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From: josh@topaz.RUTGERS.EDU (J Storrs Hall)
Newsgroups: net.politics.theory,net.legal
Subject: Re: (micromotives & macrobehavior)
Message-ID: <3476@topaz.RUTGERS.EDU>
Date: Thu, 29-Aug-85 23:06:49 EDT
Article-I.D.: topaz.3476
Posted: Thu Aug 29 23:06:49 1985
Date-Received: Sat, 31-Aug-85 08:22:49 EDT
References: <535@brl-tgr.ARPA> <987@sphinx.UChicago.UUCP> <160@gargoyle.UUCP> <3426@topaz.RUTGERS.EDU> <1726@psuvax1.UUCP>
Reply-To: josh@topaz.UUCP (J Storrs Hall)
Organization: Rutgers Univ., New Brunswick, N.J.
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Xref: watmath net.politics.theory:1005 net.legal:2224

>> >... a collective behavior pattern in which all the
>> >individual agents act rationally, yet the total result is far from
>> >optimal. ...  Such patterns are common in interactions among people...
>> >Richard Carnes, ihnp4!gargoyle!carnes
>> 
>> Richard is teetering dangerously close to a valuable insight. ...
>> --JoSH
>
>JoSH, what do you want to have in the absence of a political system?
>... I deduced ... a dictatorship ...
>Piotr Berman

Sometimes something is so simple that it can be hard to see it:
What I want in the absence of a political system is, simply,
the absence of any political system.  A dictatorship (or a theocracy
of Chicago economists) IS a political system.  It is really a good idea 
at this point to go back and separate two questions which statists
try hard to confuse:

(a) what good do people derive from political systems?

(b) why do political systems exist?

Now it is easy to point to lots of specific benefits to specific people
from any given political system, but it is much more difficult (indeed,
I believe impossible) to show that people in general derive more
benefit from political systems than detriment.

On the other hand, it is easy to see why political systems exist:
They form a stable state whereby one group holds power over society,
and uses it to obtain benefits from the rest of society; because they
benefit, they use the power to maintain the status quo, or rather 
to increase the amount of control they exert.  A political system
in a society is, simply put, a positive feedback phenomenon, and 
will increase until the society begins to break down under its
depredations.

To understand what a society without a government would actually
be like, it helps to notice that the guys sitting in the legislature
do not actually do anything but talk.  All the actual services,
police, firemen, social workers, adjudicators, garbagemen in many
places, and so forth, are merely hired help.  The legislature is
only a decision-making mechanism which decides how many of who will
be hired to do what.  The market forms an equally effective, and
considerably more fair, decision-making mechanism for society.

--JoSH