I think they’re committing the far too common sin of conflating coordination systems without objective physical reality or ontological primacy with lies. In their defense, I’ll note that even the writers of the Constitution may have been doing the same thing but in reverse: using the royal “We” to refer to some nebulous conglomeration of residents on American territory instead of the more concrete and prosaic truth, that it was a far smaller group of men with varying degrees of endorsement from their nominal constituencies, in the midst of a civil war.
The American Constitution is a “lie” in the same way that paper or digital money is a “lie”. There is no objective value of a string of digits in your bank’s servers. But objective value (if that’s a thing) is often less important than the far more subjective but just-as-real ability to coordinate with other people. Money serves as a hard-to-counterfeit proof of your control over assets, with the weight of the State backing you up in extremis. Similarly, the Constitution has the weight of centuries and consensus behind it (and, nominally, an army).
It creates a bright line in the sand: certain actions that are “unconstitutional” are recognized by everyone as being unacceptable and necessary to contest with legal or physical force. Even better? The Consistution is common knowledge, and knowledge of common knowledge. If someone breaches it, then, at least in theory, everyone knows they’ve done something bad, and the person breaching it won’t even have plausible deniability about the matter.
Of course, it’s hardly that simple in practice, but the courts and executive exist to interpret and modify the document and keep it relevant, while acknowledging that until due process was used to modify it (an Amendment), it remains paramount. There might be legal kerfuffles about state vs federal rights, but only the maximally partisan would look at a (hypothetical example) of a ruling president putting on a crown and abolishing elections as Constitutional.
In other words, the Constitution is a Schelling point, a bright line in the sand or a river that separates (many) bad actions from the good. It’s not perfect, but it works well enough in practice. Other countries, such as the UK, have an “unwritten” Constitution, a system of both legibible/verbal and implicit tradition that is held as a check to the vagaries of politics or law.
Thanks. I think I agree with everything you said. But do you agree or disagree with the Psmiths’ conclusion that “you can’t say that; you can’t point it out; the trick doesn’t work if you tell the marks it’s happening”?
Some equilibria are far more stable than others. You can go up to a group of people and argue that money is “fake” or a “social construct”, and depending on their sophistication, they may or may not be able to argue back, but they’re also very unlikely to just give you their dollars. Similarly, the US Constitution is well entrenched, though hardly impossible to overturn. I recall that the majority of lawmakers have legal backgrounds, and thus would not be strangers to such arguments.
I think they’re committing the far too common sin of conflating coordination systems without objective physical reality or ontological primacy with lies. In their defense, I’ll note that even the writers of the Constitution may have been doing the same thing but in reverse: using the royal “We” to refer to some nebulous conglomeration of residents on American territory instead of the more concrete and prosaic truth, that it was a far smaller group of men with varying degrees of endorsement from their nominal constituencies, in the midst of a civil war.
The American Constitution is a “lie” in the same way that paper or digital money is a “lie”. There is no objective value of a string of digits in your bank’s servers. But objective value (if that’s a thing) is often less important than the far more subjective but just-as-real ability to coordinate with other people. Money serves as a hard-to-counterfeit proof of your control over assets, with the weight of the State backing you up in extremis. Similarly, the Constitution has the weight of centuries and consensus behind it (and, nominally, an army).
It creates a bright line in the sand: certain actions that are “unconstitutional” are recognized by everyone as being unacceptable and necessary to contest with legal or physical force. Even better? The Consistution is common knowledge, and knowledge of common knowledge. If someone breaches it, then, at least in theory, everyone knows they’ve done something bad, and the person breaching it won’t even have plausible deniability about the matter.
Of course, it’s hardly that simple in practice, but the courts and executive exist to interpret and modify the document and keep it relevant, while acknowledging that until due process was used to modify it (an Amendment), it remains paramount. There might be legal kerfuffles about state vs federal rights, but only the maximally partisan would look at a (hypothetical example) of a ruling president putting on a crown and abolishing elections as Constitutional.
In other words, the Constitution is a Schelling point, a bright line in the sand or a river that separates (many) bad actions from the good. It’s not perfect, but it works well enough in practice. Other countries, such as the UK, have an “unwritten” Constitution, a system of both legibible/verbal and implicit tradition that is held as a check to the vagaries of politics or law.
Thanks. I think I agree with everything you said. But do you agree or disagree with the Psmiths’ conclusion that “you can’t say that; you can’t point it out; the trick doesn’t work if you tell the marks it’s happening”?
Some equilibria are far more stable than others. You can go up to a group of people and argue that money is “fake” or a “social construct”, and depending on their sophistication, they may or may not be able to argue back, but they’re also very unlikely to just give you their dollars. Similarly, the US Constitution is well entrenched, though hardly impossible to overturn. I recall that the majority of lawmakers have legal backgrounds, and thus would not be strangers to such arguments.
I gather that you disagree with the Psmiths’ conclusion.
Can you think of any examples of similar shared fictions that are much more unstable?