It may be too obvious to warrant mention, but a corporation can afford to have a monarch/CEO because a CEO is constrained externally by financial and product markets. In the case of public companies, the performance of the CEO is evaluated in a public fashion on a daily basis in the form of the stock price. External factors can also constrain monarchs of course but these constraints tend to be much weaker (see e.g. North Korea).
This is remarkably soft on the complete insanity of that Yarvin quote. Why would we believe monarchy is more common in human history than government by consensus of tribal elders? How are CEOs analogous to monarchs at all? Among the noxious features of monarchy that led the framers of the constitution to forswear it include eligibility by bloodline (often limited to firstborn sons with favored religious views, but somehow open to infants and lunatics) and the inability to fire the incumbent for incompetence. If Yarvin is proposing monarchy but minus that, in what sense in he proposing a monarchy, and in what sense can he claim his preferred style of government is common among governments in history? I kind of suspect that what he really wants is not so much a change in institutions as a change in uniforms, namely for the head of government to wear a fancy hat and be followed around by bishops waving censers or whatever.
Yarvin's point about corporate governance shows a laughable lack of understanding about how organizations actually work, unfortunately common not just among far-right edge lords, but other center-right ideologues, too.
Does Yarvin seriously think that C-Suite roles are filled via inheritance and legitimated via the Divine Right of Kings? Perhaps he's thinking of the second- or third-generations of a family firm? This does seem to be the point-of-reference for Conservatives when they imagine a given business corporation. CEOs of public corporations are far more accountable to the Board and stakeholders (especially activist investors) than any monarch. Which is why they tend not to last very long, which brings me to the next point...
Does Yarvin realize that CEOs, far from representing the stability and continuity of a monarch, have, on average, a lower tenure than a two-term president? We're talking <7 years now, on average, with that foreshortening fast-accelerating. The rest of the C-suite's "reign" is even shorter, with CMOs, especially, washing out faster than even House Members of Congress, with an average term of <4 years. Like many laymen, Yarvin's perception is likely skewed by the survivorship bias of the few especially successful CEOs with 15+ years tenure--much more like a dynastic monarch in a less tumultuous kingdom.
> One of Yarvin’s pet ideas is the notion that democracy is essentially a sham, and real power is held by a network of civil servants, college professors, and NGO workers.
I worry that Yarvin and other right wing “intellectuals” are pulling on a thread with a strand of truth: yes, a small number of liberal/progressive elites hold a disproportionately large amount of sway within our Democratic party. I don’t really get Yarvin’s focus on bureaucrats when right wing populist seem to be having more success focusing on the mainstream media and tech industry.
My particular concern for the Democrats is that our elites’ disproportionate amount of power is particularly visible. In contrast, Republic elites (e.g., Koch, Cato, Manhattan Institute) are only known to political junkies. Further, our progressive elites—particularly in journalism and academia—are engaged in an intra-elite competition to see who can be the most pious progressive by developing and championing ever-more-extreme views. I worry that our highly visible elites will grow increasingly distant from the median Democratic voter (let alone the median voter in general) and this will be exploited by right wingers to pull away voters and possibly risk fracturing our broad coalition.
“The idea that American institutions are in need of radical destruction rather than reform licenses extreme behavior and could easily put us on the path to collapse.”
I don’t want to draw an equivalence here. However, I hear these types of sentiments about our institutions a lot in the circles I run in, and the people expressing them are anything but right-wingers…
Not exactly on target, but what is the story about voting machines? Lots of people write about the assault on voting rights but I have never read anything on voting machines. To me the biggest hurdle to get people to vote is that no one likes to stand in line!
So who determines how many voting machines go to each precinct/district? Are there any laws or regulations that require a certain ratio of voting machines to potential voters? Any laws or regulations on the quality of the machines – they have to work, paper receipts etc.? Who pays for the voting machines – only state and local or does the Fed step in with grants etc? Is there any difference in the ratio of voting machines to potential voters by racial, economic or geographic considerations? How about an article on the subject?
