COBSlog

Projectors

2012-02-22T19:44:00.000-06:00

[C]ertain persons went up to Laputa [a floating city of mathematicians and musicians - COB], either upon business or diversion, and, after five months continuance, came back with a very little smattering of mathematics, but full of volatile spirits acquired in that airy region: that these people, upon their return, began to dislike the management of every thing below, and fell into schemes of putting all arts, sciences, languages, and mechanics, upon a new foot. To this end, they procured a royal patent for erecting an academy of projectors in Lagado [the capital city - COB]; and the humour prevailed so strongly among the people, that there is not a town of any consequence in the kingdom without such an academy. In these colleges the professors contrive new rules and methods of agriculture and building, and new instruments, and tools for all trades and manufactures; whereby, as they undertake, one man shall do the work of ten; a palace may be built in a week, of materials so durable as to last for ever without repairing. All the fruits of the earth shall come to maturity at whatever season we think fit to choose, and increase a hundred fold more than they do at present; with innumerable other happy proposals. The only inconvenience is that none of these projects are yet brought to perfection; and in the meantime, the whole country lies miserably waste, the houses in ruins, and people without food or clothes. By all which, instead of being discouraged, they are fifty times more bent on prosecuting their schemes, driven equally on by hope and despair

- Jonathan Swift, Gulliver's Travels

Are people ends, or just the means used by politically powerful "projectors" to pursue their particular dreams? The Declaration of Independence says the former, but Detroit and California (at least) are following the latter path.

Cumulative Impact

2012-02-07T19:25:00.000-06:00

Every law or regulation that's enacted is the most restrictive law or regulation in the history of America. Full repeals are the only exception, but we won't have to worry about that any time soon on any front.

Basis of Support

2012-01-10T20:24:00.000-06:00

In addition to pinpointing the 2012 Republican presidential candidates, the Asplund Chart can show where each candidate's base of support comes from (at least its ideological component).

Only by uniting the independents (who are more likely than not to be leaning towards Ron Paul, Gary Johnson, Jon Huntsman or Newt Gingrich) with the Republican base does any candidate for president (other than Obama) have an easy path to the presidency. If Ron Paul makes a third party run and/or loses the Republican primary in a way that puts off his supporters, Obama gets an easy re-election plurality win.

Name-Calling and Other Anti-Intellectual Pursuits

2012-01-05T01:12:00.000-06:00

esr has a post delineating different types of anti-intellectuals. He lists five types:
1. anti-intelligentsia – those who oppose intellectuals as a class/interest group in political contests
2. traditionalists – those who dislike intellectuals as people whose "ceaseless questioning carelessly damages the organic fabric of society"
3. epistemic-skeptical anti-intellectuals – those who believe that intellectuals are "too prone to overestimate their own cleverness and attempt to commit society to vast utopian schemes that invariably end badly."
4. totalizing anti-intellectuals – a collectivist "partisan for a specific totalizing system of thought which regards the methods and habits of intellectuals as its enemy."
5. thalamic anti-intellectuals – those who dislike intellectuals at a "gut-level" without necessarily having any ideological reasons for doing so.

Please read the whole thing. (Comments, too, if you have time.) The first four types of anti-intellectuals defined by esr have a direct interpretation through the Asplund Chart. Here's a map that shows all the relevant divisions.

A brief summary of the map...

The vertical axis is the inherent trade-off between collective action and personal freedom. Making participation in collective action mandatory deprives individuals of an irreplacable portion of their limited time. Making participation voluntary leads to free-rider and tragedy of the commons issues. At the top lies anarchy, the bottom tends towards totalitarianism and the middle is full of welfare maximizers and other relativists.

The horizontal axis is the inherent trade-off between institutional stability and innovation. Stable, permanent political insititutions can create a framework for human decision-making in other domians (social, economic, moral). Application of the iron law of bureaucracy shows why this strategy always fails, but the pace of subversion can vary significantly between institutions. Valuing transformational ideas and permitting institutional innovation can ensure that future generations aren't completely ruled by the ghosts of their ancestors. At the left edge lies permanent revolution, the right tends towards reactionary stasis and the center is full of ad hoc fixes for intractible problems.

(See this post for a more detailed look at where various political philosophers fall on the Asplund Chart.)

Intellectuals tend to be on the political left in the area labeled idealists. The scientific method is a set of procedures (an institution?) designed to produce, test and validate transformational ideas (including ideas about politics). The type of person who is attracted to intellectual pursuits is likely to value transformational political ideas over (demonstrably flawed) traditional political institutions. Being on the left doesn't mean one rejects all institutions, just that, on balance, it's worth pursuing institutional reform and innovation.

The intelligentsia is a more specific part of the Asplund Chart. It is comprised of those intellectuals whose ideas justify that actions of the actual people in power (see triangulation). Generally, this is limited to those intellectuals who are sympathetic to collectivist political philosophies. People who are in category 1, anti-intelligentsia, are usually opposed to the entire agenda of the transformational and/or bipartisan "moderate" establishment. For them, undercutting the intelligentsia is a necessary component of their broader tactical and strategic political battle against the entire left-leaning or "moderate" establishment.

Category 2, traditionalists, are labeled on the map. Traditionalism runs the vertical gamut from separatists, survivalists and isolationist sects (upper right corner) to constitutional free-market capitalism to aristocratic mercantilism to oligarchic, military or religious nationalism to sun gods (bottom right corner). As such, traditionalists don't necessarily agree on which institutions are particularly worth preserving. Thus their unifying political stance is opposition to every attempted change and they are charged with anti-intellectualism. (Enlightened compromises that empower traditionalist leaders can, however, be negotiated in good bipartisan fashion.)

The individualists, especially those on the right and in the center, tend to fall into category 3, epistemic-skeptic anti-intellecuals. Hayek's knowledge problem, the law of unintended consequences and complexity theory underly their practical objections to idealistic central planning. Individualists are generally supportive of bottom-up transformative ideas, especially when they operate through non-political modes (technological, social, artistic). The willingness of idealistic intellectuals to use political mechanisms to force transformational ideas on a reluctant society (especially when those ideas have been tried and have spectacularly failed elsewhere) leads to this kind of anti-intellectualism.

Category 4, totalizing anti-intellectuals, are in the collectivist portion of the map. The farther towards the bottom right corner a collectivist is, the more likely that person is to fall into category 4. The left-to-right sweep of totalitarian ideologies is approximately as follows: philosopher-kings, universal socialists, regulatory statists, national socialists, police/military dictatorships, state capitalists/aristocratic oligarchies, fundamentalist dictatorships and sun gods. All of these totalitarian regimes repress individualistic idealists, but the ones farther to the right suppress collectivist idealists, too.

With charges of anti-intellectualism (and most other political attacks) the accusers reveal more about themselves than they do about the accused.

2012 GOP Candidates

2011-12-31T14:53:00.002-06:00

A few months ago I mapped out the Republican Presidential candidates on the Asplund Chart. I think I got most of them in the right place and the numerous debates have only made it easier to pigeon-hole each of them. Here's a new version showing the remaining players, including the two potential Libertarian candidates, Dr. Ron Paul (if he doesn't capture the Republican Party nomination) and Gary Johnson.

Pundits everywhere have theories on who to support and why. Many of these theories can be improved by applying the Asplund Chart. Here's my take on each candidate.

Mitt Romney: The Triangulator's Candidate

Upside: He's the guy who can keep the RINOs in line and bring the Republican caucus together during the legislative battles that will occur starting in 2013. His combination of business skills and blue state credentials will let him pry concession after concession out of Harry Reid and the rest of the Democratic Party leadership.

Downside: He's not a limited government conservative nor is he supportive of capitalism (Exhibit A, B, C, D, E, F, G...: RomneyCare). No grand compromises he hammers out would strip power from the regulatory state/crony capitalist establishment. With Mitt, it's the glide path to civilizational decline.

Newt Gingrich: The Outsider's Insider

Upside: He's the ideas guy, the best debater, the most politically aware candidate. He has an actual history of leading a conservative revolution. His combination of insider knowledge and outsider appeal will let him tap into some of the Tea Party fervor without putting off the moderates and independents.

Downside: He's a loose cannon. He's willing to sit down on a couch with Nancy Pelosi to promote the green agenda. He's nutty and overly technical and many of his ideas reflect confidence in bureaucratic problem-solving instead of individual liberty.

Rick Perry: The Republican Candidate

Upside: He's the Republican's Republican. His combination of executive experience as governor and social conservative credentials make him the clear stand-out from a mainstream Republican's point of view. He's not a limited government conservative at the state level, but he might be open to returning some autonomy back to the states and ending the Fed.

Downside: Without pretty big Republican majorities in both houses of congress, he'll be tempted to make an accommodation with centrist Democrats that leaves Washington mostly status quo. He'd also go along with the kind of big-government, compassionate conservatism that led to the GOP's ouster in 2006 and 2008.

Michele Bachmann: The Populist Republican

Upside: She's been leading the congressional battles against Democratic Party overreach since day 1. She's taken the most appealing big-tent conservative populist positions on most issues. Tea Partiers would vote for her. Social conservatives would vote for her. Republicans would vote for her.

Downside: Anti-Obama independents might not vote for her. She's trying to take up the Reagan mantle, but she's doesn't come across as personally likable enough to have the same sort of appeal. She's willing to engage in the politics of personal destruction if she thinks it'll help her cause (Exhibit A: her campaign manager is Ed Rollins).

Rick Santorum: The Conservative Republican

Upside: He's a true conservative, and he's proud of it. He won't compromise his principles when push comes to shove. He'll stand up for conservative values and traditional governance.

Downside: Anti-Obama independents might not vote for him. Compromise-loving moderates might not vote for him. He'll be marginalized by his own party leadership because he won't play the Washington game the way they want it played.

Jon Huntsman: Just-Barely-A-Republican

Upside: He may be socially conservative in his personal life, but he won't put off independents by governing that way. He's got some bold plans to reign in out of control federal agencies. He got his executive experience in a red state. He's got serious centrist appeal.

Downside: He accepted a post in the Obama administration. He wouldn't excite Republicans, Tea Partiers or conservatives because he seems ashamed to be associated with any of them. As a centrist/swing voter type he has no ideological base to support him, so when things get tough nobody would have his back.

Dr. Ron Paul: The Only Man Who Can Save the Nation

Upside: He correctly identifies the danger associated with the Fed, fiat money and regulatory overreach. He has strong support from independents and libertarians (even some left-leaing ones) and his core message resonates with Tea Party voters and some parts of the Occupy Movement. He's the only candidate who would unflinchingly pare back the administrative state.

Downside: He comes across as angry and bitter, which is what you'd expect from someone who has been on the losing side of every legislative battle for decades. He was willing to court votes from reactionary separatist groups during the 80s and 90s. Despite knowing what the problems facing the country are, he has a long record of political failure in building a legislative coalition to reverse them. His non-interventionist foreign policy positions weaken his appeal for mainstream Republicans.

Gary Johnson: The Also Ran

Upside: He's like Ron Paul, but less extreme. He's the only candidate with a record of reducing overall government expenditures under his watch. He's socially liberal and fiscally conservative, just like libertarians, independents, centrists and moderates across the country claim to be.

Downside: Gary who? Frozen out of the debates. No name recognition. Plus, he must be a pot-head, 'cause he wants to end the War on Drugs.

Two Revolutions

2011-12-30T21:15:00.001-06:00

There were two great revolutions in the late 1700s, American and French. These two revolutions were philosophically grounded in different parts of the Asplund Chart. In the American Revolution, the traditionalist constitutional monarchy (basically occupying the red portion of the Asplund Chart) of Great Britain was rejected in favor of individual rights and a common law tradition that goes back to the Magna Carta (the yellow portion of the Asplund Chart).

The French Revolution, grounded in the ideals of liberty, equality and brotherhood, put in power a direct democracy movement (the green part of the Asplund Chart). It overthrew not just the traditionalist monarchy and aristocracy (the red part), but stripped authority from judges (the yellow part) and priests (the blue part at that point in history).

The French Revolution, by removing every institutional safeguard against tyranny, opened the door to the Terror and eventually Napoleon. After see-sawing back and forth between tyranny and democratic insurgency for a few decades, France settled into a stable constitutional democracy. Since then, their political class has used triangulation to maintain and continually expand their regulatory control over almost every facet of French society.

The American Revolution left in place more traditional institutions than the French, primarily at the local and state level. Initially, these institutions hampered many tyrannical impulses of politicians at the federal level. After the Civil War and accelerating during the presidencies of Wilson, Hoover and FDR, the American political class has triangulated themselves into a position where they, like their peers in France, have regulatory control over almost every part of society.

The difference is that in America politicians and their administrators rarely take direct ownership of businesses. The regulatory power is used instead to create an uneven economic playing-field that favors well-positioned business leaders. This has led to a corporatist establishment in America, instead of the direct bureaucratic control more typical in democratic socialist nations.

