Bitcoin and Governance
From wage-slave democracies to self-determinate monarchies.
ON GOVERNANCE
There is a lot of talk amongst bitcoin and freedom focused circles about the various potential long term viable, and sustainable, alternative governance solutions for humanity.
And we would be wise to note here at the outset that the pendulum of social governance likely swings back and forth from aristocracy to empire over thousands of years, although with such large time frames we haven’t a well documented and large enough sample size in our infancy of some 5,000 years to look back on to confirm this. At any rate, looking within the last few generations the pendulum appears to have reached its zenith in terms of empire, akin to the peak of the Roman Empire, and we may be heading back to something more aristocratic over the next thousand years.
With that in mind…
Broadly speaking, amongst us liberty maximalists, most everyone falls somewhere into either a pro-anarchy camp, of governance with rules but without rulers, or a pro-monarchy model, governance with rules decided by one ruler, and most everyone is generally against the two current primary clown show options out there today, that of democracy, governance by mob rule, or kleptocracy, governance with rules for thee but not for me.
Among those talking about this sort of stuff, The Bitcoin Podcast is no exception.
Recently on the episode Property Rights, Capitalism, Austrian Economics & The State, Dr. Saifedean Ammous sat down with The Bitcoin Podcasts host, Walker, and had an enlightened conversation on the differences that separate monarchy from democracy, namely the difference of incentive — driven, as you might guess, by time preference.
Saif explained it in this way; with one life long hereditary ruler, one whom wants to see his children’s children maintain a sustainable monarchy, to pass the proverbial torch on for many generations into the future, he needs to treat his citizenry well, almost as if they are his extended family. In this way the ruler may retain the goodwill of that extended family, such that those citizens’ children’s children will be willing to remain part of the monarchy’s hereditary jurisdiction. The monarch must offer his citizenry a good deal, allowing them to keep most, if not all of the fruits of their labor in exchange for, among other things, strong property rights.
Saif then contrasts that view, with his take on democracy. He explains that with democracies there is a much greater incentive for the politician to rob everything that can be taken from the citizenry, because the politician in power never knows if this election cycle might be his last time in a powerful position for the next four to eight years. Moreover, compared with the hereditary monarchy, there is a much lower probability of the elected officials children taking a similar position of power when the term has reached expiration. And these two pressure points incentivize the politician, no matter how well meaning he might be, to take as many fruits from the labor of the citizenry as possible, or at least certainly much more then when compared with the monarch.
Saifedean went on to elaborate that the proponents of democracy explain away this short coming, that the short term nature of modern democracy is a necessary evil, for in the alternative monarchical system, should an evil king ever take the throne of the monarchy, in that scenario, the citizenry would be subjugated to tyranny for the remainder of their lives, or worse, be forced to commit themselves to possible death in a bloody revolution in order to usurp the evil king.
The democrats argue that at least with a short term ruler, if a man elected is indeed an homicidal lunatic, it will only be a short lived evil with the ability to elect a new, and hopefully, more favorable person into power after the short four to eight years of terror.
Admittedly this logic is not entirely unfounded.
There have certainly been some terrible monarchs that did result in bloody revolution which took many more than four or even eight years to resolve.
That said though, there also have most definitely been some rather bloody democratic civil wars, in which case, the ability to vote did not help all that much. The American civil war comes to mind as a rather bloody example.
But what if there were a way to have the best of both worlds, without the downsides of either. How could we design a low time preference monarchy, but somehow keep the nuclear option to elect a new leader if needed?
Is such a thing even possible?
Well, as it turns out, there is indeed a solution through a hereditary monarchical system!
But rather than allowing for the ability to elect out the monarch, which would increase the monarchs time preference, we could allow the citizenry to elect themselves out of the monarchs jurisdiction. Effectively giving the citizenry control of the nuclear option to secede from the monarchy.
In this way you have a best of both worlds scenario, with the benefits of democratic election and low time preference monarchs. In other words, as the saying goes, we can have our cake and eat it too!