I'm not going to actually read Yarvin's stuff because who has time for an adult that seriously argues for monarchy, but can someone clarify for me, does he actually mean monarchy with some sort of heredity line of succession or just isn't familiar with the terms despotism/autocracy?
It's true we have a system now that nobody would design if they set out to design one from scratch. But it's also true that nobody DID design the system we have now. The main feature of our system that drives gridlock and dysfunction is popular election of the President and independent policymaking in the Executive Branch. And that's not part of the original design -- it's a giant semi-truck that's been driven through a little loophole in the Constitution.
The closest we can get to a parliamentary system without a new Constitution, though it would still require a major constitutional reinterpretation albeit arguably closer to the original intent, is to reimagine the entire Executive Branch, from the President on down, as an impartial, apolitical civil service branch, a executing puppet with Congress pulling the policy strings.
America has been better served by its geography than its political institutions. Our nation was born next to a continent-wide expanse of recently depopulated land inhabited by stone-age natives who could, at best, fight battalion strength actions. This land was much easier to occupy and ethnically cleanse than Schleswig Holstein or Alsace Lorraine. Any continental European state would have been invaded and devoured during the civil war. This almost happened to France, which was massively bigger and more powerful than its neighbors but still barely made it through 1792-93 as a sovereign state.
"In fact, so far the Biden years have in some ways been surprisingly non-contentious — no government shutdowns, a debt ceiling drama that was pretty clearly fake all along, and some bipartisan legislation"
I'm confused- Biden has had a D House & Senate so far, that's obviously going to change soon. Also on the obstructionist front, it's pretty concerning that Republicans were primaried just over having voted for his infrastructure bill. I basically expect Debt Ceiling Craziness, House hearings on Hunter Biden (a legitimately shady character), and an impeachment in 2023-2024. Actually, I'd bet on it.
Anyways, my concern is that we have a specific failure point- the very poor institutional design of the Electoral College system, which makes each swing state winner-take-all. In other words, a few thousand votes can legitimately swing who wins the Presidency, which is godawful political engineering regardless of which country it is. You're asking a lot of election administrators to not find a way to just throw out enough votes to swing the state. Poorer, more corrupt countries than the US successfully do huge elections because a popular vote system just makes election fraud that much tougher- hard to fake millions of votes scattered all over the country, easy to fake thousands.
Anyways, part of the critique of presidential systems is that the actual running for the presidency is too high-stakes for an unstable, polarized, low-trust country. Which is, um, us now
Why can't the President make the FDA, in your example, do what he wants them to do? He is their boss. Yes, it would be preferable for Congress to pass a law telling the FDA what to do, but there is nothing keeping the President from exercising his power over the FDA except public, and really just media, perception (and this has a lot to do with journalists' love and total deference to "experts" and people with Ph.Ds).
I think Matt is making this way to difficult. Readers would be wise to pick up a copy of Charles Mackay's fine book "Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds" (a freebie over on Project Gutenberg). This book was written in the middle of the 19th century and just as apt today (Richard Hoffstadter used a number of the themes throughout his work). A lot of what transpires in both the Fox and MSNBC universes strikes me as delusion building and once people start going down rabbit holes, it's hard to get back to the surface.
There was a good article over at The Atlantic on a family of Democratic organizers, originally from Dubuque IA and their reflections on how a reliably Democratic region flipped. It's well worth reading. Until the Democrats get back to grass roots organizing in a big way they will continue to wander in the desert. Quit complaining, get voters registered and turned out on election day and things will be OK. It's all pretty simple but the high level Dem pols are just as much of the grifter class (in a different way) as the Republicans.
This whole piece strikes me as quite naive (by contrast with the 2015 piece). Where to start? Perhaps the elephant in the room? “ Vance and Masters aren’t going to try to install a monarchy in the United States.” what makes you so sure? Doesn’t history teach us to believe people who say they don’t believe in democracy and want to topple it? Also- are you following the finds of the Jan 6 committee? Are you aware that trump tried really really hard to stay in power after loosing the elections, and that the gop has now effectively cleared house of almost all those who stood in his way last time? What makes you so confident that , should he gain power again he will ever agree to leave? And should he once more refuse that the system will once more succeed in forcing him?