Regardless, the central tendency in both nations has been a decrease in personal freedom in favor of centralized decision-making for much of the past two centuries. Neither revolution put in place a system of government that prevented rule of the many by the few, but one took at least a century longer to get to that point. One revolution rejected the very idea of historical legitimacy, while the other tried to build on the best parts of it.

Political Projections

2011-12-29T19:38:00.002-06:00

The Asplund Chart is kind of a Mercator Projection of the political map. Here's how it looks in a Mollweide Projection.

Left-, right-, and middle-of-the-road anarchists occupy the upper part of the chart. This grants a lot of space to a political theory that, if implemented, completely does away with formal politics. In this view, anarchy becomes the north pole of politics.

Similarly, different flavors of totalitarianism line the bottom of the chart. The distinction between communist dictators, fascist dictators, military dictators, fundamentalist dictators and mercantile oligarchs matters very little to people who live under their control. The leaders in all of these systems adopt, within a few leadership cycles, a pragmatic approach to eliminating any threats to their authority. Ruthlessness wins over any other consideration. Totalitarianism is the south pole of politics.

This projection shows how conservatism and progressivism span the entire distance between the poles, kind of like the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. The moderates combine with the two party establishments to form a southern continent. In the northern hemisphere the Tea Party and Occupy Movements are separated by the rocky libertarian wilderness. The swing voters are kind of a Mediterranean Sea where the different factions engage in political commerce and seek new recruits.

Minority Rule

2011-12-28T22:44:00.001-06:00

Triangulation is the second most important skill for a politician, getting elected being the most important one. The object of the game is to divide one's opponents while maintaining a unified coalition of your own. It's a symmetrical game, playable from the right, left, or center, but only by politicians who succeed in becoming representatives. In America that means (conservative, establishment, and moderate) Republicans and (progressive, establishment, and moderate) Democrats. Third parties and independents need not apply.

The easiest division to exploit is the one that separates the respective party establishments from their partisan bases of support. This first diagram shows how Democrats use a carrot/stick approach by praising those "reasonable" Republicans who are willing to negotiate while branding the less amenable ones as "obstructionist". Many moderate and establishment Republicans pile on by branding conservatives as hopeless "idealists" and flattering themselves as "realists".

This second diagram shows how Republicans use a similar carrot/stick approach by praising those "reasonable" Democrats who are willing to negotiate while branding the less amenable ones as "obstructionist". Many moderate and establishment Democrats pile on by hippie-punching progressive "idealists" and flattering themselves as "realists".

Unlike the first two situations where there might be a clear majority in favor of whatever legislation is being considered, this third diagram shows how establishment Democrats and Republicans can get something passed with only the support of four Asplund Chart factions. Here the party leaders unite to marginalize both progressives and conservatives as "obstructionist idealists" standing in the way of "reasonable" mainstream compromise.

The other division to exploit is the one that separates the respective party establishments from their more moderate members. This fourth diagram shows how Democrats use a carrot/stick approach by praising those "reasonable" Republicans who are willing to negotiate while branding the less amenable ones as "partisan". Many conservative and establishment Republicans are routinely frustrated by the aisle-crossing "RINO" contingent that seems not to hold any non-negotiable principles. Using this strategy Democrats can get legislation passed that is opposed by a clear majority of the general population.

This fifth diagram shows the reverse situation. Republicans, too, can use a carrot/stick approach by praising those "reasonable" Democrats who are willing to negotiate while branding the less amenable ones as "partisan". Many progressive and establishment Democrats are routinely frustrated by the aisle-crossing moderate Democratic contingent that seems not to hold any non-negotiable principles. This strategy can be used by Republican leaders to advance party objectives not supported by the general population.

Unlike any of the previous situations, this third diagram shows how a bipartisan moderate establishment can get something passed without the full support of any faction other than the Moderates. Here back-room deals between "gangs" congressional moderates are crafted to induce the absolute minimum number of establishment Democrats and Republicans to sign on to their grand compromises. This, sadly, is the default method of making decisions in advanced democracies, especially when it comes time to craft "must-pass" legislation like budgets, omnibus spending bills, and debt-ceiling increases.

Thieves and Liars

2011-12-27T18:57:00.000-06:00

inside, outside, which side, you don't know
my side, your side, their side, we don't know
who started it? who started it?
which side are they? which side are they?
which side of their mouth do you suppose that it came?
which side are they? which side are they?
which side of the grass is greener?
inside, outside, which side, you don't know
my side, your side, their side, no one knows

– Ministry, Thieves

Politicians, especially the bipartisan moderate pragmatists, get much of their power from maintaining doubt about who they are and what they believe in. This cultivated uncertainty about what side they're on puts them in the position of deal-makers and deal-breakers whenever the final bargain gets struck. Ultimately they're only on their own side, regardless of what they say when seeking to become your representative. Sewing discord creates plentiful opportunities for moderates to save the day with a well-crafted (self-serving) compromise.

Asplund Flow Chart

2011-12-14T19:04:00.000-06:00

Yeah. Grade school humor. The image is probably familiar to anyone who has a coworker who likes to forward "funny" stuff to everyone on their contact list. It works, though, to show the relative power of the various political factions. Most of the squawking is directed sideways, but most of the crap worth complaining about rains down from above.

Just(ified) Power

2011-12-01T19:24:00.001-06:00

The Asplund Chart is a model of how people sort themselves politically.

On large scales, politics comes down to ideology and faction. The correspondences between philosophy and faction help us sort into competing camps of us and them. The actual fight for leadership is more tactical than ideological, but only leaders and would-be leaders care about the tactical battles. We little people don't figure in those contests.

These factional philosophies combine to create governing rationales. The combination of Locke, Smith, Thoreau and Mill leads to the limited constitutional republic. Marx, Rousseau, Thoreau and Mill combine to justify absolute democratic sovereignty. Smith, Mill, Burke and Hobbes create the intellectual backdrop for aristocratic and oligarchical regimes. Finally Marx, Hobbes, Dewey and Mill create a framework useful to "benevolent" dictators everywhere. Note that utilitarianism is the shiftiest of all political philosophies, and judge it accordingly.

Animating Philosophy

2011-11-17T21:02:00.001-06:00

Animation created at www.picasion.com

This map shows rough correspondence, not absolute identification. No slight was intended to any of the influential theorists left out.

Pick Two

2011-11-17T20:24:00.000-06:00

Progress vs. Tradition
Freedom vs. Security

The four dominant factions in American politics represent (at least rhetorically) the four possible answers to these two choices.

Republican Party establishment = Tradition + Security
Democratic Party establishment = Progress + Security
Tea Party = Tradition + Freedom
Occupy * = Progress + Freedom

All of these movements are stronger and more cohesive than the four factions that focus on only one of these choices. Progressives, conservatives, libertarians and moderates are more susceptible to political triangulation precisely because they are internally conflicted on one of these issues. Swing voters, being conflicted on both counts, are of course the least cohesive faction.

Back to Left vs. Right

2011-11-08T19:11:00.000-06:00

Tying the Asplund Chart back to other maps of the political universe shows how the Asplund Chart improves on them. I showed how to relate the Asplund Chart to the Nolan Chart here. To take it back to the most basic left-right breakdown I've removed as many labels as possible, leaving behind left vs. right and insider vs. outsider.

The political right always organizes itself around the actual (or at least the commonly accepted) history of a particular society. In countries where there is a history of hereditary nobility, the royalists and their partisan descendants are on the right. Where there is a history of governance through state religion, the dominant religious community will generally be on the right. Where oligarchs have held the reigns of state, the commercial establishment will be on the right. Where rule has been established through nothing but brute force, advocates of dictatorship will be on the right. Finally, where the history of a state includes constitutional governance, constitutionalists will be on the right. Since most countries have long histories that include a mixture of many forms of government, the political right will generally consist of several mutually antagonistic factions – each pointing towards a different golden age to return to.

The political left always organizes itself around opposition to the actual (or at least the commonly accepted) failures of a particular society. In countries where there was oppression by a hereditary nobility, the anti-royalists and their partisan descendants are on the left. Where there oppression through through state religion, the disfavored religious community will generally be on the left. Where oligarchs used the reigns of state to oppress, the anti-capitalists will be on the left. Where brute force was exercised openly by tyrants, advocates of democracy will be on the left. Finally, where the history of a state includes constitutionally enforced discrimination, anarchists and revolutionaries will be on the left. Since most countries have long histories that include abuses perpetrated by a wide variety of state actors, the political left will generally consist of several mutually antagonistic factions – each pointing towards a different future to strive for.

The struggle between the left and right is important. But by limiting the focus to left vs. right, the equally important struggle between political insiders and outsiders is often neglected.

Rock, Paper, Scissors, Collude

2011-10-28T16:43:00.000-05:00

The study of games as they relate to human behavior offers insight into the likely outcomes in the three-way political contest between Republicans, Democrats and independents.

In fair three player games the results would average out to mimic the results of many games of rock, paper, scissors. Imagine a scenario where each player puts in $1 to play. The table below shows all potential payouts of a standard game. As described in Theory of Games and Economic Behavior, there is only one strategy that changes the results of an evenly balanced three player game: collusion. In this strategy two players agree before the game starts to split the third player’s entry fee (I’ll assume 50/50, but any ratio is possible) and then play between each other for their own entry fees. This ensures that the two colluding players will never suffer a complete loss. The table below includes a “Collude” column that shows how the result is modified if players 1 and 2 collude against player 3 by splitting the money and ignoring his or her move.

The payouts for each player in the fair game are as follows:

Even if players 1 and 2 collude with each other against player 3 in only one quarter of the games, players 1 and 2 change their payouts as follows:

Player 3 then faces these payouts:

The benefit from even occasionally colluding is clear. Player 1 and player 2 increase their average payout and player 3 loses much more frequently. In a fair game, player 3 would have the same opportunity to collude with either player 1 or player 2. If, for whatever reason, player 3 is incapable of entering into agreements to collude, then player 3 should take every effort to ensure that collusion between players 1 and 2 is also not possible. Player 3 would be well advised to refrain from playing the game altogether if players 1 and 2 have a demonstrable history of even occasional collusion. If the option of not playing is removed, then the "game" turns player 3 into the slave of players 1 and 2.

It seems to me that Establishment Democrats and Republicans are players 1 and 2 in all American political games. Independents, third parties, swing voters and centrists are always player 3. Reducing discrimination through collusion – the biggest source of political and economic injustice throughout history – requires a widespread rejection of political decision-making, not hyperpartisanship on parade.

Political Divides

2011-10-25T20:38:00.001-05:00

In this post I summarized the dominant political narratives of each of the nine major factions. These narratives include moral world-views (a Star Wars example of mapping moral world-views onto the Asplund Chart is here). I believe that most people see their own political faction as generally lawful and good. Swing voters tend not to grant those moral labels to any faction, including their own, but compensate for this by highlighting their position as the most balanced, neutral, reasonable, objective, inclusive, rational, etc.

The dominant division in most democratic systems is a fairly simple left vs. right conflict. Each side sees itself as good and the other as evil. The party establishments focus on stability and security within the party and come to be regarded as lawful while the less partisan, more ideological independents are seen as more chaotic and unreliable.

Right vs. Left

Left vs. Right

Within these mirrored moral world-views, political power tends to concentrate in the hands of the party establishments near the "Safety" circle. The swing voting middle includes libertarian-leaning independents, centrists and moderates. Members of these three factions are constantly asked by their near neighbors on both sides to tip the balance of political power to the right or left. Most discussions of electoral politics lump these factions together and label them "independents" because most closely contested elections do indeed turn on the voting choices of these three factions. With the conflicting definitions of good and evil coming from the left and right, the "independents" are left with a choice between law and chaos and make the obvious choice.

Tea Party Conservatives vs. the Democratic Establishment

Conservative Republicans, conservative independents and many libertarians, dissatisfied with the long history of establishment Republicans joining forces with moderates and establishment Democrats to advance the Democratic Party agenda, created an open source movement called the Tea Party. The goals of the movement are to empower politicians who would support conservative policies and oppose politicians who would advance (in full or in part) the agenda of the Democratic Party. Tea Partiers generally grant that establishment Republicans act lawfully, but see cooperation with moderates and Democrats as morally objectionable. The progressive independents are seen by the Tea Party more as chaotic and misguided than anything else. To the extent that the movement has become captured by the Republican establishment, it has shifted back to a right vs. left moral world-view.

