The news this morning is that the armed forces of Zimbabwe have apparently ousted the country's president, Robert Mugabe.
The line seems to be that the corruptocrats around Mugabe's wife (and heir presumptive) were taking out the corruptocrats around the country's vice-president. And the armed forces stepped in to stop that -- and presumably the presumptiveness of the heir presumptive.
Now this gives me the opening to talk about my theory of the state, and the ongoing revolution in the nature of human social cooperation.
Because, of course, all political entities are corruptocracies. Period. That is to say, every sovereign political entity is a armed minority, occupying territory, and taxing the people thereof to reward its supporters. You could look it up.
The only question is the natural limit of the armed minority rewarding its supporters. In an industrial society the limit is probably when the government takes so much in taxes and loot that growth grinds to a halt; then you will find that the voters will decide it is Time for a Change. In an agricultural nation like Zimbabwe I would say that the limit is that people are dying of starvation or that they are leaving for South Africa.
Interestingly, in Saudi Arabia, where the current crown prince is embarking on an anti-corruption drive, this commentator thinks it will never work.
But there is a complicating factor: the armed forces. When I say that every political entity is an "armed minority" I have to add a qualification. Whereas in the good old days the political leadership was also the military leadership, things have changed. Today the political leadership outsources its military protection to a specialist career military, and the interests of the political elite and military elite tend to diverge.
Specifically, I suspect, the time comes when the corruptocracy starts to loot the military to keep its patronage system going in other areas. You can see that the military might take a dim view of this, particularly if the looting is accompanied by hyper-inflation that makes it difficult to run the military in a good, safe administrative manner. And what about the pensions?
It is interesting to read the statement issued by the military that is taking power in Zimbabwe. It tells the people that Mugabe, the hero of the revolution, is safe and sound. Then it addresses in turn the civil service, the judiciary, the Members of Parliament, the "generality of the people," the political parties, the youth, the rest of the world, the war veterans, the "members of the Defence forces," the "respected Traditional leaders," the other security services, and the media. It tells each of these groups not to worry, everything is under control. So the leaders of the coup have been trying to think around the corner beyond the day of the coup to seize power. Notice who is left out: businessmen and significant economic actors. Maybe that's because they have already been squared and don't need to be addressed. Or maybe it's because they don't count.
It is my contention -- ok, my millennial hope -- that we humans are in a period of transition from the loot-and-plunder model of social cooperation that obtained in the agricultural era to a free-exchange and service model. It is my belief that all use of power and force in economic affairs is a poisoned chalice, and that everyone that deploys political power in the modern economy is cutting off his hand to spite his face. Obviously that is true in the limit cases like the Soviet Union and Maoist China and is proving true in Venezuela. It is less obvious that this applies to a place like Saudi Arabia, because Saudi Arabia gets its money from the oil-export meter, and until the oil runs out the loot-and-plunder game can continue.
Meanwhile, in a country like the United States there are still millions of people -- maybe a majority -- that still believe in the loot-and-plunder game. They will be disappointed.
I am reading volume three of lefty Michael Mann's The Sources of Social Power. He does a good job of describing the late imperialism of the western powers, the British Empire and the abortive American empire with Spanish colonies seized in the Spanish-American War, without really knowing what he is talking about. The British discovered that they needed to rule through local elites, that direct rule was too unpopular. However, their rule was still unpopular because it tended to create an economy parallel to the native economy that did nothing to help the colonial economy. Anyway, as the Brits weren't going to simply loot and plunder the locals, they found that their Empire wasn't really that beneficial to them. The US had the same experience when it seized Cuba and the Philippines. We were not in the plunder business, so what the heck were we doing there?
In other words, the western imperialists found that their empires were a bit of an embarrassment. They got into them often by accident, found that they had no real interest or benefit from good old looting, but could not bring themselves to abandon the whole thing.
That leads to my larger argument, that loot and plunder are yesterday's game. These days, physical loot is not worth that much. The real plunder is obtained by a light taxation of a booming economy. Indeed if you wanted to make the biggest and most powerful country the world has ever seen you would outsource all the usual government activities that we know and love like pensions, healthcare, education and welfare and regulation to remove the dead hand of government from them. But that is something that politicians and activists and most voters don't understand. To them, the economy is like a wild beast that needs to be caged and controlled.
I look forward to the day when they do understand.
The line seems to be that the corruptocrats around Mugabe's wife (and heir presumptive) were taking out the corruptocrats around the country's vice-president. And the armed forces stepped in to stop that -- and presumably the presumptiveness of the heir presumptive.
