Who watches the watchers?
Well, naturally the watcher watchers watch the watchers.
Who watches the watcher watchers?
Well, naturally the watcher watcher watchers watch the watcher watchers.
Who watches the watcher watcher watchers?
Well, naturally the watcher watcher watcher watchers watch the watcher watcher watchers.
There are some brilliant socialists out there. There are some who focus, like I do, on the abstract concepts. But there are some who really delve into the nitty gritty of tax policies and corporate structure. And I’ll be honest, I can’t really refute it at that level of detail. It’s obviously very well thought out and I hope it all works out. But I doubt it.
For an economic entity to exist, it needs two things: enough honesty and enough power. The economic entity exists only to serve a purpose, and if it doesn’t have enough honesty, it fails to serve that purpose and collapses in on itself. But if it doesn’t have enough power, something more powerful will take it out.
Unfortunately, due to the unfair nature of the universe, there’s an inverse relationship between an entity’s honesty and power. The less powerful, the more honest it needs to be just to exist, but as soon as something more powerful comes along, it’s wiped out. But the more powerful, the more compromises in honesty are necessary to generate growth and the more dishonesty can be sustained before the entire entity disintegrates.
Socialists are obsessed with power. These tax policies and corporate structures they design make for extremely powerful entities, entities that will simply bulldoze over any capitalistic entity that stands in its way. And I cross my fingers that they can maintain their honesty with no competition and only oversight from the People, but here’s what I worry about:
The socialists design their systems, notice the errors, add systems to account for those errors, and continue adding system after system to cover error after error until they can’t find any more errors. Then they step back, imagining themselves as the watcher watcher watcher watcher watchers. But they’ve made the system so complex that the People don’t know what they’re watching for, so the socialist looks at the corruption among the watcher watcher watcher watchers dumbfounded that the People haven’t called them out on it. Then they realize the obvious solution. We just need watcher watcher watcher watcher watchers, and then the People just need to watch them.
I agree that the People need to be the ones that hold all the power. But the People have lives to live. They can’t all become experts on tax and business law. So if we want them to be the watchers of the tax and business systems, we need those systems to be simpler, not more complex.
But like I said, I think about these things in abstract terms. When we get into the nitty gritty, the brilliant socialists are probably right. We can’t make things that simple. Because the people who make things complex but a little less honest will bulldoze us. And it won’t be much consolation when they inevitably collapse under the weight of their dishonesty.
