Theories of History

[ndrosen]

Thirty-five or thirty-six years ago, a one-off sf convention, Hostigos, was held in my home town of State College, Pennsylvania, where I was at that time a graduate student. It was the first con I ever attended, and I got to meet Hal Clement, Jerry Pournelle, Roland Green, and others. Among the swag which I acquired was an issue of SFWA Bulletin with an article by the great Poul Anderson. Anderson had been influenced by the historical theories of a scholar named John K. Horde, and had, I believe, adjusted the timeline of his Technic future history to fit Horde’s ideas.

In that article, Anderson summarized Horde’s theories (Horde seems never to have published a work setting them forth in full, although the keeper of the Poul Anderson Appreciation blog once included a link to an article by Horde). Briefly, a society begins in free growth, but then makes a bad decision at some point, which begins to poison it. This does not lead to immediate catastrophe, and the society’s brightest achievements may come while its roots are decaying and future disasters begin to loom. It remains possible for the bad decision to be revisited, and the path to catastrophic failure to be rejected, but as time goes by, this becomes increasingly difficult. Horde had a specific length of time, I think 125 years or something like that, from choosing the wrong path to catastrophe.

Anderson wrote, emphasizing that this was his opinion and not necessarily anyone else’s, that the United States had gone wrong in 1913, which was when we got the Federal Reserve Board (to blame for inflation), the income tax, eroding liberty and privacy, and the direct election of Senators, eroding the concept of a federal republic. This, he wrote, meant that we had until possibly 2038 to fix things, but that reversing course would become harder and harder.

I do not insist that Horde was right, or that Anderson was, but current circumstances do seem to fit the hypothesis disturbingly well. We face huge deficits and looming financial catastrophe, which neither major party is serious about addressing. The president-elect is grossly unfit for public office, and the Democrats do not offer good policy alternatives. Both Biden and Trump have sought, and in Trump’s case, very much seek, to govern by fiat rather than by persuading Congress to pass legislation; this is the path to Caesarism.

I would add that the Sixteenth Amendment, giving us the income tax, marginalized Georgism, which had been very much a part of the political conversation. Many Georgists had supported the income tax, on the grounds that income taxes on the rich largely fell on income from land rents, so the income tax was far preferable to tariffs as a source of federal revenue. However, the income tax ended up taxing the rich and the middle class on income from wages and capital, and land value taxation largely vanished from mainstream discourse.

I would also add that whether or not the direct election of senators was to blame, the power of party machines was eroded, making it possible for go-it-alone political entrepreneurs like Trump to get elected. Democratic and Republican Party machines may not have been staffed by angels, but they did mostly manage to impose some discipline on politicians, and assure that someone like Henry Ford (infinitely better as an automotive engineer than as a political thinker) could not become President, despite a substantial segment of the public wanting him.

So we may have a dozen or so years to get the United States on a very different track, against immense obstacles. Some Americans may prefer to immigrate, but the prospects of freedom throughout the world may be poor if the United States collapses, or becomes a cynical authoritarian power. Agitate, or flee, or try to find some local community which can escape the worst consequences of national crisis, and live half there, half inside one’s own head, trying to pass on one’s ideas and an analysis of what went wrong. I have taken an oath to support and defend the United States Constitution, and will do what I can, while it remains possible. “The giants and the trolls win. Let us die on the right side, with Father Odin.”

Comments

[selenite0]

I don't think the decline is the result of "one bad decision" as much as a gradual accumulation of parasites and loss of the ability to get rid of the parasites. So income tax, corporate welfare, social security, etc. etc. are all sapping the strength of the country.

[ndrosen]

Well, there were parasites in the old days of Tammany Hall, when people paid hundreds of dollars to become policemen, and thousands of dollars to become judges, and not just to collect their official salaries. No doubt you’re right that it wasn’t just one bad decision, but other bad decisions were downstream of an original set of bad decisions. Georgist tax reform at least might have averted the Great Depression, or made it less severe, and then there might not have been so much of a perceived need for the federal government to do something, which turned into a number of questionable somethings, and set the stage for further expansions of government under Lyndon Johnson and his successors, until now neither the Democrats nor the Republicans are even pretending to run on fiscal responsibility and limited government, but merely arguing over who should receive plenty of largesse from the government, and which side the administration should favor in various culture wars.