Martin Gurri’s Revolt of the Public is now available for pre-order. The release date is a few weeks away.
I raved about the first edition of the book. But this edition is bigger and much better. I contributed a brief forward to this edition, but that is not what makes it better. About 20 percent of the book is an entirely new final chapter that interprets recent events.
Because I wrote the forward, I receive an advanced copy. On page 87, he writes,
The fall of the mediators, all other things being equal, means the end of the regime’s ability to rule by persuasion.
This tightly-packed sentence makes a key point. “The fall of the mediators” means in this case the dispersion of power over information as we move from the broadcast era to the Internet era. Governments could mold the narrative with broadcast media. Governments could convey the impression that their authority was legitimate and respected. With the Internet, too much information leaks out about the failings of governments. Thus, they are unable to “rule by persuasion” and are increasingly reduced to relying on sheer force. As a provocative example, Gurri believes that the Chinese government now is more dependent on force than it would be without the Internet.
The book is a masterpiece, in my opinion.
Foreword not forward.
Right. I always mess that up.
“If the seventeenth through the nineteenth centuries were, in many countries of the West, times of accelerating social power, and a corollary increase in freedom, peace, and material welfare, the twentieth century has been primarily an age in which State power has been catching up—with a consequent reversion to slavery, war, and destruction.”
–Rothbard, Murray N.. The Anatomy of the State
The quote from the book you offer and your discussion seem to me to fit quite well with Rothbard’s observation above. The internet and social media offered a bit of a reprieve from the advancement of State power over social power. Recent moves show that the State is once again on the move with the “intellectuals” in the vanguard of speech repression.
It is logical the intellectuals would lead the way as it is their value to, and therefore their sinecures from, the State that is most threatened. If intellectuals cannot fill their traditional roll as “persuaders” and “thought leaders” then the State will find others, or other means, to promote their power.
That so much of the current divisiveness is centered on the universities, students, faculty and those still closely influenced by their college “days” is telling and supports Rothbard’s suggestion in his final footnote on how to push back on State power.
“44Certainly, one indispensable ingredient of such a solution must be the sundering of the alliance of intellectual and State, through the creation of centers of intellectual inquiry and education, which will be independent of State power.”
–Rothbard, Murray N.. The Anatomy of the State
And what centers are more tied up with dependence upon maintaining State power than the Ivies, particularly Harvard and Yale?
” The internet and social media offered a bit of a reprieve from the advancement of State power over social power. Recent moves show that the State is once again on the move with the “intellectuals” in the vanguard of speech repression. ”
Right. The Empire Strikes Back. Social media expression is increasingly controlled and regulated, and when the state cannot act directly, institutions with strong market positions will regulate on behalf of the prevailing elite orthodoxy anyway.
Now, I really liked the first edition and will definitely be buying the new book too. However, I think Gurri overly narows the wide gap between a state that is genuinely perceived as deservedly legitimate and widely respected as such – that is it would have public consent if it asked for it – and one that is perceived as ruling only by “sheer force” – that is, it wouldn’t get such consent.
He seems to indicate that consent can only be manufactured through very subtle means that fly under the radar. But I think the past few years show that some states are mastering techniques of social media monitoring and control that produce a tolerable amount of legitimacy and support, even though most people know that the state is actively molding narratives and shaping news and conversations. China’s provides a good example. Their control over state media, Weibo, and WeChat, the actions of the 50-cent Army, and their new Social Credit system, all tend to create perceptions of consensus and common knowledge, even though people know that these things are going on. Not great, but probably sufficient.
Eventually, and probably increasingly improved by deployment of AI, they will hit on ever more subtle and effective techniques, and other states with similar problems will copy their tools and tactics.
Meanwhile in the West, the original social technologies of heresy, ostracization, guilt by association, and excommunication, will ensure that pressure is applied at the right choke points for the operation of any unregulated channel, eventually snuffing them all out one by one, whenever some inevitable incident occurs that is useful as a pretext. These powers aren’t in the hands of the formal states, but they still exist and are being used by the “social state” that has comparable influence and power and similar interst in creating the perception that their ideology is the product of agreement and consensus instead of artificially constrained expression and debate.
Governments could mold the narrative with broadcast media. Governments could convey the impression that their authority was legitimate and respected.
The strangest thing to me on this is how little are these new governments changing things as I really don’t see huge changes. It is the Revolt of Public but it is all over-stated internet comments. Name one thing Brexit has truly accomplished? Hungary threw out a university and ended woman studies which is borderline trolling. OK, Angela Merkel announced her retirement in 2021 but she will have been in power 16 years which seems exceptionally long time.