The process of transforming the state from a demigod into a service company will only be possible if we move from indirect to direct democracy and break up the monopoly of the state with the right to self-determination at the municipal level.
— Prince Hans-Adam II
Saifedean goes on to explain the curious experiment of the Liechtenstein monarchy which has in fact employed such a framework thanks to innovations driven by Prince Hans-Adam II.1
This small monarchy, nestled between the countries of Switzerland and Austria leaves secession on the table at all times such that if you don’t like the way the monarch is ruling, you are free to secede from the rest of the group at anytime you wish.
With this citizenry veto power over tyranny, the evil king scenario is essentially resolved.
It is a compelling idea.
Monarchy with the option for secession at the local level always on the table?
Very interesting!
And as Saif and the Prince point out, this governance model is not unlike a corporation selling you a product.
You are not locked into an iPhone, for example. If you no longer like the product, you can always, at any point in time, “secede” from it by simply choosing some other provider, like Android for example.
It is a successful model for the development of all other goods and services throughout the market, it therefore seems only obvious that this same approach apply to social governance.
This self-determinate monarchy model may well begin to take root in more and more towns, cities, and even small nations, across the planet, indeed likely in lockstep with bitcoins expansion as it continues to dissolve away the fiat monetary system which has funded the less than ideal democratic quagmire we find ourselves in today.
And upon inspection, there seems to be a rather symbiotic relationship ‘tween the evolving governance developments and the developments of amongst the various monetary standards across these grand time frames.
On the one side is the shifting public sentiment over time in political governance from kingdoms to democracy and now it would appear to a new model we might be so bold to coin as “self-determinant monarchies” with a citizenry free to opt out of one and into another as they so choose.
And on the monetary side of the coin, the shifting public sentiment over time appears to march in tandem with the evolving political governance systems, from kingdoms filled with gold coins, to democracies filled with digital debts, and now a shift has begun towards self-determinant monarchies filled with bitcoins.
What is even more remarkable is that both the new social governance model and the new monetary standards are taking the best of the previous two systems. The self-determinant monarchy has combined the democratic election optionality for citizens with the longevity and low time preference mind set of hereditary monarchs, The bitcoin standard has combined the scarcity and finality of physical gold, with the portability, divisibility, and auditability of the digital fiat world.
There are no coincidences. Something big is happening, and we are at the dawn of an an incredibly bright future.
If you happen to have the time to listen to the entire podcast of Saif and Walker discussing more of this, it is well worth the listen. Just click the pic below to link to it.
CLOSING THOUGHTS
Admittedly, monarchy never sounded like a very good idea with it’s ruthless brutality and special favor, but the more deeply one thinks about it the more sense it seems to make.
Not surprisingly, democratic institutions tend to educate their citizenry on the terrible qualities of kingdoms and monarchies, although everyone seems to want to live like royalty, be it a king or queen, prince or princess.
Obviously a democracy would be biased in teaching its citizenry of all the good that democracy brings and all the bad that monarch offers, without telling us the opposite side of the coin, all the bad that democracy brings, which we can all painfully see with our own eyes as we live through Fiatnam, and all the good that monarchy offers, that has been swept under the rug of a time not added to our history books or popular culture, by the strongly biased democratic machine.
I suppose the only question that remains is whether you want to be the future ruling class or be ruled over.
Because one thing is for sure, you might not be interested in either, but there are most certainly people out there that are interested in ruling over you. You’d probably be better off taking an interest in becoming a good monarch or helping a good monarch come to power, rather than letting the evil ones take the lead.
There are approximately 3,000 counties in the United States. I would not be surprised if in the next couple hundred years these counties have ruling hereditary families, loosely guided by a national constitutional framework centered on private property enforcement.
And I would not be surprised to see most of the rest of the world fall into this design.
Maybe now is the time to find a country, a county, or a town, and begin your journey on the establishment of the next hereditary monarchy, dear reader.
If not now, then when?
If not you, then who?
Accept your fate, you savage noble royals.
Cheers!