the illusory reality of government

I had the pleasure of chatting to an amiable off-duty copper the other night in a pub. From this I learnt quite a nice stat: the population of Hackney is 350,000, and its police force is 900. That is approximately one policeman for every 390 people.

Given that Hackney's population is - despite the best efforts of Broadway Market - hardly the most disciplined in London, this ratio is potentially quite perillous. Imagine that 0.5% of Hackney residents are occasionally involved in something dodgy. If they were to coordinate themselves via Facebook to commit crimes simultaneously, the police would be out-numbered by a ratio of approximately 2:1, notwithstanding their dogs, truncheons and tasers. Given the unlikely event of some shared revolutionary agenda, the police could even be temporarily over-whelmed.

Is 0.5% too high? Maybe, maybe not. I suspect not, but the numbers aren't really the point. What's interesting is that it confirms the Hobbesian account of the modern state as a solution to a game-theoretical problem. As Hobbes understood things, the problem with the 'state of nature' is not that people are innately violent or bad, but that they might be, and it therefore becomes rational to resort to violence sooner rather than later. I know this, and know that you know this, and we are stuck in something resembling a prisoner's dilemma from which we both lose.

The function of the modern state is to break the prisoners dilemma. I encounter you on a dark night. You encounter me on a dark night. We both know there is this thing called 'the police'. It not only becomes irrational for me to attack you, I know that it is irrational for you to attack me. We trust each other to behave peacefully not because the police are present, or even because they might suddenly become present (even in Hackney there is only a 9/3,500 chance of that happening), but because we both know that they exist. A collective action problem is solved.

This underpins Norbert Elias's account of civilisation. The modern state combines with the moral superego to internalise the policing function, to fuse it with rational psychology. Violence in pre-modern societies was unforeseen and distributed. It required the individual to be vigilant and exercise self defence. Violence in modern societies is foreseen and centralised. The individual can estimate the likelihood of suffering violence (from the state) and can adjust his behaviour accordingly. Modern violence functions principally as a calculable possibility, rather than as a disruptive eventuality.

Much of this is also true of the banking system. Underpinned by central banks, banks depend on a collective recognition of the banking system in order to work. Obviously there are principals of banking that shouldn't be broken (as we've kept hearing over the last three months) and capital ratios have to be kept within limits, but only in the same way that Hackney needs a bare minimum of policemen. It is not the function of banks to hold all the money deposited in them, any more than it is the function of a police force to maintain sufficient capacity for violence to control a population. Banking functions thanks to psychological coordination and the construction of a shared reality. I won't withdraw my money because I don't believe you will either. The government's savings guarantee up to £50,000 helps this mutual I-won't-because-you-won't to be sustained. 

Whether the housing bubble could have been foreseen and targetted with monetary policy is a question that I am not qualified to answer. And yet! Capitalism depends on the construction of shared realities in order to function. Of course there need to be guarantees in place (just like the police need their truncheons) but the function of a guarantee is to exist in order not to be employed. Paper money is guaranteed in certain respects... which is why we are able to circulate it publicly without ever questioning  it. How could you possibly specify when asset inflation became a bubble, given that all forms of valuation in a capitalist society are subject to a collective imaginary? How can you distinguish 'herd behaviour' (as the behavioural economists do) when capitalism would be entirely impossible without it?

In this context, you wonder whether the distinction between orthodox and behavioural economics even makes any sense. Without socio-psychological laws inciting us to trust in the shared illusions of modern society, homo economicus would never pluck up the courage to leave the house. Is it any more significant that Robert Schiller predicted the financial crisis on behavioural grounds than that George Soros did on the basis of calculation?

Now apply this back to policing. If the divide between collective psychology and 'reality' is meaningless (because the latter couldn't function without the former), could you have 'bubbles' in the context of crime and security? It would seem logical that you could. As collective confidence in the police rose, so crime would fall, regardless of how many police were at large. Some Robert Peston-like criminal would then examine the figures, notice that there were now only 100 policemen in the whole of Hackney, and point out that the bubble was about to burst. The bubble would then burst, and Hackney would require a vast 'recapitalisation/bail-out' from the state.

Comments

[Phil]

The individual can estimate the likelihood of suffering violence (from the state) and can adjust his behaviour accordingly. Modern violence functions principally as a calculable possibility, rather than as a disruptive eventuality.

Benjamin would disagree:

For law-preserving violence is a threatening violence. And its threat is not intended as the deterrent that uninformed liberal theorists interpret it to be. A deterrent in the exact sense would require a certainty that contradicts the nature of a threat and is not attained by any law, since there is always hope of eluding its arm. This makes it all the more threatening, like fate, on which depends whether the criminal is apprehended.

I think on balance I'm with Benjamin. If coercion is functioning as a calculable deterrent, it's not being held in reserve as the guarantee of law - a guarantee which, as you say, exists in order not to be employed.

[max]

in this context, presumably "vast 'recapitalisation/bail-out' from the state" = sending in the army ...

