I think the political spectrum doesn’t quite line up with this. For basically any point on the compass, there will be things that should be managed in a decentralized way following Commercial precepts, and things that should be managed in a centralized way following Guardian precepts. The question is just which activities fall in which bucket. [Is medicine a good that should be bought and sold like any other, or largesse which should be dispensed?]
But some sets of choices will be more synergistic or more contradictory than others; applying this technique to the political spectrum might identify a few good clusters and a bunch of worse hybrids. [Given that politics is mostly about coalitions and loyalty instead of technical coherence, my guess is this won’t be super useful.]
The political spectrum is quite orthogonal to this. You’ve got communist Guardians who want to protect the means of production and share out all the goods along with Commercial communists who think that if we just sit down and decide to all work together we’ll come up with plans that will equally enrich everyone. Or fundamentalist Guardians who just want to ensure everyone’s purity along with Commercial fundamentalists who are arguing among themselves as to what’s the best way of interpreting a single word in the Bible.
It might be more useful to compare this with Scout and Soldier mindsets, which seem to be pointing in vaguely the same direction, but in the area of epistemics, rather than morals.
So, I think firms that sell weapons to individuals and governments broadly fall under the Commercial cluster; following the Guardian precepts as such a firm is probably a mistake. Note that these are ethical standards, so you could look at any individual firm and ask whether they’re following the precepts in particular cases. I suspect that most cases of war profiteering are a failure on the buyer’s side, at least as far as this view is concerned.
There is something interesting here with the question of largesse—traditionally, the Guardian’s role is to take resources from their territory and then spend those resources on buying loyalty / public goods. The military-industrial-complex is often this sort of largesse operation, but it’s not obvious that it should be. [Similarly, Jacobs talks a lot about how government meddling in agriculture is probably downstream of agriculture’s traditional role as powerbase for Guardians, but they tend to have lower yields / be worse at it than Commercial agriculture.]
There’s also this point that—the Guardians do need to be involved in trading! Even if the Baron isn’t supposed to engage in business himself, he still has things he needs to buy, taxes he needs to collect, and so on. This means there needs to be some sort of agent who is able to engage in trade, and presumably does so mostly using the Commercial precepts, and hopefully with a lessening of the implicit threat.
this seems to me to excessively dimensionality-reduce the political spectrum. for example, where does war profiteering fit?
I think the political spectrum doesn’t quite line up with this. For basically any point on the compass, there will be things that should be managed in a decentralized way following Commercial precepts, and things that should be managed in a centralized way following Guardian precepts. The question is just which activities fall in which bucket. [Is medicine a good that should be bought and sold like any other, or largesse which should be dispensed?]
But some sets of choices will be more synergistic or more contradictory than others; applying this technique to the political spectrum might identify a few good clusters and a bunch of worse hybrids. [Given that politics is mostly about coalitions and loyalty instead of technical coherence, my guess is this won’t be super useful.]
The political spectrum is quite orthogonal to this. You’ve got communist Guardians who want to protect the means of production and share out all the goods along with Commercial communists who think that if we just sit down and decide to all work together we’ll come up with plans that will equally enrich everyone. Or fundamentalist Guardians who just want to ensure everyone’s purity along with Commercial fundamentalists who are arguing among themselves as to what’s the best way of interpreting a single word in the Bible.
It might be more useful to compare this with Scout and Soldier mindsets, which seem to be pointing in vaguely the same direction, but in the area of epistemics, rather than morals.
ah, then maybe I’m misunderstanding at a deeper level. I will abstain from further comment for now.
So, I think firms that sell weapons to individuals and governments broadly fall under the Commercial cluster; following the Guardian precepts as such a firm is probably a mistake. Note that these are ethical standards, so you could look at any individual firm and ask whether they’re following the precepts in particular cases. I suspect that most cases of war profiteering are a failure on the buyer’s side, at least as far as this view is concerned.
There is something interesting here with the question of largesse—traditionally, the Guardian’s role is to take resources from their territory and then spend those resources on buying loyalty / public goods. The military-industrial-complex is often this sort of largesse operation, but it’s not obvious that it should be. [Similarly, Jacobs talks a lot about how government meddling in agriculture is probably downstream of agriculture’s traditional role as powerbase for Guardians, but they tend to have lower yields / be worse at it than Commercial agriculture.]
There’s also this point that—the Guardians do need to be involved in trading! Even if the Baron isn’t supposed to engage in business himself, he still has things he needs to buy, taxes he needs to collect, and so on. This means there needs to be some sort of agent who is able to engage in trade, and presumably does so mostly using the Commercial precepts, and hopefully with a lessening of the implicit threat.