Voluntary Governments?

[If you don't want to read about this stuff, don't. Just don't claim it's
not a valid list topic, as some are wont to do...often after first making
their own comments :-}. The issues of taxation, government, anarchy, and
cyberspatial institutions are important topics for a list like
"Cypherpunks." If the *beliefs* are not to be talked about, but only code
is to be written, then _what_ code? Code that helps ensure tax compliance?
Code that helps government control "cyberspace criminals"? We've seen
recent discussions about religion, the need for values, etc. Many of us are
opposed to the specific views raised, but since there is no "official party
line," the way we work on these issues is through discussion. Besides, any
arguments people actually type in themselves are worth at least deciding
whether to read them or not....I'll change my opinion if completely
off-topic posts on topics like abortion, the purported need for national
health care, and the war in Bosnia begin to dominate the discussion. Until
then...]


Where to begin?

Jason Solinsky and Mike Duvos argue for a kind of voluntary,
donation-supported, non-coercive, service-providing government, funded
voluntarily by citizens who presumably think they are getting their money's
worth.

Well, this is first of all a *very nonstandard* interpretation of
"government"...more on this later (and how the idea of "privately-produced
law" figures in).

I'm skeptical that governments would give up their current use of coercion,
or threat of coercion (the fallback position that gives their various
edicts more teeth than, for example, my edicts or your edicts). I'm even
more skeptical that the current bloated state could be funded by the small
fraction of the population that--in my opinion--would make donations. (Mike
has argued elsewhere that his concept is of a utopian state much smaller
than we have today....an even less likely possibility unless that bloated
state is starved to death by the methods many of us advocate...but this is
another discussion.)



>solman@MIT.EDU writes:
>
>[other excellent stuff elided]
>
> > Imagine if the government stopped trying to force people to
> > join it. Or imagine if they tied decision making power to
> > how much you pay in taxes. The more you pay, the more say
> > you get. After accepting the idea that government is a

Without the legal monopoly on coercion, this so-called "government" would
be just another service provider, like Safeway or Goodyear or K-Mart.
Economies of scale work against a large, slow-moving bureaucracy, so the
so-called goverment would devolve quickly into multiple small pieces.

This is the "anarcho-capitalism" many of us argue for, so I won't argue
against it here. I just wouldn't call it "the government" anymore. As soon
as "the government" gives up its use of force, allows competitors in all
areas, and is run by donations or fees, it is no longer "the government."

[I promised to mention "private produced law," or PPL. This is the notion
of multiple, competing legal systems. A fictional treatment of this can be
found in Neal Stephenson's novel "Snow Crash," and a more scholarly
treatment can be found in David Friedman's "The Machinery of Freedom" and
in Bruce Benson's "The Enterprise of Law." I don't have time now to go into
this in more detail.]

The specific point about "imagine if they tied decision making power to
how much you pay in taxes" was tried a while back: only tax-payers could
vote. I'm all in favor of this, but I doubt many of my fellow citizens are.

(And to some extent we have this, through bribes and influence-buying.
Campaign contributions, etc.)

Would anyone choose to pay more in taxes for an increased voting share?
Hardly. Do the math on how influential any one vote is in an election. For
specific cases, maybe. Again, that's how influence-peddling arises. Not a
very healthy development, even for a cynic like me.

(I view governments as protection rackets. The last thing we need is a
bidding war between various sides in a dispute.)


> > product by which you get the warm fuzzies of giving to
> > society, government could make itself into a more desireable
> > product by undertaking changes like these. The possibilities
> > are endless in this reguard. Its very easy for me to imagine
> > a government in cyberspace which is substantially more
> > successful at collecting taxes than the IRS.

For a very few services, this could be so, with the caveat mentioned above,
that "the government" would cease to exist as a monolithic organization. If
for some reason it was required to remain a large, monolithic organization,
then I'm quite sure it would collect much less revenue than it now does.
The people paying the taxes would seek alternative providers for almost
everything, leaving only a few areas "better" served by "the government."
(And maybe not even these, as things like roads, defense, etc. couldn't be
held as a monopoly by the Feds unless coercion was used...in Jason's purely
voluntary system, the government would lose even these valuable properties.
But I digress.)

Mike D. enthusiastically endorses Jason's ideas:

>The notion of government as a product which must compete on an
>equal footing with others in society definitely wins "Nifty Idea
>of the Week" in my book.
>
>Reminds me of something TS Eliott once said.  "If only we had a
>system so perfect it did not require that people be good."
>Perhaps "government in cyberspace" will be the first working
>example of this paradigm.

I have a problem with the whole notion of calling a voluntary,
self-selected, market-driven system a "government" of any kind. Yes, it is
something people may voluntarily join, but so are country clubs, book
reading groups, and mailing lists. And the decision to shop at Safeway one
day is a temporary joining of such an instantiated group. But these things
ain't governments!

