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Thread: If We Want "Unity," Government Must Become Weaker

  1. #1
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    If We Want "Unity," Government Must Become Weaker

    https://mises.org/blog/if-we-want-un...-become-weaker

    TAGS Decentralization and SecessionMonopoly and CompetitionPolitical Theory
    06/23/2017Ryan McMaken
    Last week, a gunman opened fire on a group of Republican members of Congress. Letters sent by the gunman to his local newspaper suggest he was obsessed with Republican policies, and concluded that Donald Trump "Has Destroyed Our Democracy" [sic] and that "It's Time to Destroy Trump and Co."
    In the wake of the attack, there have been the usual predictable calls for "unity." These calls, of course, fail to address a central reason why unity appears to be a problem, and why many feel the need to manufacture it where it does not exist.
    Fear of a "Foreign" Majority

    In the wake of the 2016 election, it was not uncommon to read in both the mainstream media, and in social media, predictions that with a Republican victory, a fascist police state would soon be bringing the hammer down on all the enemies of the regime. In this case, "enemy of the regime" was anyone other than the alleged troglodytes who had voted Trump into office.
    Nine months later, we're still waiting on that border wall and on that Obamacare repeal, and on that tax cut. In fact, all we're likely to get is more government spending, more deficits, and more war. In short, the new administration will look a lot like the old one.
    Nevertheless, there are some significant changes that are likely to take place. The administration may refrain from forcing nuns to pay for someone else's birth control, and environmental regulations are likely to be loosened. The general tenor of the federal government will shift slightly more toward favoring members of a center-right coalition of interest groups. The change, however, is anything but radical.
    Nevertheless, any change that disfavors one's own preferred interest groups and ideological groups is a real problem for those who find themselves on the outside of the winning coalitions.
    Many voters and activists who now feel powerless saw themselves as being in the majority ruling coalition while Obama was in power. Now that he's been replaced by Trump, the fear of abuse at the hands of the new ruling majority shifts to others.
    While the consequences are probably less significant than many imagine, there will be real winners and losers over the next four years compared to what was the case under the previous administration.
    Calling for unity and asking people to play nice will do nothing to eliminate this reality. Those groups that saw themselves as being on the outside during the Obama years are all to familiar with what many Obama supporters are now feeling.
    Indeed, living among the minority that finds itself out of power is an unpleasant experience in any context.
    Ludwig von Mises wrote on this phenomenon. He couched it within the context of immigration, but the lesson learned here applies to any situation in which one group manages to wrest control of government power away from another group:
    As long as the state is granted the vast powers which it has today and which public opinion considers to be its right, the thought of having to live in a state whose government is in the hands of members of a foreign nationality is positively terrifying. It is frightful to live in a state in which at every turn one is exposed to persecution—masquerading under the guise of justice—by a ruling majority. It is dreadful to be handicapped even as a child in school on account of one’s nationality and to be in the wrong before every judicial and administrative authority because one belongs to a national minority.
    Mises speaks of nationality in this example, but with some modest changes to the text, we could apply this illustration to any number of other examples. It is not necessary for a potentially dangerous majority to be composed of foreigners. Mises might just as easily have said that "the thought of having to live in a state whose government is in the hands of members of a competing ideology is positively terrifying."
    For many, the fear is real, and is indeed analogous to those who fear changes in government control fostered by migrations. Consider another passage by Mises:
    The entire nation, however, is unanimous in fearing inundation by foreigners. The present inhabitants of these favored lands fear that some day they could be reduced to a minority in their own country and that they would then have to suffer all the horrors of national persecution...
    In this case, Mises might have said that "Californians are unanimous in fearing a takeover by Southerners and Christians ... and they fear that some day they could be reduced to a minority in their own country."
    The analogy is a bit clunky here, but it's not difficult to see the similarity. For most California voters (59 percent of whom voted for Clinton), there is a real fear that the levers of power in Washington really will be "inundated" by members of the so-called "basket of deplorables" that Hillary Clinton spoke of. In the minds of West Coast leftists, the thought of government under the control of evangelical Christians from Texas really is something to fear.
    This same leftist might then imagine himself personally subject to the whims of his rightwing enemies in this manner as described my Mises:
    And when he appears before a magistrate or any administrative official as a party to a suit or petition, he stands before men whose political thought is foreign to him because it developed under different ideological influences. ... At every turn the member of a national minority is made to feel that he lives among strangers and that he is, even if the letter of the law denies it, a second-class citizen.
    Again, Mises is speaking of ethnic and linguistic differences, but the observation applies to any sort of minority subject to a majority group with differing values.
    Now, we can debate as to how much a leftist from Silicon Valley might "suffer" under the alleged yoke of a rightwing regime that might cut taxes.
    The perception of the danger posed by "the other" is very real, however. Nor is this limited to leftists, of course. Sarah Palin's declaration that there are "real Americans" (i.e., conservatives) who are to be contrasted with presumably fake Americans highlights the tendency to simply declare other ideological groups to be essentially "foreign" to one's own interests. The fact that these "others" happen to speak the same language or be born in the same legal jurisdiction does little to erase the perception of a rift between different groups.
    It's not surprising then, that the issue of "unity" appears to be a growing problem.
    If the members of competing political groups aren't "real Americans" or are "deplorables," then one should hardly be motivated to pursue unity with such people. Many may even conclude that violence is necessary.
    How to Address the Problem

