The people always want to be free but they are their own worst jailors. If everyone can do what they want in their own best interest, a ruthless race to the bottom is assured. If we know others face no restraint we won’t exercise restraint ourselves in the lifelong competition for food, shelter, money, mates, and prestige.
The information age has outstripped the ability of traditional social technologies to limit individual choice in ways that yield a net benefit to everyone. It is now too easy for individuals to circumvent the customs and soothing myths that create an illusion of harmony. They can get very accurate real-time information to optimize their self-interest whether in the job market or the dating market.
When everyone has access to networks, no one wants to be the 5 that settles for a 5 in life and so all the rest is a game to outmaneuver and sabotage one’s way to a better spot in the great game of musical chairs as society falls apart. Instead of getting things done, most energies are devoted to finding out who has to jump on the grenade and take one for the team. Then arises even more social strife when the despised loser nominated as grenade jumper refuses to jump.
It is impossible to reinstate rules that no one really wants to practice in real life. Nor does acting as if older customs still existed do anything to resurrect them. These systems existed by being airtight constructs that very few could successfully defect from. With that seal broken, they are imaginary fancies.
So the question lies in how to adapt to the problems of modernity in an efficient and realistic manner.
Policy in most other areas of public life suggests we need to arrest the relentless race to the bottom at strategic points.
Without safety nets like EBT cards, soup kitchens, shelters, and minimum wage there would be bread riots and people working for less than a dollar an hour to be able to afford just enough white flour and rice to keep them alive. Desperate people with nothing to lose would force anyone with surplus wealth to live in compounds guarded by private armies.(aka the 3rd world)
Without solid rules, there would be no 40 hour work week with a cushy weekend for those lucky enough to have jobs. There would be no holidays, paid vacation, or benefits. Many would be simply be worked to death. The marketplace would have no use for useless old people sticking around.
Without free association and strict controls on real estate, bidding wars impoverish even the highest paid workers, ensuring they never have kids and their high IQ breed goes extinct.
Without land forcibly set aside for parks, every urban area would be an unbroken sea of grey and all old buildings would be demolished to make way for cookie cutter tenements.
Without force itself, there would be no taxes, nor any polity at all.
The best kind of rules aren’t heavy-handed, stupid rules no one wants like forcing all American women to wear hijabs or banning plastic straws.
The rules that work best are those that force people to do what they’d like to do anyway by using the authority of the state to make sure everyone else has to do it.
No one could afford to pay taxes if the IRS didn’t maintain an airtight seal with extreme aggression and precision. Otherwise any sucker who paid up would live at a disadvantage to everyone else.
The state is truly legitimate when it becomes not just a parasitic occupying army but a broker that relieves the tensions in the endless struggles between humans. Without such an intervention, the natural state of man is Malthusian squalor. Hobbes was right.
We can see that the legitimacy of our present system really went into steep decline right as it broke the back of the old labor left that Bernie Sanders tried and failed to resurrect. The negotiation between labor and the state ended, and with it their role as a broker sustaining balance for the average worker.
Ever since, there has been a wasteland of open borders, free trade, corporate welfare, and parasitic wars to enrich the military industrial complex.
I am critical of corrupt unions and of the borderline communists who did their part to bring a hostile reaction down on them, but the “cure,” I think, has proven far worse than the disease. When the duty of easing tensions is not fulfilled, a swelling volcano cone rises up under the ruler’s feet.
The result of these modern pressures is both sides of the political spectrum now demand a return to authoritarianism. Most people, whatever their politics, understand intuitively that their freedom and empowerment have enslaved them to one another more than ever, the great game board a terrible gridlock of collective checkmate further than the eye can see. It has become self-evident that any kind of modern society requires the intervention of a strong state at carefully chosen points.
When everyone has excellent information and mobility they are forced to beg for a legitimate ruler to mediate between the people on earth and the powers of heaven.
FORWARD BASE B 
8 replies on “There’s No Real Freedom Without Authority”
And from a micro-economic perspective, the institution of marriage can’t exist without male authority/ie patriarchy
It is my fear that the institution of marriage is one of those plastic straw rules in the modern world. Marriage is a compromise for both sexes. Every woman wants a sparkly vampire/werewolf hybrid all to herself. Every man wants to have a harem of hundreds of supermodels. When everyone has access to worldwide information, the ruler is almost forced to adopt a eugenic policy that ensures desirable cooperating men have access to mates and the rest get heavily subsidized alcohol, weed, porn, and video games for the rest of their lives.
Libertarians never addressed any of these points, all they had was low-IQ platitudes.
