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We have to recognize in what real power consists. The written regulations of the federal bureaucracy only have power insofar as they are enforced.

Power is the ability to cause someone else to do something you wish. The weaker version of this is coercion, but true power is based on love. If my wife asks me to massage her shoulders, and I do so because I love her, then she has power over my time and effort, but it is driven by love rather than by coercion.

In a society striving for virtue, the leaders, especially on a local level, will have influence because of the good will of their fellow citizens, rather than because of the coercive power of the state. This power based on good will is stronger than coercive power. As we become more subsidiary, the bureaucracy will simply lose its ability to enforce arbitrary regulations, because the enforcement depends to some degree on the cooperation of the governed.

James A Lewis 1y ago

I really do like the difference between the two forms of power. It is true: a tyrant's power over a man is great, because he will capitulate with the tyrant to preserve his life; but a patriot freely gives yet more power to the country he loves, for he will give his life to protect her. "Greater love has no man than this," etc.

The ancap types mistake deregulation per se as a means to freedom, but it only appears so now because current regulation hinders freedom. It is conceivable, however, that some regulation will increase freedom.

Take for example the vows of marriage: when two form a family, but no protections are made for abandonment, do we believe the union is as free as it can be? If instead we vow to remain, and others are welcome to enforce it, the woman in particular due to that safety the vows provide can more freely make them.

So too, when we have some economic mechanism that protects people from the wiles of cunning bad actors, we can yet more freely engage in commerce with one another. In this sense, a well regulated, that is to say optimally and not entirely, economy is more free than anarchocapitalists' dreams could conjure.

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Discussion

Omekau 1y ago

A lot to chew on here but it seems like the essence is that power is not an imposition of the will but rather a calling of voluntary self giving, to the point of death as of course Christ does. The Man with no “political” (in the secular definition) is the one that has kings and emperors kneel before across all time and space to the point that even our reference of time is predicated on His life. Reminds me of Braveheart where Robert the Bruce tells his father he wants what William Wallace has, true power. Power to the point that people willing give their lives for him, fight for him, die for him.

Circling back then, if I understand correctly it seems like any engagement with community, anything that lessens dependence on the impersonal (Amazon delivery, federal welfare, big grocery store chains, etc.) will shift power down (subsidiarity) and that this will gain momentum not through imposition or force (which is a sign weakness not power) but through a sense of awareness that this is actually the natural order of things (like a farmers market).

James A Lewis 1y ago

Yes, and that power shift can't come from the top, reasonably, because the top has no motivation to divest. This is why Bitcoin and Nostr are such important tools, because they don't require permission, and that permission is effectively what a higher power would grant a lower by divesting. Freedom tech, not licensed tech, because a license can be revoked.