    For Mises, one of the primary answers to the problem of oppressing minorities was to make governments smaller and less powerful — and thus less able to oppress minorities. Again, in the context of immigration, Mises concludes:
    It is clear that no solution of the problem of immigration is possible if one adheres to the ideal of the interventionist state, which meddles in every field of human activity, or to that of the socialist state. Only the adoption of the liberal program could make the problem of immigration, which today seems insoluble, completely disappear. In an Australia governed according to liberal principles, what difficulties could arise from the fact that in some parts of the continent Japanese and in other parts Englishmen were in the majority?
    In other words, even if ethnic Japanese groups took control of the Australian state, it would not matter if the state were conducted along liberal [i.e., libertarian] lines. But the same might be said of feminists, or Christians, university professors or working class white people. If all were "governed according to liberal principles," there isn't a problem. If the state lacks the power to regulate, oppress, and impoverish one group for the benefit of another, then what group is in the majority is irrelevant.
    But, if a state "is not conducted along completely liberal lines," Mises concludes,
    there can be no question of even an approach to equal rights in the treatment of the members of the various national groups. There can then be only rulers and those ruled. The only choice is whether one will be hammer or anvil.
    Put simply: the bigger the government, the greater the threat when the other guys manage to get political power.
    The Other Option: Secession

    Should efforts to restrain the state's overall power fail, another answer is decentralization. And this was Mises's other solution to the problem of minorities subject to majorities. For Mises, the problem of "self-determination" could be addressed through decentralization, secession, and an acceptance that minority groups must have the option of breaking free from political bonds with majority groups of divergent interests:
    The right of self-determination in regard to the question of membership in a state thus means: whenever the inhabitants of a particular territory, whether it be a single village, a whole district, or a series of adjacent districts, make it known, by a freely conducted plebiscite, that they no longer wish to remain united to the state to which they belong at the time, but wish either to form an independent state or to attach themselves to some other state, their wishes are to be respected and complied with. This is the only feasible and effective way of preventing revolutions and civil and international wars. ... To call this right of self-determination the "right of self-determination of nations" is to misunderstand it. It is not the right of self-determination of a delimited national unit, but the right of the inhabitants of every territory to decide on the state to which they wish to belong...
    In his essay on Mises's views on self-determination and nationalism, Joseph Salerno notes that for Mises the answer lies in "providing for the continual redrawing of state boundaries in accordance with the right of self-determination." In other words, in order to prevent the oppression of minorities by majorities, it may be necessary to allow the minority group to separate from the majority.
    It is becoming increasingly clear that the United States is becoming a country in which every election brings a perceived mandate to forcefully — and even vengefully — impose the winning coalition's agenda on the losers. In a country where political power is relatively weak, decentralization is effective, and taxes are low, then the effects of a political loss can be relatively minor. But that's not the situation we now face.



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  3. #2
    Government can be strong, but to do that it must be smaller. Much smaller.
    #NashvilleStrong

    “I’m a doctor. That’s a baby.”~~~Dr. Manny Sethi

  4. #3
    Quote Originally Posted by euphemia View Post
    Government can be strong, but to do that it must be smaller. Much smaller.
    Yes, small enough to strongly stay in a bottle and float away down the Mississippi.
    Quote Originally Posted by dannno View Post
    It's a balance between appeasing his supporters, appeasing the deep state and reaching his own goals.
    ~Resident Badgiraffe




  5. #4
    If We Want "Unity," Government Must Become Weaker

    Therefore we can't have unity with those who want strong government.

    CALExit.
    Never attempt to teach a pig to sing; it wastes your time and annoys the pig.

