Bind the sovereign: how to do it?
Assuming that stakeholders and citizens wish to bind the sovereign,
“You sink to bind moi?”
… how can they do it? There are lots of things to try:
1. Boycott. Ostracize the sovereign and thus cut him off from necessary services. It worked for the United Farm Workers and Cesar Chavez.
A generation will never think of grapes the same way …
2. Escrow reversal. Have the sovereign pay money up front and recover funds from later performance that depends on the sovereign fulfilling its bargains. See soft debt.
3. Flee. Structure matters so that if the sovereign captures one, all the rest flee. With capital able to move globally at the click of a mouse, this is now a powerful counterforce
4. Hostages. Hold something very precious to the sovereign. Very popular in English-Scottish wars from the time of William the Conqueror.
5. Martyrdom. Gandhi’s trick, often applied to local budget politics: put the most vulnerable out front, to suffer the first funding cuts. (See elderly housing.)
6. Mutually assured destruction. As practiced by John Foster Dulles and others; it ought to work but it sometimes doesn’t.
“Of course, the whole point of a Doomsday Machine is lost, if you keep it a secret*! Why didn’t you tell the world, eh?“
7. Political bulletproofing. Expand your program’s beneficiaries so broadly that it has supporters (and Congressional co-sponsors) virtually everywhere.
8. Pretzel hold. Arrange an automatic financial penalty so that if the sovereign acts to harm the stakeholders, the sovereign is itself hurt. A good example is FHA mortgage insurance, which lead to mark-to-market.
9. Swarm. Have everyone who opposes the sovereign act simultaneously. The U N General Assembly likes this trick.
10. Symbiosis. Structure matters so the sovereign depends on the stakeholders for an essential nutrient (e.g. oil imports), a codependent version of the pretzel hold.
11. Tithe continuously. Make periodic payments in exchange for the sovereign not acting capriciously. (See also income taxes and protection money.)
Since none of these work perfectly, the most common strategy is in fact, all of the above, plus keep your fingers crossed.
“So you’ve got to ask yourself a question,
‘Do I feel lucky?’”
