Sunday, April 12, 2020


Corona Virus, Jars of Jelly Beans and Top Down Government


 It is interesting if you haven’t seen it, how when you take a large group of people and ask them to guess how many jelly beans are in the jar there are wildly divergent guesses ranging from extreme over estimations to extreme under estimations. But if you add the group’s guesses together and create an average, the average is surprisingly accurate. Watch here:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qfh-k9P8ZPI

 Complexity theory addresses diverse autonomous agent systems spontaneously self-organizing into a coherent whole with no overseer or guide like eusocial bee hives or ant colonies (almost a faint hint of intelligent design wouldn’t you agree?- Prv.6:6-10). The more highly complex a system the more exponentially powerful and unanticipated properties emerge.
 Floridians are acutely aware of the emergent weather phenomenon ‘hurricane’ from the seemingly not so powerful and complex ‘air pressure and water temperature’ and the apparently disconnected ‘easterly wave’ from Africa. These self-organized hurricanes are very difficult to predict as meteorologists demonstrate each hurricane season. Floridians might be more attuned to the realization that the experts are many times wrong. 

This brings me to an article critical of the Governor of Florida related to his response to the Coronavirus outbreak. My point is not to analyze a left leaning article from any particular liberal rag, or to defend any particular politician, but to point out the basis of criticism being used to assess politicians score cards on the Covid-19 outbreak response. (* see below) Apparently the more aggressive the response in subjugating free citizens the more virtuous the politician. The greater degree of ‘jack booting’ from ever higher leaders ‘the more obvious it is they love and care for us’. This manifestly is the criteria here for rating governors responses, with California’s governor Newsom at the top and New York’s Cuomo a close second, even the abomination Whitmer of Michigan is near the top. I hope you will not be so incensed at this characterization of the suspending of our bill of rights just yet and not objectively consider what I’m saying. We should be emotionally stable enough to hear someone with an opinion, express an idea and not reject it ad hominem.

 So, the criticism of the FL governor was partly that he didn’t provide enough leadership in instructing the mayors and county officials in what they should do. ‘Obviously’ without top down leadership people in smaller communities can’t self-organize. This is similar to the criticism of President Trump in not taking as an aggressive role over the states. Attorney General Bill Barr in a recent interview (https://video.foxnews.com/v/6148219528001#sp=show-clips) when asked about the suspension of the rule of law and protection of liberties during a pandemic stated (start about 6:30 mark) “One of the things I think the president has done very well here, is to use the strength of the federal system. Where certain decisions should be made in Washington perhaps, but also allowing each state to adapt to the situation that confronts it and make their own choices. And that’s a form of protecting liberty; the federal system is a form of protecting liberty. To have the government closest to the people make those decisions.” Basically the idea “that government is best which governs least” (whoever said it first). This idea echoes French philosopher Charles de Montesquieu on limiting government. Mark Levin’s book Ameritopia has a chapter (ch.8) on Montesquieu and government governing least. He writes “Montesquieu also believed that republican government does not work well over large regions, for the people are too diverse, their interests are too dissimilar, and their connection with the government is too distant.” He proceeds to quote Montesquieu, “It is in the nature of a republic to have only a small territory; otherwise, it can scarcely continue to exist.” (pg.137)

Now the rich heritage of political philosophy should not be expected to reside in any particular epidemiologist per se. Which brings up another facet of top down government of a complex system such as the American society. The reintroduction of the Platonic ‘rule by philosopher kings’ after the Darwinian revolution caused the progressive era zeitgeist (e.g. The Growth of America- Chapter 3, Clarence Carson). The rule by intellectuals and state (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8qhUTH8BLOs ; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7KdQ2P9N8H8) became the new scientific way to govern. Now besides this non-sequitur of ‘because we are evolving, this or that moral system should follow’ (there is no moral ’should’ in science- science identifies what is not what should be), there is the additional ambiguous fallacy of attributing to the parts those characteristics of the whole system. For example ‘this entire building is very heavy, therefore each brick is also very heavy’. Or like mistaking the university for a particular student and thinking ‘because the university of students study a host of disciplines therefore does this student of that university studies all those disciplines’. Or ‘this intellectual in one field of expertise is smarter than the collective whole of individuals in the society’. There is the problem the Austrian school of economics emphasizes with regards to economic central planners being incapable of accurately deciding all the things millions of people do every day in business and personal financial affairs. The jelly beans in the jar might have something to add. Instead of having experts guess how many beans are in the jar we should have a feedback loop from the local populace. Perhaps that government closest to the people can more accurately make decisions for those people. Which is to say maybe universally treading upon God given rights isn’t the best localized response to a crisis. Let’s let state and local governments respond and see what emerges as valuable. This is not a false dilemma of ‘either enact sweeping federal government mandates or let everyone die waiting to get into a hospital’.

 When dealing with such a complex system as our economic and civil union and one begins legislatively poking at it in a grandstanding, virtue signaling manner such as politicians are proficient at, they might be destabilizing the system into a critical state poised for a phase transition that is completely unpredictable and unanticipated. The prudent thing may be to decentralize the decision making to the states, and also the governors allowing local authorities to give more feedback and not propel the country into a critical state by wrecking the economy and lives of its citizens with ‘one size fits all’ mandates from the ‘high and wise overlords’. Who deem it apparently necessary to let criminals out of jail and threaten church goers with arrest. Or who deem liquor stores ‘essential’ but obedience to God in assembling with his saints in worship as ‘non-essential’ and subject to dispersing by the barrel of a gun. (They bear not the sword in vain you say? Churches should consider these ideas here) We better recognize as the people who put these officials (state and local as well) in power, when they manifest their lust for power. We better note them well and remove them from their station at the next voting opportunity. I pray we are not getting what we deserve. (1 Tim.2:1-2)


 Maybe a complex system that self organizes by intelligent design doesn’t need to us to “make us a king to judge us like all the nations”. (1 Sam.8:5) I would guess that when the people of God cease from the Holy Ghost given and first amendment recognized admonition of “Not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together, as the manner of some is; but exhorting one another: and so much the more, as ye see the day approaching.” (Heb.10:25) and draw back in unbelief, God may not be well pleased (Heb.10:38-9). The prophet Samuel was grieved at the people’s request. And “the thing displeased Samuel, when they said, Give us a king to judge us. And Samuel prayed unto the Lord. And the Lord said unto Samuel, Hearken unto the voice of the people in all that they say unto thee: for they have not rejected thee, but they have rejected me, that I should not reign over them.” (1 Sam.8:6-7) This followed with the surrender of liberty for security by the people of Israel (8:11-18). And I fear in our day as in his “the people refused to obey the voice of Samuel; and they said, Nay; but we will have a king over us; That we also may be like all the nations; and that our king may judge us, and go out before us, and fight our battles.” (v19-20) And the people want a strong centralized government to save us from the coronavirus war. (WW2 comparison- https://www.schiffradio.com/bubble-behind-the-virus/ ; https://mises.org/wire/calls-central-planning-covid-19-panic-are-calls-war-socialism-old)


*Apparently the FL Governor and leadership proved the better course:




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