Full Title: Chapter 6: The Lost Theory of Government | An Open Letter to Open-Minded Progressives | Unqualified Reservations by Mencius Moldbug
Creator: Mencius Moldbug (Curtis Yarvin)
Publication Date: May 22, 2008
Alternate Link: Audio: An Open Letter to Open Minded Progressives - Chapter 6 - The Lost Theory of Government - YouTube

Brief Summary:

Misconceptions about Non-Western Societies:

• Westerners are taught that people in pre-modern, non-Western societies put their faith in theories of government now known to be nonsensical
• Result of power distortion, which happens when political power is on a government's side

Progressive Beliefs and Power Distortion:

• Why do progressives think their beliefs are not a product of such power distortions?
• Because there is a categorical difference between monarchies, empires, dictatorships, theocracies, etc., and modern liberal democracy.
• coercion vs seduction

Progressives' Approach to Power:

• Progressives (aka Whig, liberal, radical, dissenter) protest coercion but have ridden seduction to power
• Today’s late Whiggery manufactured a great plinth of public opinion
• We live in a global public supermind, and are bombarded constantly and from every direction with the progressive theory of government.
• Makes no sense but must agree or be labeled ignorant or evil
• Resistance is more than useless, it's ridiculous

Social Stigma of Conservatism:

• To be conservative is to be a "nail that sticks up and is hammered down." It also makes you a social pariah.

Understanding Government:

• "The nice thing about understanding government is that it gives you an off button for the endless political yammering."
• What is a government? A government is a sovereign corporation

Criteria for Good Government:

• Should be effective, responsible, secure

Effectiveness

• The ability to accomplish what you’re trying to do.
• Here Moldbug begins describing his concept of a Neocameralist government.
• Historically, we achieve effective management by finding the right person and putting him or her in charge (Unity of Command)
• this single administrator holds final decision-making authority over budget, policy, and personnel
• (It is best that this be a single person, because divided control of any human enterprise fails due to politics).

Responsibility

• In current western system no individual can be connected reliably with any success or failure = no responsibility
• How do we make our government responsible?

Responsible, effective government has three basic parts:

• Front-end: all the people who report to the administrator.
• Middle: the administrator himself.
• Back-end: the people the administrator is responsible to: the controllers
• The controllers are a board of directors elected by a body of shareholders.
• The controllers should share a single concept of responsibility. Assured by defining responsibility in financial terms
• Controllers are the parties to whom profits are paid; their voting power is proportional to the fractions they receive (joint-stock company)

Progressive Concerns

To a progressive, undivided government = dictatorship = the root of all evil

1. Profitability isn't antithetical to good customer service. (think of how a government restaurant would compare to a well run restaurant)
2. Concern that the undivided model will prove to be sadistic.
 - Sadism was part of the security model of stalin/hitler etc.
 - It is not reproduced here
3. Progressives think of a government as a charitable institution, whose purpose is doing good works.

• So divide spending into two classes: essential and discretionary (dividends)
• Elimination of pointless expenses would lead to an incredible amount of tax revenues (Dividends).
• Dividends would be disbursed to effective entities that do good works, or directly to people in need
• thus government separated from its charitable activities
• What to do with "retards?" aka criminals, grifters, leeches
• classify by three categories: guests, residents, and dependents.
• Guests: visiting and kicked out if misbehaving
• Residents: responsible tax-paying citizens
• Dependents: not personally responsible, not independent => wards of the state
• Wards of the state could be spun off into external organizations along with their revenue streams.
• Criminals (special case wards of the state) - attach them as wards to their revenue streams (they have to pay for their own keep); let the criminal choose a guardian and switch if he is dissatisfied
• In a well-run undivided government there would likely be very little crime.

Security

• Security ensures that administrator's decision process cannot be compromised by any force, domestic or foreign. Administrator entirely indifferent to opinions of residents except inasmuch as those opinions affect quarterly numbers
• An ideal “type 3” state: public thinks what it wants, administrator does what he wants. The government neither controls public opinion, nor is controlled by it.
• How to secure an intricate decision mechanism like the above? With a secure cryptographic decision and command chain (CDCC).
• Permissive Action Links: all government weapons require code authorization to operate
• Loyal units in civil conflicts would have functional weapons, while disloyal units would not
• Cryptographic command eliminates the relevance of public opinion in political dynamics. Politics becomes irrelevant when power is inaccessible
• Cryptography extends to decision-making, where key holders determine command authority

Neo Cameralism

• Past monarchies collapsed controllers and administrator into a single royal person, solving decision problem, but introducing a "nasty biological variable" into the responsibility mix.
• On the command side it relied on loyalty, which was not always there
• With 21st century technology, these problems will be eliminated, and our design, dubbed "neocameralism" can be implimented

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