The content of this final chapter is concerned with commerce and contracts, representing the domain of free trade and agreements made between individuals; the final step in our political hierarchy of needs. The first is the need to establish a territory, second is to secure it from internal threats, third is to instate a system of law and order, and then finally free trade can flourish. Skip a step in the process and you will find a state that is motivated by money but corrupt to its core and contaminated by contradictions. Anticapitalist mentalities usually identify a meaningful fault in the system, but mistakenly attribute this failure to free trade rather than one of the underlying political substructures it is built upon. For instance, chapter six proposed a political model of land rental which would get rid of rent seeking, monopolist practices as well as allow for meaningful environmental protections. Similar arguments will be made in this chapter concerning the domain of intellectual property. If the previous chapter was concerned with the laws regulating the relationship between citizen and state, then this one will discuss the rules governing relationships between citizens. Trade and contracts are voluntary agreements we enter into with other people, and the assumptions implicit in these interactions need to be identified and protected if we wish to have a prosperous society. That is the task for today. I’ll be splitting the domains of our discussion into three categories: contracts, rules and regulations, and intellectual property.
Part #1. Contracts
For the purposes of this text, a contract can be considered any legally enforced promise or agreement made between individuals. Marriage, for instance, is a type of contract. You legally enter into a special type of relationship with another person which grants certain rights and privileges. A married couple is treated as a familial unit under the law, therefore spouses can make medical decisions on behalf of their partner and couples will often pool wealth and resources. The state shouldn’t have any say in defining what marriage is or who can get married, it is simply a specific sort of agreement made between citizens. Different couples will have different ideas about exactly how unified they want to be—this is why people have prenups and wills to determine how wealth will be allocated. Familial law is about mediating the rules of relationships between individuals. Divorce and child custody arrangements are also essentially contracts, with participants agreeing to a set of rules that is enforced and insured by the state.
Contracts in business are no different, establishing guarantees about how operations are to be run or how resources will be distributed. There needs to be a legal way of codifying this and holding others accountable to promises in order for people to make meaningful investments. The ability to hold someone to their word is how we can trust others and operate with a degree of certainty and confidence. A country that does not enforce its contracts will be rife with chaos and deception without any incentive for people to follow through on promises.
Similarly, when you purchase a product from a business, you are engaging in a form of contract. If a microwave is advertised with a 5 year warranty, or juice as made with organic lemons, there is an assumption that these claims are true and there will be some legal recourse available if the sellers are caught in a lie. All trade is essentially a type of contract. An agreement of x in exchange for y. If I pay for a bag of potatoes with fake money, or if the potatoes you sell me are actually turnips, then the terms of the agreement have been violated. In order for the government to protect these transactions they must be recorded. There needs to be a means of determining if a sale is legitimate by knowing where and when it took place. Exchanges that occur “under the table” as private arrangements between individuals have no way of being legally protected or enforced any more than a pinky promise.
This is the purpose of receipts, a record of the transaction that can be used to keep customers and businesses accountable. If I buy lemonade from some kids on the street and it makes me sick there is no real option for legal recourse without proof of purchase. Most of the time we don’t mind paying cash for small stake purchases, but if you’re buying a new car you’re probably better off with a record of the sale in case something goes wrong. I don’t think that the money supply itself should be controlled by the government, but the state does need to be able to follow a paper trail, or blockchain, when necessary. The problem with conceptualizing trade as a type of contract is that the terms of the agreement are implicit rather than explicit. If I buy lemonade from some kids I assume that it is safe to drink and not made out of lemon scented hand wipes, but it’s not like they have signed a document attesting to this fact. This brings us to the need for….
