The State Exists. Get over it.

Almost every geographic territory has a military force that exercises ultimate control over the territory. The only exceptions are frontier societies and states in a civil war. Frontier societies no longer exist, and civil war is the worst case situation.

The supreme military force will choose a political algorithm as Schelling point. That algorithm will govern its decisions and make any delegations of the use of force. We call the military and its associated political algorithm, "the state". It exists, there is no getting rid of it. Any political movement that attempts to abolish the state will in a best case be completely ineffectual, in the worst cases the movement will result in anarcho-tyranny, civil war, or domination by a foreign power.

The State will attempt to maximize revenue and will funnel that revenue to people who control it

All governments are exploitive. They maximize profits and distribute profits to those who control the government. The good governments are stationary bandits. The bad governments are roving bandits. The good government is competent and thinks for the long term. The bad government is incompetent and pillages for the short term.

Even the exceptions to this maxim prove the rule. The belle epoque era aristocracies tended to have very low tax rates. This was because the society was ruled by the wealthy aristocracies. Rather than tax heavily and redistribute the money back to themselves, it was easier to not tax at all. But when the masses took control of government the massses raised the taxes and distributed it to themselves.

In a government ruled by the masses, there will be no head tax, but will rather be a progressive income tax. There is no point to a head tax that would simply get redistributed back the payers.

In a colonial land, ruled by wealthy land owners, there will be a very low property tax, but instead there will be a head tax. The masses will be forced to pay a tax to live, and then forced to work in order to pay that tax.

This principle of formalism is again descriptive, not prescriptive. But since every human society has followed this law, the formalist does advocate not try to fight it. Doing so will be futile at best, destructive at worst.

The only way to get low taxes is to put government in the control of government in the hands of a merchant aristocracy who has an interest in low taxes. But any such change of control creates conflict, and probably violence. The gains to growing the pie far outweigh the gains from dividing the pie in a different way.

Decisions about how to grow the pie should be separate from decisions about how to divide the pie. The division should not be changeable by agitation

In democratic debates questions of how to grow the pie and divide the pie are mixed. For example the healthcare bill partly dealt with how to make the system better for everyone, and partly with dealing goodies (the mandate as a giveaway to insurance companies, the subsidies as a giveaway to the Democratic base, etc). Political parties constantly support policies that will actually shrink the pie overall, if it increases the portion for their own side (see again, the healthcare bill). Even worse, they will couch their arguments for changing the division of pie in terms of growing the pie. For example, the democrats have argued that subsidies would save money because people would no longer use emergency room. The parties will actually believe their own myths, and both parties will become utterly delusional about how to actually grow the pie.

And worst of all, the fights over dividing the pie generate an enormous amount of antagonism. The parties polarize and begin to hate each other. (slavery -> civil war)

Shareholder ownership fixes the "divide the problem problem" by fixing shares outright. And then distribute all benefits of the company in straight up cash. If you distribute benefits as in kind benefits (imagine starbucks issuing shareholders dividends in lattes), then that will not benefit all shareholders equally, and thus will cause conflict.

Once the shares are fixed, everyone in the company has the same goal - increase the share price.

When I joined my current company I had a month of somewhat stressful negotiation over my stock options. But once that was done, and the contract signed, my interests were very well aligned with management. As a result, a company of 150 people all work together as a team with one unified goal.

The doctrine of laches and adverse possession are necessary for living in a peaceful, prosperous society. It should apply to states as well as people.

Great violence has been justified by tracing the holdings of a parcel of land to a time when it was violently stolen. By declaring the land illegal, an agitator from the present can thus attempt to force a transfer. The practice of using past grievances to try and transfer existing property is the cause of great violence. We see this violence in Israel-Palestine, and in the Balkans.

At some point, you have to except borders as they are, property owners as they are, and governments as they are, and focusing on gaining wealth by creating it, rather than transfering it from others.

Democracy is not the "least worst" form of government. It is worse than many forms of government that existed. It is worse than many others that could be designed or implemented

Liberty and rule of law are great indeed. Free speech, freedom of religion, right to a fair trial, are all great.

