Disruption not Revolution

a little bit of what you fancy

Our lefty friends believe in the total transformation of society and the abolition of injustice with Revolution, Baby.

But there is another way to transform society: Disruption. Not total transformation but disruption of the current “Distributional Coalition.” Who or what is a Distributional Coalition? Jeffrey A. Tucker describes it thus.

These are deeply networked relationships between industry, government, lobbyists, friend networks, academia, and pockets of family wealth intent on building in protection for themselves at the expense of everyone else.

Now, Tucker goes on to describe how awful and malevolent this Deep State is. But I want to take a bigger view.

The whole point of human society is precisely to provide safety and security against sudden and catastrophic change. This could be drought. The Chinese have a foundation myth about ten suns hanging on a mulberry tree. And then Yi the Archer came along and shot down nine of the suns. So that took care of the drought problem.

Then there is flood. Then there are the Mongols enjoying the lamentation of our women. Then there are machine textile looms eliminating the livelihoods of hand-loom weavers. Then there is Literally Hitler. And don’t get me started on the buggy-whip makers.

So let us say that human society needs to balance the need for stability and security with the need to disrupt, from time to time, the Power Elite that has taken advantage of the human need for security and created a magnificent castle that dominates the land and exploits the humble peasants in the surrounding countryside.

It is possible that there will come a political and cultural arrangement that would balance the need for security with the need for social mobility, but that time is not yet.

Correction: I would say that we know how to do this: a market economy with free prices and almost no government-backed monopolies; a social welfare network of family, self-help and mutual-aid societies, backed up by billionaires fixing the really big social pot-holes; an absolute bare minimum of regulations; and a bare minimum of government programs. See my Four Laws.

And I dare say it wouldn’t hurt to abolish central banks and income taxes without which it is really hard to finance and fight a world war.

But the fact is that people that are already nicely situated in life are going to be against change, and people that feel disadvantaged are going to be in favor of change.

I also think there is a sexual dimension. I believe that women instinctively want and need their lives to be stable and predictable so they can bear and raise children without disruption. Men, I suggest, are either manning the battlements of the current system to stop the Mongols, or they are backing some kind of disruption: from unions forcing employers to cough up more in wages to start-up businessmen with a brilliant idea to Occupy Mars.

In other words, it’s complicated.

I think one important thing to understand is how little we know about how to balance change and stability.

Take Marxism. The whole idea was that it wouldn’t be hard to rebalance society and the economy to create equality. Marxism began with ruthless rulers ordering the peasants around and creating famine and poverty and ended up with mindless bureaucracy.

Take the welfare state. The whole idea was that with science and experts we could “plan” and manage a just and equal society. Not quite. The welfare state has ended up as a corrupt “distributional coalition” where the insiders florish and the outsiders become serfs and the overall society grinds to a halt.

In other words, a command economy doesn’t work and an expert economy doesn’t work. Human society is way more complicated than that.

And the interesting thing is that occasional economic disruption, from machine textiles to today’s internet, far from destroying the balance and security of society seems to reenergize society and spread the wealth.

But why? And how? The truth is that we don’t know.