There’s no AGM company, but thinking about it helps clarify some of the faults in the state system and raises the issue of possible problems in a system that allows companies like AGM to form. The AGM system has market-determined law and justice. Competition is insured by open entry into the market. If different groups of people have widely different ideas of the kinds of justice they want and are willing to put their wealth behind them, a variety of conflicts can arise. Ironing these out may result in competing companies that cooperate in some ways to achieve some standards to offer to their subscribers. This looks like a proto-government. The differences are that it’s still subject to the ideas of justice held by subscribers. Judicial ideas emanate ultimately from persons acting in a competitive market, not from a monopoly supplier.
If we examine the current U.S.-Syrian situation, we can see right away some faults in the state system. Let’s assume for the sake of illustration that a genocide is occurring within Syria. It’s the business of AGM to determine if this is the case, who is responsible, whether or not to intervene, and how to intervene. It has a strong incentive to get all of this right. It’s an organization designed for that purpose. The managers get paid to accomplish one anti-genocide aim. The U.S. government has no such design or purpose. If it is against genocide, it is tangential to other aims.
Notice that AGM has a continuity of mission. Contrast the U.S. It has no continuity of mission. A previous administration has supported the use of chemical weapons. Its own forces have weapons that use chemicals. In many cases, one cannot be sure what the U.S. is actually after when it deploys military force or makes threats.
The U.S. may or may not be against a particular genocide, not based on the costs of achieving a successful termination of it as in AGM’s case, but as influenced by a large range of political contingencies for a broad agenda. Politics do not enter AGM’s calculations as an inherent aspect of an agenda with competing programs. Everything the U.S. does in this situation is political.
AGM has one mission. The U.S. has many missions, often conflicting and changeable.
AGM would only draw a red line if it believed that such a threat was an effective means of preventing a genocide. It would have already had to build a reputation to make such a threat meaningful. Contrast Obama’s red line statements. He had made other statements that said he would only make war if Congress were consulted. It was not clear what action would actually be forthcoming from the government. AGM would not be making speeches about its commitment and possible loss of credibility.
AGM might face threats against its forces from states that didn’t want it to enter a region or stop a genocide, or it could face threats from a state whose borders it intended to cross. AGM would have to factor these in to its decision. Mistakes are costly. The costs fall directly on AGM. It might devise ways of canvassing its owners to see how strongly they felt, or maybe not. Maybe the owners feel comfortable with the management’s expertise. Managements that make costly errors will be sacked, or else the company will fail. In contrast, costs of errors made by the U.S. government’s managers do not fall on them to any great extent. They get re-elected or else they move into a corporate, consulting, lobbying, university or foundation job. They enter the speech circuit. Costs fall upon taxpayers. The system is largely unresponsive to their plight. This means that costly blunders like the Iraq War are paid for by taxpayers, and it means that such blunders need not be corrected or means found to reduce the occurrence of new future blunders.
The U.S. government has a management that changes haphazardly (due to voting), without being focused on a particular problem. That management is also divided between Congress and the Executive, and divided again within Congress and across various bureaucracies. This is not to say that AGM won’t have its management issues, because every company does have such problems. It’s to say that they are not as severe as the government’s and that a competitive market sifts out the companies that do not get a handle on managerial and organization problems.
It is highly likely that emotion will play a smaller role in AGM’s decisions than in those of the U.S. government. Notice that in Obama’s latest speech, there are quite a few emotional appeals being made. The 9/11 attack similarly was the occasion for a large influence of emotion. In the AGM case, moral judgments of its patrons are linked to pragmatic factors of cost and effectiveness. In the case of emotional political speeches that appeal to moral judgments, the cost factors are not raised. The result is usually crusades launched emotionally that cost more than what they are worth.
Many of the problems with the state in the anti-genocide case (and other matters) arise because it has a monopoly and that monopoly is financed by a captive public. Others arise because the government has a large menu of missions, and they conflict. Others arise because the system of “management” control is so poor. Yet others arise because the government has power, and interest groups want that power used to support their narrow aims.
1:43 pm on September 1, 2013
