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Simple math can help scheming politicians manipulate district maps and cruise to victory. But it can also help identify and fix the problem.
Imagine fighting a war on 10 battlefields. You and your opponent each have 200 soldiers, and your aim is to win as many battles as possible. How would you deploy your troops? If you spread them out evenly, sending 20 to each battlefield, your opponent could concentrate their own troops and easily win a majority of the fights. You could try to overwhelm several locations yourself, but there's no guarantee you'll win, and you'll leave the remaining battlefields poorly defended. Devising a winning strategy isn't easy, but as long as neither side knows the other's plan in advance, it's a fair fight.
Now imagine your opponent has the power to deploy your troops as well as their own. Even if you get more troops, you can't win.
In the war of politics, this power to deploy forces comes from gerrymandering, the age-old practice of manipulating voting districts for partisan gain. By determining who votes where, politicians can tilt the odds in their favor and defeat their opponents before the battle even begins.
Anyone for a game of RISK?
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Virindi on Sunday October 22 2017, @09:06PM (35 children)
Except, there has to be organized resistance to prevent the use of force in coercion, both on large and small scales. This organization is known as "government".
Without such an organized protection, the strong dominate the weak by force. Other nations invade and subjugate your nation. Gangs kill you and take everything you own, unless you are rich.
Government is a balancing act, claiming you can get by without it is naive and ignores historical evidence.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 22 2017, @11:34PM (34 children)
You're saying that you need a coercive monopoly to protect you from a coercive monopoly. It makes no sense.
The actual solution is competition within a culture that respects voluntary association.
Your government "solution" is an, ancient, authoritarian idea. The new idea is the recognition that it's not the Dear Leader (authoritarianism) that is good for society, but rather voluntary interaction between individuals (libertarianism; capitalism).
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 23 2017, @12:21AM (4 children)
And what about competition from without such a culture? Who in the Libertarian States of America is going to have the resources, training, organisation, and inclination, to stand up to the unified Mexican armed forces, when they come a-knocking to get back all the land that was taken from them?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 23 2017, @02:03AM (3 children)
If you're worried about the Mexican armed forces, then you join a "military" organization, or allocate your own damn resources to funding one.
Keep your dirty, thieving hands out of my pockets. I'd do peace-creating business with the Mexicans rather than engage in a circle-jerk of saber rattling.
Of course, if Mexican warmongering becomes worrisome even to me, then I might just join your effort. However, if you insist that I join your effort or be thrown into a cage for refusing, then I see no difference between you and those belligerent Mexicans.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 23 2017, @09:47PM
Dude, seriously, read a history book.
(Score: 2) by Spook brat on Monday October 23 2017, @10:19PM (1 child)
Don't mind if I do. There's a pretty big first-mover advantage to such a business, so as soon as your bloodless anarcho-capitalist revolution happens I'll be sure to call up my friends and launch a startup.
Thanks again for letting us know you'll be unarmed and making loads of money, I'll send a squad of my boys over to your place for a contract negotiation. I'm sure you'll agree that you signed our contract voluntarily despite me negotiating from a position of superior leverage.
Relevant quotes from my company handbook (i.e., The Seventy Maxims of Maximally Effective Mercenaries [wikia.com]):
68. Negotiating from a position of strength does not mean you shouldn’t also negotiate from a position near the exits.
49. Every client is one missed payment away from becoming a target and every target is one bribe away from becoming a client.
38. What's easy for you can still be hard on your clients.
27. Don't be afraid to be the first to resort to violence.
21. Give a man a fish, feed him for a day. Take his fish away and tell him he's lucky just to be alive, and he'll figure out how to catch another one for you to take tomorrow.
19. The world is richer when you turn enemies into friends, but that's not the same as you being richer.
Most importantly:
1. Pillage, then burn.
Incidentally, if you were to follow Azuma's advice [soylentnews.org] you'd see that the mercenary companies are the ones that will take over eventually. News reports in your anarchist utopia will be replete with reports like "Pranger's Bangers liquidated [1] the leadership of the Maryland Irregulars as the Bangers continued their eastward territorial expansion. All of the M.I. clients are now covered by the Bangers for contract enforcement and fire insurance". This will continue until one group has a monopoly on enforcement.
