Theme: Governance

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LiberalismWHAT IS A LIBERAL?

(Seriously)

1) Liberalism: The democratic republican model of political institutions that arose out of the enlightenment – Locke ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberalism ) Free Markets, Private Property, Enfranchisement of the middle class. This is the pleasant definition. It could also be defined as the ideology that justified the seizure of political power, and political institutions by the middle class, as trade expanded, wealth expanded, and therefore the economic power of the landed, agrarian, aristocracy was dramatically reduced.

HISTORY

During the 1800’s In reaction to the industrial revolution, the lower classes became consumers, and sought and were enfranchised because of the labor, communist and socialist movements, and the introduction of women into the voting and work force.

The ‘Liberal’ movement broke into two branches. a) “Classical Liberal”, which favored limited government, and as such was ‘conservative’ and b) “Social Democrat” which incorporated the ideas of the socialists and communists and favored a mixed economy that combined the state and private property, and as such was ‘progressive’.

While technically speaking a ‘liberal’ means a ‘classical liberal’, and therefore a ‘conservative’ the left intellectuals intentionally adopted and promoted adoption of the term ‘liberal’ as a self-identifier in order to use a term that was more tolerable than ‘socialism’ and ‘communism’ which were not acceptable in the united states. In Europe, where states are smaller and more homogenous, and where there is a history of aristocracy, these terms, especially post-war, are not seen as negatively, and “liberal’ maintains it’s original meaning – the opposite of how its used in the United States. And this is both a source of humor to intellectuals and confusion to average people.

Today, a “liberal” means a “social democrat”. But what does a “social democrat” mean? To understand that requires we understand Aristocratic Manorialism, Liberalism, communism and socialism.

MODELS

1) Aristocratic Manorialism, is the ownership of property by the aristocracy, and this property is then rented out to everyone else to work on, and farm, or build shops.

2) Liberalism is the individual ownership of property by individual farmers, craftsmen and merchants.

3) Socialism is the ownership of property by the state, and individuals are directed by central planners to do the work that is planned for them. Of course, this led to black markets, poverty, dictatorship, and the death of 100M people. Socialism was the greatest tragedy ever to befall human beings.

4) Communism is the theory that after enough socialism, private property will disappear because it will, supposedly, become unnecessary.

Unfortunately what we found out is that money, prices, and private property are necessary both to make use of dispersed knowledge, to make use of it in real time, and to provide people with the abilty to make plans, and for people to possess the incentives to make plans. The whole world has adopted capitalism (private property, money, and prices) for these reasons.

5) Social democracy is the ownership of property by the state, which is then lent out to people for use as private property. Then people are allowed to keep some portion of the income themselves, and the rest is captured by the state in the form of taxes for use by the state. This model then maintains the money, prices, incentives of classical liberal private property, and does not fall into the problem of the impossibility of planning and the impossibility of the incentive to work, but it’s still possible to take money from people after they have produced it.

Social democracy is a solution to the necessity of capitalism in order to get people to produce, while maintaining the ability of the state to sieze and use or redistribute the profits from production. It is the dominant model in the world.

Today, conservatives (classical liberals) and progressives (liberals) compete to determine the amount of individualism or socialism that we will have.

But why do we hold these different opinions? That’s pretty interesting.

WHERE DOES IT COME FROM?

To put these political movements in perspective: Just as the classical liberal model is the ideology that justifies the seizure of power by the middle class from the aristocracy, communism and socialism are the ideologies that justify the seizure of power by the lower classes from the middle class.

Social democracy is a means by which the clerical classes (administrative, educational) can compete for status with the entrepreneurial classes. The military class has been all but ostracized from power since the 1960’s – something unique in history. To maintain power, any set of elites, whether clerical, commercial/entrepreneurial, or military, must have widespread support of the common people.

As we have moved from a civilization of farmers, craftsmen and merchants, all of whom are individual producers and small business people, to a world where most of us work in government bureaucracy or clerical functions in large corporations, or clerical functions in universities, the number of people who actively participate in the commercial economy by taking personal risks with their own capital, has dramatically declined. But in the aggregate, this change in what we do for a living is actually driven more by the introduction of women into the dominance of clerical labor, and the voting pool than any other factor. Women lean and vote progressive and men lean and vote conservative, and single women vote heavily progressive, and single unmarried women vote almost entirely progressively. And what has happened since 1960, is a dramatic increase in single women due to delayed marriage, and single mothers due to the dissolution of the family.

WHY DO WE VOTE THIS WAY?

Now, the question arises as to why affluent educated but non-entrepreneurial people appear to adopt Social Democrat values in college, and why some people positively have this progressive bias. And it turns out that there are at least three factors.

The first appears to be genetic, in that the individual’s moral code is very narrow, and treats care-taking and protection from harm as the highest, and only moral mandate. (See Jonathan Haidt). Whereas conservatives have five or six moral mandates that they adhere to fairly equally.

The second is signaling (demonstrating your social status), where the educated in the country, whose status comes from education, but who do not gain status as business owners, business leaders or capitalists, signal their ‘high mindedness’ as a means of gaining status.

The third is an intellectual view of mankind that has extraordinary faith in humans and the technology of human beings, to solve all the world’s problems ‘if we just put our minds to it’. (Conservatives just see this as an illusion that is the product of ‘False Consensus Bias’. And it may be that this is the underlying cause – the female tendency to desire consensus and the male desire to be attractive to women by signaling similar concerns.)

GENES

We are not entirely sure which of these is more influential. But what we do know is that the political affiliations are highly dependent upon gender. And that people are highly attracted to political affiliation for both gender and genetic reasons. (See Pew Research’s excellent collection of graphs and data.)

In simple terms, socialism and individualism reflect the mating and reproductive strategies of the genders. And it certainly appears from the data we’ve collected that people vote for their moral codes and their moral codes reflect their reproductive strategies in any given economy at any given time. And therefore the result of our political debates is driven almost entirely by our reproductive strategies. (Which to those of us in political theory, is pretty funny, or pretty frustrating.)

It’s all demographics and our shouting is meaningless. Elections are decided by the 10-15% of people who don’t care. The rest of us are committed to our polarized ideologies. WHat whil happen over the next few decades is that protestant european culture will continue to vote conservative, while the immigrant populations, the underclasses, and single women and the educational and political sectors will continue to vote progressive.

Conservatives breed, and liberals dont, but the less individualistic minorities breed fast enough to keep up with the decline in liberal births.

Thanks

Curt Doolittle