The world could be quite different one several centuries from now. For all we know, a system like this might be implemented even if more people haven't read this particular substack. Almost every website on the internet is devoted to the same capitalist/socialist paradigm, but there's a growing pluralist economic movement trying to integrate different economic theories and combine different perspectives. Complex systems are fragile and can't simply be changed by "burning them to the ground". Otherwise we'll just have another cycle of collapse, tyranny, and then back to capitalism like in the 20th century. That's why I believe that systems theory is a better basis for a new economy than Marxian conflict theory.
"LAWS in their most general signification, are the necessary relations resulting from the nature of things. In this sense all beings have their laws, the Deity has his laws, the material world its laws, the intelligences superior to man have their laws, the beasts their laws, man his laws."
On this Substack I have repeatedly complained of the enduring influence of Montesquieu's book of 1748, "The Spirit of the Laws." He suggested that a government must have 3 branches:
the executive
the legislature
the judiciary
He invented the phrase "checks and balances" to describe how these 3 branches of government could balance each other, and so maintain a free society. I've written about the ways this system has become out of date:
In the modern era, we need thousands of independent branches of government, rather than just three.
I have limited aims with my writing. A few points I hope to make:
1. populism leads to bad government
2. the government will continue to grow
3. specialization will become more fine-grained
4. maintaining a free society in the face of the growth of government will require more independence for more branches of government
5. the complexity of future systems is unknowable but there will be moments of deliberate engineering. Every time an autocracy becomes a democracy, a constitution must be written (Germany 1949, Spain 1978, Poland 1990), and such moments involve conscious, deliberate architectural decisions. Therefore it is worthwhile to think about the actual architecture of democracy and civil society, since its creation does involve moments of actual constitutional engineering. While the distant future is unknowable, the issue of what would make an ideal constitution, right now, is a reasonable question that we can intelligently address.
The world could be quite different one several centuries from now. For all we know, a system like this might be implemented even if more people haven't read this particular substack. Almost every website on the internet is devoted to the same capitalist/socialist paradigm, but there's a growing pluralist economic movement trying to integrate different economic theories and combine different perspectives. Complex systems are fragile and can't simply be changed by "burning them to the ground". Otherwise we'll just have another cycle of collapse, tyranny, and then back to capitalism like in the 20th century. That's why I believe that systems theory is a better basis for a new economy than Marxian conflict theory.
The first paragraph of "The Spirit of the Laws":
"LAWS in their most general signification, are the necessary relations resulting from the nature of things. In this sense all beings have their laws, the Deity has his laws, the material world its laws, the intelligences superior to man have their laws, the beasts their laws, man his laws."
https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/abs/key-texts-of-political-philosophy/montesquieus-spirit-of-the-laws/E2CB5F96ECDB9C1B2D6F6B452C0889D9
On this Substack I have repeatedly complained of the enduring influence of Montesquieu's book of 1748, "The Spirit of the Laws." He suggested that a government must have 3 branches:
the executive
the legislature
the judiciary
He invented the phrase "checks and balances" to describe how these 3 branches of government could balance each other, and so maintain a free society. I've written about the ways this system has become out of date:
https://demodexio.substack.com/p/why-have-politics-in-the-usa-become
In the modern era, we need thousands of independent branches of government, rather than just three.
I have limited aims with my writing. A few points I hope to make:
1. populism leads to bad government
2. the government will continue to grow
3. specialization will become more fine-grained
4. maintaining a free society in the face of the growth of government will require more independence for more branches of government
5. the complexity of future systems is unknowable but there will be moments of deliberate engineering. Every time an autocracy becomes a democracy, a constitution must be written (Germany 1949, Spain 1978, Poland 1990), and such moments involve conscious, deliberate architectural decisions. Therefore it is worthwhile to think about the actual architecture of democracy and civil society, since its creation does involve moments of actual constitutional engineering. While the distant future is unknowable, the issue of what would make an ideal constitution, right now, is a reasonable question that we can intelligently address.