Point #2 your faith in structures as the be all and end all is totally misguided. For generations us was considered as super stable and leading democracy while parliamentary systems all over the world failed. In fact de Gaulle in France demanded the shift to a semi presidential system precisely because parliamentary system was too weak to face the crises of that era. In todays world we see how parliamentary democracies are once more falling and becoming authoritarian regimes in some countries (hungary, Poland?) just as others prove more resilient (uk). It’s just a whole lot more complicated than the simple electoral system. The system makes *some* difference but is not some panacea. The problems of polarization in this country wouldn’t have ended under a parliamentary system and in fact a myriad of new ones you’re not even considering might have emerged.
Lastly, it’s cute you think that the GOP voting for Biden’s cabinet nominations etc means they’re more reasonable now and would be in future. Have you not noticed that they are in the minority in senate now and have no way to block those nominees anyway, so it’s in their interest to support some of them to keep their influence? That in no way proves that once McConnell is majority leader again he won’t decide on blocking 100% of all senate confirmations (in fact that’s precisely the scenario the Biden team was bracing for before miraculous wins in Georgia!)
I’m imagining and the merger between State Street and Credit Swiss being cemented by the marriage by proxy of the 5 year old daughter of the State Street CEO to the 9 year old son of the Credit Swiss CEO.
The reason it's considered bad form for the President to run rough shod over the FDA has nothing to do with Madison. The FDA, or the Fed, for that matter, derives its power from its presumed expertise and the elite consensus that its functions should be handled via technical expertise. In both cases political interference is considered gauche.
A similar dynamic exists, I believe, with many aspects of the NHS in Britain.
The FDA has certainly weakened their claims to technical expertise, but the idea of an overtly political drug approval process hasn't become significantly more attractive.
It may be too obvious to warrant mention, but a corporation can afford to have a monarch/CEO because a CEO is constrained externally by financial and product markets. In the case of public companies, the performance of the CEO is evaluated in a public fashion on a daily basis in the form of the stock price. External factors can also constrain monarchs of course but these constraints tend to be much weaker (see e.g. North Korea).
This is remarkably soft on the complete insanity of that Yarvin quote. Why would we believe monarchy is more common in human history than government by consensus of tribal elders? How are CEOs analogous to monarchs at all? Among the noxious features of monarchy that led the framers of the constitution to forswear it include eligibility by bloodline (often limited to firstborn sons with favored religious views, but somehow open to infants and lunatics) and the inability to fire the incumbent for incompetence. If Yarvin is proposing monarchy but minus that, in what sense in he proposing a monarchy, and in what sense can he claim his preferred style of government is common among governments in history? I kind of suspect that what he really wants is not so much a change in institutions as a change in uniforms, namely for the head of government to wear a fancy hat and be followed around by bishops waving censers or whatever.
Yarvin's point about corporate governance shows a laughable lack of understanding about how organizations actually work, unfortunately common not just among far-right edge lords, but other center-right ideologues, too.
Does Yarvin seriously think that C-Suite roles are filled via inheritance and legitimated via the Divine Right of Kings? Perhaps he's thinking of the second- or third-generations of a family firm? This does seem to be the point-of-reference for Conservatives when they imagine a given business corporation. CEOs of public corporations are far more accountable to the Board and stakeholders (especially activist investors) than any monarch. Which is why they tend not to last very long, which brings me to the next point...
Does Yarvin realize that CEOs, far from representing the stability and continuity of a monarch, have, on average, a lower tenure than a two-term president? We're talking <7 years now, on average, with that foreshortening fast-accelerating. The rest of the C-suite's "reign" is even shorter, with CMOs, especially, washing out faster than even House Members of Congress, with an average term of <4 years. Like many laymen, Yarvin's perception is likely skewed by the survivorship bias of the few especially successful CEOs with 15+ years tenure--much more like a dynastic monarch in a less tumultuous kingdom.
