Anarcho-Tyranny 101

Anarcho-Tyranny is defined as "we refuse to control real criminals (that's the anarchy) so we control the innocent (that's the tyranny)."  Here it is in action.

The anarchy:

The 29-year-old man who was found beaten on the front porch of a home in Capitol Hill on Saturday has undergone two surgeries on his brain but his wife said he was able to squeeze her hand from his hospital bed Monday morning.

...

District police have released few details of the attack. They said on Saturday that Maslin was found about 8:30 Saturday morning unconscious on the front porch of a home in the 700 block of North Carolina Ave., around the corner from Eastern Market.

Where is the 700 block of North Carolina Ave, SE?  Eight blocks from the US Capitol Building:

Dunno.  Maybe Fosetti lives near there.  I hope not.  In any case, the police are unwilling or incompetent to keep the streets safe even a dozen blocks from our seat of government.

The tyranny:

PRAGUE, Okla.– There’s a bit of diploma drama going on between a local high school and that school’s valedictorian.

David Nootbaar is furious his daughter’s school is keeping her diploma.

...

Nootbaar said, “Her quote was, ‘When she first started school she wanted to be a nurse, then a veterinarian and now that she was getting closer to graduation, people would ask her, what do you want to do and she said how the hell do I know? I’ve changed my mind so many times.’”
He said in the written script she gave to the school she wrote “heck,” but in the moment she said “hell” instead.
Nootbaar said the audience laughed, she finished her speech to warm applause and didn’t know there was a problem.

That was until she went to pick up the real certificate this week.

“We went to the office and asked for the diploma and the principal said, ‘Your diploma is right here but you’re not getting it. Close the door; we have a problem,’” Nootbaar said.
He said the principal told Kaitlin she would have to write an apology letter before he would release the diploma.

I have a simple solution for this problem.  The good burghers of Prague, OK could round the Principle, Mr. Rick Martin (School Superintendent), and the entire School Board and apply a generous coating of tar and feathers and then run out of town on a rail.

I leave it to my gentile readers to decide the expected lifespan of a private school that took tuition for four years and then refused to give the earned (valedictorian) diploma.  Personally, I wonder if one of Commodore Grace Hopper's nanoseconds is the right visual aid.

Isegoria points us to a good description of why this sort of petty tyranny is so common:

Minor officials prove their status with petty displays of authority, while the truly powerful show their strength through gestures of magnanimity. People of average education show off the studied regularity of their script, but the well educated often scribble illegibly. Mediocre students answer a teacher’s easy questions, but the best students are embarrassed to prove their knowledge of trivial points. Acquaintances show their good intentions by politely ignoring one’s flaws, while close friends show intimacy by teasingly highlighting them. People of moderate ability seek formal credentials to impress employers and society, but the talented often downplay their credentials even if they have bothered to obtain them. A person of average reputation defensively refutes accusations against his character, while a highly respected person finds it demeaning to dignify accusations with a response.


How can high types be so understated in their signals without diminishing their perceived quality? Most signalling models assume that the only information available on types is the signal, implying that high types will be confused with lower types if they do not signal. But in many cases other information is also available. For instance, wealth is inferred not just from conspicuous consumption, but also from information about occupation and family background. This extra information is likely to be noisy in that the sender cannot be sure what the receiver has learned, implying that medium-quality types may still feel compelled to signal to separate themselves from low types. But even noisy information will often be sufficient to adequately separate high types from low types, leaving high types more concerned with separating themselves from medium types. Since medium types are signalling to differentiate themselves from low types, high types may choose to not signal, or “countersignal,” to differentiate themselves from medium types.

The Principal and Superintendent are moderately low status positions - petty functionaries responsible for a couple hundred workers - and not even their workers, since the school isn't their company that they started with their own capital.  The result is that we would expect the displays typical for low status officials - this sort of thing, in fact.

Compare and contrast to the "Superintendent" of a private school, who is very likely to be the owner of the school.  Not only would that person not be so entirely clueless as to the consequences of his actions to his future prospects of prosperity, as a business owner he would likely be considered a medium status official.  His signalling will be aimed at differentiating himself from low status officials.

This is a typically wordy and Borepatchian way of saying that it's all Monkey Brains, anyway.