The Separation of Commerce and State

The principle of the Separation of Church and State has done wonders for religious freedom, and has brought impressive levels of interpersonal harmony and general prosperity. Why? Because this principle removes the mechanism of violence from religion, making the proposal in explicitly harmonious terms.

Unfortunately, a new kind of violent, crusading morality has taken its place, in the form of economic progressivism. Progressives believe that certain kinds of economic transactions between people, though completely voluntary on all sides, are immoral, and thus must be violently suppressed. This has created, on economic matters, the same kind of heated partisan discord that once divided British Catholics and Protestants. In the less civilized corners of the world, the economic crusaders have employed corruption and military strength to gain a permanent advantage over their opponents, establishing socialist dictatorships.

To restore harmony on economic matters, and ensure that violence is never used for the sake of overly-intrusive, moralistic crusading, what we need is a principle of Separation of Commerce and State.

I believe this principle would function the way the Separation of Church and State has, becoming shorthand for the plea to maintain civility through the enforcement of “live and let live” on economic matters. In other words, you may not agree with the contracts that I agree to, but I am free to make my own choices according to my own economic beliefs, and so are you. Certainly, the progressives will object to such a principle, arguing that the people are too stupid to know what’s best for themselves, just as religious crusaders have continued to do, centuries after the introduction of the Separation of Church and state. Yet, I think the formalization of this concept in parallel to the language that protects religious freedom will take a giant leap forward in protecting economic freedom, with far more success than general pleas for liberty (which are often difficult for the uninitiated to understand).

So, have I made my case? Are you ready to start framing the debate over economic liberty in terms of “Separation of Commerce and State”?

The End of an Era

I found an amazing article that perfectly describes the current state of political dialogue.

The one thing that people of all political colors can agree on is that we have some serious economic and fiscal problems to work out. The question of “how” is where the disagreement begins.

Ask Paul Krugman or Barak Obama, and they’ll both say we just need to spend more. We just need to put more money into the services and programs that are failing, and then they will have enough resources to provide a good product. We just need to modify the regulations a bit, tighten them here and there, force everyone to do things in a better way, and then we’ll have control over our economy. But the thing is, the progressives haven’t had a new idea in 75 years.

Our education system sucks, and they say we need to increase spending, but that’s what we’ve been doing. It doesn’t work.

Our infrastructure is falling apart, our big cities are in decline, and they say we just need to increase spending, but that’s what we’ve been doing. It doesn’t work.

Our health care system sucks, and they say we just need to increase government control of it, and then we won’t be wasting so much money on competitive profit-based system. It doesn’t work.

The thing is, a lot of smart people like Krugman just can’t seem to accept these simple, hard facts. They can’t get their heads out of the overly simplistic thought constructions of “more spending => better products” and “more control => better engineering.” They’re stuck. But when we reach a point where even the simplest, most widely-held ideas like “increasing educational spending increases education,” turn out to be wrong, a new kind of thinking is required.

The thing is, when it comes to something as complicated and reactionary as an economy, evolutionary development is far superior to rational design. It’s impossible for anyone to ever be sure of what the economy needs at all levels of organization. More often then not, our elected leaders will be wrong about something in their attempts to rationally design a well-engineered economy. It doesn’t matter what party they’re in- it’s just a fact of chaotic complexity that it cannot be fully understood with perfect predictive power.

Consider the example of the horse-drawn carriage in the article I linked to. If you rationally design every part equally well, then when something goes wrong in a way that would destroy one part, all the parts will have the same chance of breaking, and you’re in danger of a total collapse. On the other hand, consider evolutionary development. If one part fails, it is soon replaced by something else which can do the job better. Big crises pose less threat to a system which is more adaptable and capable of recovery.

It all comes down to this simple phrase: If we all live in the same way, then when crisis hits, we will all fail in the same way.

Hence, we should completely decentralize control over economic decisions. Take the government out of the economy. Let the economy evolve on its own. When one business fails, it will have little impact on other businesses which are doing things completely differently. And those businesses which survive will learn from the mistakes of the failed ones, and continue on with their own more successful business model. This is how the economy evolves to become stronger.

The same is true on an individual level. When one individual fails, everyone learns from it. They all continue on, having a better idea of what the correct decisions are. The entire community of individuals adapts to its needs. We don’t need a military-backed government to impose a certain lifestyle. That only harms innovative adaptability. We can choose our own lifestyles, and the entire community will benefit if one of us finds a new formula to success.

We’re at the end of the era of progressive thinking. It’s time to move on to something better- something that actually works. This new decentralized economy- this is the face of the new era.

Those crazy [insert non-authoritarian entity here]

Tea Partiers, Republicans, Libertarians- these are all people which the authoritarian left dismiss as absolutely crazy.

But which is crazier:

Restoring the ideal of liberty and self-government that this country was founded upon, or;

Believing an autocracy of technocrats will be enlightened enough to take good care of their subjects without reverting to the same abuses of power and atrocities that every previous authoritarian state has succumbed to.

Which is more unrealistic: Great Society, or self-determination?

This progression towards authoritarianism which has accelerated so greatly over the past decade is like a drug. We tell ourselves it’s okay, because we need it, but we could stop anytime we wanted to. We tell ourselves that there’s no slippery slope down the road to serfdom, and so we take just one more step, and then another, and then maybe just one more, each time telling ourselves it will be the last. We gut the Constitution, surrender our liberty, and trust in our glorious leaders who know so much better than us how to live.

Because if we don’t, then the crazies will win. Then the hicks and the rednecks and the racists and the corporations and those scarily self-important Libertarians (who think they’re somehow better than us because they have “principles”) will all win. And all technological and economic progress will revert, because none of it could’ve ever happened without the government keeping those crazies in their place.

Freedom was a thing of the past. We’re done with that now. We’ve evolved beyond it. Just like the glorious Roman Empire. And anyone who thinks otherwise is crazy.