Archive for October, 2007

On the Peace Prize and Politics

Saturday, October 20th, 2007

In my recent Strike the Root article I discuss the true nature of the Nobel Peace Prize. Apart from an apparent error in the beginning of the article (Nobel dedicated most of his fortune to the Prize, not all of it), the article truthfully tells a story of the Prize based on simple economic analysis based on investigating “who benefits”. In a way, the analysis is based on Public Choice, since it necessarily, however indirectly, includes analyzing the Norwegian national parliament and how its interests (rather than those of Alfred Nobel) affect the appointing of members to the Peace Prize Committee.

The problem stressed in the article is general, even though it uses an explicit example: the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize awarded to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and former US Vice President Al Gore. The generality of the problem lies in the fact that politics tend to make things worse rather than guarantee an emphasis on the public good as opposed to private goods (if there is such a conflict at all). Actually, politics always act degenerating while most people tend to believe in political rather than private solutions. Why is this so?

One obvious reason is the common myth of democracy: that the people “rule themselves” and that public officials thus are public servants. There is however no reason to believe this is the case, and there are no empirical facts confirming that guardianship (with respect to individual citizens’ rights and interests) is what guides individual action in the political apparatus or the bureaucracy. It is however prevalent in the rhetoric, which seems to fool even some scientists that there is an unselfish dedication to what is right inherent in public bailieship.

It should be interesting to point out that the latter is a conscious mechanism or means in politics to cause the former. Guardianship rhetoric is often used by public officials in order to make the state appear as a guardian of the common interest, since that is clearly in the interest of the official. (This is however not considered a very interesting fact to analyze in political science.)

Back to the point. What does political action inherently bad as a means compared to any other possible means? It is not the fact that individual interests in the contemporary administration that makes politics itself a bad solution, even though such interests and actions [when not controlled] add costs to the solution. We know that government solutions are often or always more costly than any private enterprise, but that doesn’t necessarily mean all solutions are bad. And it also doesn’t sufficiently show or explain how this is so.

We need to accept the fact that politics is not essentially a construct to achieve certain societal ends, even though many theorists in history, as well as currently, desperately line up unfounded claims that this is in fact the case. Politics is not a means to structure a body so that it efficiently can create value. Politics is also not an arrangement to provide a basis for action or change in an organization. Rather, politics is a construct to satisfy a need for some to control, constrain, and command.

In political science speak, politics has the purpose and ability to concoct and superficially “create” a common interest from aggregating the interests of many.

As we know, it isn’t possible to measure interests or values and it also isn’t possible to satisfy two distinctly different interests through offering a “middle way” solution. In such a solution both interests are left essentially unsatisfied, rather than only one of them in a winner-takes-it-all game. (In a market solution, of course, no interest need be left unsatisfied, since the market can offer multiple solution to a problem. But this is not the topic of this post.)

The interests that always lose in a game of politics is the the interests of the public. The reason for this is that “the public” isn’t a whole and thus does not ever have one distinct interest in any issue. There are multiple interests, often as many as there are individuals, and they cannot be satisfied at once in the legal framework of a state.

One could argue the duty of public officials is to find the solution that is “best” according to a certain set of values arranged hierarchically. The best way of doing this would of course to simply enforce majority rule: satisfy the interests of the majority in every issue and thus maximize the number of satisfied interests in society.

The problem of this approach is of course the well-known problem of utilitarianism: what if interests are not equally valued by the individuals holding them? Utilitarianism cannot be subjected to a game of statistics since a person could feel very strongly about a certain issue whereas a lot people may have a slight disinterest in that very issue. Do you judge in favor of the single person at the “expense” of the others? Or do you add the “slight disinterest” of many people together and claim this is “more” than the “strong interest” of the individual? What ration needs to be satisfied in order to make this conclusion? And perhaps more importantly:

How do you measure interest?

The utilitarian solution is simply not a solution, which leaves us with the “middle way” solution. In a two-interest world the task should be fairly simply; just document the interests and offer a solution where parts of both interests are satisfy, and make sure advocates of both parties accept the solution as “better than status quo.”

