On Nassim Taleb's Principia Politica

 I just finished Taleb's Pricipia Politca.  This is my reveiw. 

This is an academic work and as such the language is not very accessible. The first page of the first chapter uses the term "tangible fractal gradations" and say these lie between "the concrete individual and the abstract collective". Page two says "Scalability is a simple property of an object that has a concave or convex response. For instance an elephant has more fragility than a mouse for an equivalent proportional random shock." and that's about it as far as explaining what a "concave or convex response" means.  

It isn't even a book about localism as such. I say this without malice, as the first chapter admits it when he says, "The main aim is to fit the dynamics to the proper scale. Hence this is not a discussion on localism but rather one on scalability." So there you go. It isn't a matter of whether his book is better or mine are, but rather what your desires are. If you want to read accessible books on localism, I suggest you read one or both of the books I wrote (see bottom of page). If you want a difficult read on scalability, then his is the better choice. 

Green-centric localists will love his assertion that, "Many modelers fail to realize that model uncertainty and disagreements about, say, a certain policy, is itself potent information that command the maximally prudent route. As an application to climate change: the most contradictory the models, and the wider the gap between their results, the more uncertainty in the system which calls for precaution, even if one disagrees with the models." 

That's a recipe to lose localism when you have a ruling class which is willing to brazenly politicize science and have an SOP of "never letting a crisis go to waste." It is a very short step from there to those with a vested interest in a crisis as a means to centralize power simply using the tools at their disposal to manufacture one which requires global solution, It isn't a default setting that a localist should follow. A more consistently localist idea would be something like "necessity, not uncertainty, should be the standard by which localities should cede power to the center."

That said, I found a lot to agree with and value in his short chapter on Scalability. I don't disagree with him on scalability, it is just that this is an aspect of localism and not a broader approach to establishing a society which can avoid the gravity-like pull of centralization over time. When it comes to scalability, he knows what he is talking about. It's just too narrow to thought of as a stand-in for localism. 

In international relations he suggests that nations reject the golden rule in favor of the sliver rule, which he describes as  "golden rules (a la neocons). Golden rules ("treat others the way you’d like to be treated") invite busybodies to change other people’s lives, while silver rules ("don’t treat others the way you wouldn’t like to be treated") is more robust. Silver rules require skin in the game..., "

I agree with him that neocons and imperial foreign policies are bad, it isn't enough to trade one idea of how to treat people in favor of a slightly different one. People who want power will twist any idea or principle around into a need for them to run other people's lives. The problem isn't the wording of what rule the profess, but rather than they are sinful and defective personalities even by normal human standards. Rather than rely on a slight verbal change in professed rules, a rigorous set of boundaries whereby such would-be God-men are not even capable of pulling off forever-war is needed. We cannot count on good intentions, but rather clearly defined boundaries which shut all thirteen doors centralizers have historically used. I don't talk about scalability much, but I do talk about how to shut every door the neocons have used to turn our Republic into an Empire. 

Another of his principles is that "Precautionary decisions do not scale. Collective safety may require excessive individual risk avoidance, even if it conflicts with an individual’s own interests and benefits. It may require an individual to worry about risks that are comparatively insignificant."

The example he gives is of a virus which in the early stages causes a relatively low risk. We now have an example of how that works in real life. He specifies what he means by saying these things "do not scale"...

The risk for an individual to catch the virus is very low, lower than other ailments. It is therefore "irrational" to panic (re-act immediately and as a priority). But if she or he does not panic and act in an ultra-conservative manner, they will contribute to the spread of the virus and it will become a severe source of systemic harm,,,,,operate in a convex way for cross-dependent small idiosyncratic risks that end up dynamically extremely large at the end. avoid systemic problems,.....even where the immediate individual payoff does not appear to warrant it. 

In light of how the corona virus saga is playing out, giving place to this "principle" ends localism. He is saying such problems "do not scale" in the sense that they don't scale down to the individual. But a localist isn't claiming that anyway, that would be an anarchist. On the other hand, masks and mandates and quarantines' can and should still be a local decision, not a state or federal one. Decisions which take away freedom even for those who mean no harm should be made at the lowest level of government possible, so that if the decision makers go to far people can escape their over-reach, or more easily replace them. He does through the word "local" in there but he doesn't spend any time describing why a centralized response would be wrong. Not even as many words as I spend here. It is all about why it should not be an individual decision and none about why it should not be a central-state one. Where is the balance, the moderate center that localism truly is compared to the disorder of anarchy or the crush of the central state?

His principle of practical Roman tinkering with government vs. Greek over-reliance on platitudes and theoretical frameworks is a good point, but there are plenty of things which seem to work in the short run but in the end are a trap. Debt-based fiat currency is a prime example, Plus, while with this principle he favors "practicality" over ideology the rest of what he writes is very ideological. 

This sort of conflicting view repeats in his chapter on how liberty is scale invariant and the chapter speaking about how morality is not aggregate. The former is at odds with what he said earlier about how it is possible for a man to be a libertarian at the national scale, a Republican at the state scale, and a Democrat at the community scale and a socialist or communist in the family. And he is right about that but then he must be wrong about liberty being scale invariant. It is ok for communities to place infringements on liberty that national governments should not be allowed, or even capable, of doing. 

This is because it is much easier to pick your own, or escape your own, community than it is to escape or pick your own nation state. The "transaction costs" of exiting bad government are lower and thus market forces on government at that scale are much stronger. That is what protects liberty even though local governments can have more leeway- localism does not rely on the good intentions of rulers at any scale of civil government. It seems like he is trying to say that some things about libertarianism are OK and some are not, and he isn't wrong about that. It is just that finding a sub-set of libertarianism which applies universally isn't what localism is about. 

His 8th chapter is called "Non-naïve Universalism". When it comes to the rules under which people from various backgrounds should live, there is no such thing. That's why the attempt to shoe-horn some libertarian ideas into "localist" principles falls flat. And I say that as someone who voted straight Libertarian ticket in the last election. If it is right, let one local space at a time discover that for themselves. The only systemic rules should be the ones which are necessary to keep power divided. His 8th principle is "Never conflate localism with monolithic, absorbing nationalism." and I have no objection to that. Nationalism is the second-worst form of government, unfortunately we are headed toward the worst- corporate-rule globalism.

I thought his ninth chapter on racism et al made some good points but he fell down again by chapter ten "Neither the minority nor the majority should be able to impose their preferences on others." He made this statemen irrespective of scale and therefore not only does it fly in the face of his claim that his work is about scale but it also flies in the face of localist premises. Local people should be able to put more restrictions on their neighbors than they can on someone they have never met in a city they have never been to. That's because those near do have some impact on one another's lives while those in distant places know their own business better than we do. 

The rest of the material through the end of part II could be called "helpful hints for better living and governing." They were good, not bad, but they really had very little to do with localism. They would not serve to stop power from being drawn to the center over time. Especially since they were expressed as principles, not suggestions for specific laws or rules to keep power from being vacuumed up. 

I did not read the final part, which were answering a series of question which seemed again to be mostly irrelevant to the subject I am interested in- how do we stop defective personalities in government from manipulating things so that more and more control of our lives winds up in their hands in the imperial center? 

That's what my books are about. Please see below. Thank you. 

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