Gyroscopic Investing

Pointedstick wrote: I doubt it. Each would appeal in its own way. The libertarians would gasp in horror at the high taxes and onerous regulations in the liberal quadrant, but the liberals living there would love it. Meanwhile, they would not be able to even imagine why anyone would want to live in a place where just anybody could buy a gun, drive 90mph, build a house, burn trash, you name it. Those things have to be controlled! And both the libertarians and liberals would be horrified by the restrictions on marriage and sex that would be enacted in the conservative quadrant, as well as its large and highly organized military force.

Well, in my fantasy these are set up as separate countries.  Each would have its own government and need to support itself, and residents of one couldn't just switch on a whim -- they'd have to be accepted by the other quadrant before being allowed to change their mind about the quadrant they had initially selected.  Children born into a quadrant are a different story: they'd have to choose whether to stay or move once they reached a certain age of reason.

Probably the statist quadrant would become empty very quickly though. Nobody really wants to live under total government restriction. Except for maybe doodle! 

No, it would not become empty, because the statist gov't would have the borders guarded and deserters would be imprisoned or killed, like North Korea of Cuba.  You don't just "leave" a statist country. 

Anyway, I always thought this would make an interesting twist on the typical dystopian science fiction story. 

doodle wrote: Maybe your water company woukd jack up your rates because of their newly unencumbered monopoly position? How would your private community security stand up  to an onslaught of millions of prisoners being let out of the jails? If they are hungry and walk into a store and just start eating off the shelves, who is going to stop them? How are you going to raise the money to pay those companies to fix the roads....door to door donations? Who decides when and how to fix them? Which ones take priority?

Your questions have an implicit assumption behind them: that these bad things are only prevented today by government order and control.

Let me ask you a question: what would YOU do if you woke up and found there was no government?

Pointedstick wrote:

doodle wrote: Maybe your water company woukd jack up your rates because of their newly unencumbered monopoly position? How would your private community security stand up  to an onslaught of millions of prisoners being let out of the jails? If they are hungry and walk into a store and just start eating off the shelves, who is going to stop them? How are you going to raise the money to pay those companies to fix the roads....door to door donations? Who decides when and how to fix them? Which ones take priority?

Your questions have an implicit assumption behind them: that these bad things are only prevented today by government order and control.

Let me ask you a question: what would YOU do if you woke up and found there was no government?

Ive got to run, so quickly...probably nothing different except I would immeditely go out and get a gun since we would now be living in a world where right and wrong was determined by ones firepower. Ultimately, problems would arise as they always do in social settings, groups would convene to solve those problems and enforce decisions and government would exist again.

Governments or decision making bodies are a natural part of group living. They go together like flowers and bees. Governments wouldnt exist without society and society couldnt function without decision making entitites. Look at the hippie communes that formed in the sixties. Eventually they all realized that anarchy wasnt working and they established a ruling structure to deal with common problems and disputes. I dont know why that is so hard to accept? Cant you just focus on making gov more responsive and accountable instead of trying to abolish it? This Libertarian pipe dream is at odds with reality. You might as well wake up every morning and shake your fist at the heavens cursing the oppresive force of gravity. Either that, orvremove yourself from society and move to Alaska. Im sure no one would bother you up there.

You could fashion a life like this guy (who is really amazing by the way) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Proenneke

rocketdog wrote: My bet would be that within a few generations the Libertarians will have significantly outperformed the rest and then have to face the problem of what to do with all the immigrants from the other quadrants who want to seek political asylum.

Who came for political asylum, but once settled in start talking about "back in {wherever I came from} we used to have..." and start trying to make their new home just like the one they left.

AgAuMoney wrote:

rocketdog wrote: My bet would be that within a few generations the Libertarians will have significantly outperformed the rest and then have to face the problem of what to do with all the immigrants from the other quadrants who want to seek political asylum.

Who came for political asylum, but once settled in start talking about "back in {wherever I came from} we used to have..." and start trying to make their new home just like the one they left.

Yes, but they wouldn't be allowed to because the constitution of each quadrant cannot be changed.  In all likelihood political refugees would need to sign a declaration that they will live according to the constitution of their new quadrant, and any attempt to do otherwise will be considered an act of treason. 

If they reminisce about how good they had certain things in their old quadrant, it would be obvious that they had perjured themselves when signing their declaration and they would therefore be subject to deportation back to their "good old quadrant". 

Remember, it's my fantasy so I make the rules. 

rocketdog wrote:

AgAuMoney wrote:

rocketdog wrote: My bet would be that within a few generations the Libertarians will have significantly outperformed the rest and then have to face the problem of what to do with all the immigrants from the other quadrants who want to seek political asylum.

Who came for political asylum, but once settled in start talking about "back in {wherever I came from} we used to have..." and start trying to make their new home just like the one they left.

