Exit

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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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Alexis Tsipras, charismatic leader of the leftist (and exit-friendly) SYRIZA coalition in Greece.

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.

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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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Secession lagniappe

Reid Wilson passes on a map of the U.S. that could have been, by Andrew Shears:

USNeverWasBig

Mixed results in the Jefferson State referenda this week:

California voters in two northern rural counties split the difference Tuesday on 51st state ballot measures aimed at carving out a new state called Jefferson.

Measure A lost by 41 to 59 percent in Del Norte County, while Tehama County voters approved Measure A by 56 to 44 percent, according to figures from the county clerks.

… In Del Norte County, a union-backed group called Keep It California waged a battle against the measure, arguing that it would further impoverish the county by removing state funding for services like schools. The school board had also opposed the proposal.

Supposedly the AFL-CIO and SEIU-backed opposition spent more than 40k opposing the measure. More county boards are taking it up next week, so stay tuned. Mark Baird fires back at local officials regarding the unsuccessful Del Norte county vote:

We are not finished by a long shot. It took Maine three tries to break away from Massachusetts. The apathy from the Massachusetts legislature toward a distant corner of the state is a reflection of what is going on here.

Liars, lie. It is what they do. It is in David Finnigan’s nature to be a liar. He has violated county administrative procedures by denying the other Supervisors the opportunity to speak and to vote. He has denied the public their First Amendment rights in a public meeting. He has lied to his constituents regarding attempts to widen the highway, when he is a member of the group which wants to keep a dangerous road. Martha McClure is cut from the same cloth.

Isn’t Hendricks the guy responsible for the alleged missing funds from the waste management district?

He’s quoted in this Washington Times report too.

Here’s Keli’i Akina’s piece on why the Obama administration’s proposal for what amounts to tribal recognition for Native Hawaiians is unconstitutional and doesn’t address the aspirations of independence advocates.

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