Don’t get me wrong. I’m all in favor of NPR. I’m a listener, albiet not a frequent one. On the other hand, using taxpayer money for purposes that are political in nature, content, or value judgements which other taxpayers find patently offensive is simply intolerable.
We will not have a government that we can all support unless it does very little, and what little it does, is acceptable to everyone.
NPR appeals to people who are educated but who largely do not participate in the market, or are wealthy enough not to need to participate in the market. It is an 11% demographic, and that 11% is decidedly left of center, because our universities are decidedly left of center. And for that reason, the use of public funds to promote the religion of secular humanism is simply offensive to other people.
NPR is The 700 Club for Democratic Secular Humanism.
It belongs in the private sector.
NPR Board Member Admits It Serves ‘Liberal, Highly Educated Elite,’ Wonders How to Justify Public Funding
http://www.newsbusters.org/blogs/lachlan-markay/2011/03/11/npr-board-member-admits-it-serves-liberal-highly-educated-elite-wond
An Ideology: Any reasonably coherent set of social, cultural, moral and political ideas that can be used to obtain and hold political power on the behalf of a part of a population that perceives it has similar interests.
THE POLITICAL IDEOLOGIES
There are three basic western philosophical traditions:
1) Aristocratic and Conservative with the longest time preference. 2) Middle Class and Classical Liberal with medium time preference 3) Proletarian and Socialist with short time preference.
These three philosophies loosely correspond to social class sentiments and perceptions of social order. They also loosely correspond to the Monarchy, the Senate, and House of Commons. The insight of the british model was to give each social class it’s house, and to force the houses to collaborate in order to enact laws.
BREAKING THE CLASS BASED MODEL OF GOVERNMENT
This class-based model was successful in adapting to changing currents until the thought leaders of the American and French revolutions attempted to break the class model and transfer full power to either the middle (american) or lower (french) classes. And was further exacerbated by the Russian and Chinese revolutions which (regrettably) succeeded in transferring political power to the proletariat – in the greatest destruction of human life in history after the Black Plague. After the world wars, Europe was broken economically and socially and the citizenry rejected the aristocratic model entirely. (( And did so wrongly. Germany’s intellectuals were right: the anglo social order was socially destructive without the empire to support it – as the experience of both Spain and Portugal had demonstrated. German social order is the most economically productive yet discovered because it mobilizes the working class to produce quality exports. Exactly as it’s 300 princes had done during the medieval era prior to unification. )) Instead of the fraternal aristocratic model, which was the unique feature of western culture, governments sought solace in socialist doctrine and universal enfranchisement. Meanwhile western authoritarian and military leadership was absorbed by the Americans along with the British navy and port system. The parliamentary method of government has been moderately successful given the …….
Americans used this period of postwar economic prosperity to assert their inherited global military power to undermine global communism – successfully. But the cost was high, and the US is now largely bankrupt and unable to fund it’s existing military structure as well as it’s redistributionist benefit system. And the west must now combat the primitivism of Islam, which has taken on the proletarian strategy communists at a time when european postwar economies have recovered, but the developing economies are competing with western lower classes for jobs.
To fund this military empire to protect the west against proletariat primitivism, Americans export debt, and effectively charge the world an indirect tax, instead of taxing other countries directly and creating a political problem for them. Then americans use that debt to finance the cost of running the world trade and monetary system.
Unfortunately, in the process of running the empire, Americans have now become a fractured society, with race, culture and class divisions, as well as somewhere between four and ten different geographic ‘nations’ within the USA, each with different cultures, but operating under the administration of an international imperial government. Many of which, within these sub-countries feel the government is as oppressive to their cultures as do foreign nations. Under this trade empire, the US economy is now so dependent upon the value of the dollar, and the use of military force to determine the means by which trade is administered, that the citizenry will suffer if these obligations are reduced.
This series of events shows the danger of empire building to national cohesion — whether it is done on purpose as in the case of Britain defending herself from Spain and France, or by accident, in the case of the USA, trying to maintain stability, and defense from communism during and after the war period.
GOVERNMENT’S STRUCTURE MUST REFLECT SOCIETY OR SOCIETY WILL FRACTURE BECAUSE IT DOES NOT
The government must reflect the class structure of society in one way or another, so that the classes that do exist can use the government to cooperate rather than regress into class warfare. And if government does not reflect society, then society will either change to reflect the government’s class structure, by the massess aspiring or attempting to become upper middle class, which has some value, or in the opposite case, the aristocracy will abandon the nation as it has in the USA and in Ireland, which is entirely destructive to culture and economy alike. Or the upper and upper middle classes will become a predatory diasporic class like it has with the Jews in the west, and the Chinese in Oceania.
While both the aristocratic (natural law) and proletariat (socialist) political philosophies specifically state that society consists of classes, our classical liberal and democratic socialist philosophies promote the false philosophy of egalitarianism: the factual equality of ability, and the couter factual equality of outcomes – rather than the equality of opportunity despite our differences in ability to produce beneficial outcomes. The socialists, in their effort to undermine the aristocratic political system so that their elites may sieze power, supposedly on behalf of the proletariat classes, have taken control of our educational system to reinforce the justification for their seizure of power in the popular consensus, and created enough of a popular mythos to affect voting patterns, reinforcing their political power, while at the same time, reducing the competitiveness of our lower classes against foreign groups, by a process of intentional “Harrison Bergeron-ing” – dumbing down.
