Plenarchy?

Posted on January 19, 2012 by peterstone

Is anyone here familiar with the idea of plenarchy? This proposed political system apparently makes use of sortition. See–

http://plenarchist.wordpress.com/2012/01/10/keeping-the-sortition-process-honest

FWIW, I am not personally very enamored with the fact that this system seems to place personal choice (a literal “social contract”) at its heart. I think it is a dangerous mistake to think that any political system could ever by voluntary (although I do believe that political system owe those who live under than an explanation for the way they handle things).

Filed under: Sortition |

2 Responses

keithsutherland, on January 19, 2012 at 8:18 pm said:

It would certainly be a change to have a social contract with some signatures on it, but I suspect this is just a libertarian fantasy. Hans-Herman Hoppe goes into the sort of secession that would be needed to make this a reality in Democracy: The God That Failed, but I imagine he would view Plenarchy as insufficiently anarchic for his taste.

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Yoram Gat, on January 20, 2012 at 7:22 am said:

I like how you put things, Peter. Having a rational social system is one thing, a social contract is a very different thing.

A contract assumes a pre-existing state of affairs which the contract amends. But how did we get to that state? Is that also arrived at via a contract? Is it contracts all the way down?

In particular, BTW, this applies to systems of “rights” (and in particular “property rights”). It is one thing to claim that a certain system is useful, another to claim that it is natural and that its amendment should require the consent of those whose “rights” are violated.

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