Part #2. Rules & Regulations
Our current political systems come prepackaged with what must be hundreds of thousands of regulations imposed upon businesses and consumers to protect their wellbeing; restaurants have strict food storage, sanitization, and service standards; there are building codes delineating what and how things must be constructed; even a task as simple as hairdressing cannot be performed without proper training and qualifications. The problem with this status quo is that the principles of protection are prescriptive rather than prohibitive. Instead of imposing a simple rule such as, “restaurants cannot serve food that is unsafe to eat,” businesses have a laundry list of standards and practices they must abide by if they even want to open their doors. Ingredients must be stored in certain containers at specific temperatures, surfaces must be sanitized every so-many minutes, every aspect of the process has been regulated to the teeth, removing any possibility for risk or uncertainty.
This creates unfair and false barriers to entry. No longer is the priority about protecting customers from a known harm, but preventing even the potential occurrence of a minor one. The massive amount of restrictions and requirements imposed upon businesses before they can even open for business means that only wealthy, pre-established players are easily able to participate in the marketplace. There are all sorts of ridiculous health and safety laws that increase costs and hassle to businesses while providing little-to-no benefit to consumers. The Canadian Food Retail and Food Services Code is a 120 page document that would render anything prepared in your typical home kitchen unsuitable for sale. Contrast this with the streets of Mexico where you can buy a taco from some back alley vendor for less than a dollar. Ingredients are kept in coolers and prepared in the open air, right next to oncoming traffic. But the products are still delicious and customers come back day after day without concern for their health or safety. Small businesses can’t get their start when they are being held to the same standard as industry giants and commercial kitchens. And if I as a customer am happy to adopt the risk of a street taco, why should the government be able to stop me?
My proposition is that we base rules in principles rather than prescriptions. In other words, look for the implicit assumptions underlying any agreement and only punish violations of those precepts. For instance, if I am purchasing something, there is an inherent assumption that I am not being lied to about the nature of the product. Claims made on packaging about it being peanut free or made with 100% orange juice need to be reliable and verifiable. Of course, there are always workarounds, such as burger patties being advertised as “made with organic beef” (but not entirely). Consumers need to be aware of such exploits if they wish to make informed purchasing decisions, but such verbal slights of hand should not be considered fraud, only lousy sales tactics.
The notion that the product you are purchasing will not harm you is another implicit assumption in most business transactions. Food should be safe to eat, a hotel should be free from bedbugs, and a home you purchased within the past year should not collapse under normal environmental strain. The concept of harm is a little more difficult to define since often negative outcomes are the result of negligence rather than malevolence. Sometimes we don’t know that a commonly accepted product is harmful until more research has occurred, such as the commercial use of lead paint and asbestos in construction projects, or the leaching of toxic chemicals from plastic packaging into food. Immediate harm matters, but so does the compounding effect of long term exposure to something that seems otherwise innocuous. It appears to me that the government should only be able to intervene in areas where there is always an associated cost to no added benefit. Thus a state could justifiably ban chemicals that are known to be toxic except for in instances where their use is appropriately regulated.
If something does go wrong, it can be difficult to determine if this is the result of accident or intention. A highly controlled commercial kitchen can make a mistake and cause a bout of food poisoning just as easily as an independent taco stand. No number of rules matter if they are not being enforced, and accidents and oversights are inevitable. If it is discovered that a common chemical is toxic, no single individual can be held accountable for using it in their business. If a bridge collapses because a builder made a mistake, this is a tragedy but not the result of criminal action; accidents can happen with or without rules imposed to prevent them. Intention is the real problem, like a building company knowingly watering down their cement mix in order to lower costs and subsequently producing a less reliable product. Practices like this are akin to fraud; the customer isn’t getting what they paid for. But what if some building company determines a way to water down their concrete to no ill effect? Creating a product that is cheaper and more efficient than its predecessor? How can we discriminate between good and bad use cases?
