Political X-Ray Vision
Virtuous political choices should lead to better results for more people. That’s axiomatic. However, political choices often turn on good intentions, not better results. Results lag far behind, and are often forgotten amid the fever of new outrages.
To this we say, the hell with intentions! Only results matter. Good intentions aren’t worth a hill of beans once the dust settles.
Better results occur for more people when human organisms bring to bear more collective intelligence that is informed by more total bandwidth between the people in the organism, who are able to access more data about their circumstances. That more, more, more, more construct describes Decentralized Control, aka dCon or DC. Four mores yields #More4More.
The opposite of DC is CC or cCon. DC & CC are visualized on the Control Axis, aka the Economic Control Axis or eCon Axis.
The ability to discern DC from CC is x-ray vision for discerning the likely results from political proposals. Political x-ray vision is typically applied to social or economic proposals and to socionomic proposals, especially those enforced by political control.
Ten charts tell the story.
Political X-Ray Vision pictorially summarizes the eCon Canon, from eCon 101 to eCon 300. Find the full eCon Canon at the eCon Portal.
People outnumber the socionomic nucleons that lord over them. People are represented as households on the left side of the eCon Scales. Nucleons are on the right side of the scales: GovNukes (governmental agencies), businesses and religions.
Socionomic nucleons exert centralized control (cCon) over people. Some cCon is good, virtuous even. However, most cCon is bad, venal and even vindictive. Mostly, it’s stupid and unnatural, deeply unnatural. It’s stupid because it’s out of balance, as the eCon Scales show. People and their brains and their phones outweigh the collective intelligence of the nucleons in their universe, even if the nukes have almost all the power. This imbalance made some sense pre-iPhone. It doesn’t now.
Axiomatically, socionomic control ranges from centralized to decentralized.
cCon mechanisms include higher taxes, monopolies and bureaucrats, to name a few. cCon results in societal penury, jealousy, helplessness and torpidity. This pattern has repeated itself time and again, recently and long ago.
dCon mechanisms include lower taxes, competition and vouchers. dCon results in prosperity, happiness, empowerment and innovation. The Trump Economy from 2016 through 2019 is an outstanding example, all the more for flowering so quickly and strongly even though not fully implemented. For instance, he never got to vouchers.
This range of control centralization is represented by the fundamental eCon scales known as Economic Control Axes, or eCon Axes for short. The top level eCon Axis is therefore the eCon Axis, since it also applies to non-economic domains like political unions. For instance, democracy is a dCon phenomenon. So, the eCon Axis is also the universal Control Axis.
Control Points (aka Socionomic Nucleons) are denser and often larger on the cCon side of the Control Axis. Examples include the more powerful IRS and expansive EPA favored by Democrats, to name two leviathans and their champion.
The economic systems that dominate economic thinking today are plotted here on the eCon Axis, where they are characterized in eCon terms of electrons and nucleons.
What is socialism? It is a system where government controls much or most property in society through taxes and regulation. To force this on the people, private property rights are minimized. That is socialism.
What is capitalism? It is a system where economic electrons (households) and businesses operate freely, subject to enforced rules of order. Capitalism thrives when private property rights are protected.
Two notes about capitalism:
Capitalism is a center right phenomenon on the eCon Axis. Hence, America has always been a center right country. As a corollary, America has been a successful country because we’re a capitalist country.
Capitalism is predicated on voluntary and orderly agreements between consenting parties exercising their private property rights, so is represented by a handshake.
Electrons include individuals and families. Though families include more than one individual, they are considered electrons because they operate in society as cohesive socionomic units. Well, families ideally operate as cohesive socionomic units, especially while raising children. Plus, healthy families are essential to healthy social organisms.
In practice, electrons can generally be equated to households.
Nucleons are centralized power centers: governmental, business, and religious institutions, often of great power and run by people of elite intelligence. Axiomatically, centralized power centers are few in number, vastly fewer than electrons.
Each particle – electrons and nucleons – has four operating properties.
Data: information available to the particle
Bandwidth: ability to absorb and communicate information via connections and sensors
Intelligence: ability to process data, and to ideate actions and reactions
Powers: purchasing power, legal and taxing authority, commercial power, police and military power, etc.
eCon modeling starts by quantifying the Per Capita properties of the four classes of particles. Thus, this first table quantifies the Per Capita data available to electrons and each class of nucleons, their bandwidth to other particles in the target universe, their intelligence and a monetary representation of their powers. The forms of power vary by particle.
The next step is to characterize the cCon and dCon cases. These relate to the base case by eCon Factors that specify how the per capita properties vary under the cCon and dCon regimes.
Lastly, the En Masse property values of the three cases are calculated by multiplying the per capita values by the population of each particle. Note that particle populations vary by case. For instance, GovNukes are more populous under cCon and less populous under dCon, while the opposite is true of businesses.
X-Ray Vision for Socionomic Policies = Political X-Ray Vision
eCon penetrates the chaotic carapace that encases the people and powers who must operate under any socionomic policy. It does this by focusing on the power, humanity and collective intelligence of the actors in a socionomic organism, including the intelligence-related topics of data and bandwidth available to the actors.
The eCon rule of thumb is that dCon is better than cCon. dCon yields more control for more people than cCon. Why? dCon is natural and open, while cCon is unnatural and hidebound. Hence, dCon leads to more prosperity and happier people.
Political X-Ray Vision judges a policy proposal by how and how much it centralizes or decentralizes control. Centralizing control is often necessary, but comes with a stupefaction cost. Political X-Ray Vision reveals if increased centralization is on the table. If it is, the cost in stupefaction may be justified, or not. If dCon is in store, better results for more people are likely.
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