This is not just semantic quibbling. If we say that such groups are
voluntary, but can vote on "rules" or "laws" which all must follow, then
the voluntary nature means people can freely leave, can choose not to abide
by the rules, etc. Hence the rules are toothless.

There *are* forms of organization in which bad behavior has implications,
such as banishment, shunning, etc. But this is true of the country club, or
this mailing list...acting like a bozo has implications. Some might call
these governments of a sort, but I don't. (Iceland in the Midle Ages is
often cited as such a thing, Cf. Friedman.)

But it is simply poor strategy as well as being poor semantics to label the
voluntary social and economic interactions as being some kind of
"government." Call them what they are: market interactions, agoric systems,
or voluntary associations. Normal life is like this...families, girlfriends
and boyfriends, freedom to associate as one pleases, free markets, anarchy
in book and music selection, etc.

And these systems work pretty well--or at least a lot better than the
corruptions and absurdities of government-run programs. They don't require
that people be "good," only that people understand the consequences of
their actions, the value of a good reputation, and the punishment that will
be meted out to the few who nevertheless transgress against a few basic
rules.

(I mention the need for violence because without some punishment, or
removal by some affordable means, the "wolves" proliferate. To make this
less abstract: no laws except for a very few laws about murder, theft,
rape, etc. Enforce those laws ruthlessly, and the wolf population is kept
in check. a fedback mechanism suppresses wolf formation. Ignore these laws,
delay justice, and proliferate thousands of economic and social laws--such
as the "dietary laws" also known as drug laws--and the wolf population will
proliferate. A feedback mechanism that encourages more wolves to form Look
at inner cities. Look at South-Central L.A.) (No offense meant to wolves or
other predators here.)

And these systems don't have to wait for implementation at some future time
in cyberspace....they already exist all around us.

Just don't call them governments, because they ain't.

"Why doth governments never prosper? For if governments doth prosper,none
dare call it government."

--Tim May

..........................................................................
Timothy C. May         | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money,
tcmay@netcom.com       | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero
408-688-5409           | knowledge, reputations, information markets,
W.A.S.T.E.: Aptos, CA  | black markets, collapse of governments.
Higher Power: 2^859433 | Public Key: PGP and MailSafe available.
"National borders are just speed bumps on the information superhighway."

> > > Imagine if the government stopped trying to force people to
> > > join it. Or imagine if they tied decision making power to
> > > how much you pay in taxes. The more you pay, the more say
> > > you get. After accepting the idea that government is a
> 
> Without the legal monopoly on coercion, this so-called "government" would
> be just another service provider, like Safeway or Goodyear or K-Mart.

Well isn't that how its supposed to be? The entire justification
for having a monopoly in the "government market" (:-) in the
physical realm is that it would be impractical to have multiple
governments in one physical location. Nobody would know who
is following which laws and confusion would reign.

In cyberspace, the default condition is that there is no interaction.
Communication requires agreement by both parties. During this
agreement, the laws (contracts, whatever) that the two parties
follow can be communicated by each party to the other, and if
party A does not feel that party B's laws provide him with
enough protection from B, he can refuse contact until B agrees
(at least for the duration of the communication) to more
constraining laws. The cost of such a transaction will likely
be negligible in cyberspace.

There is thus no longer a problem with different following different
laws coexisting in the same place at the same time, and it no
longer makes sense to allow one entity to have a monopoly on government.

> Economies of scale work against a large, slow-moving bureaucracy, so the
> so-called goverment would devolve quickly into multiple small pieces.

Kewl.
 
> The specific point about "imagine if they tied decision making power to
> how much you pay in taxes" was tried a while back: only tax-payers could
> vote. I'm all in favor of this, but I doubt many of my fellow citizens are.

I remember reading a short story a long time ago which was about an
individual filing his taxes and about how proud and excited he was to
do so. The government in the future had changed things to allow
citizens to specify where they wanted their tax dollars to go to
and the result was that they came to view filing taxes as a positive
event. Now clearly this one change would not suddenly convince
everbody that taxes were a positive event, but it would go a long
way towards that and it would be an excellent marketing ploy for
a non-monopoly government (or civic enterprise if your prefer).

[Side note, I am in the process of convincing the MIT UA to adopt
a similar measure where students would control where up to 70%
of the per student money goes. It turns out that such a change
would have a minimal impact in terms of where the money actually
goes, but it would have an enourmous impact upon the feelings
of the student body towards the UA (or the civic enterprise as
the case may be). So when I say marketing ploy, I really mean
it.]

> I have a problem with the whole notion of calling a voluntary,
> self-selected, market-driven system a "government" of any kind. Yes, it is
> something people may voluntarily join, but so are country clubs, book
> reading groups, and mailing lists. And the decision to shop at Safeway one
> day is a temporary joining of such an instantiated group. But these things
> ain't governments!
> 
> This is not just semantic quibbling. If we say that such groups are
> voluntary, but can vote on "rules" or "laws" which all must follow, then
> the voluntary nature means people can freely leave, can choose not to abide
> by the rules, etc. Hence the rules are toothless.