Ultimately, I always adopt the “innocent until proven guilty” stance to regulatory efforts. Unless a business practice or product has been demonstrated to be consistently harmful, producers should be able to do as they please. Now remember, I’m conceptualizing a political system wherein rules and regulations can be layered with increasing complexity. When I am describing laws in absolutes I am always concerned with the wild west, bare bones state of affairs. You can always make something more safe. I want to determine what the minimal conditions are for producing an environment of individual freedom. If I want to hire some guy to build me a shabby little shack with a stack of hammers, nails, and two-by-fours, should this be allowed if I am knowingly adopting the risk? My answer is yes.
Of course, there still can and should be independent regulatory bodies that hold companies and businesses to certain standards of practice. I want the street taco stands to be as uninhibited as possible, but the vast majority of food services will voluntarily adopt and comply with higher regulatory conditions. However these rules do not need to stem from government agencies! Notions of what constitutes best practice are better determined by members of the industry themselves. There could be some independent bureaus of “high quality food certification” that do restaurant inspections and ensure food is being prepared in accordance with their standards. And these agencies would also be competing amongst themselves in the free market. Different certification services may have different things they look for in terms of abiding by principles of health and safety, animal welfare, or environmental conscientiousness. Instead of all food services being held to the same set of standards, consumers could find a regulatory body that represents their values and seek out restaurants that have received their certification. The restaurants would subsequently have an incentive to pay for routine inspections since this would increase their customer base. Maybe search services like Google would decide to only list restaurants if they meet certain regulatory conditions, thereby not risking sending their users to a shady establishment. Essentially, by placing the onus of regulation upon those with actual skin in the game, customers receive a better product while also allowing for small start-ups to survive in the margins.
The same principle would also apply to occupational licensure. Instead of having state run directives as to what constitutes a qualified hairdresser or dentist, such certifications would be mediated by people actually operating in the field. A group of hairdressers could decide that their members be trained to a certain standard and advertise this alongside their services, but not every person who wants to cut hair needs to operate in accordance with these principles. Unlicensed hair dressers or tattoo artists should still be able to make a living if they can find customers who want them. Now, if someone lies to you about their certification status this is akin to fraud. A person or business who falsely claims having been approved of by a regulatory body is committing a criminal act and should be punished accordingly.
Technically, a system such as this would allow for the possibility of lousy certification and regulatory agencies to emerge, ones that hold businesses and practitioners to stupidly low standards while still allowing them to advertise as approved by so-and-so. Ultimately, knowing which agencies are good and reliable would be a responsibility that falls upon the consumer. Somebody simply being certified is no longer what matters but certified by whom. Some agencies would be the equivalent of a Michelin star ranking, communicating extremely high quality service by trained professionals, whereas others would be about as persuasive as a pizza shop that advertises itself as “grandma’s favourite.” This may be true, but it doesn’t mean much to your average consumer. It would be up to individuals to determine which popular regulatory agencies best align with their values and seek out businesses which have earned their approval. Over time certain practices would become more and more ubiquitous based on consumer demand, encouraging a heightening of standards through free market competition.
Essentially, I am suggesting a regulatory system wherein the only rule enforced by the government is the need not to lie. So long as consumers have access to reliable information they can make informed purchasing decisions. If a business falsely advertises a certification that they have not earned, or if an agency erroneously approves of a business which violates their standards of practice, they should be held criminally culpable for the consequences. Regulatory bodies would therefore have a vested interest in ensuring the accuracy of their assessments since they would be legally responsible for any oversights.
However lies aren’t the only potential issue, deception matters too! Any instance wherein a consumer is tricked into doing something they wouldn’t otherwise do is a cause for concern. Therefore there needs to be a reliable legal means of certifying authenticity. Market participants shouldn’t be able to steal the identities of or impersonate other vendors. This is the purpose of trademark laws, a legal means of certifying the relationship between product and seller. If I buy a bottle of Coke or Big Mac from McDonalds I can rest easy knowing that the products are being manufactured and distributed by the same company. Competitors can’t rip off Coca-Cola packaging since doing so may confuse the consumer, causing them to buy a different product than the one they wanted. Trademark laws aren’t actually about preventing other people from using an asset, they are intended for sellers to be able to voluntarily identify themselves as the authentic source of a product or service. They exist to protect consumers, not producers.
