Exit

Exit / No Exit

Shot:

Chaser:

The wind blew out from Bergen from the dawning to the day,
There was a wreck of trees and fall of towers a score of miles away,
And drifted like a livid leaf I go before its tide,
Spewed out of house and stable, beggared of flag and bride.
The heavens are bowed about my head, shouting like seraph wars,
With rains that might put out the sun and clean the sky of stars,
Rains like the fall of ruined seas from secret worlds above,
The roaring of the rains of God none but the lonely love.
Feast in my hall, O foemen, and eat and drink and drain,
You never loved the sun in heaven as I have loved the rain.

-GK Chesterton, The Last Hero

This is a developing discussion, of which I feel a great need to take part. As a reactionary-without-portfolio I often find myself in between differing extremes in Outer Right opinion. On the one hand, the concept of Exit is sometimes considered to be “post libertarian” ephemera, which is just a byword for “crypto libertarian” or “insufficiently reactionary”. This is a way of saying it is an idea that does not belong to our Thede or Folk or Religion; foreign and verboten. In this case, we have more of “being in the service of the ideas of foreigners.” Given the recent history of information warfare (Alex Jones’ Infowars site specializes in creating poisonous rumors to insinuate their worldview into the common consciousness) it is not an unwise criticism.

On the other hand, we have among actual Libertarians such an extreme position on Exit as to view it a good over all other goods (see Slate Star Codex’s archipelago.) That logic may lead to a perverse place: A world of quasi-sovereigns that cannot prevent people from leaving their own borders, but where no one can exit the greater entity. This issue is typical of monomania – without another balancing principle, trying to maximize the desired thing often results in negating it. Take for instance the current movement for sexual liberation: in order for some to maximize their own sexual liberation they must by definition restrict the liberation of others (in this case, women->men.) It is the strange idea of ‘guaranteeing’ exit that creates the distortion; this is like if Gideons put bibles everywhere thinking they could guarantee each person access to Jesus Christ. Even if this were true, this access might be to their condemnation, not to their salvation. Imagine a man who has just murdered someone going into a hotel and finding the bible, then reading Revelation. Maximizing one good at the expense of others decreases overall goodness.

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Secession lagniappe

The Hawaiian restoration movement tell the Obama administration to take its ethno-satrapy proposal and shove it has been one of the more inspiring things to watch in a while:

If the Department of Justice was unclear as to which constitutional power Congress exercised in 1898 when it purported to have annexed Hawaiian territory by joint resolution, it should still be unclear as to how Congress “has enacted more than 150 statutes that specifically recognize and implement this trust relationship with the Native Hawaiian community, including the Hawaiian Homes Commission Act, the Native Hawaiian Education Act, and the Native Hawaiian Health Care Act” stated in its press release.

It is clear that the Department of Justice had this information since 1988, but for obvious reasons did not cite that opinion in its joint report with the DOI that covered the portion on annexation (p. 26-30). To do so, would have completely undermined all the statutes the Congress has enacted for Hawai‘i, which would also include the lawful authority of the State of Hawai‘i government itself since it was created by an Act of Congress in 1959.

This was precisely the significance of the Office of Hawaiian Affairs CEO Dr. Kamana‘opono Crabbe’s questions to Secretary of State John Kerry. Without any evidence that the United States extinguished the Hawaiian Kingdom as an independent and sovereign State under international law, the Hawaiian Kingdom is presumed to still be in existence and therefore under an illegal and prolonged occupation.

The DOI is holding meetings starting Monday and running through August to solicit public feedback about initiating government-to-government relations with the OHA, which seeks what amounts to tribal recognition and ethnic spoils for its list of registered native Hawaiians (the sign above refers to their list). Crabbe bucked that plan with his letter to Secretary Kerry, and the cat’s out of the bag now. More here. Free Hawaii is sounding the alarm, telling people to protest the DOI, with some suggested slogans:

Kamaki Kanahele Is Not Our King
Robin Danner Does Not Speak For Us
SCHAA Shafts Hawaiian Homesteaders
Abercrombie Against Hawaiians
Hawaiians Say NO To Rule Changes
Go Home DOI
DOI Will leave Hawaiians High & Dry
Bye Bye DOI
No Aloha In OHA

It also appears that we may have found the economist laureate of the Hawaiian Kingdom, Dr. Umi Perkins, with a sort of aloha Georgism.

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Exits, left and right

In a previous post, exit and ideology, I argued that exit should be framed as a leftist value. My colleague, Ezra Jones, responded, pointing out my failure to define terms as well as attempting to counter my arguments. It is always interesting to read critiques of your work as readers often have a different impression than what one is trying to convey. Perhaps this is indicative of my writing ability more than anything else; however, I will attempt to clarify my meaning before responding to his objections.

I implicitly defined exit as a particular institutional arrangement of small separate communities with a low cost of exiting your community and entering a new one. This is a rather constrained definition, but the one Scott Alexander used in his essay which inspired mine.

I was admittedly sloppy in my use of left and liberalism. Part of the reason is an inability of mine to fully understand some distinctions. Another reason is my inability to articulate distinctions I have an intuitive understanding of. Here I will try to define the left through two aspects, change and progress. Change is the original defining feature of the left, coming from Paine’s arguments with Burke. Progress is more difficult, but I understand it as a general improving of the human condition.