[1] literally
Travel the galaxy! Meet fascinating life forms... And kill them [schlockmercenary.com]
(Score: 2) by Spook brat on Tuesday October 24 2017, @02:56PM
Re-reading what I wrote, I realize that it's far too close to Poe's Law for my comfort. For the record, I can recognize a zero-sum game when I see one, and have no interest in becoming the most ruthless and bloodthirsty contract enforcer in AC's anarcho-capitalist dystopia.
I'm much more likely to survive the apocalypse of voluntary contractual agreements by making sure I have an indispensable skill that society needs [xkcd.com] regardless of who's in political control.
Travel the galaxy! Meet fascinating life forms... And kill them [schlockmercenary.com]
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Virindi on Monday October 23 2017, @01:13AM (9 children)
That's exactly right, that's the balancing act I refer to. Human history shows that it is not possible to maintain a system where NOBODY has this type of control. If you try to do that, all you are doing is opening up an opportunity for someone else to impose it.
If you take that premise, then the question then becomes, how can such an entity be controlled by the population so that it does the least damage to society? The entity must be strong enough to protect itself to continue its own existence (and protect those it serves), but it must interfere with the population it serves as little as possible. Yes, these are opposite requirements. Thus, good government is a "hard problem".
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 23 2017, @01:50AM (8 children)
That's not a matter of balance; that's a flatout contradiction.
Markets of voluntary exchange are the best tools with which to find the balance in extraordinarily complex systems of interaction.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Monday October 23 2017, @06:25AM (4 children)
A pity they don't exist globally and will never exist.
I don't know how you are going to demonstrate the absolute optimality (as in "the best tools") given such markets don't exclusively exist.
At the best, you'll need to make lots of assumption for a theoretical demonstration - nothing short of what are doing lots of "economic science" academics nowadays.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 23 2017, @11:34AM (3 children)
Evolution by variation and selection.
Variation: supplier competition.
Selection: consumer choice.
The more you fight this process, the less effective it is; the more you work with this process, the more effective it is.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Monday October 23 2017, @11:53AM (2 children)
Prisoner's dilemma: when the risk of losing overweights the benefit of playing optimally.
The result: opportunists, playing might makes right, can't be avoided.
It will never happen, the same way communism can't happen
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 23 2017, @05:25PM (1 child)
Try again.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 23 2017, @09:49PM
How about the exact same way libertarinism can't happen.
For fun, read some of the Anarchist philosophy. It basically matches your own. I wish I could enjoy riding the Unicorns in your world.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Monday October 23 2017, @01:35PM (2 children)
You must not be from Earth. Welcome to our world, stranger. Let me explain something. We never have had, and never will have that mythical "free market". Some very few civilizations in early history, or prehistory, may have enjoyed "free markets", but they are soon abandoned. People demand strong rulers, and said strong rulers subvert those mythical markets immediately, in order to raise money for things like armies, roads, ports, castles, mansions - the list goes on and on. With every addition to the list, someone else chimes in with yet another addition.
Mankind abhors a free market.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 23 2017, @05:28PM (1 child)
Here. [soylentnews.org]
You're fighting a straw man.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Tuesday October 24 2017, @02:06AM
Oh, yes, that is so INSIGHTFUL!! That's why Microsoft has cooperated so closely with hundreds of other companies, such as Digital Research.
Nothing was covered in that post, other than some propaganda that you hoped would confuse us.
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Monday October 23 2017, @01:32AM (14 children)
Hey, dumbfuck...who enforces contracts when someone welches in the Peoples' Republic of Ancapistan?
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 23 2017, @01:57AM (11 children)
The means by which a contract is enforced are necessarily specified in the contract itself.
Law by contracts is an iterative process, where each iteration produces a more robust system of agreement in advance of interaction; enforcement is just another service in the market.
There is profit in well defined interaction; that's why people drive on the same side of the road—not because it's mandated by law, but because people want to arrive at a destination without dying.
To behave in a way that is not well defined is to take a very large risk; the consequences are unknown and possibly disastrous. There is an incentive to come to agreement, if only through an implicit agreement such as a common culture ("When in Rome...").
