Tuesday, August 6, 2024

Being Explicit: Utopia Defined as The Best Feasible Society

  My ideal government is a king and a pope. The king can do whatever he wants. The pope can only advise, having no formal power over the kingdom at all, and is financially and militarily independent of the king. Because the constitution is one line, one word, "Exit" when (not if) the king and pope become corrupt, the king can ditch the pope, the pope can ditch the king, and the subjects can ditch either of them. Since they aren't currently being ditched, of logical necessity they are ruling and advising well enough. They're good, white, cooperative rulers. The pope is offering good advice, the king is taking the good advice. When the pope offers bad advice, the king doesn't take it, good things happen, and the pope learns something. When the king has a brain fart and doesn't take the good advice, bad things happen, and the king learns something. On average things just work and apart from Exit the non-popes and non-kings don't have to think about ideas or leadership at all. Subjects can take their advice from lesser subordinate priests and don't have to think much about how to live either. There's no reason one pope couldn't advise multiple kings, as they would be different peoples, with different values, demanding different advice and justifying having two kingdoms instead of one.
 Corollary: because the subjects can switch popes, if the priests of pope B offer better advice than the priests of pope A, the subjects don't have to [think for themselves] they can ~mindlessly evaluate outcomes. May the best pope win, but more importantly, the worst pope will lose, putting a floor on how bad the advice can be. The corrupt can no longer survive. 

 Due to the feedbacks in the system itself, aside from the overall incentive structure I don't have to think about the details. This is doubly good because different peoples and different places have different ideal practices; were I a pope I would only be able to competently advise my particular place and my particular people. The best rules for you are none of my business. I don't have to care, you don't have to care, and, by fortune and design it is not up to me

 The point of a white government is that your leadership is up to you. The point is to get a cooperative leader, so they lead according to your best interests, not based on whatever ideals happen to appeal to some ivory tower toy theorist such as me or anyone else. (Or theory toy? It's for playing, not producing.) Corollary: you pay the leader full market price for his leading services, replacing taxes with a subscription, meaning being lead according to your best interests also serves his best interests, producing a stable society which automatically suppresses corruption and treachery. 

 And it's important, so I'm saying it twice: I don't need to know what constitutes bad leadership or corruption. It isn't and doesn't have to be up to me. That is the true utopia. Find the king that knows better than anyone else, and swear fealty to him. If you're mistaken, or simply notice a superior king, Exit and go use that one instead. Utopia achieved. That was easy.
 Note there is nothing stopping you from doing this right now. There could be a pope of doggerland and king of doggerland twitter accounts, and they could be your literal king and pope in the most literal possible sense. Royal doggerland substack. The amish call their popes [bishop], and I understand they have one per town, and they have an explicit ceremonial Exit offer at 21 or so.
 Nothing stopping you aside from your own lack of demand for utopia. Perhaps some sacrifice to Phobos and Democratus regarding the embarrassment associated with being a member of a kingdom with four subjects.


 That said I would suggest remembering that engineering uses prototypes. The pope doesn't have to offer the same advice to his entire flock. Ask for volunteers for new ideas, to check for any mistakenly unforeseen long-term effects. The [don't be Stalin] principle: do phase I trials, don't jump straight to imposing it on the whole society at once. Or rather, trying to impose it and provoking a huge wave of Exit, a wave that is nevertheless much smaller than it would be in a virtuous genus.
 Likewise if you can't ride through momentary hiccups without [loyalty], then cultivate [loyalty] I suppose. If every setback seems like a permanent loss and eternal decay to you, then counteract one irrationality with a different irrationality, if you really must.
 Your pope should be telling you these things himself, but it's important enough to put it at the super-pope level, just in case.


 The pope can be financially independent of the king because he takes donations from grateful beneficiaries. Socrates correctly noted you cannot be paid to teach - but you certainly can get re-paid after the fact.  Functionally he is paid for kingly advice with exposure. Kingdoms are the opposite of stealthy. Seeing the glorious and majestic kingdom produced by his teachings, followers will flock to him, producing gratitude, producing money. 

 The king himself can't pay the pope at all. The pope wouldn't directly advise the king to give the pope the keys to the treasury, but he might as well, because he'll deviously advise the king do something equivalent. It would be a good thing if the king could dock the pope's pay for bad advice, but revenge is sour. If the king could accurately identify good advice he would himself be the pope, and consequently the pope will never be docked for bad advice.

 Good advice and profitable manipulation are very different but look the same - indeed manipulation looks better - unless you yourself are already the master. 

 Parasites always win the game of paid teaching, not to mention doing so quickly. Consequently the pope also can't be directly rewarded for good advice, any more than any advisor or instructor can be paid and remain an advisor.
 Kings don't have time to focus on learning, and can't themselves be learned. He's too busy executing (output) to take significant amounts of input. Catholic popes can't be learned for similar reasons. Exit's anti-corruption effects destroy any religion which is afflicted with politics, which is why catholics get so activated about preventing Exit. Put another way, the king has to be human, to understand and cooperate with those he leads, while the pope must be inhuman, to cooperate with Truth. Although it is logically possible to play the human role at times and the inhuman role at others, no mortal will ever be able to contain those multitudes; they have to be separate individuals.

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