Progressive Independents vs. the Republican Establishment

Progressive Democrats, progressive independents and some libertarians, dissatisfied with the long history of establishment Democrats joining forces with moderates and establishment Republicans to advance the Republican Party agenda, have created an open source movement called Occupy _______. The goals of the movement are to empower politicians who would support progressive policies and oppose politicians who would advance (in full or in part) the agenda of the Republican Party. Occupiers generally grant that establishment Democrats act lawfully, but see cooperation with moderates and Republicans as morally objectionable. The conservative independents are seen by the Occupiers more as chaotic and misguided than anything else. To the extent that the movement becomes captured by the Democratic establishment, it will have shifted back to a left vs. right moral world-view.

Liberty vs. Tyranny

The libertarian moral universe is not like the first four covered in this post. In general libertarians hold that both the political left and right pursue a mixture of good and evil. Conservative traditions contain both positive and negative aspects, as do the political aspirations of the progressive movement. The biggest point of conflict between libertarians and most other political factions is that libertarians generally reject the notion that moderates and the party elites act lawfully in concentrating authority in Washington. It cannot be lawful to use legal and political institutions to break The Law. The difficulty libertarians face in acquiring political influence is in convincing other factions that they aren't just chaotic goofballs.

Asplund Chart – International Version

2011-10-25T18:36:00.000-05:00

The Promising Class

2011-10-14T18:13:00.003-05:00

From David Foster Wallace's Brief Interviews with Hideous Men, On His Deathbed, Holding Your Hand comes this passage that, I think, perfectly describes most members of the political class:

I knew him, inside and out, and this was his one only true gift: this: a capacity for somehow seemingbrilliant, seeming exceptional, precocious, gifted, promising. Yes to be promising, they all of them said it eventually, 'limitless promise.' For this was his gift, and do you see the dark art here, the genius for manipulating his audience? His gift was for somehow arousing admiration and raising everyone's estimate of him and everyone's expectations of him and so forcing you to pray for him to triumph and live up to and justify those expectations in order to spare not just her but everyone who had been duped into believing in his limitless promise the crushing disappointment of seeing the truth of his essential mediocrity.

Democratic elections among large groups (more than a few thousand) are generally won by people who are the most promising. Personal accountability, party accountability and institutional accountability are, therefore, the primary enemies of career politicians. The truth is generally much less inspiring than the promise.

Moderate Pull

2011-10-12T21:45:00.000-05:00

The animation below shows how power in democracies becomes concentrated in the hands of a moderate establishment. All frames have 30 arrows distributed in different ways around a common political center.

Condition 1: Equality – The population is evenly distributed between all possible positions (in this two-dimensional representation). The political center has no clear direction, so gridlock or laissez faire policies would dominate.

Condition 2: Left-Right Polarization – The population starts to concentrate into two opposing political factions: the Left which focuses on opportunity and progress and the Right which focuses on tradition and experience. These aspirational goals bring people together within an established democracy in a way that structural considerations like liberty and cooperation do not.

Condition 3: Party Leadership – The Left-Right polarization still leaves both sides with temporary majorities, at best. Leaders emerge on the Left to rally their party to cooperate to achieve progressive ends. On the Right, stabilizing leaders are chosen based on traditional markers of status.

Condition 4: Party Establishments – These leaders eventually find ways to maintain and increase their authority within the party, reducing the likelihood that they'll be displaced by more ideological party members. The party establishments become increasingly willing to downplay Left-Right issues and abandon autonomy or liberty in favor of increased cooperation and stability.

Condition 5: Bipartisan Establishment – The two party establishments eventually create a situation where the population clusters around a moderate political consensus. The bipartisan political center has a clear direction, favoring cooperation and stability at the expense of all other policy preferences.

Animation created using http://www.picasion.com

Vectors in Political Space

2011-10-11T23:51:00.001-05:00

To expand a little on this post about vector politics I'll show how it's useful within the Asplund Chart framework. This first graphic shows these basic concepts:

the horizontal "political ends" axis
the vertical "institutional means" axis
vector length is proportional to intensity of commitment
more horizontal vectors are more goal-oriented
more vertical vectors are more structure-oriented

Starting from the center of the Asplund Chart, a vector can be used to represent a person's political orientation.

Here are a few examples of specific political orientations depicted as vectors.

(more examples below the fold)

Occupying Wall Street

2011-10-07T14:51:00.000-05:00

Is the Occupy (LOCATION) movement the Progressive Independents' answer to the Tea Party?

John Rudd thinks so, calling it an open source protest. He then asks:

What's the real goal of this protest? Frankly, it's probably a recognition that the center of power in the US doesn't reside in Washington anymore. It's on Wall Street. This protest dispenses with the middle men (the US government) and goes straight after the real power.

The belief that the center of power within America lies with Wall Street or multinational corporations is common on the political left. It is my belief that this focus on private sector corporate power ignores the fact that the US federal government is basically the biggest corporation in the world. By assigning blame for economic inequalities on capitalistic greed, the long history of well-connected flatterers of the politically powerful leveraging political pull into economic gain is ignored or downplayed. It also ignores the unintended economic consequences of attempts to politically manage the complex adaptive economic marketplace.

It is impossible to analyze either the political or economic domain in isolation of the other. Big government depends on (and often compels) the cooperation of big business. Big businesses, especially monopolies and cartels, rely on the government to tilt the economic landscape in their favor to protect them from dynamic capitalistic competition.

The Cult of Expertise

2011-10-07T14:25:00.000-05:00

Robert Stacy McCain makes the following criticism of the mainstream right-leaning commentariat:

...they have internalized the mystique of the Cult of Expertise, the belief that being president of the United States is a job that only experienced professionals can perform. And I think it’s high time that we destroy that myth, demonstrating once and for all that the professional political class is our fundamental problem.

This "Cult of Expertise" is among the most important memes that both Establishment Democrats and Establishment Republicans use to maintain their grip on political power. By presenting the qualifications they are most likely to hold as the only valid qualifications for holding office, establishment politicians set themselves up as the only reasonable choice when the voting public decides who should hold power.

Vector Politics

2011-10-03T22:57:00.001-05:00

Political actions are taken with reference to a baseline. That baseline changes every time a political decision is made. The current status quo is, therefore, an appropriate point to use as the point of reference for comparing alternatives. From that point a policy can move the status quo towards a more distributed/centralized structure and/or more transformative/traditional purposes. The vertical axis I've termed the "real axis" because it represents the actual institutional structure. I've called the horizontal axis the "imaginary axis" because institutions often take on a purpose of their own, regardless of the intentions of legislators or officials who create and manage them. Their purpose may seem to be replaced by arbitrary and changeable decision-making processes depending on which party holds power.

There are clearly two main parties in politics, Democratic and Republican. The theory behind the Asplund Chart assumes that both major parties generally support policies that further centralize political institutions while disagreeing about the purposes these institutions should be put to. The Libertarian Party has been the most consistent third party attraction because it attempts to advance the distributed policies neither party will support.

I've represented the two major parties with equal pull and mirrored directions, but I think the basic theory holds even if the parties aren't completely matched. The three party vectors can be represented as four power-weighted vectors for factions. Up represents libertarians; down moderates; left progressives; and right conservatives.

Over longer periods, the progressives and conservatives would mostly cancel each other out from a policy perspective. The weak libertarian influence provides almost no counter-balance to moderate compromises between the two major parties. The net effect of all these vectors is democracy's drift – a tendency towards increased institutional centralization that concentrates decision-making at the highest levels of government.

If the political history of a country were to be graphed, it would look something like the diagram below. Short term electoral victories for conservatives or progressives would move the political status quo left and right. The general tendency towards centralization would keep the status quo moving towards increasing institutional centralization.

Anti-Establishment Thinking

2011-09-22T20:17:00.002-05:00

"[I]f political society, in whatever form, has still made the many the property of the few; if it has introduced labors unnecessary, vices and diseases unknown, and pleasures incompatible with nature; if in all countries it abridges the lives of millions, and renders those millions more utterly abject and miserable, shall we still worship so destructive an idol, and daily sacrifice to it our health, our liberty, and our peace?"

- Edmund Burke
from A Vindication of Natural Society (or A View of the Miseries and Evils Arising to Mankind from Every Species of Artificial Society)

The View From Above

2011-09-20T00:26:00.002-05:00

From inside the political establishment, the rest of the political universe looks crazy. This slightly distorted version of the Asplund Chart shows what they're seeing.

Moderates often believe they represent the center because they aren't partial to either the left or right. The libertarian part of the spectrum they dismiss as a minor ideological fringe group with an unworkable governing strategy. The radical left (both in and out of the Democratic Party) is likewise dismissed as a fringe position filled with insurgents and revolutionaries (possibly hippies, too). The obstructionist far right, by rejecting compromises and even wanting to roll back previous compromises, shows itself to be filled with reactionaries, extreme militia members and segregationists (and even neo-Confederates). In the world-view of the moderate, none of these extremist factions could possibly be trusted with political power.

Because of their shared dislike of ideological extremism, the hopelessly fragmented swing voters, nonparticipants and centrists are a moderate's most important constituency in electoral politics. It seems that moderates discount the possibility that their centralized, one-size-fits-all solutions can lead to authoritarianism, presumably because bad actors can be kept out by requiring impeccable credentials and connections for membership in the governing elite.

The moderates in both parties bridge the gap between partisan mainstream Democrats and Republicans. This leads to the concentration of decision-making authority in the moderate ruling elites. It also makes them the primary focus of special interest lobbying efforts. The concentrated pull of special interest pleaders competes against the more diffuse pull of transparency-loving swing voters, with predictable results. There is, however, no other stable center of power in representative governments.

Distributing political power and creating structural checks and balances is the only way to prevent (or at least slow) the authoritarian drift. Understanding, enforcing and augmenting constitutional checks on the abuse of power is the only method for maintaining political liberty with any history of success.

On Moderation

2011-09-17T19:29:00.001-05:00

To be a moderate in the sense I use it in the Asplund Chart, one has to meet two of three basic criteria:

1. Believe that policies offered by Republican leaders or Democratic leaders or some bipartisan combination of the two are generally the most reasonable solutions.

2. Have an preference for aisle-crossing, compromise-based solutions.

3. If either 1 or 2 doesn't apply, one can still be functionally moderate if there is a reasonable expectation that (through credentials and/or connections) moderate policies will lead to one being granted personal political/regulatory/economic authority.

There are really two different types of moderate and it's critically important to delineate between them.

Moderates who are bipartisan swing voters are in one category. These moderates meet criteria 1 and 2, and generally don't meet criterion 3. They are voters who will never vote for a third party or independent candidate (except for special cases like Sen. Lieberman who was a Democrat until he lost the primary to a more progressive candidate). These voters will generally be members of one party, but may occasionally cross over to vote for the other side if their party puts up a candidate they consider too ideologically conservative/progressive. This kind of moderate is, like voters in all the other factions, a reasonable and important voice in electoral politics.

The other type of moderate is the class of political insiders. These are people with a seat at the political bargaining table. They are the politicians, regulators, bureaucrats, lawyers, big corporations and special interest group lobbyists. Angelo Codevilla's ruling class is composed mostly of moderates. Glenn Greenwald identifies the Third Way alliance of political and corporatist interests as undermining the objectives of the progressive movement. Sarah Palin rails against the capitalism of connections that replaces free markets and fair competition with cronyism, influence peddling and centralized control. The groups identified in the three pieces are moderate based on criterion 3.

A government of, by and for the people is an exceptional thing. Its institutions cannot remain under the control of a small, self-serving elite without becoming something less.

The Invisible Hand of Tyranny

2011-09-16T14:14:00.000-05:00

The Asplund Chart is an attempt at an "invisible hand" explanation of the continuous centralization of power in democratic or representative political system.

Identifying who exercises power (moderate/bipartisan leaders of both parties) in representative governments and why (partisan electoral contests) is the first step in understanding why the system works the way it does. The Asplund Chart locates that nexus of powerful political elites at the point where the two governing parties find common ground. This point is outside of any "radical" or "totalitarian" ideology, yet closer to the authoritarian part of the political spectrum than anywhere else.

The gradual, incremental accumulation of slightly more centralized control results from what seem to political insiders to be prudent, pragmatic decisions. This slowly sets up an environment where creeping regulatory control and interest group cronyism gains enough power to corrupt the entire system. Democracies and republics slowly undermine themselves in a way that sudden authoritarian power grabs could never do. The capture of democratic institutions by self-interested and self-serving elites happens automatically, though clearly some political actors work tirelessly to accelerate the trend. No secret totalitarian aspirations are needed to explain a process that's repeated itself since the earliest recorded human civilizations.

The framers of the US Constitution tried to put safeguards in place against this well-understood problem with republics. Those safeguards have proven to be ineffective over the long run.

Mapping the Political Spectrum: An Advancement on the Nolan Chart

2011-09-16T10:12:00.001-05:00

Political discourse often breaks down because of incompatible or ambiguous definitions. Words like left, right, conservative, progressive, mainstream, extreme, centrist and moderate have different meanings to different people. A wide variety of political maps have been created to try to reduce these ambiguities and facilitate productive dialogue. The Asplund Chart improves on these previous attempts.