Really what significantly changed policy with any of these various strong leaders? What has Trump done significantly?
1) Most of Trump’s changes are minor de-regulations put up by the Obama administration. So the administrations are fighting between the 40 yard lines.
2) With a R Congress Obamacare was not been rolled back and Trump with endangered Republicans are promising to protect Pre-Existing Conditions!
3) Really the biggest thing Trump has accomplished is appointment of conservative judges. A good conservative win but again the policy between the 40 yard line stuff with the courts.
4) We have seen more movement against illegal and legal immigrants but Trump still not going after DACA and border crossing is slightly increasing. (Last point more of job market conditions.) The Wall has not even begun building!
5) Even as anti-Trump, I appreciate his foreign policy as he seems more careful making war than the last three Presidents including first Obama.
6) Oddly enough he is making significant trade issues but I am not sure that is popular.
7) What about Social Security and Medicare which are libertarians goals? I suspect Trump ain’t going after those and will face huge backlash if he did.
So, it is the Revolt of Public but please don’t change a whole lot.
So convince me that this is true Revolt Of Public and not just a bunch of angry Grandpa Simpson reactions. (TBH I think Obama got health care and then he managed the left center after 2010.)
There needs to be better forms of arbitration of political truth to resolve disputed narrative.
“the peasants are revolting, ’cause Louie, you’re pretty, revolting yourself” (Alan Sherman)
The “too peaceful” revolt of Tea Party & normals is being countered by the revolting pro-elite, Dem mass temper tantrums, amplified and supported by elite Dem media and universities.
There is a small revolt, and actual tax cuts — but who is going to feed the starving caravan illegals at the border? The key elite desire that animates most revolt is the semi-open borders of the Dems plus GOPe elite. It paused, but has risen again, and too few GOP folk really want to stop it enough to fund the wall.
The internet, of “free info” in return for ad attention which is monetized, is too easily controlled and converted into instruments of the elite consensus.
The key purpose is for the rich & powerful to get richer and more powerful faster than the poor get richer; and it helps if the really poor are supporting the policies of the rich. A la socialism or other Big Gov’t.
Brexit was an expression of proportional democracy. We can’t Exit, we are a republic with mal-proportioned democracy. Last time we tried an exit we had war. Proportional democracy beats the state everytime because each citizen get their government feedback with the same uncertainty, no one is an official insider.
The EU is state power with no democratic backing, the EU parliament powerless but seemingly better proportioned. The problem we see is the unmasking of unresponsive government. The US government and China’s government cannot respond even if they wanted, the voting channels are not proportioned, information flow too asymmetric.
The battle is about balanced information flow, oligarchs do not like it, they prefer insider barrier to entry, hence the republics have more corruption, more inefficiency in government more bailouts.
Bought the original and because of my respect for Dr. King’s learned wisdom have pre-ordered the new edition. The wide range of examples cited and direct reference to source materials in the first edition made for a great read.
That said, “The fall of the mediators, all other things beiqual, means the end of the regime’s ability to rule by persuasion” would appear to be more a concern for one-party state/winner -take-all quasi-democracies that purport to be representative and democratic but are not in any meaningful sense. My sense from the first time around was that Gurri’s model of the center and the fringe is inapplicable where you have proportional representation and parliamentary forms of government. Gurri sounds a whole lot like Murray N. Rothbard in The Anatomy of a State who could have been commenting on the Jonah Goldberg speech posted the other day: “For this essential acceptance, the majority must be persuaded by ideology that their government is good, wise and, at least, inevitable, and certainly better than other conceivable alternatives. Promoting this ideology among the people is the vital social task of the ‘intellectuals.'”
The Left’s current rage provides a real opportunity to undertake constitutional reform. Maybe midterm results will awaken the Right to the need to adopt a modern system of governance. In the first edition Gurri mocked the EU foundational documents for being lengthy and giving each popular consideration “a chocolate chip cookie” if I remember correctly. But after the Kavanaugh hearing, wouldn’t it make sense to iron out some details in advance so we don’t have to live under 10s of thousands of pages of ever shifting supreme court opinions interpreting our much shorter document?
Anyway, this time around I hope Gurri will look at how so many nations have made significant changes to their constitutions and have reformed their systems of governance.
Looking out into the future, one also wonders how the various digital taxation schemes being cooked up around the world and especially the UK’s recent digital tax initiative are going to impact the online information ecosystem. Taxes just might trim back the influence of the big social media platforms and create an opportunity for the blogs to claw back some influence.