Branko Milanovic — Democracy or dictatorship: which works better?

Branko Milanovic puts his finger on why hierarchical governance can be more effective and efficient than consensual governance.

Global Inequality
Democracy or dictatorship: which works better?
Branko Milanovic | Visiting Presidential Professor at City University of New York Graduate Center and senior scholar at the Luxembourg Income Study (LIS), and formerly lead economist in the World Bank's research department and senior associate at Carnegie Endowment for International Peace

See also

Consortium News
D is for a Dictatorship Disguised as a Democracy

John W. Whitehead

Eric Schliesser — On Presidents

On Alexander Hamilton's argument for dictatorship in a republic.

Digressions&Impressions
On Presidents
Eric Schliesser | Professor of Political Science, University of Amsterdam’s (UvA) Faculty of Social and Behavioural Sciences

Sputnik — Society Should 'Filter' Information Based on Moral Principles - Putin

Putin puts his finger on a key issue without naming explicitly.

This is the classical question about what it means to be a good person in a good society.

Under Anglo-American liberalism, this question is not to be asked because the market is the arbiter of truth and value equates to prices. In this view, culture is based on utilitarianism, with its stimulus-response model of human behavior, and law exists chiefly to provide security and protect private property.

Traditionalism disagrees. In this view, human behavior involves moral responsibility and genuine freedom is impossible without moral responsibility.

Morality is about how people should behave, and law is about how people must and must not behave.

Morality and ethics are evolved culturally, and law is decided institutionally.

Classical conservatism is traditionalist. It looks to tradition for guidance in such matters.

Classical liberalism is rationally based. It looks to reason and evidence for justification.

Classical conservatives generally favor government taking a moral role and exerting moral authority where the need arises owing to conflict of views.

Classical liberals generally hold that this is is not a question for government to answer, although law makers must deal with it in legislating. Reason and evidence should be the guide rather than tradition and custom.

Putin is taking a liberal position for Russia, albeit traditionalist in Western liberal eyes. However, traditionalism and classical conservatism predominate strongly in Russian culture and politics.

Sputnik International
Society Should 'Filter' Information Based on Moral Principles - Putin

Also

It’s up to the creative community to filter tele-and internet content as the government’s influence in this sphere should be reduced to minimum, Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Sunday at a meeting with participants in the Tavrida educational youth forum, commenting on an idea of establishing a kind of a filter for television and internet content to reduce aggressive and crime-related information that is adversely impacting the younger generation.

"What is prohibited by law must be outlawed everywhere - both in the internet and in television, and in other mass media," he stressed. "But everything else must be done only by one way - through filtering by the creative community. If the community elaborates a system of moral and ethical filters it would be right. The government’s say in this process should be if not excluded, then minimized. But better excluded."

The president called to "think together on the establishment of such mechanisms." He said he is in contacts with the CEOs of Russia’s leading television channels and with those "who influence this or that way what is going on in the internet" and these people, in his words, understand the situation and "are trying to change it for the better." "It is difficult to do it - to filter information torrents - in the present-day world. There are grounds to fear that such filtration could be ideologized and society would be stripped of the possibility to receive reliable, open and direct information," Putin added.

TASS
Putin says government’s say in filtering info content should be reduced to minimum

Kimball Corson — China's Developing Thoughts on Statecraft

A short summary of the Chinese history of statecraft and governance from ancient times to Xi Jinping. This is a should-read unless you are up to date on it already. It's short. I think that Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin are pretty close on this. The US leadership not so much.

 Having studied Chinese martial arts and strategy for some time, I believe that Kimball gets it basically right. Kimball observes that the Chinese integrate various traditions into an ideology and worldview suitable for the contemporary context. Understanding this gives insight into their way of thinking.

Western people tend to adopt a single ideology based on a preferred historical view that they then interpret in contemporary terms. 

This makes Westerners seem simple to the Chinese, and the Chinese "inscrutable" to Westerners. A basic rule of strategy in the martial arts is to understand the opponent so that one knows what he is likely to do, whereas one should be invisible to the opponent, so that he does not know what you are likely to do. Hence, the Chinese have an advantage over Westerners in this regard, since Westerners send signals whereas Chinese don't.

While I am less familiar with Russian strategy, people who are familiar with it say that it is more similar to the Chinese than the Western. Additionally, Vladimir Putin has been a judoka for many years, so he presumably understands this very well.

Wandering the Oceans
China's Developing Thoughts on Statecraft
Kimball Corson

US & EU Both Pledge "1 billion" ($/euro) Loan Guarantees For Ukraine - While Pledging Nothing More For Their Own Electorates

   (Commentary posted by Roger Erickson)

Loan Guarantees For Ukraine

This raises two sets of questions, about what we're doing domestically, and why, compared to what we're doing internationally, and why. Initial questions about why domestic US/EU electorates can't guarantee fiat investment in themselves, and instead submit to austerity ... is exceeded only by the sheer number & depth of half-truths, mis-conceptions and outright lies included in this article.

Example? Reduced tariffs go directly back to the exporter? No, that only reduces costs for the importing consumers (maybe only the intermediary merchants), and MAY increase the volume of exports being extracted from the "beneficiary" country. In reality, look for more EU/US firms to set up subsidiaries in the UK, and move yet more jobs from serfs in receiving countries to even lower-paid serfs in sending countries being looted. Can you say "internal devaluation?"

Where have we heard this story before?

Read on, & decide for yourself what these loan guarantees really imply.

There's a theme to the last 40 years? When electorates cede all governance to their merchant classes, they get what they claim was unpredictable ... less innovation, invention & leadership ... and more risk control, "management" and stagnation.