But the simplicity of this solution is deceiving. Even if we assume that the interests can easily be documented and measured (which is a requirement here too!), the solution doesn’t apply to politics. Many great minds have mistakenly assumed the state takes on the role of objective negotiator between interests, and that the state’s [negotiator's] job is simply to find a “best fit” solution. This is not the case.

In a real negotiation the parties generally agree on who is to negotiate for them. Also, the parties pay the negotiator(s) for his or her services – they might even pay him or her for successfully suggesting a solution acceptable to both parties. This is certainly not the case for the state: it doesn’t get paid for taking on certain conflicts of interest and it also doesn’t have an interest in being objective.

Also, the state shouldn’t be denoted “it”- it is not a person or a tight organization dedicated to achieving a certain goal. Rather, “it” consists of a number of people with interest in satisfying their own interests first, be it the power of their formal position or their personal wealth. Thus, adding the state in this case simply adds an interest to the equation – our two-interest game is suddenly, in the simplest possible case, a three-interest game after adding the state!

It should be much more difficult finding an acceptable solution to a three-interest conflict, especially if the third interest is added after the conflict already exists! Adding to this that the third interest gets veto power to any suggested solution, and that it effectively has the power to force all other interests to comply with the solution of its choice, makes it impossible to find a winner among the original conflicting parties.

And what about the incentives of payment? The state, again talking of it as “an it,” has the power to charge whatever it wants actually supplying whatever it wants. This is called taxation – there is no connection between payment and delivery.

This is a major reason why the state tends to make things worse rather than offer a solution to problems. A market solution would presumably offer a wide range of negotiation and arbitration services (in fact it already does) by companies and individuals that make profits through supplying non-biased solutions to conflicting interests. And it isn’t difficult to assume some of them may even choose to charge the parties only for accepted solutions.

The Norwegian parliament represents 169 individual sets of interests (not counting interests of parties, special interest groups, etc.) that will affect who will be appointed to the Nobel Peace Prize Committee, and the individuals in the committee will have further opportunities to satisfy their own interests when awarding the Prize.

As is asked in the article, Is there really no one in the world who has done a better job for peace during the last year? There should be many. But the right question to ask is: who can be awarded the Prize in order to maximize the satisfaction of the interests of the individuals in the committee and the Norwegian parliament? The choice to award the IPCC and Al Gore suddenly makes a lot more sense.

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Finding the Neutral Arbiter

Sunday, October 14th, 2007

Discussing how to solve conflict people generally tend to search for a “third party” that can approach the issue causing the conflict from without, an external “power” that does not have anything to do with the involved parties. The logic is essentially correct if the aim is to minimize corruption. In a dispute between A and B, anyone working directly or indirectly for B cannot be a neutral arbiter. And the same goes for anyone with ties to A. Only someone who doesn’t personally, directly or indirectly, have a relation to A or B, and who doesn’t personally gain from the outcome of or a solution to the conflict, can be trusted to settle the dispute.

The logic is equally applicable when there is a conflict between a person and an organization, as is the case when a person is involved in a contractual conflict with for instance the government. Only someone, a person or institution, without ties to the person or the government can be trusted to provide a solution that is truly neutral, a solution that thus doesn’t give one of the parties benefits at the cost of the other. This makes true justice a difficult task in most state societies, since government not only upholds a monopoly of the use of force – but also claims the monopoly of setting rules for justice as well as defining what is justice in government courts.

This problem has been well-known to theorists and politicians alike for centuries, which is why we expect to find some sort of safeguard in most political and state systems. For instance, the United States government has the monopoly to settle disputes in the court system – but the courts are a power in the government that is essentially “separate” from other powers (the executive and legislative). Of course, such a system cannot truly provide neutral arbitration, especially not when government is one of the parties in the conflict, but most people tend to agree it is “close enough.”

This “close enough,” which is often falsely described as a guarantee, is sometimes taken as an argument for the state. In essence, it is not so much an argument for the state but against the market’s possibility of supplying such goods and services. This is a false argument, even if we accept the assumption that the “close enough” solution to the arbitration problem is, as advertised, a guarantee.

The reason it is false is that it is based on system thinking. The market, it is claimed, cannot supply neutral arbitration simply because there are interests in the market that have interests in the conflict and how it is settled. The fallacy, of course, is to see the market as a system. Were it a system, then it would certainly have interests in the conflict, the parties, as well as the solution to the conflict.

