Democracy and individual liberty; decentralised prediction markets
A pair of links I found recently (via Marginal Revolution) and haven’t found on LW:
http://www.cato-unbound.org/2014/03/10/mark-s-weiner/paradox-modern-individualism
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=475054.0;all
The former discusses liberty in the context of clannish behaviour, arguing that it is the existence of the institutions of modern democracies that allows people individual liberty, as it precludes the need for clan structures (extended family groups, crime syndicates, patronage networks and such).
The latter is a author’s summary of a white paper on the subject of decentralised Bitcoin prediction markets with a link to the paper.
Historically it was the other way around. Societies that were already not-so-clannish were the ones that tended to make governments that defended individual liberty. Southeast England and the Dutch Lowlands were already far ahead on the path of eliminating clans before the states became strong and centralized.
I’d say that the above summary of the article is incorrect. The article poses that a strong, central state is essential for the elimination of clan structures as the fundamental organizing principle of a society. It also states that the concept of individual liberty we have today could only develop under such strong, central states, and that strong, central states are essential to the preservation of that liberty. The ‘natural’ inclination of any society is to gravitate back towards clannish behavior, and the role of the state is to prevent that kind of back-sliding.
The key in this story is not the development of modern democracies, but the development of strong, central states that superseded clan structures, regardless of how liberal those strong governments actually are. While the author doesn’t state this explicitly, the reason is that conflicts in these cases are not decided by clan strength, but rather by a (nominally) impartial, superior party—whether that’s the rule of law or the arbitrary decisions of a ruler.
In that sense, the definition of a strong, central state becomes any institution that rules the clans without being (too) influenced by their relative strength, and that is not beholden to clan politics for its power. This does fit with a lot of the historical knowledge we have.
What timeframe are you talking about? Magna Carta? Before? After?
900s − 1100s, possibly even as early as the 800s.
http://hbdchick.wordpress.com/2013/11/25/kinship-the-state-and-violence/
If there’s any large organization you can credit for clannism (and hence violence) reduction, it might actually be the Catholic Church, because they were the ones with the biggest and earliest hardon for breaking up clans. Then again, nobody yet knows why it was the Dutch and the Anglo-Saxons that followed the Church’s ideas so faithfully …
Yeah, and the timeline doesn’t work either. England and her American colonies had a large degree of individual liberty long before becoming “modern democracies.”