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Monday October 23 2017, @04:10AM (1 child)
Bro, do you even game theory...?
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Monday October 23 2017, @05:52AM
Which theory is he supposed to game? ;-)
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 23 2017, @04:23AM (1 child)
Do you really want to run around negotiating and signing 8+ billion contracts? How in the world would you find time to do anything else?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 23 2017, @11:37AM
Don't waste my time with stupid questions.
(Score: 4, Informative) by Mykl on Monday October 23 2017, @04:29AM (6 children)
Got it. So people just agree to the terms of the contract, even if they disadvantage them, because another term in the contract says that they have to. Right.
I'll tell you how things work out in your Libertarian paradise. It takes just one powerful psychopath in all of your society to make Pablo Escobar look like a teddy bear. If I don't like your contract terms, I'll just shoot you in the head.
What's that you say? That's against the terms of the contract? You mean the one I just wiped your brain off my jacket with? Oh well, someone will come and see me about that, I'm sure. Although, our contract was nobody else's business, so I suppose everyone will just shrug and get on with their own selfish lives instead.
Oh, but we agreed to engage the services of an 'enforcement group' beforehand? I suppose I could just bribe them. After all, how are they going to collect their fee from you when you're already dead and I've
stolenclaimed all of your money for myself?(Score: 2) by rylyeh on Monday October 23 2017, @05:57AM
Think Blade Runner!
"a vast crenulate shell wherein rode the grey and awful form of primal Nodens, Lord of the Great Abyss."
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 23 2017, @11:44AM (4 children)
Not only are you failing to describe law-by-contracts, but you're ignoring the fact that such a problem already exists: Indeed, your law-by-legislation "government" idea is founded on that very principle of "do-as-I-say" coercion rather than "do-as-we-agreed" voluntary interaction.
You've solved nothing.
Why would you want to established a blessed, ordained monopoly on such violence? That's absurd. Clearly, it would be better to construct checks and balances, the most robust form of which is competition (after all, consider that the world is composed of separate governments, not one world government, and thank goodness for that!)
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 23 2017, @03:30PM (3 children)
Hey dummy, they were trying to "solve" your naivety. Your series of voluntary contracts will boil down to one group with more power and they absolutely will renege on the co tractual terms as soon as they can make their coup. But you're too blind and throw all your problems into "naturally evolves to the optimal balance." It is like you're not even human...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 23 2017, @05:34PM (2 children)
You've explained exactly why there's One World Government for the entire planet. Thanks for the insight.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 23 2017, @06:46PM (1 child)
Except there is not OWG, but there should be. Nations should become more like states, with limits on their abilities to violate human rights. It is a shame upon our entire planet that places exist like North Korea, Somalia, and other bastions of dictatorship and abuse.
(Score: 2) by etherscythe on Monday October 23 2017, @08:27PM
...as defined by whom, exactly?
"Fake News: anything reported outside of my own personally chosen echo chamber"
(Score: 3, Interesting) by DeathMonkey on Monday October 23 2017, @06:16PM (1 child)
Hey, dumbfuck...who enforces contracts when someone welches in the Peoples' Republic of Ancapistan?
Anyone else get the feeling Mr Violently Imposed Monopoly's actual purpose is to derail any discussion on the real issue of Gerrymandering?
Certain interested are not served by a more representative political structure in the US.
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Tuesday October 24 2017, @07:29PM
No, i think he's a medium-to-high-functioning Aspie with an axe to grind. If someone actually hired this idiot for disinfo purposes I suggest they get a refund.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Monday October 23 2017, @06:20AM (2 children)
And there is your utopia, not better or worse than communism or free market.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 23 2017, @11:47AM (1 child)
People laughed when the "radicals" spoke of "a culture that respects the democratic Will of the People." Yet, here we are.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Monday October 23 2017, @11:57AM
Those readicals needed to make heads roll. Crowned heads.
Good luck beheading multinational corporations - the ones, theoretically the closest, but actually the very first enemies of your dream.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 23 2017, @02:41PM
It may not, but it is what it is. The government should never be half as weak as any corporation and/or other criminal enterprise. You can always, and should, give government more scrutiny than you do to any private entity, but you do need it. They should not have any need to work in secrecy on economic policy.