Chapter 5. Is it the road to Anarch-Capitalism? Chapter 6.
This gradual decline of nation-states' power and their raison d'etre has become a negligible trend in this world. This diversification of politics is like a revolution replacing the political status-quo with an alternative. Unlike various political revolutions of socialism, fascism, and anarchism (Such as in Catalunya, Spain) seen in 20th century, this economic political diversification is far less violent and its process is slow, gradual, and even relatively unrecognisable. This new form of economic political diversification is a transition to the laissez-faire.
There are three types of political-structure which are dictatorship, democracy, and laissez-faire. In economics, these three are represented as command-economy, mixed-economy, and pure free market economy accordingly. Both anarchy and free market economy are based on the philosophical principle of the laissez-faire which is directly translated as "Let you do". This philosophical type encourages individuals to follow the flow of spontaneous orders without an intervention by any authority to artificially correct the flow. It assumes that none can be perfect to determine what is truly right and predict the future outcome correctly. It expects individuals to be capable and rational to choose and act by means of their free will, and the natural interaction of individuals without any autocratic intervention by an artificial collective force eventually induces an optimum outcome securing stability and prosperity.
Dictatorship and command economy are based on the complete scepticism about the laissez-faire as they support there needs to be an autocratic figure who is in charge of stabilising politics and economy suffering from the conflict of interests among individuals. Democracy and mixed economy claim the free flow of the laissez-faire requires an occasional autocratic intervention as the means of error correction as the laissez-faire is desirable but not perfect. Nation-states' government have been functioning as a driving force of either dictatorship=command-economy or democracy=mixed-economy. However, the gradually declining power of nation-states described in the previous chapters eventually leads the entire world economy and politics to the laissez-faire.
Anarchism is an extreme form of laissez-faire which does admit any authority like not only nation-states' government but also rational authorities of both judicature and private corporate governance. The origin of anarchism was invented by the idealism created by the Romantic movement which regards highly of establishing an utopian politics of altruistic individuals living in a harmony and philanthropy. The counter-force is political realism which is sceptical about the altruistic cooperation of individuals without being egoistic and power hungry stimulating a conflict of interests. Then, political realism regards highly of the necessary existence of authorities forcibly intervene to prevent the conflicts.
The currently growing global capitalism looks weird in terms of this economic political model because it contains the characteristics combining both aforementioned political idealism and realism: The economic political structure is flat and there is no particular authority fully controlling it meanwhile there is a function mediating the conflict of interests among individuals. The sovereign explained by Hobbes, the remarkable political realist philosopher, in his Leviathan is supposed to be either a single human or an artificially created congregation of individuals. Nevertheless, the market force grown by the expanding economies of scale has already become significantly powerful enough to influence individuals' action patters.
The anti-capitalist conspiracy theorists presume these corporate elites plot to establish their new world order conducted by their leading world government. But, by means of the real economic and legal environment, this is an excessively costly, and it is less likely to be necessary. These conspiracy theorists tend to assume that laws are purely created by the powerful minority elites for their own interests. By contrast, it is extremely difficult to enforce majority individuals to obey this law without fulfilling their interests because it requires the system watching and correcting every subjected individual living under this order all the time.
Law is a form of instruction guidance for all subjected individuals living in a functional order, and it takes account of individuals' desires and natural characteristics influencing their action patters. So, unlike the conspiracy theorists' presumption, law takes account of individuals' custom to instruct individuals to maintain their social order without an intense authoritarian control. The market force itself is a law which spontaneously influences individuals' action patters by providing rewards and punishments for the consequence derived by their actions. As this market force is growing under the ongoing expansion of the global capitalism, the element of this spontaneous law becomes more and more significant in individuals' life.
Moreover, unlike nation-states' government which is plopped up by an involuntary tax contribution from their citizens, private corporate elites need consumers and investors to voluntarily pay the price for goods, services, and financial gains from these corporations. So, these big corporations and their elite executives can be bankrupted when they lose their consumers and investors or commit some injustice reducing individuals' happiness so that these corporate elites always under the pressure of sustaining their businesses and acquiring trust from majority individuals.
Unlike the classical anarchism, this new emerging form of anarchism will remain the public sector in order to preserve the necessary existence of judicature and its rational authorities as an intermediary of fair consistent judgement. These rational authorities in judicature must not belong to any of private enterprises because they have to be neutral to any conflict of interests among individuals. Furthermore, in order to maintain the stable order for the global business interests, the interests for and the benefit to majority mass will be cared because the influence of majority mass on both economy and social policy is strong. Therefore, the fair independent branch of judicature will be preserved even after the end of nation-state.
All in all, the law and order in the post nation-states era becomes more spontaneous than it used to be, and there is no single sovereign directly controlling this order. The key elements of maintaining law and order are the market demand, happiness/utility of majority individuals, and the constraint of available natural resources. Because of the rapidly developed and globalised information technology, it has become easier to know what is demanded and what is available to supply and detect any mischief of individuals. So, individuals are more required to become rational enough to take the others' opinion into account while they attempt to maximise their utility. The influence of sympathy and antipathy will be furthermore exaggerated and this will affect individuals' will more than before.
Individuals' motivation to maximise the utility and gaining sympathy will be restricted under the inevitable limitation of natural resources. So, the incentive of repressing the population growth and the other environmental conservation issues and will be still considered as the negligible factors. As the traditional norms and the universal values disappear, individuals are literally free to do whatever they want under the constraint. This constraint is the natural barrier which is the measurement of how much the earth is capable to afford the natural resource supplies for individuals' economic and personal life activities.
In this new era of the end of nation states, the individuals' sensation will be more important measures of social justice as the universal value is no longer worshiped as the universal doctrine to follow as the principle of social justice. Then, individuals' honest subjective sensation such as pleasure and pain will be the measure for the social justice, and law and legislation will be based on the calculus taking account of how these individuals react on by means of their honest sensation without any abstract value in social justice.
Bentham's word "The greatest sum of pleasures with the lowest sum of pains is the principle of moral and legislation." will prevail all the more. This is a bodiless sovereign with an invisible hand regulating individuals' will and action with the aggregate demand under the constraint of individuals' antipathy and the supply limit of natural resources.
* Small remark for my Project1:
This is my original political compass based on various groups of civilisation and religion. Although the top spectrum of political ideology is not quite technically identical to the current world movement toward the end of nation states, both share the similar characteristics together. The positive law based on the spontaneous order can be explained by the market mechanism derived by individuals' desire, sympathy, and antipathy and the supply limit of natural resource by means of the legislative measure. The normlessness of the end of nation states can be seen as the extended secular-liberalism by means of the judicial measure.
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