[ExI] Free societies in space/was Re: Be nice to leftists

[Dan Ust]

> On Jun 17, 2014, at 2:30 AM, Anders Sandberg <anders at aleph.se> wrote:
> 
> In general, we do not have good tools for analysing robustness of political philosophy. The closest is economic arguments or game theory, but in practice the open-endedness of human behavior makes most theories fail when exposed to reality. At the same time we have empirical evidence about robustness of all kinds. One interesting observation is that many social systems on the face of it sounds utterly unstable, but actually do work - partially because they have correction subsystems, partially because human adaptation makes many societies "sticky" and more robust than on paper. 
> 
> Space does have interesting political connotations. As Iain M. Banks pointed out in "Some notes on the Culture", once you have enough space industrialisation enforcing a central power becomes hard - it is possible to move away and set up shop elsewhere, and attacks removes value. Disagreement may just lead to splitting of habitats. That doesn't necessarily lead to niceness (which Banks assumed): habitats might be internally far more bigoted and closed than Earth societies, maintaining their cohesion through underhanded means. And one could maintain an "empire" by threatening everybody. Still, the decentralization tendency would likely lead to a lot of divergence and diversity. So I think Nozick wins in space, even if he doesn't win on Earth. 

I also wrote on this topic a few years ago:

http://mysite.verizon.net/vzezsi8g/SpaceFreedom.html

Not all that deep. One might have "airlock despotism" off world, but I think the kind of permanent edge society space settlement seems very likely to create -- regardless if all the nice details are worked on how to split a settlement (why does this have to be worked out at all? Local despotisms would likely create informal migration flows away from them; the easier this is, the harder it is for any local despotism to grow or survive).

Also, Nozick was more talking about how a minarchy might _without violating rights_ enforce its monopoly on legitimate coercion. I think his argument is flimsy: it presumes that the minarchy-in-the-making has a special privilege on determining what's valid justice procedures and already has a sort of monopoly on this. Why wouldn't rival agents be able to arrive at correct (or better or as good) justice procedures? Why wouldn't they have as much right as a government on the make to correct (or stop) wrong justice procedures -- even when they were being applied by the government on the make? But these arguments against Nozick aside, I believe he meant something other than some one or group taking and keeping power; he meant a specific path that would be acceptable at each stage from a justice (by his view of justice) perspective.

Regards,

Dan
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