But democracy is not great. We use the U.N definition: "the will of the people shall be the basis of the authority of government; this will shall be expressed in periodic and genuine elections which shall be by universal and equal suffrage and shall be held by secret vote or by equivalent free voting procedures."

Historically the introduction of universal suffrage has generally lead to high levels of corruption and violence. In the majority of cases lawful democracy degenerates into corrupt democracy, which then degenerates into tyranny or civil war.

Other systems such as timocracy, lawful absolutism, and merchant aristocracy have provided better government in the best case, worst case, and average case.

Lawful, legitimit rulers are almost always superior to rulers that come to power through fraud and/or violence

The most vile rulers in history - Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, Sulla, etc, - came to power through violence. When a ruler achieves power through illegal means he a) has less legitimacy, and thus is forced to violently purge opponents to support his rule b) generally far more violent than the average person, and thus much more likely to use violence against his subjects and neighbors.

It is difficult to find a ruler who came to power through legal means (fair and lawful elections, hereditary birth, adoption, selection by existing oligarchs) who's body count is within two orders of magnitude of that of the violent rulers.

Authority is always conserved, it cannot be destroyed

For every possible human action, someone has the ultimate decision making power. Whoever has that decision making authority, has great power to influence the lives of me and my neighbors for good and for evil. There is no getting around the problem, the authority cannot be destroyed somone or some group must have that authority.

For instance, I wish to build a factory in a plot of land that I own. If I have the authority to make the decision, I can inflict great misery on my neighbor by polluting the air. If a zoning board has the authority, the members may recieve little of the benefits from the factory (the profits and consumer surplus) but will experience some of the downside (pollution), and thus deny the permit even though it is a net utilitarian gain. If a jury decides the owner and valuation of the property rights for the air and noise easements, they may grossly overvalue or undervalue due to igonorance. If a mob decides, they may have their own passion and prejudices. If an elected council decides, that council might be bribed into doing the wrong thing.

This is the great problem of governance. Authority cannot be destroyed, every decision must have an ultimate decider. But whoever that decider is has great power to create misery. Figuring out who should have that ultimate authority is a non-obvious and non-trivial problem.

If you look closely at any proposal to "limit" authority or destroy authority, you will see that it never actually limits or destroys authority. It simply changes who exercises that authority. For instance, deep down, Aretae's anarcho-capitalist proposal is not a proposal for destroying authority. It's a prosposal for putting ultimate authority of all decisions in the hands of a coalition of for-profit, security agencies.

Those who attempt to deligitimize authority, do not destroy authority. If they succeed, they simply make all exercise of authority unlawful, without actually reducing the scope of authority (since authority is conserved). And we have observed that unlawful authority's are far more prone to violence and evil. Denying the legitimacy of govnerment in general is thus not a recipe for getting liberty, but a recipe for selecting vile rulers.

Judges should be arbiters, not rulers

The purpose of a judge is to arbitrate a dispute between two parties. A judge should not be trying to bend or alter the world to his own will, and initiating his own policies. That is against the very definition of a judge. If a body is exercising its own positive authority that body should be called rulers, not judges.

The collarary is that if you wish judges to remain judges, the judges must be selected by the two parties of a dispute (or selected by a process agreed to by both parties). If a judge is to decide between a resident and a city government, the judge should be selected by both the general assent of the residents, and the assent of the government.

If a justices are selected by a process of self-selection, a la, the Israelie supreme court, the institution will quickly degenerate into a self-selected theocracy, that will be imposing its own positive law based on its own ideals.

If justices that judge cases between the State and Federal government, are only selected by the Federal government, as in the U.S., overtime they will side with the Federal government against the states.

Good governments are strong enough to defend against invaders and quell internal rebellion

Few things are worse than internal civil war, or foreign conquest. A government that preserves liberty internally is worth little, if it cannot protect from an aggressive foe who wishes to anhilate you and steal your land.

Good government is generally coherent, fractured government is generally bad

In all well run corporations, the lines of decision making and authority are very clear. There is a hierarchical chain that ends in the shareholders.