    Robert Heinlein

    Give a man an inch and right away he thinks he's a ruler

    Groucho Marx

    I love mankind…it’s people I can’t stand.

    Linus, from the Peanuts comic

    You cannot have liberty without morality and morality without faith

    Alexis de Torqueville

    Those who fail to learn from the past are condemned to repeat it.
    Those who learn from the past are condemned to watch everybody else repeat it

    A Zero Hedge comment

  6. #5
    How long before the government declares itself an oppressed, underprivileged group? Talking bad about the government is going to be a hate crime.

  7. #6
    Quote Originally Posted by William Tell View Post
    Yes, small enough to strongly stay in a bottle and float away down the Mississippi.
    I'm sure this would violate numerous EPA regulations ...
    The Bastiat Collection · FREE PDF · FREE EPUB · PAPER
    Frédéric Bastiat (1801-1850)

    • "When law and morality are in contradiction to each other, the citizen finds himself in the cruel alternative of either losing his moral sense, or of losing his respect for the law."
      -- The Law (p. 54)
    • "Government is that great fiction, through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else."
      -- Government (p. 99)
    • "[W]ar is always begun in the interest of the few, and at the expense of the many."
      -- Economic Sophisms - Second Series (p. 312)
    • "There are two principles that can never be reconciled - Liberty and Constraint."
      -- Harmonies of Political Economy - Book One (p. 447)

    · tu ne cede malis sed contra audentior ito ·

  8. #7
    Government is disapprove.
    freedomisobvious.blogspot.com

    There is only one correct way: freedom. All other solutions are non-solutions.

    It appears that artificial intelligence is at least slightly superior to natural stupidity.

    Our words make us the ghosts that we are.

    Convincing the world he didn't exist was the Devil's second greatest trick; the first was convincing us that God didn't exist.

  9. #8
    Article is not bad, however, there is a glaring omission that pretty well spears its practical utility. Nowhere does the author define "unity".

    How can we know of what he writes if he has not rigorously defined the core term about which the entire exposition is built?

    Some may balk at this, thinking this some case of pedantic splitting of hairs, but I assure you it is no such thing. When one considers "unity" with some care, it becomes immediately clear that the term may apply to a nearly endless list of possibilities. Is he speaking of unity such that all people love chocolate ice cream, believe in the same God, use precisely the same sex positions, drive the same cars, hate the same baseball teams?

    Without a clear, precise, correct, and complete definition of "unity", the article actually remains devoid of sense, all superficial appearances to the contrary notwithstanding.

    Communications. It's not as easily done well as so many seem to think.
    freedomisobvious.blogspot.com

    There is only one correct way: freedom. All other solutions are non-solutions.

    It appears that artificial intelligence is at least slightly superior to natural stupidity.

    Our words make us the ghosts that we are.

    Convincing the world he didn't exist was the Devil's second greatest trick; the first was convincing us that God didn't exist.



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  11. #9
    Quote Originally Posted by osan View Post
    Article is not bad, however, there is a glaring omission that pretty well spears its practical utility. Nowhere does the author define "unity".

    How can we know of what he writes if he has not rigorously defined the core term about which the entire exposition is built?

    Some may balk at this, thinking this some case of pedantic splitting of hairs, but I assure you it is no such thing. When one considers "unity" with some care, it becomes immediately clear that the term may apply to a nearly endless list of possibilities. Is he speaking of unity such that all people love chocolate ice cream, believe in the same God, use precisely the same sex positions, drive the same cars, hate the same baseball teams?

    Without a clear, precise, correct, and complete definition of "unity", the article actually remains devoid of sense, all superficial appearances to the contrary notwithstanding.

    Communications. It's not as easily done well as so many seem to think.
    Go get a job with the propagandists, and use that Zippy Brand Double-Talk(TM) for some actual profit.

    The federal government divides us in order to conquer us, and they're working hand in hand with the media, under the command of the sponsors who own both. Clearly one doesn't have to read very many of Zippy's 'here's a poll showing why we hate each other' posts to realize that, if the federal government had less resources to throw at propaganda, and had its grubby fingers in less pies overall, it would necessarily do less to pit us at each other's throats.
    Quote Originally Posted by Swordsmyth View Post
    We believe our lying eyes...

  12. #10
    Quote Originally Posted by acptulsa View Post
    Go get a job with the propagandists, and use that Zippy Brand Double-Talk(TM) for some actual profit.

