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Notes -
Free market capitalism and identity
Today I spent some time reading about Georgia Meloni and watching some of her speeches, such as this one. She’s charismatic, but being a rootless global laissez-faire capitalist I am of course not thrilled; anyway, I’d like to offer my perspective on some of the issues raised in her speeches.
It is a natural state of affairs that the governments, by leveraging their capacity for violence, have an enormous power over their citizens and by extension on their businesses; all private organizations are by default subservient to the State.
"Everything in the State, nothing outside the State, nothing against the State" — Benito Mussolini
Diverting from such an arrangement is not trivial. Indeed, how do you stop the people who have, pretty much by definition, overwhelming firepower from using it to take your stuff? One way are the democratic institutions — things like the separation of powers, checks and balances, key positions being elected and therefore held at least somewhat accountable, and so on. All of that works to an extent, but these things are fragile and often not really sufficient.
The other pillar of limiting the power of the govts to control and loot private enterprise, is the competition between different countries. The states themselves can be seen as providers of a certain service — you pay the taxes, and in return get useful things like personal asset protection, arbitrage, infrastructure and so on. As such they are also subject to the market forces. If there are multiple independent offers, and you are free to choose any of them, then in fact you are likely to find a fair deal.
Therefore, in order for the free world to exist it must be possible to change your country at will. It’s easy to see that nationalism runs contrary to this goal. If you only ever can be accepted in one country, if you can only be permitted to run important businesses or organisations in the country of your birth; and doomed to be an irrelevant outsider in all others — well, then your government has you by the balls — you have no real negotiating position with the state.
This reasoning can be extrapolated to other kinds of identity Meloni mentions, to an extent, although of course the most important one of them by far is the national identity. But I disagree that the capitalist’s goal is to destroy identities. It is only necessary for them to be made interchangeable.
If anything capitalism served to amplify and increase the adoption of certain cultural elements, think the Italian cuisine or the Japanese animation. I know what you’re going to say — that it’s not real, it’s superficial, it’s commoditized and the real national identity is something else entirely. Well, it is. The real national idea, the one you’re left with when the music stops, is always to force you to surrender everything you have to the state and to go die in the trenches for no good reason, ostensibly as a sacrifice to your country. Perhaps it’s for the best if we abandon that.
First off, I suppose I should thank you for taking the mask off, if only for a moment.
But having said that the obvious counter argument is having admitted that you feel no particular sense of loyalty and are only shopping around for who ever will give you the best price, and will ditch them in a heartbeat should a better deal come along, why should anyone give you that deal? Having effectively announced your intention to defect in the any subsequent prisoners dilemma, why would you expect anyone to cooperate with you? It seems to me that your fall into the same trap that pretty much all utopians from a progressive background seem to fall into. An inability or unwillingness to consider the possibility of multiple agents.
I kind of touched on this in my reply to @sliders1234 below, but if an identity can be changed at will it ceases to be meaningful as an identity. If an if an identity can be changed at will, what obligation does anyone else have to honor it? The answer of course is "none", because an contract that can be broken on a whim without consequence is no contract, and that's what this is really about. The Free-rider problem. You want to enjoy the privileges of membership in a tribe or nation without having to bear the associated responsibilities.
Why, for the same reason people give me all other kinds of deals; doing that brings them value.
I mentioned that I see my relationship with a country as a business transaction — I pay the taxes and follow the regulations — and in return the state allows me to operate on the territory it controls and provides a range of useful services. As an honorable businessman, I uphold my part of such a deal.
It’s also not true that I’d ditch them in a heartbeat. First, there is value in a good long-term relationship, and second, moving assets and processes is not without cost.
Yes, I got that, and this is where the whole game with multiple agents thing comes in. The argument that it's all just a business transaction is a double edged sword. If all you have to offer is the value of your stuff why shouldn't a country just take your stuff?
Because if a country does that, people will predictably stop producing stuff for the country to take, and also will leave the country if they can.
Unless you mean "some of your stuff, but not enough that you're strongly incentivized to leave or stop producing stuff", in which case they're called "taxes".
But they aren't taking "people's" stuff, they are taking your stuff specifically. You the defector is getting your stuff taken, the cooperators keep their stuff.
How is the government in question distinguishing "cooperators" from "defectors" here, such that they are specifically taking the stuff of "defectors"?
If "defector" is a broad enough category, it might still be better to take only some of their stuff rather than all of it, even from the perspective of a government that only cares about obtaining resources for itself.
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First they came for the defectors? This is fine.
If your state ever gets to the point where people are so desperate to leave that the government starts going to extremes to discourage it, it's time to leave anyway, while the penalty is merely robbery, before the next "Antifaschistischer Schutzwall" goes up. "You're worthless and so I want to make it hard for you to leave me" is a self-contradictory claim. It's only a popular claim because the first part is a too-often-effective lie that abusive relationship partners use as a control tactic. But even when the best time to escape escalating abuse has already passed, the second-best time is "as soon as possible".
Better revisionof the article, before the COVID19 section got blanked.Edit: Don't know why that link didn't work, hopefully this one will.
Strangely, that links to something unrelated.
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Your link does not mention COVID.
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The point is not so about you defecting against the state, but rather about preventing the state from defecting against you.
"defecting" implies a relationship not in evidence. If you don't owe any loyalty to the state what makes you think the state should show any loyalty towards you?
The state never did. Arguably it can't by definition. Specific people may be inclined to have loyalty, but the pressures to get into power don't favor those people.
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