What, exactly, WOULD the Desired Outcome for national policy be, if we bothered to survey our actual citizens? Can we pick some worthwhile goals FOR OURSELVES, and go for them, instead of merely managing existing risks? Forget defense & offense, the best cultural evolution is an active Adaptive Rate?

Steve Randy Waldman — Tradeoffs

Key words. "Blackmail" and "bribery." It's not about security vs. privacy, but about good governance.

Interfluidity
Tradeoffs
Steve Randy Waldman

David Graeber: Some Remarks on Consensus

There has been a flurry of discussion around process in OWS of late. This can only be a good thing. Atrophy and complacency are the death of movements. Any viable experiment in freedom is pretty much going to have to constantly re-examine itself, see what's working and what isn't—partly because situations keep changing, partly because we're trying to invent a culture of democracy in a society where almost no one really has any experience in democratic decision-making, and most have been told for most of their lives that it would be impossible, and partly just because it's all an experiment, and it's in the nature of experiments that sometimes they don't work.

A lot of this debate has centered around the role of consensus. This is healthy too, because there seem to be a lot of misconceptions floating around about what consensus is and is supposed to be about. Some of these misconceptions are so basic, though, I must admit I find them a bit startling.

Occupy Wall Street News
David Graeber: Some Remarks on Consensus
OccupyWallSt

I think that two distinctions are in order. First, that between hierarchical organization and consensus decision making. Hierarchical decision making is the military model of organization that was promulgated in the West through the Roman Empire. Consensus decision making is characteristic of tribal organization in which leadership is natural and based on trust.

The second distinction is between institutional arrangements based on rules and cultural and social rituals based on values, values being expressed in principles if expressed explicitly at all.

Hierarchical organization is based on institutional arrangements set forth as rules. It is used in the military and business in that it is ruthlessly efficient and effective in achieving given objectives. That is the temptation to use it, and why it is not compatible with direct popular democracy, where objectives are not given but are emergent. And being top down, it is antithetical to exploring options.

Consensus decision making is based on cultural and social rituals that rest on shared values, especially voluntary cooperation for mutual benefit, mutuality, reciprocity, fairness, and most importantly treating everyone as intrinsically valuable as a person.

Consensus decision making is neither efficient and effective at achieving objectives because objectives are not given. They are emergent. The process of allowing them to emerge embues them with power instead of coercion.

Consensus decision making is foundational for a complex social system in which the focus of the group is directed onto emergent challenges in a flexible format that allows for exploration of options. This increases the adaptability rate and amplifies return on coordination through crowd sourcing. It's a biological principle that fosters life.

Potentially adaptive systems that do not follow this pattern of distributed decision making that is conducive to exploring alternatives end up in evolutionary dead ends due over-centralization that encourages premature focus and crystallization.

This is how an apparently weaker force can beat a stronger force, even militarily, as guerilla warfare has shown. It's also the basis of the internal martial arts that use circular motion rather than linear, that is, apparently yielding in order to turn the force the opponent against him by putting him off balance.

Sandy Levinson — Is America Governable? The tapes

John Roland, a dedicated libertarian who runs Constitution.org and has placed many important documents of American constitutional history on the Internet. He taped all of the sessions at the conference held last week at the University of Texas Law School last week and has been kind enough to make them available to one and all. I am grateful to him for his generosity. You can find each of the eight sessions, seven panels and Larry Lessig's Friday luncheon talk below. With some trepidation, I am opening this for discussion, the trepidation coming primarily from the fact that the topics of the panels were certainly far ranging and it will be more difficult than usual to have a truly coherent discussion. Still, I hope that those of you who have the patience to work through any or all the sessions find them as interesting as they were for the participants and live audience.

If you watch nothing else, you should look at the Larry Lessig's talk at least long enough to see the astonishing card passed out to all newly-elected Democratic members of Congress relating to how they should spend their days.

Balkinization
Is America Governable? The tapes
Sandy Levinson | W. St. John Garwood and W. St. John Garwood, Jr. Centennial Chair in Law, University of Texas Law School

Dan Mitchell and William Black Debate Economic Policy in Steamboat "Freedom Conference"

commentary by Roger Erickson

Dan Mitchell and William Black debate economic policy in Steamboat

Unfortunately, the article plays down MMT and throws in "Keynes" - the arch-fiend to Libertarians - as often as possible. Were there any other journalists present, that were more open minded?  If readers come across more coverage, or especially video, please post the links in comments here.

On the positive side, note that Dan Mitchell comes right out and says: cutting the deficit isn’t his main concern. “I worry about the size of government,”

So far so good on the fiat budget issue.  However, about that "social brain" - aka, governance.  Seems to me the need is for smart governance, regardless of size?

Hmmm. Do you supposed he worries about the size of our population, or only the absolute size of government?   Maybe someone should introduce him to basic concepts of system self-control?  Anyone wanting smaller government regardless of population size should also want a smaller brain relative to their body size.  Maybe they've already achieved it.

Overall, I'm amazed they let Bill Black into their "Freedom Conference."

ps: Is anyone else confused by the very concept of International Liberty? Our ancestors all came here to make a nation that was - in one way or another - more free than other nations. Now some of us want to be free of any nation whatsoever? Time for some fact checking. Can any member of a social species be free from their species? Sure, commit suicide?

There is a LOT of sloppy discussion of processes that have to be exquisitely tuned.  That takes accurate semantics and serious thought.  Not just polemics.  We need more adults in our policy apparatus.