Oddbean new post about | logout
 Contrary to Churchill’s take, I believe Democracy is perhaps the worst form of government to exist.

100,000 Lichtensteins is the model I think can work at scale. Lots of smaller autonomous communities who are not beholden to the whims of people hundreds or thousands of kilometres away let alone on the other side of the planet, with localised leadership of people who have skin in the game.

This accounts for social/cultural differences between areas and peoples. The people of Broome shouldn’t be beholden to the Socialists of Melbourne - in fact they should share zero governance between them. And the people of Broome and Melbourne should have absolutely nothing to do with edicts from cunts like the WHO or IMF or any other supranational body.

Decentralising will force those with a collectivist mindset to focus on their own backyards rather than being enabled to virtue signal about the poors that they have zero interaction with. 

Seeing chuggers successfully go around collecting money mostly from women to purportedly send to some poors overseas whilst there are homeless people sitting 10m away, junkies all over, kids down the street who don’t get regular meals and men forced out of work by immigrants who those women supported importing, that really drives home the need for decentralisation and localisation over these retarded globalist socialist forms of governance. 
 100%.

I'd emphasise rather it is centralisation that is the enemy of good choices, rather than democracy per se. 
 And women's decision quality suffers more than men's at increasing scales. 
 The level of retardation increases with scale. Democracies are rule by those best at deceiving the retarded 
 It is my opinion that this was exactly the way the founders intended this to go - and that they would not recognize or approve of how things are done now. 
 What happens if a tyrant starts gobbling up these small Lichtensteins? I agree it would be better to have many microstates but history shows you also need a way to prevent forced consolation. Or maybe with Bitcoin you can reduce the incentives to invade? 
 Serious risk, and an ongoing one.

Tyranny is monopoly, and monopolies are synergistic with one another. The more monopolies we can make structurally impossiblev the less tyrants can hope to grasp.

(Enter Bitcoin) 
 With our modern lens it’s easy to forget, but traditionally people would go and cut the heads off people like this. This modern period where politicians get away with all sorts and never have to face the reality of themselves being sacks of flesh and bone is an anomaly that won’t last, it is perpetuated precisely because optionality doesn’t exist in the modern world.

Back then you didn’t need passports and visas to leave a tyrant like you do today. You didn’t have to traverse oceans. Didn’t have permissioned money that you couldn’t take with you. Didn’t have mass surveillance and Intelligence agencies infiltrating every nook and cranny where people might organise etc etc.

There is always a risk of an evil king, no doubt about it. Taking out one person is a lot easier than the hydra of a liberal democracy where no-one is accountable for anything though.

The key is to build wealth and prosperity through specialisation. Germany had this during its city state period (and it largely remained although bastardised thereafter), as did Italy before them. You can even see it in places in Asia albeit their culture is a bit different.

Allowing smaller regions to excel at certain things and having to compete is how the remaining principalities/city states have flourished whilst larger countries deal with non-stop internal and external conflict caused by trying to homogenise radically different groups into some incoherent mess of a society. https://i.nostr.build/zdYYz.jpg  
 A high rate of gun ownership among the population might deter an invader or at least drive up the cost significantly if you know that on every street behind every window could be a granny with a rifle.  
 This is a given for decentralisation to work. Relying on centralised security whether that is police or military leaves the people vulnerable. They don’t need to be well-trained militias, they just need to be well-armed enough that the MAD of any invader is sufficient deterrent that conflict is avoided in most scenarios. 
 The very idea is offensive: strong, righteous men having to ask permission of the dull majority to do what is right. 
 And it is perhaps even more offensive for the strong and righteous to bow down to the "votes" of the more numerous cowardly and low, and the parasitic overclass that controls them. 
 Society will always have layers of aggregation and centralization, as they are downstream of the natural forcing function (economies of scale). 

What is most important is what services at what layer... The wrong service at the wrong layer leads to abusive relationships.