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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?
You thinking it’s not just a transaction makes it easier, not harder, for the state to take your stuff when the time comes, right as you’d stare at the process in disbelief, denial, hoping for the better and taking seriously the state’s shallow excuses for doing so. I’ve seen this happen many times. Sentimental feelings towards a country prevent people from cutting their losses early on.
What I have to offer are the yearly taxes and the ongoing benefits of my participation in the economy, the value a country receives out of my residence in it extends far in the future.
Also most of the "stuff" we’re talking about consists of control over businesses and processes, that wouldn’t fare well after being seized.
What if the ongoing benefits of of your participation in the economy, are less than the perceived costs? You say "value a country receives out of my residence in it extends far in the future" but how can that be if you leave? Why shouldn't the state take your stuff and kick you to the curb should the perceive it to be in their interests to do so? That is what you would do were you in the state's position, is it not?
No, I don’t generally violate the NAP even if it’s profitable for me to do so — I am a principled man and I value these principles.
First, it’s simply not the case, in a viscerally evident way — the state makes money on taxes and also my participation in the economy of a country means that something in it is getting done well — this is how I get my capital in the first place.
Second, I think you haven’t really understood my perspective of seeing this as fundamentally a business relationship. Suppose you are subscribed to Netflix. You pay them 10$ per month, and in return you can watch movies there. If Netflix feels they are providing you this service at a loss, they can raise the prices (let’s call them “taxes”). Then you are free to either accept these prices or to switch to a different provider.
Similarly if a state feels they spend more value on me than it gets back, well they can raise taxes and then I can decide whether or not to relocate my enterprise after that.
Ideally this all leads to a mutually beneficial arrangement where I provide value to the state, and the state provides value to me; indeed the state can provide valuable services — protection, arbitrage, infrastructure, and so on — I am not opposed to paying for them. It is only fair.
The difference is of course that the state, unlike Netflix, can use force to compel me to accept a deal that I wouldn’t have accepted on my own free will. Some things, like liberal institutions, make it harder, so I support them; some things, like proliferation of nationalism, make it easier, so I oppose them.
First, can you prove it? Many people believe themselves to be indispensable, few are.
Second, I think I might understand better than you do. Having actually spent some time as a mercenary I am well aware of the implications and downsides of that perspective/lifestyle. Lets be blunt, the NAP is a dodge. No one outside yourself is obligated to honor your principles, least of all the people paying you.
Like I said, viewing everything as a business transaction is a double edged sword.
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"Loyalty to nation" doesn't mean "loyalty to the current government". And nation isn't the only loyalty there, and it becomes harder for the government to take your stuff if it interferes with loyalty to someone else and that loyalty is recognized.
I don't even know how you'd compute "most" when comparing financial and non-financial stuff. How would you compare, for instance, teaching CRT in schools to taking $X in taxes, and how would you compare either one to taking $Y in taxes, but using the money for things most people object to?
Well imagine if someone paid you one billion dollars, on a condition that your children have to listen to let’s say a course of ten 1-hour CRT lectures in school. Would you agree to it?
If yes, then there is in fact a value of $X that compares to teaching CRT in schools, and it is somewhere between zero and one billion.
It may be hard to estimate precisely, so in real life you should just go with what your intuition tells you is a better option.
I could give approximate answers like you suggest, but these answers would have large error bars on them, and because diminishing marginal utility applies differently to money and to non-monetary costs, it wouldn't be possible to add up the monetary values anyway, making them useless for comparison.
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