On the other hand, were the conflict really a problem in the market, accepting for a moment the assumption that the market is a system, then there is no reason to assume the market cannot internally find a solution to the problem. After all, the reasoning is based on the assumption that both parties are “parts” of the market and that the market, therefore, is not neutral to the case. If this were true, then the market should be able to settle any dispute between two of “its” actors. An “internally” settled dispute must be better than any dispute involving external parties, especially when the case is that both parties in the conflict are parts of the same “system.”

Not many would agree that this is a real response to the critique, however, even though it does essentially follow the line of thinking of most – if not all – of the criticism of market arbitration.

A couple of truths following this statement of market as a system and arbitration should be noted. If accepted, a solution is not very difficult to imagine. Actually, an “internal” solution is likely to occur and the problem would, in most cases, simply vanish. If rejected, we must also reject the notion of the market as a system. The only reason an “internal” solution, as mentioned above, can be rejected in the case when it is obvious that the parties in conflict are “parts” of the market is to state the parties are not parts of the same system. Thus: they are not actors in the market or the market is not a system.

A premise for the problem discussed is usually that the parties involved in conflict of some kind are actors in the marketplace. After all, if the argument is used as an argument against anarchism (which is, by definition, the alternative to the state) the parties cannot be anything but actors in the market. Hence, the market cannot be “a system.”

This conclusion does however not prove that the alternative to state arbitration must have an interest in one of the parties or one of the possible outcomes of the conflict. It proves only that the market is not a system, and thus that the parties in the conflict are actors that are acting in the market but not as parts of a market system. The parties are thus not parts of a homogeneous whole and must therefore be essentially independent.

There is nothing in this statement saying another actor in the market cannot also be independent of other actors, and there is also nothing saying a third party – an actor in the marketplace – cannot be equally independent with respect to both parties in the conflict. Such a party, even though it is an actor in the market, perhaps even the same niche market as the parties in the conflict, must theoretically be able to take a position between the conflicting parties and arbitrate!

Yes, there might be problems with such a third party’s independence, but such problems do not arise because there is no one in the market that can be independent of both parties – they arise because it is difficult, perhaps very costly, to find someone who is truly independent (or: equally dependent) of both parties. Nevertheless, this rules out the criticism that “the market” cannot supply arbitration in conflicts “in the market” without necessarily being unfair and unjust. “It” certainly can supply such services, the argument against this is invalid.

Looking back at the alternative, that the State – an actor that no doubt has interest in the outcome of conflicts (even if “only” to enforce its own laws) – has a monopoly of arbitration between parties in conflict, it should be obvious which alternative is superior. The state system offers the monopoly product arbitration and can only supply “close” to just solutions to conflicts. The market can supply such services that are essentially, if not fully, neutral enjoying the fruits of competition in supplying the best services for arbitration.

The latter may be costly, but the cost should be nothing compared to the coercive system of a state monopoly. The problem of arbitration in effect boils down to whether one believes products, in this case justice, are best supplied by a monopoly or by a market with multiple actors supplying a variety of products.

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Power and the Death of Man

Sunday, October 7th, 2007

When writing this it is exactly one year since the murder of the outspoken Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya. It is also the 55th birthday of the Russian former KGB agent and current dictator-calling-himself-president Vladimir Putin. The events seem to be the perfect set of contradictions, not in any sense supplying grounds for a Hegelian synthesis.

Rather, we get the feeling that evil has not only prevailed, it has essentially won. At least in Russia. Putin seems, judging from western reporting, to have had something to do with the murder of Politkovskaya. At least, he had a lot to gain from her death. She was essentially what made the Russian army’s slaughter of innocent people in Chechnya look like a slaughter rather than, as Putin would have preferred, a heroic and patriotic yet merciless hunt for the people posing a “threat” to the unity of Great Russia.

Whereas the Russian “campaign” in Chechnya was done openly and therefore was condemned in global news media, the slaughter is but one example of many. It is one clearly recognizable symptom of a disease having haunted humankind for millennia: the mercilessness of power, and the death and suffering it inevitably leads to.