Now this gives me the opening to talk about my theory of the state, and the ongoing revolution in the nature of human social cooperation.
Because, of course, all political entities are corruptocracies. Period. That is to say, every sovereign political entity is a armed minority, occupying territory, and taxing the people thereof to reward its supporters. You could look it up.
The only question is the natural limit of the armed minority rewarding its supporters. In an industrial society the limit is probably when the government takes so much in taxes and loot that growth grinds to a halt; then you will find that the voters will decide it is Time for a Change. In an agricultural nation like Zimbabwe I would say that the limit is that people are dying of starvation or that they are leaving for South Africa.
Interestingly, in Saudi Arabia, where the current crown prince is embarking on an anti-corruption drive, this commentator thinks it will never work.
The problem in resource-rich states is that corruption is not marginal to political power, but central to acquiring it and keeping it. Corruption at the top is a form of patronage manipulated by those in charge, to create and reward a network of self-interested loyalists.In other words, whereas patronage and corruption are a significant factor in, e.g., the United States, patronage and corruption are the entire game in places like Zimbabwe and Saudi Arabia.
But there is a complicating factor: the armed forces. When I say that every political entity is an "armed minority" I have to add a qualification. Whereas in the good old days the political leadership was also the military leadership, things have changed. Today the political leadership outsources its military protection to a specialist career military, and the interests of the political elite and military elite tend to diverge.
Specifically, I suspect, the time comes when the corruptocracy starts to loot the military to keep its patronage system going in other areas. You can see that the military might take a dim view of this, particularly if the looting is accompanied by hyper-inflation that makes it difficult to run the military in a good, safe administrative manner. And what about the pensions?
It is interesting to read the statement issued by the military that is taking power in Zimbabwe. It tells the people that Mugabe, the hero of the revolution, is safe and sound. Then it addresses in turn the civil service, the judiciary, the Members of Parliament, the "generality of the people," the political parties, the youth, the rest of the world, the war veterans, the "members of the Defence forces," the "respected Traditional leaders," the other security services, and the media. It tells each of these groups not to worry, everything is under control. So the leaders of the coup have been trying to think around the corner beyond the day of the coup to seize power. Notice who is left out: businessmen and significant economic actors. Maybe that's because they have already been squared and don't need to be addressed. Or maybe it's because they don't count.
It is my contention -- ok, my millennial hope -- that we humans are in a period of transition from the loot-and-plunder model of social cooperation that obtained in the agricultural era to a free-exchange and service model. It is my belief that all use of power and force in economic affairs is a poisoned chalice, and that everyone that deploys political power in the modern economy is cutting off his hand to spite his face. Obviously that is true in the limit cases like the Soviet Union and Maoist China and is proving true in Venezuela. It is less obvious that this applies to a place like Saudi Arabia, because Saudi Arabia gets its money from the oil-export meter, and until the oil runs out the loot-and-plunder game can continue.
Meanwhile, in a country like the United States there are still millions of people -- maybe a majority -- that still believe in the loot-and-plunder game. They will be disappointed.
I am reading volume three of lefty Michael Mann's The Sources of Social Power. He does a good job of describing the late imperialism of the western powers, the British Empire and the abortive American empire with Spanish colonies seized in the Spanish-American War, without really knowing what he is talking about. The British discovered that they needed to rule through local elites, that direct rule was too unpopular. However, their rule was still unpopular because it tended to create an economy parallel to the native economy that did nothing to help the colonial economy. Anyway, as the Brits weren't going to simply loot and plunder the locals, they found that their Empire wasn't really that beneficial to them. The US had the same experience when it seized Cuba and the Philippines. We were not in the plunder business, so what the heck were we doing there?
In other words, the western imperialists found that their empires were a bit of an embarrassment. They got into them often by accident, found that they had no real interest or benefit from good old looting, but could not bring themselves to abandon the whole thing.
That leads to my larger argument, that loot and plunder are yesterday's game. These days, physical loot is not worth that much. The real plunder is obtained by a light taxation of a booming economy. Indeed if you wanted to make the biggest and most powerful country the world has ever seen you would outsource all the usual government activities that we know and love like pensions, healthcare, education and welfare and regulation to remove the dead hand of government from them. But that is something that politicians and activists and most voters don't understand. To them, the economy is like a wild beast that needs to be caged and controlled.
I look forward to the day when they do understand.
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