> One of Yarvin’s pet ideas is the notion that democracy is essentially a sham, and real power is held by a network of civil servants, college professors, and NGO workers.
I worry that Yarvin and other right wing “intellectuals” are pulling on a thread with a strand of truth: yes, a small number of liberal/progressive elites hold a disproportionately large amount of sway within our Democratic party. I don’t really get Yarvin’s focus on bureaucrats when right wing populist seem to be having more success focusing on the mainstream media and tech industry.
My particular concern for the Democrats is that our elites’ disproportionate amount of power is particularly visible. In contrast, Republic elites (e.g., Koch, Cato, Manhattan Institute) are only known to political junkies. Further, our progressive elites—particularly in journalism and academia—are engaged in an intra-elite competition to see who can be the most pious progressive by developing and championing ever-more-extreme views. I worry that our highly visible elites will grow increasingly distant from the median Democratic voter (let alone the median voter in general) and this will be exploited by right wingers to pull away voters and possibly risk fracturing our broad coalition.
“The idea that American institutions are in need of radical destruction rather than reform licenses extreme behavior and could easily put us on the path to collapse.”
I don’t want to draw an equivalence here. However, I hear these types of sentiments about our institutions a lot in the circles I run in, and the people expressing them are anything but right-wingers…
Not exactly on target, but what is the story about voting machines? Lots of people write about the assault on voting rights but I have never read anything on voting machines. To me the biggest hurdle to get people to vote is that no one likes to stand in line!
So who determines how many voting machines go to each precinct/district? Are there any laws or regulations that require a certain ratio of voting machines to potential voters? Any laws or regulations on the quality of the machines – they have to work, paper receipts etc.? Who pays for the voting machines – only state and local or does the Fed step in with grants etc? Is there any difference in the ratio of voting machines to potential voters by racial, economic or geographic considerations? How about an article on the subject?
I'm not going to actually read Yarvin's stuff because who has time for an adult that seriously argues for monarchy, but can someone clarify for me, does he actually mean monarchy with some sort of heredity line of succession or just isn't familiar with the terms despotism/autocracy?
It's true we have a system now that nobody would design if they set out to design one from scratch. But it's also true that nobody DID design the system we have now. The main feature of our system that drives gridlock and dysfunction is popular election of the President and independent policymaking in the Executive Branch. And that's not part of the original design -- it's a giant semi-truck that's been driven through a little loophole in the Constitution.
The closest we can get to a parliamentary system without a new Constitution, though it would still require a major constitutional reinterpretation albeit arguably closer to the original intent, is to reimagine the entire Executive Branch, from the President on down, as an impartial, apolitical civil service branch, a executing puppet with Congress pulling the policy strings.
America has been better served by its geography than its political institutions. Our nation was born next to a continent-wide expanse of recently depopulated land inhabited by stone-age natives who could, at best, fight battalion strength actions. This land was much easier to occupy and ethnically cleanse than Schleswig Holstein or Alsace Lorraine. Any continental European state would have been invaded and devoured during the civil war. This almost happened to France, which was massively bigger and more powerful than its neighbors but still barely made it through 1792-93 as a sovereign state.
"In fact, so far the Biden years have in some ways been surprisingly non-contentious — no government shutdowns, a debt ceiling drama that was pretty clearly fake all along, and some bipartisan legislation"
I'm confused- Biden has had a D House & Senate so far, that's obviously going to change soon. Also on the obstructionist front, it's pretty concerning that Republicans were primaried just over having voted for his infrastructure bill. I basically expect Debt Ceiling Craziness, House hearings on Hunter Biden (a legitimately shady character), and an impeachment in 2023-2024. Actually, I'd bet on it.