Here's a brief summary of the Asplund Chart. ...

Read the rest at libertarianrepublican.net

Stop Me If You've Heard This One...

2011-09-16T00:10:00.000-05:00

Implied Extremism:

Take any blue item. Call it A.
Find the blue item directly opposite A. Call it B.
Find the red label at the edge nearest B. Call it C.

Anyone who is willing to give up ___A___ in favor of ___B___ must be a ___C___.

For example:
Anyone who is willing to give up moral virtue in favor of social justice must be a nihilist or a revolutionary.

Assumed Extremism:

Take any faction label. Call it A.
Find the blue item nearest A. Call it B.
Find the red label at the edge nearest A. Call it C.
Find the blue item opposite B. Call it D.

Even though ___A___ claim to favor ___B___ they're really ___C___ who want to destroy ___D___.

For example:
Even though right-leaning independents claim to favor self reliance they're really militia members and secessionists who want to destroy the social safety net.

Projected Extremism:

Take any faction label. Call it A.
Find the red label at the edge one left/right of A. Call it B.
Find a faction label two to the right/left of A. Call it C.
Find the red label opposite B. Call it D.

If only ___A___ weren't secretly ___B___ they'd work with us ___C___ to keep the ___D___ in check.

For example:

If only establishment democrats weren't secretly fascists and totalitarians they'd work with us left-leading independents to keep the cronyists and corporatists in check.

And on, and on, and on.

Engaging people on the merits is always more difficult than impugning their character.

Back to the Nolan Chart

2011-09-12T19:45:00.001-05:00

In developing the Asplund Chart, the Nolan Chart was used as an example of another two-axis political map. Here's what happens when I map the Asplund Chart back onto the Nolan Chart.

This mapping helps to show that the political parties aren't just evenly distributed left and right. They're also skewed towards the bottom half of the Nolan Chart. Moderates are in the part of the Nolan Chart often labeled Authoritarian or Statist. Centrists, independents and libertarians occupy a large block in the upper middle of the chart. Everyone along the edge or outside the chart is considered politically extreme.

That first mapping shows the major parties. This next one shows a more ideological breakdown.

This chart shows why the centrists, independents and libertarians don't work together. The strong ideological divisions between conservatives, progressives and libertarians keep them apart. There is a stable ruling class populated by Republican and Democratic Party elites, their patrons and the administrative state. Each party keeps their own base in line by marginalizing strongly ideological candidates on their side as wing nuts. This narrows the political mainstream to establishment Republicans, establishment Democrats, bipartisan moderates and independent centrists. The expanding centralized government consensus in this smaller political playing field leads to democracy's drift.

This is how the left-right axis should be placed on this modified Nolan Chart.

The middle of the left-right axis is always claimed by the moderates. The two major party establishments are then immediately left and right of this modified center. Ideological conservatives and progressives are farther from the center. Reactionary anarchists (militia movements) occupy the far right end of the axis, while revolutionary anarchists (Che fans) are on the far left end. This diagram helps to explain why the Republican establishment is so often characterized as reactionary totalitarians (corporatists/oligarchs/fascists) and the Democratic establishment is portrayed as revolutionary totalitarians (communists/socialists/fascists). They are the closest groups in mainstream politics to the various totalitarian ideologies.

The Asplund Chart provides a framework for fleshing out these more widely used political maps to more realistically track political dynamics.

The Two+ Party System

2011-09-08T23:51:00.002-05:00

The Asplund Chart places both the Republican and Democratic Parties in the institutionally centralized part of the map. That should leave an opening for a third party in favor of pragmatic institutional decentralization. The Libertarian Party has tried to fill that role for decades with almost no success. Why?

The easy answer is that we have a two-party system. First-past-the-post, winner-takes-all elections are also part of the answer. The more fundamental answer is that there is only room for two centers of power in any political system: the establishment and the opposition.

In democracies, the party or coalition in power is the current establishment and the other party (or parties) forms the opposition. Power switching between parties based on sometimes mixed electoral results often forces them to find common ground and seek compromise to successfully govern.

One of the most obvious reasons for cooperation between the establishment and opposition parties is to reduce the likelihood of upstart parties displacing them. It's usually easier to deal with the devil you know than to deal with an unpredictable challenger. So the ruling parties collude to impede the formation of third parties by discouraging voters from "wasting" their votes, making it hard for third parties to be placed on ballots and creating labyrinthine rules about financing and running campaigns. This reduces politics from a three or more party strategic contest to a two-party tactical battle.

Many people assume successful political parties can't afford to move too far away from the center. Any move away from the center leaves an opening for opponents to change their platforms to gather in some of the voters left behind. The collusion between the establishment and opposition parties makes their positions more stable and allows them to move away from the true center of political opinion. The direction governing parties collectively move is always in the direction of pragmatic centralization of power. This is democracy's drift, and it puts most political power at the moderate consensus point on the Asplund Chart.

Third parties in America have only been successful if they quickly displace and replace one of the two existing parties. The possibility of this happening acts as a check on the two major parties. The two party system is actually a 2.X party system with 0.X representing the likelihood of a successful third party displacement. I think we have a 2.1 party system, but without the Tea Party movement I'd say it's more like a 2.000001 party system.

The Muddled Middle

2011-09-06T20:08:00.002-05:00

Swing voters occupy the middle of the Asplund Chart.

The swing voter category includes people who are any of the following:
– only lightly attached to parties or candidates
– occasional or infrequent voters
– not particularly ideological
– mostly indifferent to or annoyed by politics
– not participants in electoral politics

Political life can be tough for swing voters. A lot of swing voters have views that aren't well represented by either party, so they often have to decide to support a particular candidate based on one or a few key issues. While many politicians claim to speak for the political center, politicians of every stripe come across as self-serving or dishonest to many swing voters. This can lead even very politically engaged swing voters to sit out most elections.

Both parties court swing voters with talk of centrism, unity, compromise, reasonableness, bipartisanship, moderation, good government, responsiveness, efficiency, openness and transparency. Political analysts try to figure out what mix of issues gives a candidate the maximal appeal to likely swing voters in a particular race. Candidates try to reduce the swing voter appeal of their opponents by tagging them as extremists, ideologues or obstructionists.

Once in office, though, politicians have little incentive to follow through on any campaign promises to swing voters. Swing voters don't generally donate their time and energy to electioneering efforts, so successful candidates don't owe them anything. They aren't very well organized and don't put pressure on politicians to follow through on promises. Many swing voters don't even follow politics closely enough to know that they've been betrayed or ignored.

Political decisions at the federal level have expanded and displaced personal, economic and social decision-making in many areas. Moral politics (of both the left and right), employment regulations, energy policies and environmental protections are just a few of the ways the federal government has replaced more informal ways of resolving disputes with political ones. This politicization gives more people an incentive to be involved in and aware of politics, but doesn't change the way swing voters are treated by elected officials. Courting the middle is important to getting elected, but not to governing.

The failure of centrist movements like the Coffee Party and No Labels demonstrates how weak swing voters are when it comes to generating political action. The Asplund Chart shows swing voters as being in favor of a pragmatic, competing powers political system. There is neither a unifying political end or means for swing voter movements, so they usually lose steam quickly.

More Than Politics

2011-09-04T10:54:00.001-05:00

I developed the Asplund Chart to create a useful map of politics. It can also be used to describe other complex systems. Scientific, religious, cultural and economic institutions all map onto the Asplund Chart.

I'm not going to list out nine factions in each of the four areas, just identify the four colored lines and numbered points. The middle is always populated by the undecided, the non-committal and the apathetic. Here's how the colored lines work out in the five arenas (including politics).

Above the green line (C)
Politics: Progressive (or left-leaning) independents

Science: Inventors and innovators

Economics: Entrepreneurs and start-ups

Religion: Sects that focus on personal transcendentalism
Culture/Art: Artists

Above the yellow line (D)
Politics: Conservative independents and Tea Party

Science: Engineers and applied science

Economics: Established small businesses (Main Street)

Religion: Sects that focus on personal accountability to a higher power
Culture/Art: Craftsmen

Below the blue line (A)
Politics: Democratic Party
Science: Public university system and other government-funded science

Economics: Large disruptive businesses (e.g. hedge funds) and big labor

Religion: Sects that focus on societal transcendentalism
Culture/Art: Producers and critics

Below the red line (B)
Politics: Republican Party
Science: Corporate or business funded research

Economics: Large established businesses (especially those with high fixed costs and low margins)

Religion: Sects that focus on societal/universal accountability to a higher power
Culture/Art: Patrons and sponsors

Here's how the four numbered points come out.

Point 1

Politics: Freedom

Science: Empiricism (Skepticism)

Economics: Free markets

Religion: Congregations (personal transcendence through personal accountability)
Culture/Art: High quality art or craftsmanship

Point 2
Politics: Progress

Science: Cutting-edge or speculative science

Economics: Upstarts and self-made successes

Religion: New Age (personal and societal transcendentalism)
Culture/Art: Ground-breaking or fashionable

Point 3
Politics: Tradition

Science: Stable science

Economics: Business establishment

Religion: Traditional morality (personal and societal accountability)
Culture/Art: Functional or useful

Point 4
Politics: Security

Science: Consensus science

Economics: Planned economies

Religion: Organized or state religions (cultural transcendence through social accountability)
Culture/Art: Mass market consumerism

A lot of people will have a similar world view in all five of these domains. Many will have different, potentially conflicting affiliations in at least some of them. Intricate social networks are created and sustained by free association based on personal affiliations in these overlapping domains.

Political Adaptability and the OODA Loop

2011-09-01T23:56:00.001-05:00

I think Science, Strategy and War: The Strategic Theory of John Boyd was among the most eye opening books I've read.

Plato outlines a theory of learning that claims it's impossible to generate new knowledge. If something is true, it already exists in the perfect World of Forms and the fault for not already knowing it lies with one's human imperfections. Learning is, therefore, more akin to remembering a long-forgotten truth than encountering something new. That's how I felt on page after page, as threads from a wide variety of scientific, military and philosophical disciplines were woven together into a coherent and satisfying whole. (I know that's probably just confirmation bias kicking in, but it's enjoyable all the same.)

The biggest take-away from John Boyd's theory is the OODA loop. It's a general decision-making flow-chart he developed for a variety of military scales from tactical combat to grand strategic warfare. This four-step Observe, Orient, Decide, Act (OODA) process can be applied to many complex adaptive systems. As Osinga repeatedly stresses, the OODA loop is not a simple cycle to be endlessly repeated. It's a way for a complex system, whether that is a single person or an entire culture, to determine what action(s) [or inaction] to take to promote continued survival in a dynamic, sometimes chaotic world.

Political systems (along with cultural, religious and economic systems) are complex adaptive systems at a societal level. I think the Asplund Chart basically takes the place of the Orientation step in the OODA loop in American politics. Here's an OODA-ized Asplund Chart model of politics.

Politics is adaptive when it is able to:

Observe - take input from a wide variety of view points,

Orient - process all of that noisy data and opinion to generate several reasonable courses of action (including waiting for/seeking new information from external sources before proposing solutions)

Decide - collectively selecting an alternative (including sometimes the no action alternative) that is intended to promote the interests of the whole society

Act - put the decision into effect and observe the (as implemented) consequences of the decision

The four colored circles represent the libertarian (yellow), progressive (blue), conservative (red) and moderate (green) consensus positions from the Asplund Chart. The interplay between the colored circles is meant to indicate a political give-and-take between adjacent coalitions. Each coalition is also able to participate in and observe the decision-making process and adjust their strategy and tactics as appropriate.

Unfortunately real world politics often fails to maintain this complex adaptive structure and becomes a rigid, maladaptive process. Here's where I think we've gone wrong.

Dialogue and cooperation between the political leaders of the progressive movement and the libertarian coalition is almost nonexistent. The other three lateral connections (libertarian/conservative, conservative/moderate, progressive/moderate) generate many more actionable political proposals, though joint libertarian/conservative proposals are rarely enacted.
The two-party system gives establishment Democrats (who favor collective transformative action) and establishment Republicans (who favor collective action to maintain existing institutional structures) practically all the power. Libertarians, progressive independents, and conservative independents (including Tea Partiers) are largely ignored in political decision-making. Even conservative Republicans and progressive Democrats are usually more like foils in a bargaining dispute than participants at the table.
The No Action alternative is never taken. Even if no immediate action is taken by our political leaders, they never remove an issue from consideration at some later date. The last time a major issue was removed from the potential control of federal actors was the repeal of prohibition. Political leaders almost always talk of compromise, never truce.
We cannot observe the consequences of our political actions. By taking a hand in managing the medical, energy, education, transportation, financial, manufacturing, etc. sectors it is basically impossible to know what is a result of free market activity, what comes as an intended consequence of regulation and what is an unintended consequence. In addition, the time scale for making new decisions is almost always shorter than the amount of time it takes to actually collect and analyze the data that could show how effective the previous actions were. (Think how long a longitudinal medical study has to go before anyone can objectively report on the impact of air quality regulations and then note that new air quality regulations come out a few times every decade.)

