I’m starting to notice a tendency towards high time preference thinking in right-wing authoritarians. When they argue for authoritarianism, they will use an example of a bad (real or hypothetical) and then bring up an authoritarian state as the solution. They give no thought to the long term concenquences of such a policy. All they care is that they will get immediate gratification because they will be the victors in the current thing.
To give you an example, see this video (5:33)-(6:06)
Here the authoritarian gives us a hypothethetical bad thing and his solution is to give the state the authority to force people from doing this specific bad. In this case the immediate bad is averted, however, no discussion is had as to what do we do now that this precident has been set. Here I see two options,
- the right is just so naive about power that they actually think that there is no way that this could backfire
- they are politically thinking in a high time preferance mentality. They simply don’t care about the future because as a gay pedophile once said, “in the long run we are all dead”
I think that it is likely a mix between these two. The right has seen them being beated down heavily by the very institutions that they supported. But rather then reconizing their own failures, they have doubled down on this lunacy. Thus this incredibly naive thinking that if we only voote hard enough, then the right guy will get into power and everything will be fixed. What I find funnily enough is that this is labeled “realism” and “the reality of power/politics” when its clearly the furthest thing from reality.
So then, what do I think is the low time preferance solution? Politcal decentralization. There will always be power. The right tries to make this argument that libertarians believe that power can simply go away. I do not deny that there will always be power. The leap they make is that because power always will exist, we therefore must centralize that power. What utter nonsence! Instead we should seek to decentralize power to that of local communities. As Hans-Hermann Hoppe said,
“Don’t put your trust in democracy, but neither should you trust in a dictatorship. Rather, put your hope into radical political decentralization, not just in India and China, but everywhere.”