Pleasant-Sounding Beliefs and 2nd-Order Effects
1st-order victims and 2nd-order victims. One freedom devours another.
This may seem based, but it isn’t:
These are the kind of middle-school-tier political stances that contribute to societal degradation. This superficially agreeable view is the libertarian equivalent of "I believe in equality and social justice". Gosh that sounds nice, who could disagree with such a statement? Unfortunately, your rainbows-and-puppies policy produces DEI neocommunist outcomes. The words are pleasant; the byproduct is not.
This kind of platitudinous, pollyannish context-rigging isn’t specific to any party or platform; all are equally susceptible to this. In fact, democracies encourage it.
Political platforms in democracies are oriented around how they make constituents feel; because feelings, not facts, attract voters. Nice-sounding intentions, not outcomes, inform how well it sells to your base. In democracy, the majority rules. The majority is, by definition, mostly composed of the lowest-common-denominator (LCD). You win by appealing to the fleeting impulses of whimsical, easily influenced, emotionally swayed masses. Policy and discourse flows accordingly.
When victory is determined by the LCD, messaging caters to them. Nuance and sophistication have no home here. Complex issues distilled down to three-word chants. The selection effects this produces for candidates and platforms are apparent; whoever best manipulates consensus and emotions is successful. The political domain is optimized for those who are most convincingly frame‑capturing and Machiavellian; it’s the nature of the game.
To craft policy positions based on pragmatic outcomes is to commit electoral suicide. Few care about your results, because that would require actual analysis! If the vibes poll well and align with en vogue moral preferences, you’ve got yourself voter.
If your policy doesn’t work, it’s because not enough of it was tried.
“The investor who overtrades eventually realizes it's a fallacy that more activity means more profitability. Take what the market gives you, more is not necessarily more. The zealous bureaucrat or academic never realizes his actions are counterproductive; the feedback mechanism is too long, and failure attribution too vague. If your policy didn't work, it's because you didn't do enough of it. Real *insert my policy* has never been tried.
So now you get more of the bad idea as a solution to the bad idea. However despite it being a technical failure, the idea was actually a strategic success. Your “more is always more” approach to political policy ended up being quite effective at what it was really aiming to accomplish: generating loyalty.”
No Victim, No Crime? What Do You Consider a Victim?
This "no victim, no crime" deception is destabilizing and produces numerous 2nd-order victims at the societal level. Luxury conditions insulate many from the outcomes of their luxury beliefs. A venture capitalist in Pacific Heights doesn't experience the consequences of drug and homeless policies in the Tenderloin district; he keeps voting for them because he keeps not having to pay that price.
Massie’s superficial political stance can’t see beyond 1st-order effects, creating 2nd-order repercussions everyone pays for. Here are some "victimless" crimes:
Drunk driving
Drug use
Insider trading
Public homelessness
There are no immediate victims from any of these. Here's what happens when you allow them unchecked:
Drunk driving: The penalties are onerous because they act as a society-wide deterrent for actions obviously leading to higher rates of death and injury. Many a stupid drunk-driving decision has been stopped because people know what awaits them if they get caught.
Allowing it would create 2nd-order victims by making the act more prevalent: if you only get in trouble when you hurt someone, and not just for doing it, you’d do it more often and assure yourself you’ll just pay closer while driving. Of course it won't be you who hurts someone driving drunk, it'll be the other guy. You're always super safe…
Hard drug use: For example, the 'safe injection' sites in SF. Normalized use of hard drugs invariably leads to degraded public spaces, increased property crime, and decay of social cohesion across entire neighborhoods. Everyone who has to be surrounded by the degeneracy that mass drug use causes is a victim.
Insider trading: You undermine trust in markets by letting big players access inside information and disproportionately profit off it. This potentially reduces investment (growth) as well as market participation, which decreases liquidity, which impedes price discovery. But hey, there are no direct victims here!
The 2nd and 3rd-order effects of this harm economic activity, hurting jobs and other financial components nations need to prosper. Markets without integrity become playgrounds for the connected few while the many lose faith in the system altogether. Victims everywhere, just not ones you can easily point to in a headline.
No one is victimized by a homeless guy sleeping on the sidewalk, but what about a homeless encampment along the street near your kids? You get to the latter by allowing the former.
We're seeing real time in big cities what this mentality breeds. Property values erode, businesses close, tax revenue diminishes, filth spreads, and entire neighborhoods slowly become uninhabitable for families.
The 2nd-order effects are spikes in crime and declining living standards. 2nd-order victims everywhere, but no 1st-order victim you can immediately see. The tyranny of "how nice does it sound and how good does it make me feel" political thinking eventually results in societies where no one wants to live.
1st-Order Freedoms and 2nd-Order Freedoms
Sometimes maximum freedom reduces everyone's freedom. Sometimes restricting freedoms produces more of it. This is the paradox at the heart of functional societies that myopic pleasant-sounding platitudes fail to understand.
I met some Singaporeans recently, and it was interesting hearing how they appreciated the militant laws of their country. They understood the tradeoff they were making by losing some 1st-order freedoms, but gaining 2nd-order freedoms in the process. On one axis they had less autonomy, and on another they had far more of it. They can't chew gum and don’t dare risk trying any drugs, but their children can play in parks at midnight. They leave laptops on cafe tables unattended. They can't openly criticize the government, but they don't need to worry about stepping over human waste on their morning commute. All of life’s a tradeoff.
You’re maximally free in an environment that facilitates your ideal mode of being. An exaggerated example: Tom Brady is optimized for a highly restrictive setting. A football game has rigid rules for what you’re allowed to do, and there are swift punishments for violations. However in this freedom-limited domain, Tom performs at peak capacity. And he’s not oppressed by it; it’s how he prefers to exist. He welcomes this constraining situation, because it brings the best out of him.
This concept is abstractable on a societal level. If you have no desire to operate outside the circle drawn for you, then you're maximally free within that circle.
If you're content living inside a circle with unyielding boundaries, you're actually freer than if you lived in a space with no boundaries. The constraints almost exclusively only limit others' abilities to act upon you.
How comparatively liberated are the people of Singapore who can walk wherever they want at night vs those in LA and NYC who can’t do the same? The SF resident has the ‘freedom’ to do cocaine, but not the ‘freedom’ to park his car without rolling the windows down, so a car-robber doesn’t smash the glass.
People in SF have more 1st-order freedoms, but far less 2nd-order ones because of the unstable environment their feel-good myopic fixation has produced. Whereas the Singaporean has less 1st-order freedom, but far more 2nd-order ones.
The same people who champion "victimless crimes" policies wouldn't let their children wander freely in the neighborhoods those policies create. "No victim, no crime" is decadent thinking: advocating pretend freedoms while insidiously robbing people of freedoms actually worth having.
By only focusing on 1st-order victims, Massie would have you believe all that exists are 1st-order freedoms. A naive, politically expedient fiction that ignores societies tradeoffs. The liberty to shoot heroin in public devours the liberty of families to use that same public space. Whose freedom do you prioritize?
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Biofoundationalism Chapters:
Biofoundationalism I: Moral Foundations Utility Theory & Hypermoralization
Biofoundationalism III: Verbal Intelligence & Factual Sediment
Biofoundationalism IV: Masculine Because You Have To, Feminine Because You Get To
Restriction of freedom = More free behavior
Reminds me of a study commonly referred to among us artist/architects. Schoolyard without a fence? At recess the kids stick around the building. Put up a fence and they roam the entire grounds. 👍