Another such example has been going on for years now, but it is obviously not as easy to recognize. As a matter of fact, many of the people condemning the slaughter in Chechnya are whole-heartedly supporting the same kind of slaughter in another country. The difference? Rhetoric.

The Russian slaughter in Chechnya was clearly a matter of David being attacked by the horrible Russian Goliath. David wanted his freedom, and for this reason he was slaughtered. “Goliath has no right,” we heard in the media.

People tend to identify with the less powerful in a fight, and this is exactly what happened in the Russia vs. Chechnya case. If there is no reason to directly identify with either of the parties – and for the western public this was the case in this conflict – people support the one they “feel sorry for.” Goliath has no right if people feel sorry for David.

An example of the opposite is the ongoing American war on Iraq. Literally thousands of innocent people have been slaughtered in the now occupied territory, by both state mercenaries and private Blackwater USA “law enforcement,” but this slaughter is justified by so-called libertarians in Europe and so-called conservatives in America. The United States’ occupation of Iraq, after the dethroning of Saddam Hussein, is a clear case of Goliath assaulting David. But in this case the people slaughtered are “not like us” whereas the guy in the White House looks kind of like “us.”

Both cases, even though they are approached and assessed in completely different ways, are symptoms of the same thing. Especially in taking the violations of domestic rights in the United States as an effect of the ongoing occupation, it is obvious that these are symptoms of power and the struggle for more power.

“Freedom” is in these cases only a word used for propaganda purposes (and it obviously works), but has nothing to do with what is really going on. If freedom is really the driving force behind the American occupation of Iraq (NB, the occupation) it doesn’t make sense to kill innocent civilians. It also doesn’t make sense to use the occupation as an argument to increase the state’s ongoing confiscation of people’s private properties in the United States and further restricting American citizens’ “constitutionally guaranteed” rights.

One has to be ignorant of reality to believe freedom has anything to do with it, unless we are talking of the freedom of the ruler to use his (or her) powers. One also has to be ignorant of how the people of power has acted throughout history – always at the cost, often the death of the people, only for the aim to increase and consolidate power.

Randolph Bourne wrote in an essay by the turn of the 19th century that “war is the health of the state.” That is certainly the case, and it has been proved frequently throughout the 20th century and it seems to continue in the 21st. The reason war is the health of the state can easily be shown using the Hegelian triad thesis, antithesis, and synthesis.

The triad suggests conflict between two contradictory theses can be solved through reconciling their common truths in a new proposition. War and the State obviously seem to be contradictions through war generally being waged by one state on another. War, it thus seems, means, apart from the destruction, that one of the states in a conflict will be defeated and thus it should be in the interest of states to not engage in war unless victory is guaranteed (which, of course, never is the case). And people generally turn to the state in order to avoid war – the state offers protection and defense against foreign aggressors.

Trying to find a synthesis between the State and war we quickly find that the difference between the two is but an illusion. There seems to be an overlap in their definitions; the State being a system of aggression with a monopoly of violence, and war being the use (by states) of such aggression directed at foreign peoples and states.

When investigated in detail we realize war is the essence of the State. Or, if you like, the State is the essence of war. Both are means for power and both rely solely on physical and psychological violence as well as the use of aggression, force, and merciless killings to achieve certain aims:

The purpose of the State is to secure power through a war on the people. The purpose of war is to defeat a people in order to establish a [new] State.

Trying to find the synthesis, in this case, removes the “veil of ignorance” under which we have been hiding, and allows us to see what is the true nature and purpose of the State. And what is the true nature and purpose of war. The two are inseparable and the same; they are two sides of a coin – two names for the same thing. They differ only in how the enemy is defined, a definition itself necessarily based on state-enforced artificial “nationalities,” and in their temporal stretch. The State is a never ending war on the domestic population; war is a temporary aggression on a foreign people.

In the light of this “Bournian” truth, the differences vanish between the Russian attack on Chechnya, as well as the murder of Politkovskaya, and the American war on, and occupation of Iraq. They are essentially the same, they share both motive, means, and aim. The difference is but the name of the murderer-in-charge and how well he (or she) manages public opinion through propaganda.

What we are seeing is truly a David vs. Goliath, but we fail to realize who is who. And we fail to see that the Davids are dying by the thousands. If we recognize this fact we might be able to do something about it. And then the illusion is no more.

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