If the political system continues to run out of control, it will eventually undermine the adaptability of the entire society. We would become susceptible to collapse from within and vulnerable to attack from without. These four issues may be correctable, but not easily or quickly.

Political Narratives

2011-08-28T13:12:00.005-05:00

In Star Wars Culture Clash I showed how a simple narrative structure can be mapped onto the Asplund Chart. The basic hero narrative of each of the nine political factions follows.

The Libertarian Narrative:
Underdog libertarians are battling the evil corporate/socialist state to preserve freedom. The potential conservative/progressive allies are unreliable and ineffective. The Republican and Democratic Parties have misguided priorities and are actually serving the interests of the ruling class.

Conservative Independent Narrative:
Underdog conservative independents (and Tea Partiers) are battling the out of control regulatory state to preserve freedom. The potential libertarian/conservative Republican allies are unreliable and ineffective. The progressive independents and establishment Republicans have misguided priorities and are actually serving the interests of the hyper-regulatory state.

Conservative Republican Narrative:
Underdog conservatives are battling the state-sponsored progressive Democrats to preserve freedom. The potential independent/Republican allies are unreliable and ineffective. The moderate Democrats and libertarians have misguided priorities and are actually serving the interests of the (closet) communists and revolutionary anarchists.

Republican Establishment Narrative:
Underdog Republicans are trying to reign in an out of control, nearly bankrupt welfare state to preserve freedom. The potential conservative/moderate Democrat allies are unreliable and ineffective. The libertarians and progressive Democrats have misguided priorities and are actually contributing to the problems.

Progressive Independent Narrative:
Underdog progressive independents are battling the out of control crony-capitalist state to preserve freedom. The potential libertarian/progressive Democrat allies are unreliable and ineffective. The conservative independents and establishment Democrats have misguided priorities and are actually serving the interests of the corrupt (shadow) oligarchy.

Progressive Democrat Narrative:
Underdog progressives are battling the evil corporate/religious state to preserve freedom. The potential independent/Democratic Party allies are unreliable and ineffective. The Republican moderates and libertarians have misguided priorities and are actually serving the interests of the corporatist/fundamentalist ruling class.

Democratic Establishment Narrative:
Underdog Democrats are trying to temper the out of control religious and social intolerance, while reducing corporate welfare to preserve freedom and create equal opportunity for all. The potential progressive/moderate Republican allies are unreliable and ineffective. The libertarians and conservative Republicans have misguided priorities and are actually contributing to the problems.

The Swing Voter Narrative:
Some libertarians, conservatives, Republicans, progressives, and/or Democrats are too rigid and are pulling the country in chaotic/evil direction(s). The good/lawful libertarians, conservatives, Republicans, progressives, and/or Democrats are unreliable, ineffective, and have the wrong priorities. We all need to work together to restore balance to the political system. This narrative doesn't facilitate long-term cooperation as the No Labels and Coffee Party movements have recently demonstrated.

The Moderate Narrative:
Republican/Democratic leaders act together with the noble, pragmatic moderates to find common ground, avoid gridlock, and keep the country working.

All of these narratives are true, from a certain point of view. The big problem with the political process is that only people who have internalized the moderate narrative get to make public policy decisions. Moderates use their big government hammer on every issue that becomes politicized, nail or not.

Star Wars Culture Clash

2011-08-25T21:23:00.006-05:00

One of the joys of Star Wars (A New Hope for anyone born after 1990 or so) is that it is such a simple morality play. I've developed a new way to chart culture clashes and examining the relationship between Luke and Han will help to introduce it.

The most useful breakdown of possible moral alignments I've come across is (sadly) from Advanced Dungeons and Dragons. In this system there are three possible takes on morality (Good, Neutral, Evil) and three positions on legality (Lawful, Balanced, Chaotic). By creating a 3X3 grid, like the one below, all possible combinations are shown. There are actually several different ways to arrange this map of moral alignments. The lawful/chaotic or good/evil axis could have been flipped. The axes could have been rotated 90 degrees either way. I'll call this particular orientation Luke Skywalker's world view.

At the beginning of Star Wars Luke is living with his aunt and uncle on an isolated water farm on Tatooine. He's led a fairly sheltered, boring life and isn't really sure what to do with himself. There are three options he's considering: submitting his application to go to the Imperial Academy (Lawful Neutral), staying and helping his uncle with the farm work (Lawful Good), and hanging out at Toshi Station with his friends (Balanced Good or Balanced Neutral). He's been exposed to the Sand People who are Chaotic Evil and the Jawas who are Chaotic Neutral.

When C-3PO tells him about his recent participation in Rebel activities (Chaotic Good), Luke gets excited and wants to find out more. After leaving the farm to chase after R2-D2, he enters the wasteland and runs into a crazy old wizard (who Uncle Owen thinks is Chaotic Neutral) named Obi-Wan Kenobi. While recovering from an encounter with some Sand People Luke finds out that Obi-Wan was a (Balanced Neutral) Jedi as was Luke's own father. Obi-Wan encourages Luke to join up with the Rebels, but Luke isn't willing to commit to such a big step.

When Luke sees the destroyed Jawa transport and then the devastation at his uncle's farm, he's forced to reclassify the Empire from Lawful Neutral to Lawful Evil. This leaves no real options open to him other than joining Obi-Wan in the quest to return the droids to the Rebel Alliance. To that end, Obi-Wan takes them to the (Chaotic Evil) “wretched hive of scum and villainy” that is Mos Eisley Spaceport. There they run into a (Chaotic Evil to Luke) smuggler named Han Solo. This characterization is underscored by the casual way Han kills the bounty hunter Guido (in the original version of the film).

So, to summarize, Luke had his Lawful Good family destroyed by the Lawful Evil Empire and has fallen in with a Balanced Neutral Jedi guide and a Chaotic Evil smuggler to go join up with the Chaotic Good Rebels.

As Obi-Wan would no doubt confirm, the world can be seen from multiple points of view. For example, Han Solo does not see himself as Chaotic Evil. He just lives in a different moral framework than Luke. The only laws that Han respects are the thieves' code: might makes right, follow through on your obligations, watch your back. His moral world-view is below.

From Han's perspective Obi-Wan and Luke are drawing him in to some serious trouble. If they weren't offering him enough cash to get out of his own problems with Jabba the Hutt he wouldn't have taken on the risk. He, too, sees the Empire as Lawful Evil and wants no part of the conflict if he can avoid it. The rugged independence of the privateer is Han's idea of the good life. Han is skeptical of Obi-Wan's Jedi philosophy and is only willing to help the Rebels because it helps him meet his contractual obligations.

The rescue of Princess Leia (Chaotic Good to Luke and Han, but Lawful Good in her own world view) starts to get Han personally vested in the fight against the Empire. Obi-Wan's death at the hands of Darth Vader (Lawful Evil) leaves Luke without a guide. The bonding from shared combat leads to friendship between Luke and Han. The three world-view cells they have in common (Chaotic Good, Balanced Neutral, and Lawful Evil) form the basis for their initial cooperation. Their friendship leads both to question their own world view as they internalize some of the others' judgments into their decision making process. Their composite world-view is a more nuanced and conflicted understanding of the moral universe.

As soon as they reach the Rebel base Luke officially joins the Rebellion. The upheaval in his life make it the only real choice he could have made. Han takes his reward money, but gets some grief from (Balanced Good) Chewbacca for cutting and running. While the hopeless position of the Rebellion would have made this an easy decision for the Han that killed Guido, the friendship with Luke makes it a tough call. In the end, loyalty and friendship keep him hanging around. When Luke gets in trouble with Darth Vader, Han jumps in to save him, and the Rebellion, from certain destruction.

By their actions, the Rebel Alliance judges both Luke and Han to be Lawful Good warriors and holds an award ceremony to honor them.

Why does this matter? Here's a diagram of the narrative structure created by the composite world-view of Luke and Han.

This is a map of the heroic epic. A hero starts out in a sheltered environment where true evil and chaos are unknown. After leaving this home or having it disrupted by outside forces, the hero discovers that a powerful evil force is threatening some vulnerable and virtuous people. By teaming up with a seemingly incompatible ally (or allies) under the tutelage of a wise, balance-seeking guide the hero works to protect the underdogs and vanquish the forces of evil. Along the way some allies drop off or flame out. Encounters with randomly helpful or destructive third parties distract or assist the hero with the quest. The villain's underlings are duty-bound to follow the dictates of their leader, but some see the evil and may even assist the hero. Eventually the band of adventurers is successful in restoring the known world to something closer to its proper balance.

These elements are as old as storytelling itself. That they are created by simply overlaying two different world views shows the usefulness of this method of mapping the moral universe. Storytelling is about broadening horizons, challenging assumptions and reconciling real differences between characters and cultures. The reason the heroic narrative is universal is because no two cultures (and no two people) have identical world views. Creating and sharing these narratives allows people to discover and reinforce commonalities that facilitate collective action (for good or evil) and/or peaceful coexistence.

2012 Republican Presidential Field

2011-08-22T22:22:00.002-05:00

Moderate Establishment Candidates:

Newt Gingrich

Mitt Romney

Jon Huntsman, Jr.

Rudy Giuliani (if he enters)

Mainstream Republican Candidates:

Rick Perry

Paul Ryan (if he enters)

Chris Christie (if he enters)

Tim Pawlenty (before he left)

Conservative Republican Candidates:
Rick Santorum
Thaddeus McCotter
John Bolton (if he enters)

Libertarian Candidates:
Ron Paul
Gary Johnson

Big Conservative Tent Candidates:
Michele Bachmann
Herman Cain
Sarah Palin (if she enters)

Asplund Chart Nuts and Bolts

2011-08-22T20:13:00.003-05:00

LEFT VS. RIGHT

You're familiar with the Left-Right diagram of politics, right?

Either way, here it is.

This breakdown is stupid. Left and Right have no real meaning, just a relative one. They mean different things depending on what country you're in, what time period you're talking about, and what phase the moon is in.

It's also stupid in a very smart way for incumbents. They get to say they're responsible moderates while their challengers are crazy wing-nuts.

This leads to stupid, annoying arguments about who the "real" liberals or conservatives are and who has the best chance of winning. Politician X is a too conservative to win. Politician Y is a real liberal, not like that fake liberal hippie-punching Politician Z. Pointless discussions because "liberal" and "conservative" are extremely subjective terms that very few people will define the same way.

Left and right isn't totally useless (since almost everyone does, in fact, use it), but it's tremendously counterproductive for everybody but moderates.

ECONOMIC FREEDOM VS. SOCIAL FREEDOM

So if Left-Right doesn't work on it's own, what can we add?

The obvious choice is something about "size" of government. The Nolan Chart does this by having two dimensions, social freedom and economic freedom. Conservatives supposedly like small government economic policies and big government social policies. Liberals, on the other hand, supposedly like big government economic intervention and small government social policies. "Statists" like big government everything and Libertarians like small (or no) government anything.

Wonderful! Now you can be social liberal yet fiscally conservative. Or maybe socially conservative and a fiscal centrist. It's better than just left or right, but still not quite good enough.

There are two problems with this breakdown.

The first is that it again leaves the centrists/moderates with the best position on the map. Anyone who isn't (or can't claim to be) in the center of the chart can be marginalized by someone for not being centrist enough. All those divisive liberals, conservatives, libertarians, and statists (communists, fascists, fundamentalists, and Nazis, I guess) are pulling the country apart. It sounds like another job for Moderate Politician Man!

The second problem is that the social freedom/economic freedom distinction is hooey. All money is time, so all social and economic questions are irrevocably linked.

ASPLUND CHART

Unlike the other two examples, my chart is a useful, ideologically grounded, functional map of politics. Go me!

Here it is:

See the sideways axis: Transformational, Pragmatic, Traditional

It's just like left and right, but it says something about the goals of the people/politicians involved. Hope and Change should be pretty obvious. Likewise those traditional, stodgy conservatives. The pragmatic middle is the start of a neat trick to pull the rug out from under the moderates. I'll explain more in a bit. So the horizontal axis is the "ends" people are trying to achieve through politics.

The up-and-down axis: Distributed, Competing Powers, Centralized

Big government and small government are useful, but it isn't really about how big you are it's how you use the power you have. Distributed systems encourage distributed (independent, local, free) decision-making. Centralized systems encourage one-size-fits-all decision-making. Competing powers systems, like the one set up in America a couple hundred years ago, try to balance decision-making authority between many different actors (state, local, federal, public, private) to keep it from devolving into tyranny or anarchy. So the vertical axis represents the preferred "means" of achieving one's political ends.