In dysfunctional organizations, multiple power blocks work against each other. For example, in the Detroit police department of the 1960's, the police commissioner (who was apointed by an elected mayor) had no power to fire police. But he did have some power to alter policy, or promote/demote police. The result is a fractured management structure, neither the commission nor the police have ultimate authority, accountability, or respsonsibility. As a result they squabbled and worked at cross purposes. There was a police brutality incident, but the commissioner had no power to fire the officer. Thus to remedy the situation, he tied the hands of the entire police force by forcing more lenient policing. This led to going soft on crime, and a rise in crime. The decline in quality of policing was a major contributing factor to the destruction of the city.

Distribution of the pie should be aligned with actual power

In France of the 1780's the profits of government went to a variety of nobles, bureaucrats, and royals. But military technology had changed. While the previous age had been the age of knights, and winning a battle required expensive armor, the 1780's was the age of gunpowder. The mob was now powerful. As a result there was a disparity between the profits of government, and actual on the ground power. When the mobs revolted, the government did not have the physical power to put down the mob. The result was violence and destruction.

Actual Power Should be as stable as possible

Government is a system of incentives that produces decisions. A government is not a mystical trust of God or embodiment of univeral ideals.

Democratic idealists believe in voting, etc, as an ultimate end. Suffrage is itself an ideal and a human right. The formalist rejects this notion. A vote is a means to an end. The end is good, responsible government. Granting suffrage to a person is only good if leads to the goal of responsible government.

The elite always end up ruling. What matters are which elite, and what the incentives of the elite are

Google.com is ruled by a oligarchy with near absolute power. This oligarchy can slash entire divisions or fire anyone in the company. It can alter any aspect of the company and forever alter the life of any of the 20,000 people who spend a the majority of their waking hours at the Google offices. The oligarchy can approve changes in a search algorithm that will completely destroy some businesses, and make others. It owns large tracts of property and the oligarchy controls absolutely who is allowed to set foot on the property. Those who disobey will be removed by armed guards.

Yet contrary to Lord Acton's theory, this elite oligarchy does not abuse its power. It feeds its workers great sushi, gives them a delightful workplace, and delegates a huge number of decisions to small groups. It is authorartian, but it is not a tyranny. This is a mystery to all of us who grew up reading our history books that authoriatarian and tyrannical were synonyms.

The Google oligarchy rules well because of the selection process and the incentives. The oligarchs did not build their empire through the sword, treachery, inheritence, or fraud. The oligarchs built the empire by devising a superior algorithm for indexing information. They then built a company dedicated to that goal. The oligarchs only receive income if millions of people freely choose to use their software. The oligarchs treat their workers well, because it they do not, the workers will refuse to work for Google. Incentives align.

The myth of democracy is that of popular sovereignty, that the people do not rule. But the people cannot rule, they cannot collectively make decisions, manage resources, delegate, etc. Democracy is a system of government in which votes are occaisionally used as an input into the selection of the ruling elite.

Democracy has a ruling oligarchy as much as any other government. That oligarchy consists of the party leaders, the owners of the press, the journalists who tell people what to think, the upper level civil servants, the heads of the factions. The elite comprises David Alexrod, Karl Rove, K Street, Larry Summers, Obama, Bush, Pelosi, Paulson, Bernanke, Limbaugh, Krugman, Friedman, and Palin.

Across the board the democratic elite is more vicious, incompetent, and dishonest than the Silicon Valley elite. The idea behind democracy was that a government in which mass suffrage would result in a government that acted in the interests of the people. Instead it create a government that ruled by lies and deceit. And even when it does not decieve it is too incompetent to rule well.

Rules and laws that are inherently about "ought" or how to live should be left to the smallest jurisdiction possible.

Many communities have religious and moral beliefs and rules. The Amish ban use of electricity. A university community might ban the use of cars among its students. A small town might ban ponographic stores. Some religious communities would like to ban abortion.

These kinds of ought decisions should be allowed. A world without freedom to form communities would be a poorer world. But these decisions should be made the narrowest level possible. Tulsa Kansas shouldn't tell Cambridge, MA what it's beliefs about gay marriage should be, and Cambridge, MA should not order Tulsa to overturn its ban abortion.