Jones’ main charge is that exit, as I identify, is more interested in conservation than change. While a fair charge given what I wrote, I’m afraid I failed to fully communicate my vision. First, as a more technical point, exit itself is a radical concept given the current world order. Allowing peaceful secession, even if to preserve ethnic identity, is nearly unprecedented in history. This suggests a closer affinity to the left than Jones seems willing to admit.

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Exits, the left, and liberalism

Earlier this week, my colleague Mark Lutter attempted to make an impassioned case for the left to embrace the political practice of “exit,” while not making much of an effort to define it in a way that a leftist could make much sense of it.  I say this not because the practice itself is incomprehensible to the left, but because leftist ideas of mass “exit” are already in existence in so many places.  The Scottish National Party leans heavily to the left, as do the Bloc et Parti Québécois*.  The current efforts for Catalan independence are being spearheaded by a leftist party, the Republican Left of Catalonia, with backing from the pragmatic Convergence and Union. SYRIZA, the leftist coalition in Greece led by Alexis Tsipras (above), is pushing hard for a general election after success in European elections last month, so as to set up a possible exit from the European Union after being under severe austerity in recent years. The list goes on.

Of course, with the exception of SYRIZA (which we’ll get to in a moment), one could argue that most of these secessionist efforts are ethnically oriented, and perhaps not what is meant by “exit” in Lutter’s mind. So, let us look at the more basic terminology, the act of free dissociation. Lutter rightly points out that exit was previously associated with the classical left. The Paris Commune of 1871 could be framed as one of the better leftist representations of that from the time period: A dissociation from the nascent Third French Republic in order to protect the interests and livelihoods of the city’s workers from the political machinations of the majority-rural French population.

However, Lutter is not interested in the left of modern times, even though it still exists — albeit as a marginalized fringe group — in American politics.  Liberalism and progressivism, strains of political thought that are often haphazardly associated with the left, are Lutter’s true concern. Yet, both those philosophies are completely incompatible with the concept of “exit.” Why? The answer falls on the basis of what purpose “exit” serves. Lutter’s use of the term “survival” nails the principle: “Exit,” in his mind, serves as an act of self-preservation from change, or from the pressure to change. It serves as a means to survive upheaval of one’s way of life because of these changes.

The important thing to understand about liberal thinking, be it economic liberalism or social progressivism, is that its purpose is to instigate change itself, or at least embrace it. In the liberal’s mind, to allow any and all persons** to opt out of these changes defeats the purpose of making changes to begin with. Their primary act of self-preservation, and often their means of advancing change, is accommodation and compromise. In essence, “exit” by Lutter’s terms is a defense against liberalism, even if one were to create liberal communities as he and Scott Alexander suggested.

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How private cities can help the poor

A piece on private cities I wrote was published today in the Freeman. This sentence captures the idea, perhaps the most unappreciated idea in economics:

Proprietary communities offer a solution to a host of problems commonly assumed to justify government intervention. Private property internalizes externalities. Proprietary communities take advantage of that fact by creating private property over land spaces traditionally thought of as public domain. They work by creating a residual claimant in the provision of public goods. That is, proprietors keep as income the rents collected through leases after costs are deducted.

Here’s another important point:

An additional advantage of private cities is that they incentivize institutional change. Institutional change is rare because of the logic of collective action. While the gains outweigh the costs of protecting private property rights, the gains are dispersed and the costs are concentrated. Those benefiting from such change have an incentive to free-ride, letting others agitate for the change.

Poor countries are poor because their governments are predatory. Proprietary communities concentrate the benefits of economic liberalization, increasing the likelihood of success. Honduras is the closest to achieving private cities. About one year ago, they passed a law allowing for ZEDEs (zonas de empleado y desarollo economico). ZEDEs can opt out of Honduran civil and commercial law, bringing in a legal system of their choosing. In order to internalize the gains from such changes, some companies have expressed interest in creating private cities similar to the ones described in my essay.

Exit and ideology

Exit, the ability to leave, has been gaining traction as an institutional arrangement. If exit costs are sufficiently low, people can choose the ideal community for their preferences. Further, the low exit costs force competition between institutional regimes to satisfy client preferences.

Though best enunciated by a liberal economist, Albert Hirschman, exit has largely been associated with the right. In America, secession, the ultimate form of exit, has forever been tainted by racism due to our own War of Secession. However, exit was once a celebrated value of the left. The Guardian, hardly a bastion of conservatism, offered mild support for the south during the American Civil War:

The great stumbling-block issue for the Guardian and many other liberals was the right to self-determination. The paper believed that the south had the right to secede and to establish an independent state.

Of course, if exit is to be a primary political value, the right to exit must extend to all persons, something the south did not do. While intellectually exit has been associated with the right, politically some the distinction is less clear. American states decriminalizing marijuana and legalizing gay marriage in contravention of federal laws has been a milder form of exit, in pursuit of leftist values.

In a very interesting piece Scott Alexander tries to reclaim exit as a liberal (in the modern American sense) value. He envisions competing communities:

Usually the communities are based on a charter, which expresses some founding ideals and asks only the people who agree with those ideals to enter. The charter also specifies a system of government. It could be an absolute monarch, charged with enforcing those ideals upon a population too stupid to know what’s good for them. Or it could be a direct democracy of people who all agree on some basic principles but want to work out for themselves what direction the principles take them.

While he desires a world government to prevent war and ensure the protection of children, he acknowledges that his ideas are largely analogous to Nozick and Moldbug, the advocates of libertarian exit and conservative exit respectively.

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