[Will Davies]

well quite - but then the police would be accused that they were hording security to defend their own police stations, rather than lending it to the public for their own needs, as the government had hoped.

[Rob]

I'm not sure that you're quite right about Hobbes: although I haven't got a copy of Leviathan to hand, when he talks about the causes of disorder in the State of Nature, it looks like it's not just the problem of uncertainty about people's motives that generates conflict, but that people seek power and glory for their own sake. This is central, for example, to Rousseau's critique of Hobbes as having imported socially generated motives into a pre-social situation. Indeed, if people don't seek power and glory for their own sake, it's not quite clear that the State of Nature is a prisoner's dilemma rather than an assurance game: in a prisoner's dilemma, the best pay-off is from defecting when the other player cooperates, whereas in an assurance game, the best pay-off is from mutual cooperation but cooperation is prevented by the fact that the worst pay-off is that from cooperating when the other player defects. Without power and glory, the State of Nature looks like an assurance game since everyone understands that cooperation would be better for everyone but can't trust anyone else enough to do it, and you might, like Rousseau, think that assurance games end in cooperation, of a sort.

I think this has some broader implication, but I can't quite put my finger on exactly what it is. For one thing, it seems to show that it's the fact that people seek socially-constituted goods that generates the need for the state in the first place. I suppose the question is in what way do those socially-constituted goods need to be regulated in order to avoid generate the struggles over their possession that Hobbes describes. Are houses or credit the kind of negative-sum game - where any gain by you is a greater loss by me - that power and glory seem to be in his State of Nature?

[Will Davies]

Interesting, Rob. It sounds like I'm mis-remembering key bits of the argument. Although I do say "it's not that people are innately violent or bad, but that they might be". Obviously there has to be a threatening aspect at large in the state of nature, in order for it to deteriorate in a "warre of all against all". I've obviously forgotten the aspect regarding pride and glory that you mention.

But as I recall, there is still a sense that it becomes rational for all people to engage in violence, regardless of their own temperament. And this derives from the sense of uncertainty as to who is or isn't a (as you point out) vain-glorious threat. I guess I could go and pick up my copy...

[Rob]

Checking, the stuff on glory should be at the beginning of the second part of Leviathan. I think it does make a difference, because the outcome of assurance games depends on people's temperament - whether you're risk-averse or not - whereas prisoner's dilemmas don't - the worst outcome involves cooperating, and the best defecting. But I'm not a Hobbes scholar, or a sociologist, or even an economist, so...

[pete]

You've misunderstood the prisoner's dilemma: then best solution, in the long run, is tit-for tat (cf wikipedia, which has a big section on this). So when I meet you in a dark alley, the rational stratergy is for me to not attack (but if you attack, then I should retaliate). However in the real world, Jeremy Clarkson is such a big oaf that when he meets Richard Hammond in a dark alley, Clarkson will win on size. The role of the state, then, is to ensure that we all have equal retaliation, i.e. to enforce the logic of the prisoner's dilemma (not break it).

Socialism: it's about helping the little guy stand up for himself; think otherwise and you end up on some authoritarian bender.

[Rob]

That's certainly not how Hobbes describes the State of Nature, where he is fairly explicit that everyone poses a threat to everyone else. Nor, it strikes me, is it a particularly sensible description of the rational thing to do given the pay-offs likely in (Hobbes' version of) the State of Nature. It's not very sensible to rely on a strategy which depends on iteration in a situation where a) you have no guarantee you'll meet your current potential cooperator again and b) the likely cost of cooperating when the other person defects is death. A better way of putting Pete's point seems to be that appropriately iterated prisoner's dilemmas become assurance games, because the iteration alters the pay-offs.

[Phil]

I think you're misremembering Hobbes, Rob. From Chapter 13:

if any two men desire the same thing, which nevertheless they cannot both enjoy, they become enemies; and in the way to their end (which is principally their own conservation, and sometimes their delectation only) endeavour to destroy or subdue one another. And from hence it comes to pass that where an invader hath no more to fear than another man's single power, if one plant, sow, build, or possess a convenient seat, others may probably be expected to come prepared with forces united to dispossess and deprive him, not only of the fruit of his labour, but also of his life or liberty. And the invader again is in the like danger of another.

He mentions 'glory' as one reason for aggression, the others being greed and fear ('diffidence'):

in the nature of man, we find three principal causes of quarrel. First, competition; secondly, diffidence; thirdly, glory.

The first maketh men invade for gain; the second, for safety; and the third, for reputation. The first use violence, to make themselves masters of other men's persons, wives, children, and cattle; the second, to defend them; the third, for trifles, as a word, a smile, a different opinion, and any other sign of undervalue, either direct in their persons or by reflection in their kindred, their friends, their nation, their profession, or their name.

[John Morton]

Is this another love affair with the "war of each against all", or, just another Common Purpose for social engineering.

Either way, it stinks.

[William]

You've totally lost me there, John