Part #3. Intellectual Property
The reason I bring up this point about trademarks is because usually they are lumped in with other forms of intellectual property, although the role that they play is functionally different. A trademark is essentially a certification of relation, a legal guarantee that x product comes from y source, which is extremely important if people are to navigate market systems effectively. Intellectual property, on the other hand, is about ownership, not authenticity. Patents and copyrights exist to protect producers, not consumers. They offer a legal means of gaining monopoly power over an idea, and I believe they are entirely illegitimate.
Now, this is a controversial opinion, especially among libertarians who typically consider IP to be the cornerstone of what makes profit and innovation possible in the first place. But I believe that this is a mischaracterization and intellectual property laws actually produce a lot more harm than good. Just like how land ownership can create unfair and unearned monopoly power that exacerbates differences between haves and have nots, I believe that IP is a gross misapplication of capitalism rather than a desirable feature of it. This final segment of the series will be dedicated to exploring why, and what we can do about it.
The conventional defense of IP is that creations of the mind are a product of labour, and since man has a natural right to the fruits of his labour this necessarily includes creative works of art or inventions of the mind. Seems simple enough, but the problem with this approach is that it is a misapplication of the concept of property. The only reason we have property rights in the first place is because of scarcity. Conflict over limited resources introduces the need for rules which will mediate disputes over their use. If we lived in a world of infinite abundance then there would be no need for ownership since anything you want you could be easily obtained. The problem of scarcity is part of what brings about the need for political institutions in the first place, and property rights are an effective means of determining who gets to control what resources. But when it comes to matters of the mind, no such limitations exist. Copying something is not the same thing as stealing it. Theft shifts control over limited resources whereas copying simply adds to the supply. Because there can be no shortage of ideas or information, there is no need for property rights to apply to intellectual pursuits. Introducing the concept of intellectual property creates an artificial scarcity which need not exist, and which can only be propagated through political power.
You cannot own an idea. All concepts are a consequence of those that came before them. New genres of music arise out of amalgamations of old ones, new types of food emerge where cultures collide, all of human innovation is a product of when ideas have sex. Nothing is wholly original and all creative work is derivative, for it is impossible to have inspiration without influence. And this is a good thing! As human beings we have a massive multicultural canon which is constantly being enriched by new ideas and new perspectives. We thrive off of collaboration. So where did this notion of intellectual property come from?
It’s a common misconception that copyright laws were introduced as a means of ensuring that writers can profit off of their work. The truth is that when the printing press was invented, only a small government-controlled guild had the power to publish and distribute written works. It wasn’t until 1710 that the Statute of Anne was passed by British parliament, granting authors the right to control the printing of their books. So there was never actually a time when information could be published and circulated freely. The Copyright Act just substituted one set of unfair monopolistic practices for a slightly better one. The 1623 Statue of Monopolies did the same thing in the realm of patents, transferring what had been indefinite government control over patents to a definite (14 year) private monopoly. This may have been the lesser of two evils at the time, but this does not imply that such a state of affairs is therefore desirable.
In the few hundred years since intellectual property laws were first implemented they have seen some dramatic changes. When the Copyright Act was introduced to America in 1790 the terms lasted 28 years, twice what it had been in England. Nowadays copyright lasts the lifetime of the creator plus 70 years, or 95 years if the creative work was commissioned by an employer. The copyright on Steamboat Willie, the 1928 animated Disney short which first featured Mickey Mouse, is set to expire in 2024, nearly 100 years after the original work was created. This is after Disney has lobbied the government three separate times to ensure that Mickey did not enter the public domain.
