A High Population Density + High Tech Necessitate Different Rules
As societies become more complex, they have more choke points which can be exploited to take away people’s freedom & money
By David Grace (Amazon Page — David Grace Website)
[NOTE: Throughout this column I’m going to talk about a group that includes: wealthy individuals, government bodies, unions, employers, corporations, institutions, cartels, and monopolies. Instead of writing “wealthy individuals, government bodies, etc.” over and over throughout this column, I’m going to collectively call them “Power Holders.”]
More People With More Technology Create More Threats To Your Freedom & Wealth
You have to recognize a fundamental fact of life:
- Individual humans are like atoms of nuclear fuel. Keep them separated and you don’t need much government, but as you compact more and more people into a smaller and smaller space and give them access to higher and higher levels of technology, the more they interact and the number and seriousness of the potential threats they pose to other people’s lives, freedom and money materially increase.
That farmer with a horse-drawn plow who lives a two-hour horseback ride away from your farm isn’t much of a potential threat to you.
The tens of thousands of people with access to high-capacity weapons, explosives and poison gas who live a short plane ride from your apartment building are.
Low Tech, Agrarian Societies Only Fear The King
Other than the government, in 1770 there weren’t any material Power Holders who could seriously threaten the freedom, health and money of people who lived on their own land and grew their own food.
The freedom, health, money and lives of Edmund Burke’s farmers and shopkeepers were not at risk from credit bureaus, insurance companies, huge banks, drug companies, patent holders, cartels, unions, employers or mega-corporations — Power Holders.
For them, the only real, material, human-based danger to their freedom and their money was from the government, which is why 18th Century political theorists were so concerned with restricting the power of government.
Citizens Of High-Tech Societies Are Largely Dependent On 3rd Parties
But, as population density increases, the economy becomes more industrial rather than agricultural, and the level of technology increases
- The number of people obtaining their food and shelter from third parties increases,
- Peoples’ dependence on utilities supplied by third parties increases,
- People’s dependence on transportation supplied by third parties increases,
- People’s reliance on communication services supplied by third parties increases
- The number of people whose lives depended on wages earned from third parties increases
- Many people stop feeding and housing themselves and rely on profit-driven third parties to fund and provide their food, housing, and other necessaries of life.
A High Level Of 3Rd Party Providers Of Vital Goods & Services Creates Economic Choke Points
This increasing dependence by huge numbers of people on money, products and services provided by third parties creates large numbers of societal “choke points,” each of which is subject to the influence of more and more Power Holders.
This has nothing to do with left or right, liberal or conservative.
It’s a fact of life that as systems become more complex, they become more fragile, with more weak spots, and more choke points, each of which exploiters can use to take away people’s money and power.
As a chain becomes longer, the number of links that can fail, can be made to fail, or can be held hostage, increases.
Power Holders Who Control A Choke Point Are A Threat To Your Freedom & Your Money
In the 21st Century the risks to your life, freedom, health and property don’t come only from the government; they come from any of the Power Holders who can exercise some measure of influence over one or more of the choke points for a product or service that is important to you.
Consider the 21st Century’s citizens’ reliance on third-party provided:
- Utilities — electricity, water, sewer, police, fire, emergency medical
- Business insurance
- Medical Insurance
- Credit ratings
- Credit cards
- Business loans and home loans
- Commercial & residential leases
- Prescription drugs
- Gasoline
- Educational services
- Transportation services (mail, packages, airlines, etc.)
- Communications services
- Internet access
- Wages
18th Century Philosophers Could Only See The Gov’t As A Threat
None of these Choke Points or the Power Holders who exercise influence over them were even conceivable by Edmund Burke and his 18th Century farmers and shopkeepers, but influence over these choke points by today’s Power Holders presents a huge threat to the freedom, health and money of 21st Century human beings.
Anarchists will claim that ordinary minimum-wage workers have the real-world ability to keep the banks and insurance companies, credit agencies and pharmaceutical companies from exploiting them. On its face, that claim is totally ridiculous as a look the price of prescription drugs in the United States versus their cost in Canada will quickly demonstrate.
More Extreme Situations Require Different Rules
There is a second fundamental fact of life that you have to recognize:
- When conditions materially change, the old rules/strategies that were used to deal with the original environment either
- >>don’t work well,
- >>don’t work at all, or
- >>actually do harm.
When the velocity of an object increases past a certain point, Newton’s equations produce incorrect answers.
At pressures beyond certain limits, Boyle’s law of gases fails.
Simple contracts that work well for simple transactions quickly devolve into litigation if you try to use them to govern a complex transaction.
The economic and political rules that worked for a sparsely-populated, low-technology, agrarian country don’t work for a densely-populated, high-technology, industrialized country.
An illiterate can grow and harvest corn on his own land.
An apartment dweller requires at least fourteen years of formal education to be able to earn a good enough living to feed himself, buy a house, buy medical care and educate his/her child.
Economic & Government Systems Must Adapt To Changed Circumstances
Simple governmental systems that work adequately in a low-population-density, low-tech society work poorly in high-population-density, high-tech societies because they have no mechanism to deal with
- The massive increase the number of people whose lives are dependent on money, goods and services required from third parties
- The Power Holders and the choke points they control
- The drastically increased cost of training tech workers need in order to earn a decent living
- The drastically increased cost of medical care
- The drastically increased reliance on employer’s paychecks for access to food and shelter
- The drastically increased collateral effects of mass-produced products (plastics, batteries, tires, industrial chemicals, pesticides, heavy metals, carbon dioxide, etc. on
- >>clean water
- >>clean air
- >>clean land
- >>a healthy food supply
Jamming tens of thousands of humans together in a couple of city blocks where they cannot grow their own food, supply their own water, or build their own houses, but rather must live in a common environment over which they have no direct control changes everything about how the government and the economy have to be organized because it changes everything about how much ordinary citizens are able to control their own lives and how much their lives are controlled by profit-driven third parties.
High Tech Amplifies Physical Dangers
In addition to increased population density changing how both the government and the economy work, increased technology increases both the (1) quantity and (2) the severity of the risks to peoples’ lives, health, freedom and wealth from the actions of third parties.
The greater number of Power Holders, the greater number of choke points, and the larger number of people who have access to a greater number of and a greater severity of physical threats creates a much greater level of potential physical harm to a much larger number of people.
In the 21st Century there are many more people with more access to explosives, automatic weapons, poison gas, toxic chemicals, biological agents, radioactive materials and malicious manipulation of the country’s technical infrastructure — electrical grid, water purification, communications, banking, transportation, home appliances, hospitals, medical appliances, etc.
Because of these fundamental increases in population density and technology, the eighteenth and nineteenth century political and economic theories of Adam Smith, John Stuart Mill, Edmund Burke, Karl Marx and the like are largely
- irrelevant to operation of the political and economic systems of the twenty-first century, and
- Irrelevant to the risks to the health, lives, freedom and money of the citizens of high-tech 21st century countries
in the same way that Issac Newton’s seventeenth century equations are irrelevant to operations in the aerospace environment being used in the twenty-first century.
Vastly different environments require vastly different systems tailored to meet their conditions.
It’s really stupid to apply old theories designed for a much simpler society and economy to the materially larger, higher technology and more complicated economy and society that exists today and expect them to produce good results for the majority of our citizens.
— David Grace (Amazon Page — David Grace Website)
