Fractal Control

It's an illusion...

Some may remember, months ago I said this would be the strangest, most contentious election season any of us have lived through.

And it’s weirder than I ever guessed.

And that is okay. I’ll explain why.

This morning, I was having a discussion with a person who will remain unnamed (who gets her news primarily from TikTok and Twitter) about the cost of living and the unfairness of capitalism. I agreed on the first, disagreed on the second, and eventually her argument boiled down to “No one needs a billion dollars! Think of all the people a billion dollars could help.”

My thinking is that anyone who has earned a billion dollars has already helped a lot of people, because behind any billionaire a slew of millionaires was also made; those who helped make the billion happen, and an army of people being paid. I might have gone off about the zero-sum game fallacy, but I wanted to make a point about the danger of fence-peeping.

“How much does someone need?”

“I don’t know, but I work with guys who work their asses off and they can’t afford a modest house and a couple of kids.”

“Okay, but you said no one needs a billion dollars. Does anyone need a million?”

“Close to it!”

“Okay, but let’s drill down. Does anyone need, say, a television? How many? Air conditioning? A swimming pool? A boat? A pickup truck? An RV or a vacation home?”

The conversation started breaking down about then, but my point was made to my satisfaction. Who the hell am I to decide what someone else needs? Never mind deserves. That’s way, way above my pay grade. Yet, here was this well-meaning individual, certain that she holds the moral high ground, ready to jump right in and start redistributing things that have nothing to do with her. She is not the least bit unusual in this regard

I thought about this today when reading about the Trump trial. In a nutshell, a District Attorney (with a plate chock full of local crimes that require attention) took it upon himself to concoct a case of expired misdemeanors that amount to erroneous ledger entries and a never-before-suggested legal theory, get it into a courtroom before a highly conflicted judge, and before a jury predisposed to loathe the defendant. The outcome was inevitable. The defendant was convicted. Of course, he had the chances one might give a black defendant, accused of a crime in a Jim Crow south courtroom before a judge who held office in the KKK and an all-white jury. No honest person believes this case would ever have been brought against someone not named Donald Trump. It wouldn’t have been. (For anyone unclear as to what Trump’s supposed felonies were, here is a primer on the case, from an expert who was not allowed to testify.)

What do these things have at all in common? In each case, someone is trying to direct the outcome and shape the future to the result they, in their wisdom, deems “best”. It isn’t good enough to play the game fair and square and allow the chips to fall. That’s too random. The chips might fall the wrong way! In each case someone decides what needs to be done, that a billion dollars is too much or that someone they dislike should not get a fair trial or open election. Thumbs must be put on the scale. For the greater good, of course.

The road to hell is paved with good intentions.

We all have biases. I’d take it a step further and say that we are all deluded to one degree or another and about a third as bright as we believe we are. I have a hard enough time making decisions that are good for me. Do I need that second bowl of ice cream? Should I golf today or get some work done? Should I go out to dinner or use that money to pay down my credit card balances? I have zero chance of making a good decision for someone else, particularly when it is decided against their will.

Yet humans always seem to try. We’ve all seen it and probably even done it ourselves. We had a parent or relative who disapproved of our choices in girl or boyfriends, the car we drove, where we lived, the career we chose, the music we listened to. We had that neighbor who told us how we should be investing, the best way to get rid of the crabgrass, the color we should paint our house so it fit in better with the neighborhood, how we should vote. We’ve all seen these things. Hell, at one time or another, we’ve all likely been these things.

Now imagine these people, the very same people, had the ability to force you to comply with their wishes? Imagine they just assumed this ability, without any suggestion from you that they could or should? Imagine you were expected to just roll over, because they know better what is right for you than you do.

That is what is happening today. The guardrails our Constitution imposes, that protect us from the busybodies, are being eroded and vanishing. Many are good with this because they approve of the current direction of these controls. But will it still be okay when someone tells you that you can’t do whatever it is you love doing? The subjects your art is allowed to consider? Who you can associate with and what can be said? Many assume the rule making ends precisely where they want it to end, with our choices, not theirs, but that is not how this works. The process of controlling your neighbors is fractal, because someone, always, is certain they know better and has the right idea, and because between any two rules one can always fit another.

In science, a fractal is a never-ending repeating pattern (See Koch Snowflake). Trying to control your fellow citizens is exactly like this. Start limiting people to less than a billion dollars or how they can vote, and before very long someone will be telling you what pets you can have and how you should care for them. This is axiomatic and something we have seen again and again and again throughout history.

We live in strange times, where individuals can decide, unilaterally and willy nilly, that they will not follow or enforce some laws (sanctuary cities?), enforce other laws only upon those they dislike, and invent laws on the fly to make things happen as they believe they should.

Pretty grim picture I draw, but here’s the good news. People in general (and Americans more than most) have a limited tolerance for this sort of bullshit. We all hate to feel like we’re being bullied and eventually we push back. Sometimes, we push back very hard, but things usually don’t get that far. The sort of bullies we see today (on both sides of the aisle), corrupt judges and DAs, pundits, journalists, politicians, bureaucrats, academics, and experts, hold sway only so long as people invest them with power by believing in them. Like Tinkerbell, when the kids stop clapping the end is nigh.

I stopped clapping some years ago, about the same time I understood what is and is not my business, and the list of things that are not my business is huge. What someone else thinks, earns, hopes for, or worships are just the very beginning of that list. More and more people stop clapping every day. It isn’t Atlas that will shrug. It will be the masses watching the puppet show. One by one we will grow bored with those who presume they are our betters, shrug, and turn away.

And the world will keep on turning.

Peace.