What exactly is going on here? It seems like the implementation of copyright law has strayed far from its original purpose. It is no longer about allowing creators temporary control over who reproduces their work, but protecting the interests of large media corporations. Owning a lucrative copyright asset allows companies to turn a profit without adding anything of value themselves. Whatever royalties are being made off of Steamboat Willie are certainly not going to the men who originally produced the animation. Copyright term extension acts also have the unfortunate consequence of creating orphan works. When Disney extends copyright law they are doing it across the board, not just for that particular property. This means that any creative project produced more or less within the past 100 years cannot be distributed without the express permission of the copyright holder, causing hundreds of thousands of songs and stories to fade out of print and into obscurity despite the fact that there may still be people who would happily pay for product. In order to protect the profits of a few hits, copyright extensions cause the vast majority of other creative work to go extinct in the process.
Patent protections pose a parallel problem. There is a general assumption that patents are good since they reward industry innovators and incentivize new inventions by granting monopoly power over a particular product. However historically what usually ends up happening is that patents impede progress rather than promote it. For instance, in the 1700s when steam power was just being popularized, James Watts applied for a patent on a superior engine design. Despite this, or in fact because of it, most of the progress in steam engine design occurred after Watts’ patent expired, not during its duration. Why? Well, by holding monopoly power over the superior system, Watt’s lacked any financial incentive to develop his product even further. His patent may have protected him from potential competitors, but patents also prohibited him from collaborating with other innovators. If an inefficiency in the steam engine could only be resolved by using technologies protected by other patent holders, the entire industry would have to sit and wait for them to expire before they could make meaningful progress. Two good inventions can’t be used in tandem to maximize output if patents are held by opposing owners. And even if conclusions are arrived at independently or through different mechanisms, it’s the outcome that is patent protected, not the process.
Similar stories can be said of the Wright brothers, who refused to develop their airplane while preventing others from doing so either. When someone has monopoly power they have little incentive to improve the cost or quality of the product they have produced. Patent protections tend to keep prices high, and slow the adoption of otherwise socially valuable technologies. These legal protections hamper growth rather than accelerate it. What’s worse is that patents cover independent discovery of the same ideas, meaning innovators can be punished by no fault of their own if they aren’t the first to the patent office with a new product. Most great technological advances are attractor states which are reached more or less simultaneously by multiple people within a short window of time. Things like the invention of the lightbulb or telephone usually had a few thinkers working on the project concurrently, however only one receives popular credit for the invention because they were first to receive a patent for it.
Matters are made even worse when you begin to examine how patent policies can be abused to prevent newcomers from even entering an industry. Patent pooling is the practice of a few large corporations deciding to share their patents among themselves, making it incredibly easy for them to innovate and share valuable ideas whilst preventing others from doing the same. Alternatively patent thickets are used to prevent competition in an industry by filing useless patents which must then be carefully sidestepped and avoided by any burgeoning business. It’s essentially the equivalent of a competitive cold war, companies will spend money on defensive patents that they have no intention of using only so that they can blackmail innovative firms when the opportunity presents itself to extract a quick buck. What’s even more insane is the practice of submarine patents, patents that are filed in secret for a technology that may not even exist yet. All that the patent holder has to do is wait for an innovator to come along who has a useful application for the idea, then the submarine surfaces and they can demand licensing fees for a product they had no role in making!
I could go on endlessly about the way patent laws are used and abused by big businesses to prevent small startups from ever standing a chance. Most new firms have to resign themselves to being one-idea companies, producing something new and valuable once before immediately being bought out by a larger business. There is no longer any incentive or ability to compete, the best a small company can do is find something new to feed the big guys and then get the hell out of their way. What’s worse is that patents are considered legitimate until proven otherwise, meaning a patent holder can easily file fraudulent claims and tie their competitors up in legal battles without having to risk anything of consequence themselves. Those who are wealthy and powerful can easily withstand a lawsuit while the same legal fees would put a small start up out of business. Patent laws seem almost designed to protect large corporations while leaving little left for the rest of us.
