Comment by sovietcattle | Hacker News Reader

Comment by sovietcattle | Hacker News Reader

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They certainly don't work for me. I have to pay something between 20-80% of all my income and financial gains to governments despite the fact I don't agree with anything they do, or with their existence. I never signed a contract with them agreeing on that sort of taxation, and if I don't pay the taxes the government imposes on me I can have my property taken away from me, get arrested and even be assassinated. I also have to comply with laws that are created out of some old man's ass, "respect" the police and the military otherwise they will kidnap, torture, or kill me, etc.

That said, I don't advocate for anything, nor I think revolutions or reforms would "fix" a centralized system that persists on the basis of the monopoly of force, such as the so-called "democratic" governments we have all over the world.

What I think, however, is that those centralized systems will inevitably and progressively fail due to their own inefficiencies, and as the transaction costs [1] diminish. As that happens, the centralized state's functions will leak into the decentralized market, until the state loses its ability to hold a monopoly of force.

I think we're a few decades away from seeing the end of the governments and states as we have today. The "alternative" will be a free, decentralized market that will emerge progressively as the governments disappear. We don't have to do anything "special" for that to happen. Just sit down and observe.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transaction_cost

And who prevents the criminal or military leaders from taking over once the governments fail in your scenario? Are you saying there won't be anyone around who attempts to seize power? That isn't how things have played out in areas of the world where central governments have failed.

The more likely scenario is that we're headed toward a world state. That's the direction civilization has been heading since nation states and regional trade became a thing.

A third scenario (if cooperative globalism doesn't work out) is currently democratic countries gradually converting into totalitarian states in order to compete with China, who seem to be clearly demonstrating that Totalitarianism Done Right >> Democracy (and yes, with this approach comes greater systemic risk, but such risks can and are routinely ignored).

A fourth (ideal) way is a true New Enlightenment - true as opposed to (for example) what globalism is often mistakenly considered, imho due to hardly anyone thinking in a disciplined and critical manner, but rather rationalizing their personal in-group ideology.

That again disregards the fact that those regimes have to be sustained economically.

See, no matter what people believe, which gods they pray for, what ideologies they follow and how they manage their lives, they inevitably increase the means of production. Even if a given person is dumb and useless, that person would still prefer cheaper goods to more expensive ones, therefore generating economic signals for investments in production improvements.

Increased means of production mean lower transaction costs. Lower transaction costs generate decentralization. Decentralization progressively make centralized regimes not viable.

> That again disregards the fact that those regimes have to be sustained economically.

I don't really see how I'm disregarding that. I mean, sure, I didn't explicitly include a list of necessary pre-requisistes, of which this is just one, but I don't see why either of my scenarios are not possible because of economic constraints. I'm totally open to hearing any reasoning behind this belief though.

> See, no matter what people believe, which gods they pray for, what ideologies they follow and how they manage their lives, they inevitably increase the means of production.

Unless I'm misunderstanding (am I?), this suggests no examples can be found in history of ideologies being adopted that result in decreased production.

> Increased means of production mean lower transaction costs. Lower transaction costs generate decentralization. Decentralization progressively make centralized regimes not viable.

Sometimes, maybe. Many things are possible, this theory is just one of them.

"China, who seem to be clearly demonstrating that Totalitarianism Done Right >> Democracy"

I wish that was not the main take-away people had. China has a very unique economic system that does not require totalitarianism: free-market capitalism with many public actors especially in finance.

China could be democratic and maintain such a system. I'd like to see it tried somewhere else.

They could retain their micro economic system, sure, but could they retain their superior social harmony? Of course, it's possible, but totalitarianism (censorship, cultural cleansing, etc) is far from irrelevant.

And what about their ability to rapidly implement strategic policy initiatives, including displacing massive numbers of people against their will? Unfortunate for the individuals, but incredibly beneficial for the group, compounding over time.

I think China demonstrates that economic growth solves a lot of issues.

The idea that "if a government fails, another government will take its place" only makes sense in an environment where centralization is viable economically.

There's this idea that "because things have been playing out in a way, they'll keep being played out this way", despite the fact the increased means of production (call it "technology") change things fundamentally all the time.

It's very expensive to maintain the military. It's only possible nowadays as governments can impose taxation and due to the currency monopoly they can print as much money as they want to fund that sort of self-preserving activity, which is technically called "debt spending".

As decentralization spreads over, the management costs of taxation skyrocket, and the currency monopoly disappears. Without that governments can't fund their own activities. Which means they'll shrink progressively. As time goes by, they'll start failing at providing law and order, and private companies start providing protection, insurance and private arbitration services to people. Further down the road those companies in their aggregate will start protecting people from the state itself. The state then either becomes a company which some people voluntarily contract services from, or it vanishes.

I'm pretty sure someone would say that the "evil companies" would then merge and become another government, but that's only if that person missed the whole point: in the long term centralization is not economically viable, and in a non-regulated free market environment monopolies are not really possible. As those companies are voluntarily contracted by people, an attempt to fight their customers would be catastrophic as they'd unrecoverably lose their business to competitors.

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