The party lines: red and blue

The area below the red line is where most card-carrying Republicans reside. Likewise, those below the blue line are Democrats. Big national parties favor centralized decision-making processes because that maximizes their political reach. The moderates (and party switching backstabbers) are those pragmatic deal makers who seem to come up with a big government solution to every problem they've ever encountered. Yeah, compromise!

Unless we are eternally vigilant, the moderates will come out on top in every political decision-making process. We, as a country, have not been vigilant and have let ourselves get trapped in an endlessly repeated prisoner's dilemma. The conservatives have to choose between letting Democrats win or going along with moderate Republicans and progressives have to let Republicans win or go along with the moderate Democrats. Net result is Republicans win (very) occasionally, Democrats win (very) occasionally, the moderate (in name only) political establishment wins almost all the time.

The ideology lines: green and yellow

The area above the green line is the home of the progressive. Above the yellow line are the conservatives. These ideologically "rigid" purists won't play nice within their "own" party and are constantly ridiculed for having principles that aren't negotiable. If they didn't despise the leaders and the establishment (and even some of the base) of the other party so much, they might just vote for a third party or stay home. The area above the intersection of the two lines holds the pragmatic, distributed-government, so-ideologically-pure-they-make-each-other-puke Libertarians who haven't found a political battle they couldn't loose since 1787 (when they called themselves "Anti-Federalists" and got the Bill of Rights added to the Constitution [which many of them opposed]).

In the middle of the map is the mushy middle swing voter. Courted by all. Counted on by none. Electorally powerful, yet completely legislatively powerless. There is no unifying principle that they can rally around aside from being nice and playing fair.

OK, so here's the Asplund Chart again.

It should be your map of (American) politics. See who you are. Decide what you want. Figure out who your allies should be.

Taxes are Time

2011-08-19T14:53:00.001-05:00

Economic and political liberty are inseparable because time is money.

The time each person spends earning money that is taxed is time they can never recover. Anyone who has a part of their existence appropriated also has an interest in making sure that the government uses that money in a sound, prudent, and morally permissible way. Automatic, unavoidable taxation, therefore, creates an ethical duty to see that any social engineering performed by the government conforms to each taxpayer's world view. User fees avoid this moral issue by limiting their reach to those who voluntarily participate with full knowledge that the fees will be assessed.

Anyone who is a net tax beneficiary also has a moral obligation to use the portion of their fellow citizens' lives they have been gifted in a prudent, respectful way. Like many ethical and moral obligations, this duty is often viewed with resentment by those who are faced with it.

The different responses to government social engineering from the political right and left is a reflection of the relative position of members of the two coalitions with respect to the generation and receipt of tax money. The left generally resents and opposes limitations on how and why tax money is spent because they are net receivers of these funds (through public sector employment or direct subsidies). The right, as net payers of unavoidable taxes, see themselves as having a duty to ensure that the funds are spent in a way that is morally acceptable.

The political left objects to the moral social engineering the political right tries to attach to spending. They rarely acknowledge that by forcing all wage-earners to pay taxes they are also imposing a duty to participate (or interfere) in the management of these programs. If everyone was given the ability to opt out of the taxation, many would gladly give up the duty of participating in their administration.

Allowing people the freedom to disassociate from government social engineering efforts is the only option the political establishment will never consider.

Detailed Asplund Chart

2011-08-17T22:34:00.005-05:00

Politics is a complex adaptive system.

The major factions and interactions within the system are created and maintained through decisions made by individual participants acting at their own discretion.

No person or group controls the process, though some understand it well enough to use the political system to their advantage.

A more transparent system is a more equitable system, so towards that end I made this chart...

Truce or Compromise

2011-08-09T14:45:00.000-05:00

Great compromises are always at or near point 4 - the only point where Republican and Democratic Party leaders can find common ground. This means that every time someone says compromise is necessary, they're advocating a big government solution to the problems of the day.

The alternative to a great compromise is a grand truce. The grand truce is the small government, distributed approach to problem-solving and would occur at point 1. Only by rejecting the idea that compromise is possible can the conservative and progressive movements provide a check against the unrelenting consolidation of power in the hands of political and economic elites.

The US Constitution is a mixture of a grand compromise and a grand truce. The Bill of Rights (grand truce) outlined the terms under which the people of America would accept the governance structure laid out in the Constitution (grand compromise). The ultimate responsibility for enforcing limits to constitutional powers lies with the people, thus the founders' calls for eternal vigilance on behalf of freedom.

It is important to work together to solve problems. It is also important to recognize that not every problem has a political solution. Agreeing to disagree and negotiating a truce can be just as beneficial as a managed compromise. A system, such as the one that has developed in America (and most of the rest of the world), that forces everyone to work together to solve every problem ignores the benefits that come from ideological and political diversity. America used to be an exception, but it's increasingly conforming to the rule of tyrannical governments everywhere.

Personal Freedom through Constitutional Republicanism

2011-07-13T16:55:00.000-05:00

As I mentioned here, I think the second US Constitution attempted to institutionalize as even a distribution of power as is possible between all participants in the political decision-making process. The founding fathers had participated in the revolution to throw off the institutionalized authority of the British monarchy, which conformed to the standard distribution of power in almost all societies at almost all times in human history.

The fear of instituting a new government that would become the very thing they had rebelled against was the motivating factor in the creation of the first US Constitution. A strong central executive was recognized as a threat to personal liberty, so the first framers created a unicameral congress to perform a limited set of federal functions, leaving most authority with the state and local governments. This governing structure was widely believed to give too much power to secessionist and obstructionist local authorities. By concentrating too much power at point 1 on the Asplund Chart, the first US Constitution was leading to a dissolution of the United States into two or more regional confederacies.

The framers then went about devising a system of government that they hoped would tend towards neither dissolution or authoritarianism. What they created was this:

Article 1: Congress
The House of Representatives (Point 2)
The House of Representatives was designed to provide a forum for transformational populism. As the only directly elected members of the federal government, they were expected to be most susceptible to majoritarian excesses. As the most directly accountable body, the House of Representatives was also given the power of the purse.

The Senate (Point 3)
Since Senators were initially appointed by the states, it was assumed that they would guard against the usurpation of local authority by the federal government. Because the Senate gave equal representation to all states regardless of population, it would also provide a check on the more reckless majoritarian impulses of the House of Representatives and act to uphold traditional institutions. The framers also invested significant executive branch oversight functions in the Senate to try to maintain a humble presidency.

Article 2: Executive (Point 4)
The President was invested with the minimum authority the framers thought necessary for a stable union of states. The President's authority was limited mostly to foreign affairs, with some very limited domestic responsibilities.

Article 3: Judicial (Point 1)
The Supreme Court was created mostly to resolve disputes between the states and occasionally between the other two branches. With the adoption of the Bill of Rights, it also became the ultimate guarantor of constitutionally protected personal liberties.

Constitutional Shortcomings
Amendment Process
By requiring super-majorities in Congress to pass a constitutional amendment, the framers guaranteed that only amendments that increase or are neutral with respect to federal authority would be passed. The power to adopt amendments should have been left with state governments and the people directly.

Impeachment

The infrequency of impeachments reflects the unwillingness of all federal elected officials to censure their colleagues through the constitutionally provided process. To be an effective deterrent, the ability to initiate the impeachment process would have to be given to some non-federal authority such as the governors or legislatures of some specified number of states (with significant penalties for bringing spurious charges).

Constitutional Enforcement

The enforcement of constitutional limitations on congressional, executive, and judicial authorities was supposed to be done by each branch acting as a check on the other two. That does not seem to have worked out very well. Since the President appoints Supreme Court Justices with Senate concurrence, there has proven to be a bias towards selecting justices who will interpret the Constitution in a way that accommodates the centralization of decision-making authority at the federal level. This tendency might be partially mitigated by providing a check on federal overreach such as allowing a super-majority of states to remove a Justice who is particularly negligent in enforcing Constitutional limitations on federal authority.

America's Alternatives

2011-07-12T18:46:00.001-05:00

We are here:

Bad Scenario #1: Continued Centralization

Bad Scenario #2: Massive Unrest

Hopeful Scenario: Cooperative Decentralization

American History (in five charts)

2011-07-11T18:21:00.002-05:00

Revolutionary War

Early America

Civil War

Post Civil War through Modern America

Concentrating Authority

2011-07-10T10:24:00.000-05:00

In the Asplund Chart, political power will concentrate along the lines A, B, C, and D. Because politicians attain power by obtaining the support of multiple factions, they need to occupy (or at least seem to occupy) the ideological ground near the boundaries between these factions. If political involvement was distributed equally between every possible ideological stance, the distribution of power would look something like the figure below.

The yellow areas around the numbered points represent the four equally powerful political consensus points. The blue area shows the political mainstream, while the darkening shades of gray represent successively more extreme and marginal ideologies. This is the best case scenario under the Asplund Chart framework. As I'll go over in more detail in a later post, this is the type of balanced political system the framers were hoping to institutionalize through the second US Constitution.

Any political system that does not maintain separate, competing, and equally powerful coalitions at or near those four points will transition into the power arrangement in the figure below.

The coalition that occupies point 4 will come to dominate the political landscape. The smaller concentrations of power at points 2 and 3 represent coalitions that sometimes support and sometimes oppose the coalition at point 4. The political battles between the coalitions at point 2 and 3 will tend to distract attention from the systematic centralization of power at point 4. The fourth consensus (point 1) will be politically powerless and only barely inside the political mainstream.

This creates a Prisoners' Dilemma situation where opponents of the central authority (anyone above line C or D) must choose between supporting a somewhat powerful consensus (points 2 or 3) that will possibly sell out to the central authority or the powerless and ineffective anti-establishment consensus at point 1. As long at most political participants choose to support consensus 2 or 3, the moderate consensus establishment at point 4 will maintain its hold on the political decision-making process.

The only relatively peaceful way to get from the second figure to the first is for the minor coalitions at points 2 and 3 to break all ties with the coalition at point 4 and actively cooperate to empower the ideology of the anti-establishment consensus at point 4. This type of transition is extremely unlikely, but would be better than the other alternatives.

Entrenchment

2011-07-07T00:49:00.000-05:00

The basic Asplund Chart is shown below. Lines A, B, C, and D represent the types of trade-offs that are commonly made in political decision-making processes. In general, committed Democrats are left of line A, Republicans are right of line B, progressives are left of line C, and conservatives are right of line D. Swing voters or centrists are in the center of the chart, with libertarians in the top center and moderates in the bottom center.

The choice of straight-line factional boundaries does not necessarily reflect real-world political boundaries. In a stable political system the tendency is for those who exercise political authority to gradually accumulate more over time. This entrenchment process is easy to represent by replacing the straight lines with curved ones as shown in the version below.

Replacing the straight lines with curved lines shifts the political ideologies represented by the four line intersection points. Point 1 shifts towards a somewhat more centralized institutional structure, but is still on the distributed side of the competing powers structure preference. Points 2 and 3 are shifted from the competing powers institutional structure to a much more centralized position. Point 4 is still more centralized.

As the lines and points shift with the process of political entrenchment, many political participants will find that their old political allegiances are no longer valid. Some who considered themselves mainstream, swing-voting independents will find that their ideology is now considered marginal under the new political consensus. Similarly some moderately conservative or progressive voters who used to be accepted as valuable participants in Republican and Democratic Party politics will find that the party no longer has a place for them. Even some moderates who were previously key decision-makers in political debates will find that they are now part of the less influential group of independent swing voters who are mostly ignored except during elections.

The concentration of power in the smaller group of establishment Democrats, Republicans, and moderates works to the advantage of everyone within the political establishment. With the marginalization of anyone who leans towards being politically independent comes an increasingly bitter partisan divide. The divide itself protects the entire political establishment from third party challenges by encouraging voters to pick the lesser evil or to simply quit participating in disgust. The entrenchment of the establishment results in increasing power being exercised by an increasingly select, unrepresentative elite.

Electoral Trade-offs

2011-07-06T22:46:00.000-05:00

Predicting election outcomes using the Asplund Chart

[Closed Party Primaries]
In a closed primary the preferred candidate would generally fall near the centroid of the party membership. For Republicans this would be an individual who falls near the midpoint of the yellow line between the red line and the bottom-right corner. This would translate into a fairly conservative individual who is comfortable with an expansive governmental role promoting traditional economic and social activities. Similarly for Democrats this would be an individual who falls near the midpoint of the green line between the blue line and the bottom-left corner. This would translate into a fairly progressive individual who is also comfortable with an expansive governmental role overseeing most economic and social activities.

[Open Party Primaries (both competitive)]
In an open primary the preferred candidate would generally fall near the center of the right (or left) half of the chart. For Republicans this would translate into a somewhat conservative, constitutionalist (or federalist) candidate. Similarly for Democrats this would translate into a somewhat progressive candidate who is particularly interested in advancing policies that address social or economic justice issues.

