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Notes -
This ultimately seems like a generalized argument against centralized authority, however.
There's a version I can conceive of with enough competition between various entities that it is less likely that a person gets frozen out of everything at once due to violating the policy of one of them. And likewise the competition prevents any one company from engaging in full monopoly pricing to suck all the consumer surplus out of the system.
What would you say the optimal balance looks like, and is that sustainable as an equilibrium? Or barring that, what metrics would you examine to determine where the balance lies, and why are those metrics important?
I ask because it can be a bit hard to measure "individual sovereignty" on a scale or "convenience" as an objective phenomenon. How much 'inconvenience' should we accept to avoid giving away too much autonomy?
Core capabilities are decentralized and privately owned, preferably by many people as opposed to few. Economic transactions via crypto for instance, private ownership of weapons, private ownership of land, private ownership of websites and communications.
Metrics - self-employed as % of the population, wealth equality, number of people arrested for social media posts per year, size of government as % of GDP
I want a more strictly defined role for the state and large companies. Police should be focused on real crimes as opposed to speech, the organs of government should be less ideological. Of course government is innately political but you should not be able to get ahead of the queue in the NHS because you're pro-Palestinian. The US Air Force should not have a written desire to reduce the percentage of white male pilots to X%, even if they say 'oh this is still totally meritocratic and just an aspiration' as a disclaimer at the bottom of the page. Institutions and companies should be purely focused on their formal goals, not social engineering. If people think 'oh this cause is worthy' they should donate their own money, not company funds. Spending other people's money on other people is the worst kind of spending, it should be minimized where possible.
Governments should accept limitations in their powers, not grasping at extraordinary interpretations of the constitution or law to retroactively justify doing things they have no head of power for (this happens all the time in Australia).
In some areas I want stronger government powers, to speed through industrial projects to completion, produce housing and crack down on crime. But I want them wielded by people with a different understanding of what their role is and what they're aiming for.
Clearly this is a difficult equilibrium to maintain. Governments and big corporations all want more power and control, that's a natural desire. Ideologues want more power so they can achieve their goals. The population at large has a tendency to be distracted by prosperity or the media.
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