    The federal government divides us in order to conquer us, and they're working hand in hand with the media, under the command of the sponsors who own both. Clearly one doesn't have to read very many of Zippy's 'here's a poll showing why we hate each other' posts to realize that, if the federal government had less resources to throw at propaganda, and had its grubby fingers in less pies overall, it would necessarily do less to pit us at each other's throats.
    Not sure why you seem to have a bur under your saddle here. Dunno who pissed in your cornflakes this morning, but it wasn't me.

    Or perhaps I am completely misunderstanding your meanings here.
    freedomisobvious.blogspot.com

    There is only one correct way: freedom. All other solutions are non-solutions.

    It appears that artificial intelligence is at least slightly superior to natural stupidity.

    Our words make us the ghosts that we are.

    Convincing the world he didn't exist was the Devil's second greatest trick; the first was convincing us that God didn't exist.

  13. #11
    Quote Originally Posted by osan View Post
    Not sure why you seem to have a bur under your saddle here. Dunno who pissed in your cornflakes this morning, but it wasn't me.

    Or perhaps I am completely misunderstanding your meanings here.
    Unity is not a hard concept. Arguing over its meaning just distracts from the important point being made in the thread. The divide and conquer game is working all too well, and government is playing a prime role in it.

    And I don't know hat a 'bur' is, but no, I have no burrs in my socks today.
    Quote Originally Posted by Swordsmyth View Post
    We believe our lying eyes...

  14. #12
    All the while the government prosecutes hate speech more than they prosecute attempted murder.
    #NashvilleStrong

    “I’m a doctor. That’s a baby.”~~~Dr. Manny Sethi

  15. #13
    Quote Originally Posted by acptulsa View Post
    Unity is not a hard concept. Arguing over its meaning just distracts from the important point being made in the thread. The divide and conquer game is working all too well, and government is playing a prime role in it.

    And I don't know hat a 'bur' is, but no, I have no burrs in my socks today.
    I must respectfully disagree. Meaning is important. Precise meaning is more important. The article is FAIL because a most fundamental aspect of basic communication was omitted. If the article works for you, then I am happy for you. As for me, it fails. He needs to go back and try again. Just my opinion.

    If the message is as you claim, he could have written it in just about that many words.
    freedomisobvious.blogspot.com

    There is only one correct way: freedom. All other solutions are non-solutions.

    It appears that artificial intelligence is at least slightly superior to natural stupidity.

    Our words make us the ghosts that we are.

    Convincing the world he didn't exist was the Devil's second greatest trick; the first was convincing us that God didn't exist.

  16. #14
    Quote Originally Posted by osan View Post
    ...he could have written it in just about that many words.
    I've thought that about you a time or two. But I was too nice to say it...
    Quote Originally Posted by Swordsmyth View Post
    We believe our lying eyes...

  17. #15
    Quote Originally Posted by acptulsa View Post
    I've thought that about you a time or two. But I was too nice to say it...
    Still in a snippy way?

    I didn't write what I wrote to be mean; I don't waste my time with such petty idiocy. The author wrote about something important to politics, which affects everything we do. He didn't do a particularly good job of it from the standpoint I outlined. I pointed it out and explained why it was important so that people can learn not only what to look for, but perhaps to do better themselves. Half the reason the world is up to its eyes in $#@! is because we typically communicate in such abysmally lazy and ignorant fashion.
    freedomisobvious.blogspot.com

    There is only one correct way: freedom. All other solutions are non-solutions.

    It appears that artificial intelligence is at least slightly superior to natural stupidity.

    Our words make us the ghosts that we are.

    Convincing the world he didn't exist was the Devil's second greatest trick; the first was convincing us that God didn't exist.

  18. #16
    So the article lays out two options for avoiding tribal warfare among the population: (1) limit the state's power so that it ceases to be an effective weapon against the minority, and (2) allow the minority to secede. The first option only begs the question: how? The second is also problematic, but for different reasons. Either secession is legally permitted or it is not. If not, then any attempt at secession will simply mean war (the most extreme form of what we're trying to avoid). If so (and it's already unrealistic to expect secession to be legal), then the state will altogether dissolve (ancaps like this idea, I don't). A third solution, one that worked pretty well for most of history, one whose abandonment really inaugurated the modern era of ethnic/religious genocide, is (3) non-democratic government. It is generally above the ethnic/religious/ideological factions, rather than an instrument of one of them against the others, and has a proprietary interest in its taxpayers not slaughtering one another over nonsense. Look at what happened in Africa when the colonial governments dissolved, or what's happened in the Mid East with the removal of Saddam and Qaddafi: long-suppressed ethno-religious tensions reappeared and caused civil war.