Okay, but what about drug companies? Surely there are some circumstances where patent protections allow for industry innovations which would otherwise not be possible. Right? Well, let’s consider something like the aids crisis in Africa. The drugs required to treat the illness are cheap to produce and desperately needed overseas, but pharmaceutical companies charge enormous premiums in order to reap larger profits in Western countries. The companies don’t want to sell their medicine for less in Africa, even though they could afford to do so, because this runs the risk of a parallel market emerging out of Africa that resells the cheap product to the West, thus undercutting the drug companies profits. This creates a situation of artificial scarcity: there is both supply and demand, but because one company gets to control who they sell to and for how much, millions of people are getting needlessly sick. This isn’t the fault of capitalism, it’s the fault of patent protections which are acting as an unnecessary bug in the system.
Maybe you agree with me that patents present some problems but still think that copyright protections are more or less a good idea, perhaps with a lower term limit. However I maintain that it’s better to abolish the concept of copyright entirely, if only because copyright laws still present the opportunity for abuses of power by controlling the flow of information. For instance, Scientologists have been able to use copyright claims to take down websites that are critical of the church since they reference copywritten material. In the early 2000s a similar tactic was used to suppress negative information about the security of American voting machines. Copyright laws allow companies to use takedown notices to censor and repress information they would rather not have available as public knowledge.
But aside from exploits in the system, the entire concept of copyright is built upon shaky foundations. As I said at the start of this section, the notion of private property is predicated upon scarcity. So when it comes to intellectual and creative endeavours that can be freely reproduced, why should anyone else be able to artificially limit that resource? “To protect the creators!” is the conventional answer. Artists need a reliable method to profit off of their work and if their creations can be replicated by anyone then this reduces their value. But it’s not like copying is the only or best way to profit off of an artistic endeavour. Instead of authors relying upon royalties from book sales, what if they simply received a flat fee up front? This used to be the conventional way authors were paid and no one had any problem with it. In fact, there was a time when the United States freely printed foreign publications without paying the copyright fees that were required in England. Yet English authors would often make more money selling their works in the United States than they did back home collecting royalties. This is because American publishers prioritized quantity over quality. They would buy a manuscript from an English author and then flood the market with cheaply made paperbacks. The availability of affordable books in America lead to an increase in literacy and subsequently more authors and more demand for more books. This feedback loop created a more educated populace due to the fact that information could flow freely through the system. Artificial barriers that impede that flow are bad for both consumers and producers.
Now, of course, if an author is just selling the initial manuscript of their text then this means they miss out on any additional profits if the book turns out to be a bestseller. But at the same time, not relying upon royalties as a main source of income means that even if the book does poorly the author still has a guaranteed paycheque while the publishing company must eat the cost. If they do happen to write a best seller, that means later works produced will be valued more highly and can be priced accordingly. The notion that an artist must be mostly or even remotely dependent upon royalties in order to make a living ignores the numerous other ways that creators can turn a profit. Anything involving live appearances of authors or musicians will always be scarce. The majority of a film’s revenue is made at its initial release in theatres. And there is a myriad of other ways to monetize tours, talk show appearances, autographs and merchandise. The online community is a great showcase of innovative ways creators can profit off of a product that is free. Either through advertisements or special subscription services, people tend to feel some sort of responsibility to support artists whose work they appreciate. This is why artistic exposure is always preferable to obscurity. Most musicians would pay money to have their song play on the radio or be featured in a big movie, since this attracts an audience. Even if the first set of eyes or ears aren’t paying for it, they may expose the product to someone who will.
It’s worth noting that there is a meaningful difference between copying something and claiming it as your own. We can have a system without copyright while maintaining the concept of artistic ownership. To falsely claim that you are the creator of a stolen work is tantamount to fraud. To reproduce the contents of a book while changing the title or author is an act of deception, but reprinting an existing text while crediting the original creator should be allowable. Personally, I have posted some poems online and it would be strange to walk into a bookshop and see them being sold on a shelf. It would make me angry if someone else was pretending to have written them, but if they were published as a curated collection of anonymous poems found on the internet I think that would be rather charming. Not being compensated for your creative work isn’t the best, but it’s not like I was going to any effort to publish them either so I can’t pretend I’ve lost money if it’s someone else who has put in the work.
