Dear Friends,
It seems to me, just as a still can’t be operated from within, a government needs an outside observer to keep it from blowing up. This is the problem we have with government… we expect the still to run itself. Then we go blind from drinking heads, and the thing blows itself up. Blinded, we stand there agog wondering how that could possibly have happened. The metaphor runs deeper than just a distillery building pressure. It refers to what a still does. A still refines. In the case of government the incentive structure refines the elite. Each incentive on its own does little to move the needle, but after going through dozens of plates of refinement, government produces an elite that is pure pride, arrogance, and presumption. Government mixes heads with hearts and tails.
Inside the still it’s impossible to observe the still. There is an idea in logic. It’s called Tarski’s undefinability theorem. Truth can’t be found within. It must be deduced from an outside perspective. Thus a government, like a still or ontology, must have an outside observer. The still doesn’t know when it’s producing all methanol, just as the ontology inside physics doesn’t know it’s producing unfalsifiable tripe or brilliance. Government is the same. It thinks it’s measuring valid metrics and changing accordingly, but the metrics it chooses are biased, as are the measurements themselves. This is often because a universal measurement inside a system can’t exist. One has to be imposed from the outside. Like a moonshiner discerning heads from hearts, it can’t be done from the inside.
A distillery takes a polluted mash and uses heat to distill spirits from it. The lighter spirits evaporate first and the heavier ones last. That’s essentially how a still works. In a reflux plate column still each plate only refines a little bit, but after several plates the product gets ever more refined until it’s pure. The analogy to government is that each incentive is like a plate. It only filters a little bit. Like self-selection for elites. Those who self-select to lead have certain qualities. This amounts to a plate in the reflux process of government. After filtering through several rounds or plates of purification, elites emerge who have the same qualities. The process ensures it. If no one is outside the system to control the reflux process, heads get mixed into the hearts and people go blind (bad outcomes occur).
A still left to run itself will eventually explode. It needs the hand of a moonshiner balancing the outflow to the pressure. In a still the fire could go out saving the apparatus, but in government the fire is ever present, and grows as government grows. The demand for government is proportional to the size of government’s ability to provide. Rent-seeking, welfare, and NGO charities provide the heat. So such a system left to run out of control must rupture once pressure exceeds the vessel’s capacity. We see this played out in history over and over. Governments, societies, and civilizations rise, mature, then die. Often some external exigency is blamed. This is explained by Tainter’s The Collapse of Complex Societies. But jarring an over pressured still isn’t a prime cause.
I suspect the answer is an outside observer. The people are too busy and easily distracted to be that outside observer. One vote in millions isn’t a strong voice. A Numa or fourth branch of government would be. It would have to be utterly separate from government with no swinging door, and would separate the heads from hearts and tails. A Numa would keep the pressure of corruption to a minimum. Moreover a Numa might be able to remove a few of the plates that produce such a refined product. An elite that are uniform in thought, conviction, and plan. The system of a Numa should be mechanical so it can’t be gamed. Moreover, its power should be as distributed within it as possible. Installing an operator to ensure government functions properly will be difficult… but worth the effort.
Sincerely,
John Pepin
