A response to @tjslater 8-1-12

It was brought to my attention that @tjslater (twitter) proposed:
"Theory does not dictate reality, it describes it. If warlordism/instability is a persistent problem in places without governments, and your theory doesn't include this - you have an intrinsically flawed theory. There's no such thing as directed anarchism, it's an oxymoron yet all I hear is 'this is the way it should go'.." http://tmi.me/uw88w


"Theory does not dictate reality, it describes it." I find much agreement with this statement. I'm not sure that I would use the term, "reality", but might substitute "reality" with "that which is empirically verifiable"; if this is what is meant by "reality", then I would have no objections. ["Reality" when used to imply something objective-in-relation-to/independent-of the objects of consciousness, would be to imply something that is not empirically verifiable, and therefore, would be applying a theoretical construct upon "reality" which could not be justified by empirical verification alone, which would imply 'theory dictating reality' and therefore would be self-contradictory.]

"If warlordism/instability is a persistent problem in places without governments, and your theory doesn't include this - you have an intrinsically flawed theory."

I find agreement with a more strict rephrasing of the original proposition, "If a theory of political/ethical/socially-optimal interactions, does not take into account or regard the unethical/socially-detrimental behavior of individual actors, then a theory of political/ethical/socially-optimal social interactions is intrically flawed."

What I would not find agreement with, is the theoretical-identification of empirically/historically verifiable social-interactions of "warlordism" and "instability" as difference in concept, from "government". The original proposition would seem to imply that that which is called "government" (I presume that "government" used here refers to the vernacular usage) is different in kind (requires a theoretical construct to organize and interpret that which is empirically-verifiable) from what the author of the original proposition identifies/refers-to as "warlordism" and/or "instability". Because these identifications require some kind of theoretical framework to make the distinction between "government" and "warlordism", this second proposition fails the qualification of the first proposition; the second proposition requires (or pressumes) a political/ethical/socially-optimal theory in order to make the qualifying identifications. Without this presumption, the statement could be seen as unable to answer the question of, "What if the 'government' in question, enslaves one-third or the population and wages a 'holocaust' against the other third (for which there might be historical-precedents), while at the same time the 'warlord' in question, after gathering a cohort of ruffians, usurped 'power' in a bloodless coup, and enslaves no one, kills no one, and maintains her 'rule' upon voluntary contributions from those who do not wish to see a violent 'warlord' take power?". If one were to attempt to resolve/answer the hypotheticals contained in the prior question, by re-identifying/re-defining the hypothetical's 'government' as 'warlordism' and the hypothetical's 'warlord' as a 'government', then the second proposition would not be meaningful, in that it substitutes arbitrary (if no political/ethical/socially-optimal theory is presumed) definitions; if this kind of resolution was sought, then the meaning of "warlordism" becomes whatever political/ethical/social interactions the subject does not prefer and "government" is revealed to mean, whatever political/ethical/social interactions the subject does prefer, in this case, either the statement is meaninglessly tautological, subjective/arbitrary or it must be presuming some theory by which, what is empirically-verifiable is analyzed and interpreted.