A Brief Note From The Doylist Perspective

So, saw an addition to the verse’ trope page today:

Libertarians In Space: Examined. The central setting, the Empire of the Star, is portrayed as a libertarian Utopia, where respect for liberty and personal choice is balanced by an admirably cheerful general attitude of voluntary civic-mindedness. On the other hand, it’s mentioned that there are plenty of outliers outside Imperial space where a narrow, dog-eat-dog, almost Randian interpretation of self-interest is practiced; it’s implied that these are not nice places to live at all, especially if you can’t afford decent protection services.

Well, now. To pick a nit or two…

While this is generally accurate – in any form of governance, it turns out, people are a problem¹ – and while it’s bad form, I’m told, to edit Word of God entries onto one’s own trope page, the author would beg to point out that he believes that the locals (after being provided with the appropriate literature) would probably point out that they are practicing something relatively close to a Randian interpretation of enlightened self-interest, and really, can’t these bloody Earth-monkey [pseudo|anti]-objectivists get anything right? Haven’t they even read Effective Selfishness² [Aral Harran, pub. 7222, Clue KEW Press]? (Of course, they’d probably interpret that wrong, too.)

1. With apologies to Douglas Adams.

Also 1. If you’re an Imperial libertist, an Earth libertarian, or an anarchist anywhere, you would probably add the corollary that the problem only gets worse if you let people be in charge of things, and also people. If you’re anything else, your mileage may vary.

2. A book which points out, for those who haven’t guessed already, that similar to the alchemy which transforms effective Evil Overlords into mere Unpleasant Accountants, that it’s mathematically demonstrable that you maximize your own personal return through cooperation, niceness, active reciprocal benevolence, and only punishing defectors. That’s optimal selfishness.

Your “nasty defectors” are screwing themselves over by sticking to a particularly idiotic local maximum that’s far, far below this in terms of productivity.

(This is why the typical Imperial critique of people the rest of the galaxy sees as greedy tends to be less “you evil plundering greedheads” and more “man, you suck at greed”.

And now my head is going to be full of Gilea Cheraelar lecturing Donald Trump on how he is basically a complete and utter failure in this respect and a disgrace to the good name of plutarchy, so, um, thanks, brain!)