I deleted a lot of quibbling around the edge cases. I think you are putting into ‘the Enlightenments’ mouth a lot of stuff I’m reasonable confident its architects had no opinion on(3 branches specifically, a triumph?!), but that’s whatever, it’s not the main focus here.
It feels like this is incomplete unless you answer the central paradox, yeah? Like, don’t skate past it. if concentration of power is bad, and must be prevented...
What can do that? Power is powerful, yeah? So a greater power is necessary to prevent bad actors from concentrating it? But this greater power itself (classically, in this sort of thing a state) is/was concentrated. If I’m not free to trade with Elon how much less free am I to trade with the CIA? Isn’t that, very obviously, also a bad thing that needs to be prevented/removed? But what could possibly...
IE, if I trust you to make sure Elon can’t have too much power, then you have more power than he does, and who makes me safe around you? Aren’t you just large Elon (Elonger?) at that point?
(if your answer contains the words ‘self limiting’ you lose so many quatloos.)
It’s not that, like, folks are ignorant of the power = power over theory that you are proposing. It’s an old and well trodden path. But history has been at least a little kind to the idea that I’m safer with a buff guy next door than with a department of guys in charge of making sure no one gets too jacked inspecting my spoon weight to make sure I’m not surreptitiously bulking out.
I think you may have sliced this too fine. Like, the argument needs to be developed more to exist as more than a kind of ‘oh, this is what this person believes’. I can’t really agree or disagree, to say nothing of the libertarians you are attempting to convince.
Concentration of Power can’t be ‘bad’ or ‘good’ unless you are a religious sort, and God is assigning scores. Otherwise, it has to be relative, right? It is ‘better’ or ‘worse’ than some other thing. In the absence of that other thing (that is, the thing we would use to make there not be billionaires), saying that they are ‘bad’ is meaningless.
If you want libertarians to pay attention to why people might think concentrating power is wrong, there needs to be a whole argument. Concentrating power is wronger THAN (this specific way of preventing power from being concentrated). Otherwise its people who think rain is unpleasant. “Sure...anyway...”
IE, if I trust you to make sure Elon can’t have too much power, then you have more power than he does, and who makes me safe around you? Aren’t you just large Elon (Elonger?) at that point?
Not if your power is not fungible, which is the point (and also how separation of powers work). You have power greater than Elon but only on one thing. The problem is that Elon has ALL kinds of power, because he has lots of money, and everyone likes money, so Elon can simply pay people to do what he asks and then he transforms money into power.
Yeah, exactly. Everyone has a piece that allows them to have power over other in certain circumstances, but also isn’t enough on its own to control everything.
Thanks for your comment! (I quoted you in bold, and me in italics.)
I think you are putting into ‘the Enlightenments’ mouth a lot of stuff I’m reasonable confident its architects had no opinion on(3 branches specifically, a triumph?!)
I am not sure what you mean by “a triumph”. But yes, 3 branches specifically comes from the Enlightenment! It’s from Montesquieu’s “De l’esprit des lois” from 1748.
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It feels like this is incomplete unless you answer the central paradox, yeah? Like, don’t skate past it. if concentration of power is bad, and must be prevented...
What can do that?
IE, if I trust you to make sure Elon can’t have too much power, then you have more power than he does, and who makes me safe around you? Aren’t you just large Elon (Elonger?) at that point?
In the article, I explained what the current way to mitigate this problem, which we have used to this day: Separation of Powers and comes from the Enlightenment.
A system where no individual has more power than you by ensuring that no one can deploy the collective might against you unilaterally.
I am not even saying that this is a good way to mitigate it. I am just describing that this is how we do it. I explained specifically that I am not talking about solutions:
This essay is not about solutions. So in itself, it is not a critique of libertarianism or our current systems, given that I am not presenting an alternative.
I am not sure what more I can say to make this clearer.
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Concentration of Power can’t be ‘bad’ or ‘good’ unless you are a religious sort, and God is assigning scores. Otherwise, it has to be relative, right? It is ‘better’ or ‘worse’ than some other thing. In the absence of that other thing (that is, the thing we would use to make there not be billionaires), saying that they are ‘bad’ is meaningless.
I don’t care more about word policing
If you want libertarians to pay attention to why people might think concentrating power is wrong, there needs to be a whole argument. Concentrating power is wronger THAN (this specific way of preventing power from being concentrated). Otherwise its people who think rain is unpleasant. “Sure...anyway...”
I mean, this is still addressed in the conclusion.
I wanted to write a direct criticism of libertarianism, but I needed to make the point about power first.
The whole argument is coming later, but one sub-argument is this dynamic that is often unclear. So I write about the dynamic, and then the whole argument.
IE, if I trust you to make sure Elon can’t have too much power, then you have more power than he does, and who makes me safe around you? Aren’t you just large Elon (Elonger?) at that point?
