The Opposition

Matchism will be opposed by many individuals and groups, and most of them will have good reason for doing so: By distributing power among all of The People matchism reduces the power available to those who currently hold it. Matchism is not a consensus or consent-based decisionmaking philosophy, however, so the majority will rule. When the majority of The People (neurotypicals) make the decision to switch to matchism and then use The System to implement it, those who currently wield power will just have to accept this new way of doing things.

Matchism will generally be opposed by authoritarians and other conservatives. Worse, they will most likely attempt to marginalize anyone who expresses an interest in matchism, probably by accusing them of treason or sedition. Please pay no attention: This just what they do. Matchism can only be adopted by majority vote of The People, a vote that will simultaneously invalidate any existing government. Therefore, although it is a subtlety that authoritarians may fail to grasp due to their generally weak ability to apply logic in the realm of moral decisionmaking, this proposal is explicitly only to develop a system capable of replacing our current governments, and not an actual plot to do so over the objections of the population.

There are several other features of matchism that will make it possible to circumvent opposition from conservatives:

  1. The System, because it relies on new technology, will be harder for most conservatives to use effectively because they are generally reluctant to accept new things in general.
  2. The System will be designed to make it difficult for authoritarians to screen out points of view that conflict with their own, or to maintain their delusions that their positions are somehow in the mainstream.
  3. As concepts in matchism begin to gain traction, we will see a shift in the authoritarian position to actually accepting matchism: Remember, authoritarians are more motivated to enforce group harmony than any particular ideology. As soon as matchism becomes a majority position, authoritarians will begin to consider it the status quo and will work to marginalize the non-matchist. It will be a delicious irony when the SDAP leaders and followers in one country start accusing the leaders of another country of being SDAP and therefore unfit to govern.

Matchism will generally be opposed by the wealthy and powerful, who will use a variety of arguments against it, most of which will boil down to some derivative of “divine right”, the concept that the wealthy and powerful have been chosen by God for that role. It has been used by monarchies since the dawn of civilization as a tool to keep the neurotypicals from overthrowing them: To act against those in power is to commit blasphemy and risk retribution from God. Any such act can also therefore be punished by the rulers themselves with the implication that they are just doing God’s will. The modern form of “divine right” is that the wealthy and powerful somehow deserve their status because they worked harder or smarter or are somehow imbued with genes from their successful ancestors that render them especially qualified to hold these positions. Of course none of these claims have any scientific evidence to support them, and in most cases the wealth and power actually accrued to them via luck  or indeed directly via inheritance of capital, or at least “social capital” (business contacts, legacy admission to universities, etc.). On average they are doing no better with their inherited money and power than would someone else chosen at random, at least someone raised in the same high-SES environment (this process as described in Gladwell’s Outliers). So, not only did they not earn these things, but by working to preserve or extend their power they are effectively depriving everyone else of its use. All this being the case, it is not unreasonable to expect them to do a certain amount of belt tightening as part of the process if necessary.

As for the characterization that the wealthy and powerful have gamed the system to acquire these things, it’s not just them, most of us are doing the same thing, or planning to. The classic example is that in the US both Social Security and Medicare have been sold to the American People as some sort of insurance or forced savings programs and yet pay out far more in benefits than they take in. Both systems are relying on deficit spending and increases in population to compensate for this fact, an unsustainable practice (indeed if populations ever start to decrease the entire Ponzi scheme will collapse in relatively short order). Under this framework seniors have therefore been stealing from the young (including future generations), and most middle-aged people (which of course includes most of the wealthy and powerful) are assuming that they will be able to do the same. It was simply dishonest behavioral engineering (i.e., incompetent social engineering) to have sold Social Security this way because it doesn’t work like that either in theory or in practice. Fixing this will require restructuring the systems and re-educating the population as to their purpose (establishing a floor income) and how they actually funded (directly through taxation rather than as “savings” or “insurance” programs).

A similar situation exists with respect to national debts, the practice of “borrowing” money to finance expenditures that we can’t afford. Clearly we have no intention of ever paying these debts back or we would have arranged a payment schedule and stuck to it. Since we haven’t, national debt can only be considered theft from future generations. The wealthy and powerful, and indeed the middle class, may object to being required to set up a payment plan to have to repay this money (i.e., their taxes are going to go up), but it is not reasonable to just pretend this problem doesn’t exist and go on not solving it. Note that this is not a “balanced budget” amendment or other superficial attempt at a fix: At times it may be necessary to allow deficit spending to compensate for economic slowdowns. But in the long term, budget surpluses that result in debt being repaid must become a component of The Will Of The People.

But both of the preceding are small-potatoes examples compared with the far more important issue of resource extraction and consumption: A large percentage of the wealth and power in the world today has been derived from the rapid extraction and consumption of non-renewable resources (some aspects of this “consumption”, such as species and habitat loss and impending climate change being merely collateral damage in this process). As such, it represents unfair and selfish enrichment, if not outright theft, of those resources from future generations, who will necessarily be relatively impoverished for not having access to them. The finite limits of these resources will also eventually lead to social and economic instability as we reach them: Raising today’s living standard by sacrificing tomorrow’s has been a very effective social stabilization technique (The People are far less likely to insist on revolutionary change when their bellies are full) but when those resources start to run short so too will the social stability they have provided.

A common argument will be that by distributing power and wealth more evenly that the wealthy and powerful will necessarily have less of it. While this may be true for power, which is a relative quantity, for wealth itself this assumes that civilization is a zero-sum game (i.e., for every winner there must be a loser), an assertion which has been proven to be false. Indeed by removing the parasitic load of “national defense” and most of the enormous waste from government corruption and inefficiency, matchism allows for everyone, including the currently wealthy and powerful, to gain wealth with only a small number of SDAPs having to give up some of their power: Yes, it is possible for everyone to win or to at least come out far ahead of where they’d be if we don’t implement matchism.

Matchism will also generally be opposed by special interest groups who have worked out sophisticated methods of gaming our existing systems, particularly churches, charities and non-profits, unions, lobbyists, and any organization that engages in rent-seeking behavior. This opposition should be of little consequence, however, the theory being that if individuals are required to vote as individuals rather than as components of political parties or other “tribes”, and if they are presented exactly the information they need to make optimal decisions, that they will put aside their biases and prejudices and vote more rationally than they are able to now.

Next: Conclusion