A Functioning Patchwork

Spandrell consistently posts some of the most thought provoking content on the internet.  In his most recent post he ties together early soviet communism, modern day cultural Marxism, and the important concept of loyalty tests.  Is rule by a priestly bureaucracy really the best we can do?  In bureaucratic rule, loyalty becomes so important the vows of celibacy are necessary to prove loyalty.  The problem with priestly bureaucracies is that they lose the incentive to innovate, or even have any respect for objective truth.  To understand how a society based upon testimonial truth might be constructed it may be helpful to analyze one small example.

The lobster industry of Maine has been practicing sustainable fishing for years.  The industry has managed to increase the number of lobsters caught to record levels.  This did not happen because of laissez faire capitalism, nor by bureaucratic communism.  The secret to the lobster industry’s success is rule of law—in this case a system of regulations.  Lobsterman must wait years to get a license.  There are no open borders at the entrance of the lobster industry.  Female lobsters with eggs must be marked and returned to the ocean.  Lobsters under or over a certain size must also be returned unharmed.

The laws regarding lobster fishinghave prevented a tragedy of the commons in which each fisherman seeks to maximize his own profit by catching all that he can.  The result of a complete absence of cooperation among lobsterman would be a collapse of the industry due to over-fishing.  Another factor, which probably helps the industry to succeed, is that the lobstermen are all New Englanders.  They follow the rules, and they will snitch on cheaters.  They are a tough bunch and they have their own culture.

The lobster industry should be an example to so called conservatives that a well regulated marketplace does not need to be a totalitarian nightmare.  Each member of the patchwork is a profit seeking entity.  Lobstermen have been developing better traps, more fuel-efficient boats, and methods of harvesting further from shore.  Greed actually is good.  The industry serves as an example to liberals that government ownership of an industry is far from ideal.  The keys to the success of a patchwork are a healthy incentive structure for each patch, and a method of ensuring cooperation between the patches.  The profit motive provides the incentive, while cooperation is always the tricky part.

To govern a healthy society it helps to have:

Rule of law (accountability)

Racial and cultural cohesion

Restricted entry into the society, market, or county

Punishment or exile for those who imperil the commons

Freedom by itself does not produce a health society.  In fact that’s bass ackwards.  Liberty is the fruit of a high trust society under accountable rule of law.

Equality does not happen just because people scream and protest.  Social mobility increases, and class differences decrease when excessive profit is slowly ground away by competition in a marketplace.

Our goal on the new right is to crush both liberalism and conservatism, as most people understand the concepts.