First of all, I think that government is in a very specific business,
the business of providing security (note, infact, how many of the
government's programs are labled "insurance" of some kind). FDA
restrictions, welfare, medicaid, anti-gun laws, the military...
they are all intended to make sure that the citizenry need not
worry about these things, to make sure the the people feel secure.
For now, however, I'd like to define governments as entities
that try to use some form of coercion to get others to follow
its rules.

My definition of government is as follows: governments are civic service
providers which by their design attempt to impose a consistent set of
rules on a diverse group of entities. In the physical world, the word
impose usually translates into puting a gun by your head. In cyberspace,
the word impose translates into placing stipulations on contact between
people who follow the rules of the government and people who do not.
Charging "aliens" penalty taxes during economic transactions,
and refusing contact altogether are examples of cyberspatial government
imposition. I do not find it difficult to imagine extremely large
cyberpatial governments that depend entirely on these voluntary economic
forms of coercion. In fact, unless some sort of enourmous cultural change
were to occur, I find it extremelly likely that except for some fringe
groups (like ourselves :) most citizens of Western nations would wind up
belonging to large cyberspatial "nations", each with international treaties
that govern the interaction between "citizens" of different "nations".

So my claim is this:

Without extreme cultural upheaval, it is highly probable that voluntary
economic coercion alone will be sufficient to allow big government
to move from the physical realm into cyberspace.

Certainly the relationship between the citizenry and the government
will change when government becomes voluntary. But when Joe Average
gets wired, he will happily join whatever government that the
authorities that be tell him is the right one for him to join
without giving a second thought about the philosophy behind
the existence of government. Nor will Joe think about how difficult
it would be to create an annonymous pseudonym that was not a
"citizen" of a "cybernation" and could not be linked back to his
own identity or damage his primary identity's reputation. Joe
probably won't even know what the word escrow means when the personal
government agent he choses (because it was convieniently labled USA)
secret splits his private key and sends the halves to the NSA and
the FBI.

JWS

solman@MIT.EDU writes:

>In cyberspace, the default condition is that there is no interaction.
>Communication requires agreement by both parties. During this
>agreement, the laws (contracts, whatever) that the two parties
>follow can be communicated by each party to the other, and if
>party A does not feel that party B's laws provide him with
>enough protection from B, he can refuse contact until B agrees
>(at least for the duration of the communication) to more
>constraining laws. The cost of such a transaction will likely
>be negligible in cyberspace.

The problem I have with this is that there is no such place as cyberspace.
I am not in cyberspace now; I am in California.  I am governed by the
laws of California and the United States even though I am communicating
with another person, whether by postal mail or electronic mail, by
telephone or TCP/IP connection.  What does it mean to speak of a govern-
ment in cyberspace?  It is the government in physical space I fear.  Its
agents carry physical guns which shoot real bullets.  Until I am able
to live in my computer and eat electrons, I don't see the relevance of
cyberspace.

Hal

solman@MIT.EDU writes:

[ > T.C.May writes: ]

> > Without the legal monopoly on coercion, this so-called "government" would
> > be just another service provider, like Safeway or Goodyear or K-Mart.

> In cyberspace, the default condition is that there is no interaction.
> Communication requires agreement by both parties. During this
> agreement, the laws (contracts, whatever) that the two parties
> follow can be communicated by each party to the other, and if
> party A does not feel that party B's laws provide him with
> enough protection from B, he can refuse contact until B agrees
> (at least for the duration of the communication) to more
> constraining laws. The cost of such a transaction will likely
> be negligible in cyberspace.

Huh?  This is gobbledygook.  Get specific.  What is it that party A is
providing that would motivate party B to "agree to more constraining
laws?"   Or do I have it backwards; I can't even tell which of these
parties is supposed to be a "government".


> My definition of government is as follows: governments are civic service
> providers which by their design attempt to impose a consistent set of
> rules on a diverse group of entities. In the physical world, the word
> impose usually translates into puting a gun by your head. In cyberspace,
> the word impose translates into placing stipulations on contact between
> people who follow the rules of the government and people who do not.
> Charging "aliens" penalty taxes during economic transactions,
> and refusing contact altogether are examples of cyberspatial government
> imposition.

This is just gobbledygook again.  Please describe how a "voluntary"
government would prevent "aliens" from conducting their own economic
transactions completely outside this system.  And what is meant by the
phrase "refusing contact?"  Does this mean that the government to which
I don't "belong" will refuse to receive communications from me?  How is
this a penalty?


> So my claim is this:
> 
> Without extreme cultural upheaval, it is highly probable that voluntary
> economic coercion alone will be sufficient to allow big government
> to move from the physical realm into cyberspace.

Perhaps.  You certainly haven't explained how.  ("voluntary" and
"coercion" in the same sentence?)


-- Jeff