We hear these words today: tipping point. We hear a similar phrase: inflection point. These are two names for the same process.
There are two versions of this process. One points to a lift-off. The other points to a crash.
The lift-off version relies on the image of the exponential curve. At some point, it shoots upward. That is a tipping point. I find the most compelling one these days is this Ray Kurzweil’s discussion of Moore’s law and the law of accelerating returns.
[amazon asin=1629144894&template=*lrc ad (left)]The crash version relies on the image of two trend lines crossing. One or both of these must end. An example: the unfunded liabilities of the U.S. government (rising fast) and the expected revenues of the U.S. government (not rising fast). This outlook is best expressed by Stein’s law: “When something cannot go on, it has a tendency to stop.” That is a tipping point, in the way that a train wreck is a tipping point.
I think both trends are in operation today. One has to do with compound economic growth. In the long run, it prevails. The other has to do with the expansion of the state. It has to do with the short run. The model is the train wreck.
THE GODS OF THE COPYBOOK HEADINGS
My favorite poem is Kipling’s The Gods of the Copybook Headings. It is about the permanent war between permanent truth — original sin and scarcity — and the latest fad, which he called the gods of the market place. He meant[amazon asin=B00KN0K6EM&template=*lrc ad (right)] the market place of public opinion.
AS I PASS through my incarnations in every age and race,I make my proper prostrations to the Gods of the Market Place.Peering through reverent fingers I watch them flourish and fall,And the Gods of the Copybook Headings, I notice, outlast them all.We were living in trees when they met us. They showed us each in turnThat Water would certainly wet us, as Fire would certainly burn:But we found them lacking in Uplift, Vision and Breadth of Mind,So we left them to teach the Gorillas while we followed the March of Mankind.
We moved as the Spirit listed. They never altered their pace,Being neither cloud nor wind-borne like the Gods of the Market Place,But they always caught up with our progress, and presently word would comeThat a tribe had been wiped off its icefield, or the lights had gone out in Rome.
[amazon asin=162914603X&template=*lrc ad (left)]You get the idea. This is the idea: there are no free lunches.
With the Hopes that our World is built on they were utterly out of touch,They denied that the Moon was Stilton; they denied she was even Dutch;They denied that Wishes were Horses; they denied that a Pig had Wings;So we worshipped the Gods of the Market Who promised these beautiful things.
Then comes the stanza that applies to today’s little lesson.
When the Cambrian measures were forming, They promised perpetual peace.They swore, if we gave them our weapons, that the wars of the tribes would cease.But when we disarmed They sold us and delivered us bound to our foe,And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: “Stick to the Devil you know.”
Stick to the devil you know. Then work steadily to replace the gods of the market place — public opinion — with the gods of the copybook headings.[amazon asin=B00E257UFM&template=*lrc ad (right)]
THE DEVILS WE KNOW
There are two ideological outlooks today that officially hold to this. In politics, conservatism. In economics, rational expectations. The rat-ex people are not laissez-faire: “Leave us alone.” They are realists: “Leave it alone.” Don’t mess with the system’s laws. The market will respond. Stop futzing with it. But economists just cannot quit recommending reforms. The rat-ex movement is doomed. Economists are tinkerers. So are political reformers. So are power-seekers.
So are we all.
[amazon asin=B007KTEBO0&template=*lrc ad (left)]No one is a zero-change conservative. The old rule of conservatism is this: “If it is not necessary to change, it is necessary not to change.” But this admits the possibility that it is sometimes necessary to change.
Problem: you can’t change just one thing.
My advice: change things marginally. Change them steadily. Marginal changes add up. They are cumulative. If they are positive, they produce enormous benefits over time. The slow rate of American economic growth, 1800 to today, with only 16 years of reversal (1930-46), has created a world that would have been inconceivable in 1800. The world has imitated Great Britain and the United States. The world is incomparably rich, and it is getting richer.
I am no fan of revolution. I understand Engels’ point: nothing is more centralizing than a revolution.[amazon asin=1416547487&template=*lrc ad (right)]
But the anti-authoritarians demand that the political state be abolished at one stroke, even before the social conditions that gave birth to it have been destroyed. They demand that the first act of the social revolution shall be the abolition of authority. Have these gentlemen ever seen a revolution? A revolution is certainly the most authoritarian thing there is; it is the act whereby one part of the population imposes its will upon the other part by means of rifles, bayonets and cannon — authoritarian means, if such there be at all; and if the victorious party does not want to have fought in vain, it must maintain this rule by means of the terror which its arms inspire in the reactionists. Would the Paris Commune have lasted a single day if it had not made use of this authority of the armed people against the bourgeois? Should we not, on the contrary, reproach it for not having used it freely enough?Therefore, either one of two things: either the anti-authoritarians don’t know what they’re talking about, in which case they are creating nothing [amazon asin=1594037256&template=*lrc ad (left)]but confusion; or they do know, and in that case they are betraying the movement of the proletariat. In either case they serve the reaction.
You want bumper sticker slogans? I’ve got them. “Reform, not revolution.” “De-fund, don’t capture.” “Withdraw Washington’s legitimacy.”
Decentralization favors marginal changes. Decentralization favors competition. Decentralization undermines revolution. We are in the midst of a worldwide process of decentralization. It has to do with technology. It has to do with networks of communications. It has to do with an aspect of Moore’s law: the steady reduction in the cost of information.
This is why we are not headed for a revolution. We are headed toward secession.
The heart of this decentralized, unorganized secession movement is this: the withdrawal of political legitimacy, voter by voter.