Anyways, my concern is that we have a specific failure point- the very poor institutional design of the Electoral College system, which makes each swing state winner-take-all. In other words, a few thousand votes can legitimately swing who wins the Presidency, which is godawful political engineering regardless of which country it is. You're asking a lot of election administrators to not find a way to just throw out enough votes to swing the state. Poorer, more corrupt countries than the US successfully do huge elections because a popular vote system just makes election fraud that much tougher- hard to fake millions of votes scattered all over the country, easy to fake thousands.
Anyways, part of the critique of presidential systems is that the actual running for the presidency is too high-stakes for an unstable, polarized, low-trust country. Which is, um, us now
Why can't the President make the FDA, in your example, do what he wants them to do? He is their boss. Yes, it would be preferable for Congress to pass a law telling the FDA what to do, but there is nothing keeping the President from exercising his power over the FDA except public, and really just media, perception (and this has a lot to do with journalists' love and total deference to "experts" and people with Ph.Ds).
I think Matt is making this way to difficult. Readers would be wise to pick up a copy of Charles Mackay's fine book "Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds" (a freebie over on Project Gutenberg). This book was written in the middle of the 19th century and just as apt today (Richard Hoffstadter used a number of the themes throughout his work). A lot of what transpires in both the Fox and MSNBC universes strikes me as delusion building and once people start going down rabbit holes, it's hard to get back to the surface.
There was a good article over at The Atlantic on a family of Democratic organizers, originally from Dubuque IA and their reflections on how a reliably Democratic region flipped. It's well worth reading. Until the Democrats get back to grass roots organizing in a big way they will continue to wander in the desert. Quit complaining, get voters registered and turned out on election day and things will be OK. It's all pretty simple but the high level Dem pols are just as much of the grifter class (in a different way) as the Republicans.
This whole piece strikes me as quite naive (by contrast with the 2015 piece). Where to start? Perhaps the elephant in the room? “ Vance and Masters aren’t going to try to install a monarchy in the United States.” what makes you so sure? Doesn’t history teach us to believe people who say they don’t believe in democracy and want to topple it? Also- are you following the finds of the Jan 6 committee? Are you aware that trump tried really really hard to stay in power after loosing the elections, and that the gop has now effectively cleared house of almost all those who stood in his way last time? What makes you so confident that , should he gain power again he will ever agree to leave? And should he once more refuse that the system will once more succeed in forcing him?
Point #2 your faith in structures as the be all and end all is totally misguided. For generations us was considered as super stable and leading democracy while parliamentary systems all over the world failed. In fact de Gaulle in France demanded the shift to a semi presidential system precisely because parliamentary system was too weak to face the crises of that era. In todays world we see how parliamentary democracies are once more falling and becoming authoritarian regimes in some countries (hungary, Poland?) just as others prove more resilient (uk). It’s just a whole lot more complicated than the simple electoral system. The system makes *some* difference but is not some panacea. The problems of polarization in this country wouldn’t have ended under a parliamentary system and in fact a myriad of new ones you’re not even considering might have emerged.
Lastly, it’s cute you think that the GOP voting for Biden’s cabinet nominations etc means they’re more reasonable now and would be in future. Have you not noticed that they are in the minority in senate now and have no way to block those nominees anyway, so it’s in their interest to support some of them to keep their influence? That in no way proves that once McConnell is majority leader again he won’t decide on blocking 100% of all senate confirmations (in fact that’s precisely the scenario the Biden team was bracing for before miraculous wins in Georgia!)
Sanewashing Yarvin was not the take I expected.
I’m imagining and the merger between State Street and Credit Swiss being cemented by the marriage by proxy of the 5 year old daughter of the State Street CEO to the 9 year old son of the Credit Swiss CEO.
The reason it's considered bad form for the President to run rough shod over the FDA has nothing to do with Madison. The FDA, or the Fed, for that matter, derives its power from its presumed expertise and the elite consensus that its functions should be handled via technical expertise. In both cases political interference is considered gauche.
A similar dynamic exists, I believe, with many aspects of the NHS in Britain.
The FDA has certainly weakened their claims to technical expertise, but the idea of an overtly political drug approval process hasn't become significantly more attractive.