Another great article. I do believe that it’s possible to move the country in a better direction with less drastic means than a Dictator like the Romans used to put in charge in times of great stress. By getting rid of some of the Judges decisions that vested vast amounts of power in the city centers in the 1960’s,[no voting requirements, no regional representation in the State legislatures, etc.]. This can be done without a Constitutional amendment with only a majority in the House and Senate. Details here.
http://thezman.com/wordpress/?p=14728#comment-70220
Of course having a Dictator would be faster and give great pleasure as the mighty are crushed but the same power could be used to crush us also. Better to slowly work on it.
“…It is my fear that the institution of marriage is one of those plastic straw rules in the modern world. Marriage is a compromise for both sexes. Every woman wants a sparkly vampire/werewolf hybrid all to herself. Every man wants to have a harem of hundreds of supermodels…”
Sigh…it’s really bad and it will get worse. I have a solution for that also that could work but again it will be slow. Add a new class of marriage. If you want a regular marriage like now then fine you can have it but add a more expensive class that followed the old rules. No no fault. If the wife leaves the husband the breadwinner gets the kids. Old, old, old school marriage. It would be placed outside of the family court system so it won’t be contaminated. Over time Women, I bet, would not be satisfied with “cheap” marriages. It should cost a couple thousand dollars. You could say it was for court cost but the real reason is to make a no-fault marriage look cheap. People could still get a Vegas divorce if they both agreed that life was hell together but if one refused they would not be on the hook for child support or any of the other legal requirements.
“…I am critical of corrupt unions and of the borderline communists who did their part to bring a hostile reaction down on them…”
I agree. I really, really don’t like Unions all that much but…the auto Unions didn’t run the auto companies. The guys who ran the auto companies were stiffing their pockets with cash as fast as they could while not investing in the continuation of the business. The Union reps saw this and said,”well you pay us too”, The execs didn’t have to pay them what they asked but they wanted that cash so bad that they agreed anyways knowing it would eventually destroy the companies. The Unions didn’t control the situation and were;’t paid to do so. The fall of the auto companies lies fully with the execs who ran them.
I think, the Germans have a better Union system where the Union is actually part of the board and are informed of the actual running of the company. Its a great advantage because they can squeeze a little more out of the company but at the same time they know when the company is really in trouble and when to back off and cut cost for everyone’s sake. Unions in the US assume, for good reason, that everything management tells them is a lie.
McCain is dead!!! YAY!!!
Giovanni Dannato — the Falcon — is a social micromanager with a great eye for detail. But he lacks, I think, real world experience that would doom a lot of his ideas.
Don’t get me wrong, Giovanni — the Lord of Introverts — is brilliant. When he writes,
Without free association and strict controls on real estate, bidding wars impoverish even the highest paid workers, ensuring they never have kids and their high IQ breed goes extinct.
he underestimates the will of intelligence to survive, and the ruthless steps it takes to ensure this happens. Men and women alike will make sure their genes march on into the future, but Giovanni thinks this is a delicate process that requires the nudge of the State, practically. Where he is righter is when he writes,
The result of these modern pressures is both sides of the political spectrum now demand a return to authoritarianism.
But I think it is a little more than that. There is a gridlock and a great pushing and pulling in society for control over its overall destiny. The Left wants its ultimate progressive ideals quickly met, the Right wants a return to a kind of ordered dominance in which the Pyramid of Society is sacredly enshrined. Where both clash, they see that sufficient force could quell their opposite numbers without having to resort to the messy functions of the supreme courts and the legislatures.
In the event of a Dictator, all parties would lose. The Dictator’s personal preferences would eventually become paramount over time, as Napoleon’s did in post-Directory France and Hitler’s did in post-Second Reich Germany. Giovanni sees himself — the Falcon perceives its beautiful wings — as smarter than the rest, and he is right, but in his blog he manifests a Dictator’s vainglory for the purposes of ideas which have no tenable hold onto the Earth, talons slipping off its purchase every time.
Shado.
Sorcery God, is that you?
“…but Giovanni thinks this is a delicate process that requires the nudge of the State, practically. Where he is righter is when he writes,
The result of these modern pressures is both sides of the political spectrum now demand a return to authoritarianism…”
It seems to me that you’ve missed the point that the State is the problem. That without the massive State intervention we would naturally default to a more tradition lifestyle. Women would be forced to to take care of their kids. The Left has always loved the coercion of the State and the Right wants power to get some of it off their backs. [I’m not naive about the Rights, and the Lefts, business Men’s wish to monopolize everything that moves and compel everyone to but it at their inflated price. So there is that section of the government the Right loves.]