[Open Party Primaries (one competitive)]
In an open primary where only one race is competitive, the preferred candidate would generally fall near the center of the chart and below the party line. Since political opponents and swing voters will be more likely to vote in the competitive primary, this type of primary will favor candidates closer to the political center. For both Republicans and Democrats this would translate into an establishment or moderate candidate. Establishment candidates are generally much less ideologically motivated than conservative/progressive candidates, but are also much more comfortable with an expansive role for government in decision-making processes.

[General Elections (two parties)]
By looking at numbered points 2, 3, and 4, all of the important general election dynamics can be explained. These positions refer to the (sometimes misinformed) public perception of a candidate, not necessarily to the candidate themselves.
Toss Ups - Democrat at 2 and Republican at 3;
Both the Democrat and Republican at 4
Republican Wins - Democrat at 4, Republican at 3
Democrat Wins - Democrat at 2, Republican at 4

Basically whichever party has the biggest tent wins. A big tent is not, however, an attempt to win over the moderates. Motivating right-/left-leaning independents and libertarians to participate has a significantly higher electoral payout than attracting a few more moderates.

[General Elections (three parties)]
All four numbered points are necessary to explain three-party general election dynamics. There are too many permutations to cover all of them. If the major parties position themselves at points 2 and 3, third part challengers will generally find little traction. If a major party candidate occupies point 4, a third party candidate at either point 1 or 2/3 (whichever is open) will split that party's vote allowing the other candidate to win. This rough dynamic was on display in 1992 with Clinton (near 2), Bush (near 4), and Perot (near 1) and in 2000 with Bush (near 3), Gore (near 4), and Nader (near 2).

[Election Prediction Caveats]
These predictions are based on assuming that ideological preferences of candidates are the major deciding factor in an election. Obviously there are other factors that are extremely important to election outcomes such as financing, name recognition, and organizational support. All three of these factors will generally favor incumbent and establishment candidates over challengers from the left or right. These predictions also assume a roughly even distribution in faction membership. Specific electoral strategies would be more or less effective depending on the demographics of a particular electoral geography.

Institutionalized Liberty

2011-07-04T10:19:00.000-05:00

Political institutions are complex adaptive systems. The single institutional imperative that drives the entire political process is the centralization of authority. Complex systems often have punctuated equilibriums of the kind shown in the background bifurcation image.

The sweet spot for liberty and justice for all is the massive intersection in the bifurcation image below which the system is split into two competing hierarchies that can only be reunited through totalitarianism. America is the only country in the world that was founded on that spot.

Happy 4th of July!

Nolan Chart vs. Asplund Chart

2011-07-04T00:52:00.000-05:00

Is the Asplund Chart just another variation on the Nolan Chart?

No. The Nolan Chart is a classification tool while the Asplund Chart is a functional model of dynamic political systems.

The figure above is an overlay of the two charts. Some new factional labels and additional fringe groups were inserted to supplement the labels on the basic Asplund Chart. The correspondence between the two charts is to be expected since both are attempting to represent the same political system.

A major difference between the two charts is the axes. An economic freedom vs. personal freedom distinction forms the basis for the classification system used in the Nolan Chart. In my opinion, the two types of freedom are inseparable and attempts to regulate one will necessarily create unintended consequences for the other. With that said, many attempts have been made to supplement the official axes in the Nolan Chart with a vertical and horizontal axis similar to those used in the Asplund Chart.

The most common vertical axis added to the Nolan Chart is a generalized freedom axis. The Institutional Structure axis in the Asplund Chart provides a similar range of freedoms, but explicitly ties freedom to the type of institution that has decision-making authority. Power comes with both freedoms and responsibilities, and exercising power through one institutional structure necessarily limits the freedom of other institutional levels. Individual preferences regarding acceptable trade-offs between institutional structures is part of the process of determining one's political affiliations. The ability to classify individuals based on preferred institutional means instead of aspirational views about freedom is a clear improvement over the Nolan Chart and its major variants.

The most common horizontal axis added to the Nolan Chart is the Left-Moderate-Right axis. Again this is similar to the Purpose of Institutions axis, but the left-right distinction has no explicit ideological component. By placing a spectrum of ideological ends on the horizontal axis and combining it with the institutional means identified on the vertical axis, the entire chart functions as model of the political system instead of serving only as a classification tool.

The major political fault lines result from differences in individual preferences regarding the relative importance of ideological autonomy, party institutional effectiveness, and party ideological effectiveness.

The diagonal lines in the Asplund Chart track trade-offs that are the basis for political decision-making. Lines A and B represent Democratic Party and Republican Party membership, respectively. Participating in party politics requires one to sacrifice a non-trivial amount of ideological autonomy to the party decision-making process. The reward for relinquishing this autonomy is an increased opportunity to advance some other part of one's ideological agenda through collective action. People with ideological preferences below lines A and B would likely make the type of sacrifice that political party membership requires. As an individual's preferred institutional structure shifts from distributed to centralized, the person will be increasingly comfortable with the fairly centralized decision-making process of both major political parties.

Lines C and D represent a different sort of ideological trade-off that is responsible for most intra-party conflict. The lines separate those party members who are accused of being too willing to compromise from those who are accused of being too ideologically pure. This division is especially visible during primaries, but is also important during general elections and the normal process of governing. The trade-off is between doing something that modestly improves the institutional power of both parties without furthering any important ideological goals or accepting a political stale-mate in the hope that an opportunity to pursue a more ambitious will arise. People with ideological preferences above lines C and D would likely choose to take no action if they feel that no substantive advancement of their agenda is possible. As an individual's preferred institutional structure shifts from centralized to distributed, the person will be increasingly unwilling to trade ideological ends for increases in party institutional effectiveness.

The combinations of ideological goals, party affiliations, and preferred institutional structures represented on the Asplund Chart track the observed political landscape more closely and with much more context than is available using the Nolan Chart. The only major labeling mismatch between the two charts is that the authoritarian/statist quadrant of the Nolan Chart is called the moderate consensus in the Asplund Chart. The moderate label was used to make the chart accessible to the averagely informed voter.

In addition to providing a framework for classifying participants in the political system, three processes can be modeled using the Asplund Chart: the formation of a consensus, the process of political compromise, and coalition building. These capabilities make the Asplund Chart a useful tool for understanding, predicting, and improving dynamic political systems.

Party Paradigm Shifts

2011-07-03T08:44:00.000-05:00

If the Asplund Chart accurately represents the political landscape, how does it account for the formation of successful third parties? To answer that, it is important to understand that there are two competing philosophies of democratic governance: the representative model and the leadership model.

Early America - Representative Governance
America was founded under the representative model of governance. This model assumes that a party/electoral system is supposed to choose and elect candidates who believe that their task is to advance the agenda of their constituents to the best of their abilities. Under this paradigm the interpretations of lines A and B are swapped with the interpretations of lines C and D. Here is what the new political fault lines would become:

C (Green Line) - Progressive party left of the line
D (Yellow Line) - Conservative party right of the line
A (Blue Line) - Left-leaning ideologues below the line (representatives above)
B (Red Line) - Right-leaning ideologues below the line (representatives above)

The founding documents reflect the fact that the early political consensus in America was at or near the Libertarian consensus point (1 on the chart). The Federalist-crafted structure of the federal government laid out in the Constitution is based on the "Competing Powers" institutional structure. It created competing branches of government and a distribution of authority between the state and federal levels. The Anti-Federalist push for enumerated rights and more explicit limitations on federal power lead to the adoption of the Bill of Rights, a clear example of the "Distributed" governing philosophy.

Modern America - Elected Leadership
The current two-party system is based on a leadership model of governance. This model assumes that a party/electoral system is supposed to choose and elect candidates who are supposed to promote the interest of their constituents to the best of their abilities. The distinction between "advancing the agenda" and "promoting the interest" is a subtle, but important shift. If one assumes that elected leaders may have access to better information than their constituents or may possess character traits that make them more likely to come to the correct conclusion than the average voter, then forcing the elected leader to defer to the expressed will of their constituents is counterproductive. The Democratic and Republican Party establishments (and most governing parties world-wide) have institutionalized both of these assumptions. Because the parties themselves act to filter out voters and candidates who disagree with these assumptions, they create a system where the moderate consensus (point 4) dominates political activities.

Civil War Era Paradigm Shift
How did the governing philosophies of both parties become inverted? The first inversion was the emergence of the Republican Party. As an explicitly national progressive party, the Republicans displaced the competing regional and local progressive parties (including the Whigs). This lead to a total breakdown of the political process because there was no possible point of compromise between the old Democratic Party (line D) and the new Republican Party (line A). This political breakdown was resolved through the Civil War.

After the war ended, the progressive Republican Party became the new conservative establishment (line B). The modern Democratic Party reformed (line A) under the leadership governing paradigm, creating a stable, balanced political dynamic between the parties. The remnants of the pre-Civil War Democratic Party in the south remained an ideologically disconnected anachronism within the modern Democratic Party until the mid to late 1900s.

Tea Party Paradigm Shift
What happens if the Tea Party (line D) is able to replace the Republican Party? If the Democratic Party maintains their current power structure and governing philosophies, there will be no point of compromise between the two parties and the political system will become hopelessly gridlocked. This will be problematic if the Tea Party is able to win enough seats to have a unified super-majority at the national level. Otherwise, it will be catastrophic. A matching progressive movement inversion of the Democratic Party would be the only way to stabilize the inter-party political dynamic.

Asplund Chart = Political Theory

2011-07-02T21:57:00.001-05:00

As a theory of political dynamics, the Asplund Chart accomplishes quite a few things.

Identify major factions:
Republicans, Democrats, progressives, conservatives, moderates, independents, Libertarians, and swing voters comprise most of the frequently mentioned factions in American politics.

Identify basis for intra-factional cooperation:
The combinations of "Purpose of Institutions" and preferred "Institutional Structure" for each faction closely tracks the area on the chart where each faction appears. These shared ideological ends and institutional means provide the basis for cooperation between members of each faction in pursuing their political goals.

Identify basis for inter-factional conflict:
Because each faction has cohesive ideological preferences, there are substantive disagreements between any two factions. These disagreements tend to be more hostile along the horizontal axis than the vertical one. Shared assessments of the proper institutional structure combined with disagreements about institutional aims give rise to accusations of acting in bad faith or intentional mismanagement. Shared ideological goals and mismatched institutional structure preferences result in accusations that one faction or another is unserious, unrealistic, or too willing to compromise.

Identify basis for inter-factional cooperation:
Because each faction is a political minority, none would be able to implement any policies without obtaining the cooperation of some other faction(s). Cooperation between adjacent factions is much more likely because they will have at least some political aims in common.

Predictions for governance:
Almost all elected representatives will be positioned in the bottom half of the chart. This means that the net outcome of any long-term series of legislative decisions will be in the direction of a more centralized government. Given that the party platforms and candidates are selected through an adaptive process, there is no structural reason to expect more successful candidates would fall on the left or right side of the chart. There would, however, be a slight bias towards adopting transformational policies since traditional goals are often best served by taking no legislative action.

The area around moderate consensus point (4) is the focus of most legislative activity because it is the natural point of compromise between the two parties. The rhetorical battle between the parties rarely reflects this legislative reality because both parties maximize their electoral appeal by highlighting the gap between the Democratic and Republican consensus points (2 and 3 on the chart). The Libertarian consensus point (1) has little relevance to actual legislative activities, but occasionally will be important in judicial decision-making (thanks to a combination of originalism and stare decisis).

A New Map of the Political Landscape

2011-07-02T19:25:00.000-05:00

Line Labels:
A (Blue Line) - Democrats to the left of the line
B (Red Line) - Republicans to the right of the line
C (Green Line) - Left-leaning idealists above the line (realists below)
D (Yellow Line) - Right-leaning idealists above the line (realists below)

Point Labels (for line intersections):
1 - Libertarian consensus
2 - Progressive consensus
3 - Conservative consensus
4 - Moderate consensus

Facts and Faith

2011-06-15T15:54:00.000-05:00

Trust without skepticism makes one susceptible to confidence artists.
Skepticism without trust makes one susceptible to conspiracy thinking.

Trust. Verify. Repeat.

Self-Imposed Blinders

2011-06-14T19:49:00.000-05:00

Being politically independent and politically moderate are often treated as if they're the same thing. They're not.

To be politically independent, one must be willing to consider many different positions and proposals in determining one's stance on an issue. Understanding, or at least being exposed to, the full range of alternatives allows one to make an informed judgement.

To be moderate, one must limit oneself to the range of options considered mainstream. If the consensus about an issue is mistaken enough that none of the mainstream alternatives will solve a problem, then being a moderate means that one is unwilling to consider any productive solutions.