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  20. #17
    Quote Originally Posted by r3volution 3.0 View Post
    So the article lays out two options for avoiding tribal warfare among the population: (1) limit the state's power so that it ceases to be an effective weapon against the minority, and (2) allow the minority to secede. The first option only begs the question: how? The second is also problematic, but for different reasons. Either secession is legally permitted or it is not. If not, then any attempt at secession will simply mean war (the most extreme form of what we're trying to avoid). If so (and it's already unrealistic to expect secession to be legal), then the state will altogether dissolve (ancaps like this idea, I don't). A third solution, one that worked pretty well for most of history, one whose abandonment really inaugurated the modern era of ethnic/religious genocide, is (3) non-democratic government. It is generally above the ethnic/religious/ideological factions, rather than an instrument of one of them against the others, and has a proprietary interest in its taxpayers not slaughtering one another over nonsense. Look at what happened in Africa when the colonial governments dissolved, or what's happened in the Mid East with the removal of Saddam and Qaddafi: long-suppressed ethno-religious tensions reappeared and caused civil war.
    Your third option is an attempt to answer your question about the first option, it is not a new option.
    And when the differences between peoples are too great only secession will work.

    If We Want "Unity," Government Must Become Weaker

    Therefore we can't have unity with those who want strong government.

    CALExit.

    Never attempt to teach a pig to sing; it wastes your time and annoys the pig.

    Robert Heinlein

    Give a man an inch and right away he thinks he's a ruler

    Groucho Marx

    I love mankind…it’s people I can’t stand.

    Linus, from the Peanuts comic

    You cannot have liberty without morality and morality without faith

    Alexis de Torqueville

    Those who fail to learn from the past are condemned to repeat it.
    Those who learn from the past are condemned to watch everybody else repeat it

    A Zero Hedge comment

  21. #18
    Quote Originally Posted by Swordsmyth View Post
    Your third option is an attempt to answer your question about the first option
    It is the answer to that question, yes, but it's a solution to the sectarian civil war problem regardless.

    i.e. even if the non-democratic state weren't smaller, it would be less inclined to join in sectarian struggle

    it is not a new option
    Didn't say it was new, it just wasn't mentioned in the article and needed mentioning.

  22. #19
    Quote Originally Posted by r3volution 3.0 View Post
    Either secession is legally permitted or it is not. If not, then any attempt at secession will simply mean war (the most extreme form of what we're trying to avoid).
    While it may be true that a given attempt at secession might mean war, it is not the case "any" attempt at secession "will" mean war ("simply" or otherwise).

    Whether secession in any particular instance will result in war depends upon a variety of factors, the foremost of these being the will and wherewithal of the relevant anti-secessionists in forcibly preventing secession. If either is absent (or manifest in insufficient degree), secession can indeed proceed without war.

    The successful secession of the Baltic states from the Soviet Union is an illustration of this.
    The Bastiat Collection · FREE PDF · FREE EPUB · PAPER
    Frédéric Bastiat (1801-1850)

    • "When law and morality are in contradiction to each other, the citizen finds himself in the cruel alternative of either losing his moral sense, or of losing his respect for the law."
      -- The Law (p. 54)
    • "Government is that great fiction, through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else."
      -- Government (p. 99)
    • "[W]ar is always begun in the interest of the few, and at the expense of the many."
      -- Economic Sophisms - Second Series (p. 312)
    • "There are two principles that can never be reconciled - Liberty and Constraint."
      -- Harmonies of Political Economy - Book One (p. 447)

    · tu ne cede malis sed contra audentior ito ·

  23. #20
    Quote Originally Posted by Occam's Banana View Post
    While it may be true that a given attempt at secession might mean war, it is not the case "any" attempt at secession "will" mean war ("simply" or otherwise).

    Whether secession in any particular instance will result in war depends upon a variety of factors, the foremost of these being the will and wherewithal of the relevant anti-secessionists in forcibly preventing secession. If either is absent (or manifest in insufficient degree), secession can indeed proceed without war.

    The successful secession of the Baltic states from the Soviet Union is an illustration of this.
    Sure, I agree, wasn't trying to make an absolute statement. However, if conditions are bad enough that secession is actually necessary to avoid serious majoritarian oppression, it seems reasonable to assume that the majority will strongly oppose secession (and, presumably, being the majority, be in a position to stifle any attempt at legal secession, leaving force as the only option). In any event, it's a significant risk.



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