisie naturally conceives the world in which it is supreme to be the best; and bourgeois Socialism develops this comfortable conception into various more or less complete systems. In requiring the proletariat to carry out such a system, and thereby to march straightway into the social New Jerusalem, it but requires in reality, that the proletariat should remain within the bounds of existing society, but should cast away all its hateful ideas concerning the bourgeoisie... Bourgeois Socialism attains adequate expression when, and only when, it becomes a mere figure of speech.
Free trade: for the benefit of the working class. Protective duties: for the benefit of the working class. Prison Reform: for the benefit of the working class. This is the last word and the only seriously meant word of bourgeois socialism. It is summed up in the phrase: the bourgeois is a bourgeois — for the benefit of the working class."
With the possible exception of Free Trade, which has a habit of undermining the bourgeois, what political party does this sound like?
Ain't the Republicans.
What -are- the Republicans? Well, who are the proletariat?
The working class.
Which political party is dominated by the beliefs of the working class?
Now, this is not to say that the Republicans -aren't- largely run by the upper classes; this is true as much of the Republicans as the Democrats. The difference is that Republicans do a much better job of reflecting the wishes of their constituents. The Tea Party represented the proletariat, the working classes, more truly than had been seen in a while; they weren't quite -welcomed- by the Republicans, but neither were they turned away.
I'll leave further ramifications of the Republicans being more proletariat in nature, and the Democrats more bourgeoisie in nature, to the reader.
I'll close with a quote from Marx, and my simplistic translation:
"The bourgeoisie finds itself involved in a constant battle. At first with the aristocracy; later on, with those portions of the bourgeoisie itself, whose interests have become antagonistic to the progress of industry."
The bourgeois will stop promoting free-market capitalism, and start opposing it, when capitalism stops benefiting them.
See, I encountered this concept called the "Lumpenproletariat", which is essentially a derogatory term for the welfare class that Marx used. "Wait," I thought, "Wouldn't Marx be -for- the welfare class?" So I started reading.
Long story short: Nope. Marx regarded the welfare class as class security for the bourgeois. He expected them to be counter-revolutionary and vote for bourgeois socialists, who he describes thusly:
"The Socialistic bourgeois want all the advantages of modern social conditions without the struggles and dangers necessarily resulting therefrom. They desire the existing state of society, minus its revolutionary and disintegrating elements. They wish for a bourgeoisie without a proletariat. The bourgeoisie naturally conceives the world in which it is supreme to be the best; and bourgeois Socialism develops this comfortable conception into various more or less complete systems. In requiring the proletariat to carry out such a system, and thereby to march straightway into the social New Jerusalem, it but requires in reality, that the proletariat should remain within the bounds of existing society, but should cast away all its hateful ideas concerning the bourgeoisie... Bourgeois Socialism attains adequate expression when, and only when, it becomes a mere figure of speech.
Free trade: for the benefit of the working class. Protective duties: for the benefit of the working class. Prison Reform: for the benefit of the working class. This is the last word and the only seriously meant word of bourgeois socialism. It is summed up in the phrase: the bourgeois is a bourgeois — for the benefit of the working class."
With the possible exception of Free Trade, which has a habit of undermining the bourgeois, what political party does this sound like?
Ain't the Republicans.
What -are- the Republicans? Well, who are the proletariat?
The working class.
Which political party is dominated by the beliefs of the working class?
Now, this is not to say that the Republicans -aren't- largely run by the upper classes; this is true as much of the Republicans as the Democrats. The difference is that Republicans do a much better job of reflecting the wishes of their constituents. The Tea Party represented the proletariat, the working classes, more truly than had been seen in a while; they weren't quite -welcomed- by the Republicans, but neither were they turned away.
I'll leave further ramifications of the Republicans being more proletariat in nature, and the Democrats more bourgeoisie in nature, to the reader.
I'll close with a quote from Marx, and my simplistic translation:
"The bourgeoisie finds itself involved in a constant battle. At first with the aristocracy; later on, with those portions of the bourgeoisie itself, whose interests have become antagonistic to the progress of industry."
The bourgeois will stop promoting free-market capitalism, and start opposing it, when capitalism stops benefiting them.
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