Gutsiness

2011-05-09T18:59:00.000-05:00

The operation that killed Osama Bin Laden was gutsy from President Obama's point of view because there was a significant chance that:

A. intelligence agencies were incorrect in determining his location
B. the special forces would be unable to complete the mission
C. the Pakistani government would retaliate against America politially or militarily
D. world opinion would condemn the action as a war crime
E. it would undermine the legal case against CIA operatives accused of torture
F. by succeeding it would vindicate many of the war on terror policies the president campaigned against and/or discontinued

Many on the right are interpereting the President's post operation media tour as seeking to take an undue portion of the credit for the mission. Answers A, B, and C all seem to be low risk propositions, and if they are the reason the decision is considered gutsy then the critics have a point. If Answers D, E, and F were also major factors, the critics are missing the parralel effort to insulate everyone else in the Administration from having to take any of the blame. It is gutsy to make a decision where success goes against one's deepest principles, even if one couldn't politically have made any other choice.

Easy Targets

2011-04-26T20:17:00.000-05:00

Local businesses in high-crime areas often find it necessary to pay protection money to stay open. The extra-legal authority, whether that's mafia, gangs, freedom fighters, or terrorists, can usually gain enough leverage over any business with fixed assets or business-people with social ties to the community that no actual violence is necessary to collect the tributes. The knowledge that thugs employed by the extra-legal authority could kill, maim, or destroy with impunity encourages those who are just interested in making some money and can't move away to passively accept perpetual extortion as the unchangeable status quo.

The same dynamic exists in the relationship between businesses and the legal authority. The main difference is that the legal authority has redefined protection money as taxes and campaign donations and hidden the existential threat in paperwork and bureaucracy. The willingness of astute business-people to go along to get ahead makes them poor defenders of freedom.

Giving Back

2011-04-25T22:27:00.000-05:00

A standard argument for progressive taxation is that society sets up the conditions necessary for individual success, therefore no individual should balk at giving back whatever the government requests. The flaw in this logic is that government and society are not synonyms. The only way to make government synonymous with society is to institute a totalitarian regime.

A Republic, If You Can Keep It

2011-04-02T08:10:00.000-05:00

America's first constitution failed because of unsustainable federal debt, mostly debt incurred during the Revolutionary War. This failure was blamed on recalcitrant states who were less than prompt in fulfilling congressional funding requests. Both the general public and the political class were in agreement that the first constitution needed to be altered to allow the federal government to collect operating revenue without relying on voluntary state-level cooperation.

America's second attempt at a constitution has also failed because of unsustainable debt, this time debt incurred mostly to fund optional social programs and voluntary military engagements. The second constitution places no limits on the types or levels of taxation that can be exercised by the federal government, so no blame for the enormous debts can be placed anywhere but at the federal level. No reasonably foreseeable political actions can prevent national bankruptcy, because politicians on the left will not admit the problem and politicians on the right think they will not be reelected if they make the types of cuts that seem necessary.

Will America attempt a third experiment in constitutional governance, or have we rejected the idea that sustainable representative governance requires strict constitutional limitations on the types of decisions politicians are allowed to make?

Who Decides Who Decides?

2011-03-29T21:49:00.000-05:00

The different types of decision-making processes outlined in Thomas Sowell's Knowledge and Decisions can be sorted from least to most rigid as follows: informal decisions, economic decisions, political decisions, judicial decisions. It seems that America has systematically shifted decision-making authority away from informal and economic processes towards political and judicial processes. I think that this trend is a systematic result of stable democratic or representative governance, not the result of any intentional plan.

Even assuming political leaders have the most benign intentions, political decision-making processes inevitably crowd out less formal decision-making processes. Politicians of all parties increase their importance or motivate their constituencies by "politicizing" an issue (shifting something that used to be decided through informal or economic systems into the political arena) or by accusing their opponents of doing so. After an issue becomes politicized, the gridlock that often results from tactical political battles further incentivises politicians to use judicial systems to lock in their decisions if they are able to gain a temporary political majority. When politicians decide who decides, the net result is always a trend towards centralized, rigid decision-making processes.

The reason a constitutionally defined set of "negative" rights is important is that it walls off whole areas of life from politics. When political leaders are broadly prohibited from interfering in informal and economic decision-making, individuals are able to work out mutually beneficial arrangements. The diversity of economic arrangements and personal lifestyles is a direct result of individual people deciding for themselves how to live. Prosperity and diversity are the natural outcomes in areas where society is willing to enforce a legal right of individuals to decide for themselves.

Political and judicial decision-makers rarely generate or even permit a broad array of options. When politicians decide who decides, prosperity, diversity, and freedom are taken away from individuals and relegated to being factional concerns.

Libertarian-Moderate-Statist

2011-03-16T21:18:00.000-05:00

Many people (especially Libertarians) have been dissatisfied with the Left-Moderate-Right diagram of politics and a few have attempted to add a second axis. The most commonly added axis is a size-of-government delineation like the one shown below.

The Nolan Chart is probably the most widely known diagram of this type. This layout allows Libertarians to position themselves as being above the fray at the smaller government position while "Statists" are assigned the bigger government position beneath everyone else. Since there isn't an established Statist party to object to the arrangement, Libertarians get the pride of place by default.

As with the Left-Moderate-Right diagram, I assume that everyone consciously or subconsciously makes assumptions about the relative frequency of each potential political position. A rounded pyramid- or cone-shaped distribution centered on the moderate position seems to me to be the most likely scenario. It might also be possible to justify a two-peak distribution with liberals and conservatives each having a local maximum. There might be a small bias among people on the left for bigger government while those on the right have a correspondingly small bias towards smaller government. Plenty of real world examples of small government leanings on the left and big government tendencies on the right dissuade me from attempting to assign an overwhelming bias to either side. The history in America of third parties makes any distribution with three or more stable peaks seem highly improbable.

Overall, the moderate position is still portrayed in this framework as the best position to hold on the political landscape. Given almost any one- or two-peaked distribution of ideologies, this two-axis map of politics puts moderates in the same peacemaker/consensus position they hold in the Left-Moderate-Right diagram. Adding a second axis might cast some doubt on the wisdom of bipartisanship since bipartisan deals could leave out a sizeable number of libertarian- and/or statist-leaning moderates.

Knowing that few people willingly take up pejorative labels, Libertarians take it for granted that the Statists are hiding in plain sight as the big government factions within both the Republican and Democratic Party. Using their position within both parties the Statists are seen as gradually implementing their agenda despite it not being the preference of a majority of voters. Even if this characterization is largely correct, Libertarians have proven themselves unable to do anything but sound the alarm from an outsider position.

The two-axis map of politics is better than the one-axis map, but the common choice of axes serves to legitimate the ruling political establishment.

Left-Moderate-Right

2011-03-14T22:26:00.000-05:00

Understanding politics is difficult without first understanding the map of the political landscape that each of us uses to map one's position. The dominant map of politics underlying most political dialogue in America and most of the industrialized world is this one dimensional left-right political spectrum.

Subconsciously most people will also assign some sort of population distribution to this line. The simplest assumption is to use a (possibly skewed) bell curve to make a guess about the relative frequency of each type of opinion. I think that many people, especially those who are only mildly interested in politics, will make that assumption. The other common distribution would be to envision two overlapping bell curves (possibly of different heights) with peaks near the liberal and conservative positions.

In the normally distributed left-right spectrum the moderates occupy the consensus position. The two parties in this view are subverting the will of the people to serve partisan ends. Bipartisanship is perceived to be the solution to this problem since it keeps either the far left or the far right from taking politics too far off course. Since most people are in the center, both parties need to moderate their views to keep from losing moderates, independents, and swing voters.

In the two overlapping curves distribution the moderates act as a bridge between polarized factions. The two parties faithfully represent their voters in this view, but they want to take the country in radically different directions. Bipartisanship is again perceived to be the solution to this problem since it allows a divided populace to work together and compromise when it's necessary for the good of the nation. Both parties need to keep a big tent that attracts moderates while still motivating the far right or left within their coalition.

Under these (and almost any other) reasonable population distributions the left-right spectrum casts the moderate position as the will of the majority or as the glue that holds society together. The existing political establishment relies on widespread acceptance of one or both of these narratives for its continuing legitimacy.

Laws and Metalaws

2011-03-12T09:23:00.000-06:00

Most everyone knows what a law is. Broadly speaking, a law defines an action that is being regulated and then outlines the punishment for failing to follow the rule. Metalaws are laws that set up a framework for some future decision-maker to create the actual rule. The Constitution, for instance, is a metalaw that sets up the legal framework for all federal lawmaking activity.

Laws are easy to craft and pass when almost everyone agrees. Killing, theft, and physical attacks are easy to identify as bad and lawmakers have a relatively easy time breaking those sorts of crimes into several well-defined categories and assigning punishments based on the severity of the crime.

In cases where societal agreement about the criminality of an action is less than universal the specific text of the laws becomes critically important to its adoption. Laws dealing with the environment are prime examples of the difficulty in passing laws on contentious issues. Making determinations about, say, the maximum allowable runoff of fertilizer from a field into a stream is extremely difficult. The farmers would want the law to be permissive while the fishery downstream would want the law to be strict. Many people wouldn't have any opinion about the proper threshold. There isn't a clear enough consensus for lawmakers to settle on any specific legal threshold.

Congress has generally resolved these tricky lawmaking dilemmas by passing metalaws that empower agencies like the EPA to do some research, some public involvement, some industry consultation and to make a rule that will be enforced as law. The Code of Federal Regulations contains the many rules that have been passed by the many federal agencies.

I believe that the switch from lawmaking to metalawmaking at the federal level was the most important step in expanding the role of the federal government beyond the intent of the ratifiers of the Constitution. It allowed Congress to regulate activities simply by deciding that they should be subject to some sort of regulation. It allowed those same lawmakers to avoid political accountability for the actual rules created through bureaucratic rule-making exercises. Metalawmaking provides an illusion of political consensus while also creating innumerable rules to which a majority of voters would never consent.

Factor of Safety

2011-03-11T19:10:00.000-06:00

When building an important structure such as a bridge or a tall building, the calculation of the structural capacity includes at least one Factor of Safety term. This term is generally given a seemingly arbitrary value of 2, 3, 4 or some other smallish integer. It is then used to multiply the maximum calculated load/stress/etc to make sure that the structure won't fail because of some unknown or unforeseen circumstance. This willingness to err on the side of caution is a prudent way to protect the users of the structure from discrepancies between theory and practice.

Leaving aside disputes about the exact shape of the arch or the location of the equilibrium point, the Laffer Curve describes a fundamental relationship between taxes and revenues. At zero percent taxes, no taxes are collected regardless of how much income is earned. At 100 percent taxes nobody has any reason to work, and 100 percent of no income is no tax revenue. At all points in between some people will earn income and some taxes will be collected. The height of the curve at any point represents the portion of the national product that the government is able to collect in taxes.

The critical concept that is often glossed over in discussions of the Laffer Curve is that maximizing government revenue is probably not the socially optimal outcome. The opportunity cost to individual citizens from lost income is, in the aggregate, much greater than the opportunity cost to society of the government not collecting as much revenue as it is theoretically able to achieve. Government is generally necessary to administer justice and enforce contracts, both of which are critical to maintaining the conditions necessary for economic growth, but it is not responsible for the actual expansion of the economy. All real, sustainable, healthy growth in the GDP comes from an expanding private sector.

Therefore economists should calculate the location of the maximum revenue point on the Laffer Curve to the best of their ability, then responsible politicians should divide that number by 2, 3, or 4 to make sure that we err on the side of growth instead of risking stagnation.

Prisoners' Dilemma

2011-03-10T18:41:00.000-06:00

The textbook game theory situation puts two (guilty) criminals in separate interrogation rooms and offers the following possible outcomes:

Both prisoners keep silent and both stay free (this almost never happens)
One prisoner squeals and gets a reduced sentence while the other keeps silent and faces the full term
Both rat out the other and receive some middling period of incarceration

While most consider this is a two-person game, there are actually three participants: two criminals and the state. The reason the criminals face the choice is not because they put each other in the interrogation rooms. They're there because the police put them there. The police then set up the dilemma for the prisoners to create a situation that will usually work out in their favor. The police are happy when either prisoner confesses, society is happy when criminals are convicted, criminals learn they can't cooperate without risking a stab in the back.

Ideological conservatives and liberals face a prisoners' dilemma. By limiting the choice to D vs. R, the political establishment gets to play the role of the police, with the following possible outcomes:

Both conservatives and liberals compromise their principles and vote for a party (thereby legitimizing the political status quo)
Conservatives or liberals try to form a third party, creating a power vacuum that the undivided party is happy to fill
Both conservatives and liberals reject their political establishment leadership groups (this almost never happens)