Coalition politics is one approach here (and voting systems that enable it). If a coalition of Alon, Blon, Clon, and Dlon forms to keep Elon from getting too much power, then none of A–D necessarily have more power than E. If Clon gets full of himself next, then Alon, Blon, and Dlon can still coalesce against him.
You can gerrymander a result from that by changing whether you’re a lumper or a splitter. Is Wal-Mart a single entity or is it a coalition of groups that have some similar goals but who also sometimes work against each other? Is a political party? Is “capitalists” a coalition and can we say that Elon Musk is in a coalition with other rich people?
It is too decentralized to qualify as the kind of centralized power that WalterL was talking about, and probably too decentralized to fit the concerns that Gabriel expressed.
I deleted a lot of quibbling around the edge cases. I think you are putting into ‘the Enlightenments’ mouth a lot of stuff I’m reasonable confident its architects had no opinion on(3 branches specifically, a triumph?!), but that’s whatever, it’s not the main focus here.
It feels like this is incomplete unless you answer the central paradox, yeah? Like, don’t skate past it. if concentration of power is bad, and must be prevented...
What can do that? Power is powerful, yeah? So a greater power is necessary to prevent bad actors from concentrating it? But this greater power itself (classically, in this sort of thing a state) is/was concentrated. If I’m not free to trade with Elon how much less free am I to trade with the CIA? Isn’t that, very obviously, also a bad thing that needs to be prevented/removed? But what could possibly...
IE, if I trust you to make sure Elon can’t have too much power, then you have more power than he does, and who makes me safe around you? Aren’t you just large Elon (Elonger?) at that point?
(if your answer contains the words ‘self limiting’ you lose so many quatloos.)
It’s not that, like, folks are ignorant of the power = power over theory that you are proposing. It’s an old and well trodden path. But history has been at least a little kind to the idea that I’m safer with a buff guy next door than with a department of guys in charge of making sure no one gets too jacked inspecting my spoon weight to make sure I’m not surreptitiously bulking out.
I think you may have sliced this too fine. Like, the argument needs to be developed more to exist as more than a kind of ‘oh, this is what this person believes’. I can’t really agree or disagree, to say nothing of the libertarians you are attempting to convince.
Concentration of Power can’t be ‘bad’ or ‘good’ unless you are a religious sort, and God is assigning scores. Otherwise, it has to be relative, right? It is ‘better’ or ‘worse’ than some other thing. In the absence of that other thing (that is, the thing we would use to make there not be billionaires), saying that they are ‘bad’ is meaningless.
If you want libertarians to pay attention to why people might think concentrating power is wrong, there needs to be a whole argument. Concentrating power is wronger THAN (this specific way of preventing power from being concentrated). Otherwise its people who think rain is unpleasant. “Sure...anyway...”
Not if your power is not fungible, which is the point (and also how separation of powers work). You have power greater than Elon but only on one thing. The problem is that Elon has ALL kinds of power, because he has lots of money, and everyone likes money, so Elon can simply pay people to do what he asks and then he transforms money into power.
This is a big part of the insight behind separation of powers.
Yeah, exactly. Everyone has a piece that allows them to have power over other in certain circumstances, but also isn’t enough on its own to control everything.
Thanks for your comment! (I quoted you in bold, and me in italics.)
I am not sure what you mean by “a triumph”. But yes, 3 branches specifically comes from the Enlightenment! It’s from Montesquieu’s “De l’esprit des lois” from 1748.
-
In the article, I explained what the current way to mitigate this problem, which we have used to this day: Separation of Powers and comes from the Enlightenment.
A system where no individual has more power than you by ensuring that no one can deploy the collective might against you unilaterally.
I am not even saying that this is a good way to mitigate it. I am just describing that this is how we do it. I explained specifically that I am not talking about solutions:
I am not sure what more I can say to make this clearer.
-
I don’t care more about word policing
I mean, this is still addressed in the conclusion.
The whole argument is coming later, but one sub-argument is this dynamic that is often unclear. So I write about the dynamic, and then the whole argument.
Coalition politics is one approach here (and voting systems that enable it). If a coalition of Alon, Blon, Clon, and Dlon forms to keep Elon from getting too much power, then none of A–D necessarily have more power than E. If Clon gets full of himself next, then Alon, Blon, and Dlon can still coalesce against him.
You can gerrymander a result from that by changing whether you’re a lumper or a splitter. Is Wal-Mart a single entity or is it a coalition of groups that have some similar goals but who also sometimes work against each other? Is a political party? Is “capitalists” a coalition and can we say that Elon Musk is in a coalition with other rich people?
No. Amish society is pretty successful at stopping concentrations of power, mostly via peer pressure.
Why does “Amish society” not then count as a greater power?
It is too decentralized to qualify as the kind of centralized power that WalterL was talking about, and probably too decentralized to fit the concerns that Gabriel expressed.