An Abstract Path to Freedom¶
At this thread (and in other places), commenter VXXC cites Durant’s Dark Counsel: “For freedom and equality are sworn and everlasting enemies, and when one prevails the other dies. Leave men free, and their natural inequalities will multiply almost geometrically.” He then remarks: “That’s fine with me, I’ll go with Freedom.” Outside in concurs without reservation.
Take this dark counsel as the thesis that a practically-significant ideological dimension can be constructed, within which freedom and egalitarianism are related as strictly reciprocal variables. Taking this dimension for orientation, two abstract models of demographic redistribution can be examined, in order to identify what it is that neoreactionaries want.
The Caplan-Boudreaux Suicidal Libertarianism Model (SLM), touched upon here, and then sketched here, takes the following arithmetical form:
Suppose there are two countries with equal populations. The quality of policy ranges from 0-10, 10 being best. In country A, bliss points (people’s first choice for policy) are uniformly distributed from 2-6. In country B, bliss points are uniformly distributed from 4-8. […] When the countries are independent, country A gets a policy quality of 4 (the median of the uniform distribution from 2-6), and country B gets a policy quality of 6 (the median of the uniform distribution from 4-8). Average policy that people live under: 50%*4+50%*6=5. … suppose you open the borders, and everyone moves to country B (the richer country). The median of the whole distribution is 5. Result: The immigrants live under better policies, the natives live under worse policies. The average (5) remains unchanged.
A few preparatory tweaks help to smooth the proceedings. Firstly, convert Caplan’s “bliss points” to freedom coefficients (from ‘0’ or absolute egalitarianism, to ‘1’ or unconstrained liberty). A society in which freedom was maximized would not be wholly unequal (Gini coefficient 1.0), but it would be wholly indifferent to inequality as a problem. In other words, egalitarian concerns would have zero policy impact. It is in this sense, alone, that freedom is perfected.
Secondly (and automatically), the question-begging judgments of “better” and “worse” are displaced by the ideological reciprocals of freedom and equality – there is no need to compel acquiescence as to the objective merits of either. Indeed, there is every reason to encourage those unconvinced of the superior attractions of liberty to seek ideological satisfaction in an egalitarian realm, elsewhere. From the perspective of liberty, egalitarian exodus is an unambiguous – even supreme – good, analogous to political entropy dissipation.
It is further, tacitly presumed here that freedom coefficients correlate linearly with intelligence optimization, but this depends upon further argument, to be bracketed for now.
The extraordinary theoretical value of the SLM can now be demonstrated. Due to its radical egalitarianism it defines a pessimal limit for neoreaction, and thus – by strict inversion – describes the abstract program for a restoration of free society (the Neoreactionary Model of demographic redistribution, or NM). In order to chart this reversal, the simplest course is to presuppose the full accomplishment of the SLM in an arbitrary ‘geographical’ space, which it taken to be flexibly divisible, and populated by 320 million people, SLM-homogenized to a freedom coefficient of 0.5.
Confining ourselves to the tools already employed in the establishment of the climax SLM (whilst – for the sake of lucid presentation — ignoring any degenerative ratchet asymmetries), let us now proceed on the path of reversal. The SLM conservation law holds that average freedom is preserved, so an initial schism produces two equal populations – equivalent to those of Caplan’s starting point – each numbering 160 million, but now differentiated on the dark counsel dimension, with freedom coefficients of 0.6 and 0.4.
Pursue this fissional procedure of territorial / population division and ideological differentiation recursively, focusing exclusively upon the comparatively free segment each time. The 160 million 0.6s become 80 million 0.7s, and an equal number of 0.5s. After five iterations, the final neoreactionary-secessionist de-homogenized distribution is reached:
160 million x 0.4
80 million x 0.5
40 million x 0.6
20 million x 0.7
10 million x 0.8, and – incarnating the meaning of world history, or
at least absorbing neoreactionary exaltation —
10 million x 1.0
Roughly 3% of the original population now live in a truly free society. For Caplan and other SLM-proponents, of course, nothing at all has been gained.
Yet, assume instead of SLM utilitarian universalism, on profoundly inegalitarian grounds, that the aggregate quantity of freedom was considered of vastly lower importance than the exemplary quality of freedom, then the neoreactionary achievement is stark. Where freedom nowhere existed, now it does, at an essentially irrelevant cost of moderate socialist deterioration elsewhere. Half of the original population – 160 million souls – have now been released to enjoy a ‘fairer’ society than they knew before. Why not congratulate them on the fact, without being distracted unduly by the starvation and re-education camps? It can be confidently presumed that they would have voted for the regime that now takes care of them. Their internal political arrangements need no longer concern us.
For Neoreaction (the NM), it is not a question of whether people (in general) are free, but only whether freedom (somewhere) exists. The highest attainment of freedom within the system, rather than the averaged level of freedom throughout the system, is its overwhelming priority. By reversing the process of demographic redistribution envisaged by the SLM, its ends are achieved.
The zero-sum utilitarian conclusions of this comparison would be unsettled by a more concrete elaboration of the NM, in which the effects of exemplarity, competition, the positive externalities of techno-economic performance, and other influences of freedom were included. At the present level of abstraction — set by Caplan’s own (SL) model — such positive spin-offs might seem no more than sentimental concessions to common feeling. It is the ruthless core of the Neoreactionary Model that has, initially, to assert itself. Better the greatest possible freedom, even for a few, than a lesser freedom for all. Quality matters most.
The quasi-Rawlesian objection — fully implicit within the SLM — might run: “And what if the free society, as ‘probability’ dictates, is not yours?” — our rejoinder: “It would require a despicable egotist not to delight in it, even at a distance, as a beacon of aspiration, and an idiot or scoundrel not to set out on the same path, in whichever way they were able.”
Disintegrate destiny.