Yes, but they wouldn't be allowed to because the constitution of each quadrant cannot be changed.  In all likelihood political refugees would need to sign a declaration that they will live according to the constitution of their new quadrant, and any attempt to do otherwise will be considered an act of treason. 

If they reminisce about how good they had certain things in their old quadrant, it would be obvious that they had perjured themselves when signing their declaration and they would therefore be subject to deportation back to their "good old quadrant". 

Remember, it's my fantasy so I make the rules. 

I can see a few major problem with that:

1) No constitution has ever been devised that the government and/or people did not figure out how to later change.

2) There is no way to objectively say what is and is not a violation of the constitution because constitutions are documents of written language, and language is always vague to at least a certain extent. Total precision is impossible.

3) If violating the constitution is act of treason, the aforementioned vagueness makes it easy for anyone to be charged with treason at the whim of the body or person charged with enforcing that portion of the law.

Pointedstick wrote:1) No constitution has ever been devised that the government and/or people did not figure out how to later change.

They aren't allowed to change it.  Anyone who proposes to do so clearly does not belong in that quadrant, and they will be relocated appropriately. 

2) There is no way to objectively say what is and is not a violation of the constitution because constitutions are documents of written language, and language is always vague to at least a certain extent. Total precision is impossible.

Attempting to change the constitution is the only violation I referred to.  And since constitutions are generally written by the people in order to impose restrictions on their government, only the government can violate the constitution. 

3) If violating the constitution is act of treason, the aforementioned vagueness makes it easy for anyone to be charged with treason at the whim of the body or person charged with enforcing that portion of the law.

Already addressed this point in my previous answers. 

Nobody can change the constitution even to correct errors? What if a provision is sloppily-written, or gains a nonsensical or even opposite effect due to cultural or technological change?

rocketdog wrote:

Pointedstick wrote:1) No constitution has ever been devised that the government and/or people did not figure out how to later change.

They aren't allowed to change it.  Anyone who proposes to do so clearly does not belong in that quadrant, and they will be relocated appropriately. 

2) There is no way to objectively say what is and is not a violation of the constitution because constitutions are documents of written language, and language is always vague to at least a certain extent. Total precision is impossible.

Attempting to change the constitution is the only violation I referred to.  And since constitutions are generally written by the people in order to impose restrictions on their government, only the government can violate the constitution. 

3) If violating the constitution is act of treason, the aforementioned vagueness makes it easy for anyone to be charged with treason at the whim of the body or person charged with enforcing that portion of the law.

Already addressed this point in my previous answers. 

What about simply interpretation of the constitution?  Like it or not, even something as universally accepted in the U.S. as "free speech" has boundaries.  I can't incite violence, yell fire in a crowded theater, threaten someone, or claim to be someone I'm not.

This whole "quadrant" idea is just another form of control... just sliced and diced a bit differently to give it the illusion of liberty and choice .  We have 200 experimental governments worldwide with a huge number of un-settled islands.  Nowhere does a "free society" exist (meaning that maybe Taleb's theory that it's more robust and less fragile than a government-based society is a myth).  And the ones closest to a "free society" are just war-torn wastelands.

I think what some here don't want to admit is that the experiment is maybe being tried as we speak, and just failing so miserably that we can't identify it as happening at all because the outcomes are so different than what the uber-libertarians have predicted.

So almost by logical certainty, a free society is not robust, as some, including Nassin Taleb (who I respect a lot) would claim (otherwise we'd see more of them... or any of them!), and therefore is probably some combination of not truly desired by all those who claim to desire it (populate the damned islands already, or at least move out of Manhattan!), or are just a very, very fragile power vacuum that just gets sucked up into whatever invading force eventually deems its resources attractive, and thereby both undesireable and not resulting in any of the freedom we'd hoped to obtain when it's all said and done.  Seems to me it's a very rich combination of both.

In the end, when you put a bunch of people on a rock together with natural laws and limited resources, there is no such thing as unfettered liberty... period.  I think I've come to terms with it... it's just a matter of what forms of control we'd like to accept, and maybe even use the beast of organized control in doses to give us enough certainty to launch ourselves into a level of freedom from natural laws we thought were unbreakable (the internet, satellites, flight, etc... all as a result of a robust, well protected economy).  So not only is a "free society" not going to happen, it truly seems fundamentally impossible.  I know I haven't read MG's books on this but I've seen this hand waving around the complications of an intertwined society a hundred times... usually it just works once you sell the roads to rich investors, charities start to take care of the sick and elderly, and everyone hires a private police force) and I don't think anything I'm going to read will change this fundamental rule.  I'd love some kind of teaser as to how trillions of dollars of land and real resources should be split up before I dedicate myself to hours of reading.  Otherwise, it's just confiscation by another name, leaving those without it having to trade their labor for necessary resources, and liberty just a myth for the few who now control what they didn't really earn.