Now, there has been some drama in the past where it is discovered that a large company is copying and commercially selling art that was found online without compensating the creators. Unfortunately this is something that would be technically allowable in my system, but hopefully not generally desirable from an optics standpoint. If an artist discovers that their work is being appropriated for profit by some big company, they should take to social media and call for a boycott. Most of the time I think companies would see the value in paying for original designs, if only so they have access to a better quality file. When it comes to sales there could also be ways of signalling when the profits from a product directly support an artist. Something like a special sticker for physical products or a blockchain authentication for digital ones.
Contracts made between creators and vendors would also help protect product use and distribution to some extent. A filmmaker could sell his movie to a cinema on the condition that they do not duplicate or share any copies of the file, thus ensuring that they can profit off of an audience. An inventor could take her design to a manufacturer and offer priority access to its use in exchange for company stock or royalties on each sale. If that manufacturer doesn’t accept her deal then a competitor will, for most of the profit made from a product comes from whomever is first to market. The first mover in any industry always has an advantage. Name-brand drugs are generally preferred to their generic counterparts simply because they feel more familiar. A publishing house knows that the vast majority of book sales come from the first few weeks of its release. A copycat cannot replicate success by imitation because imitation of success suggests that someone else has already profited. You can’t make much money trying to reprint bestsellers because they have already been sold; anyone else who comes along afterwards is just grabbing crumbs up off the floor.
The difficulty with instating meaningful change to IP law is the fact that the majority of global trade is dependent upon agreeing to certain international copyright treaties. Even if a smaller developing country would benefit from not enforcing IP protections, doing so would disqualify them from global trade which they are likely reliant upon. Meanwhile countries with strong IP laws will attract creators and innovators since they believe they can turn a higher profit. For a country to survive that does not offer conventional IP protections it would need to be incredibly self-sufficient and offer incentives in other areas that would make the trade-off worthwhile. What is really needed is a global shift in attitude about what intellectual property is and if it should even exist in the first place. This series is called Wonderland for a reason. We are focusing on philosophical oughts in order to determine how best to fix what currently is. The reason I am such an advocate for first principles thinking is that often it isn’t obvious what features of a system are helping or hurting it. In order to disentangle causes from effects it’s best to start by thinking from the bottom up so you can avoid contradictions.
My main goal throughout this series has been philosophical rigour and consistency. The problem of practical application is a separate issue. But I hope you can appreciate me taking the time to tease these topics apart, if only as an intellectual exercise. Personally, I am a little more idealistic. I think we are often so caught up in the current and conflicts of day to day life that we forget that all of our biggest and most powerful institutions are a mere blink of the eye in relation to the rest of human history. Nothing that exists now need carry into the future unless we want it to, and ideas that aren’t sustainable will naturally weed themselves out. So I am incredibly optimistic for the future. I think that political theory always necessarily predates practice since people need a roadmap telling them where to go and why. Haphazard attempts at change without a unifying theory or set of principles is bound to produce more problems than solutions. That’s why I like engaging with the abstract rather than the everyday. For me, the ideas and ideals feel more real than their chaotic implementation, since at least in theory I can have logical consistency. Issues of practical policy are often clouded by the bad foundations upon which they are built, so it isn’t obvious what changes will make things better or worse. I think the best solution to our problems is to lead by example, and the possibility of micro-nations present an exciting opportunity to experiment with potential political models. If an idea works then it will naturally spread over time, which is why truth and utility go hand in hand. The only thing inhibiting our capacity for growth and change is the belief that it isn’t possible. My aim with this series was to demonstrate that it is.
Continue to Season 2, Part 1: The And
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1.10 Commerce & Contracts