This is not to say that giving people property rights is necessary a bad thing. In fact, it’s an exceptional thing for everyone in the society. THe question is not whether people should have individual property rights. Its whether people need poliitcal rights if they have property rights. And logic would dicate that no. NOt only do they not need political rights, but that by giving people the opportunity for political power, we distract them from developing more useful activities in the market.
We are argue over the absurdity of choosing the best single form of government, when what we mean is ‘which class should rule?’, and “if any class should rule it should be the lower, which is the majority.” When the question itself posits a false dichotomy: the question is, since society consists of different social classes, what institutions should we create to help them cooperate such than none harms the other, and only by mutual benefit can they reach their desired ends. And so we have chosen ‘winner takes all’ government, and because of that choice, we have also, of necessity, chosen perpetual class warfare, and the destruction of the cultural cohesion necessary for the perpetuation of our nations.
So, we should reframe the question, from “which class should rule, using their class’ philosophy”, to “which form of government best facilitates the cooperation of the social classes for achieving shared ends?”
That answer, logically, is that we can, with some effort, accomodate all three class philosophies into one form of government. In fact, we had that form of government. We foolishly have abandoned it, because of the rapid shift in economic power during the industrial revolution.
THE OTHER MISTAKES WE HAVE MADE – AND NEED TO CORRECT
The first mistake we made was the transfer of political power from the landed aristocracy to the middle class, rather than replacing landed and inherited aristocracy with a new layer of aristocracy whose position was earned by merit. This allowed a new aristocracy to form, that is excluded from, and invisible to the politcal economy of society. American upper classes have abandoned participation in politics. The second mistake we made was egalitarianism, and structuring our government for rule by a single class. But we have made a series of other mistakes, partly because we lacked the knowledge of other options, lacked technologies, ideas, philosophical frameworks and processes to provide an alternative to the Hellenic and British models.
-The Errors Of The Political Process:
Scalability of the Debate form of government.
Rational Debate rather than Empirical Pragmatism: The problem of Calculation.
Taxes rather than loans.
Devolution of the defense provided by the senate / House of lords / Upper house
Descent From Utilitarianism Into Moralism
Failure to Keep Pace WIth Technology – debit cards and direct democracy.
-The Errors Of Abstract Ideas:
The Corporeal State, and the Corporeal Business
The Error Of Free Trade
The Error Of Intellectual Property
Probabilism From The Physical Sciences Applied To The Social Sciences
-The Errors Of Human Nature:
The Blank Slate vs Natural Law
The Prohibition of Political Wealth
Ignoring the Status Economy
Devaluing Aristocracy
Devaluing Voluntary Charity
The Universal Utility of Freedom, Democracy and Capitalism
The Impossibility of Agreement upon means, even if possible to agree upon ends.
-The Errors Of Credit and Money
The Relationship Between Time And Money
Breaking The Relationship Between Knowledge And Valuation Among Bankers and Lenders
Erroneous Priorities: The Financialization Of The Economy vs The Productivity Of The Economy
The Creation of Ponzi Benefits Packages Rather Than Saving and Insured Investments.
The Errors Of Incentives
The Transformation of Incentives from Negative Punishments, to Positive Rewards.
The Inability of governments to ostracize individuals and groups.
The Inability of popular government to punish real crime
The criminalization of political speech and action.
GOVERNMENT IS A SET OF INSTITUTIONS
Governments consist of organizations of human beings who follow processes, rituals and rules. These processes and rules may be historical and habitual, or formal and written. The purpose of these rules is to allow people to PLAN: to make plans and to cooperate with one another. So that they may take the risks needed to increase productivity and trade. Even dictators need a bureaucracy: an organization that will execute their will. Democracies more so, because without the hierarchy they must rely upon the established rules to give them authority by which to persuade others to cooperate with them to achieve their goals. And people who wish to cooperate, and combine their capital to produce ends, need some assurance that their risk will allow them to take the profits from that risk.
We call these organizations, rituals, processes and rules ‘institutions’. Institutions are the means by which we cooperate and compete politically.
REPAIRING THE INSTITUTIONSInstitutions:
Managed Corporate Institutions
Managed Private Institutions:
Each institution operates as do the medical, legal and accounting industries, which are largely self regulating, and self-educating. They report to senate committees.
ALSO:THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT
THE REGIONAL GOVERNMENTS
Money, Insurance, War are global but all trade and culture is local.
NATIONALISM
Monarchs have been superior to elected leaders because they have a longer time preference. And with a longer time preference they can more wisely veto those fashionable changes which will, in the long term, harm the society, or transfer power between social classes.
CONSTITUTIONAL MONARCHY IS A CLASS BASED SYSTEM OF GOVERNMENT
(undone)
MONARCHY HAS ALWAYS BEEN A CLASS BASED SYSTEM OF GOVERNMENT
(undone)
ALL SYSTEMS OF GOVERNMENT NEED IDEOLOGIES
Monarchy needs a sufficient ideological base. The people have abandoned the church. The church has abandoned christendom. Economics has replaced cultural nationalism, and empirical tools have replaced the moral sentiments. For monarchy to prevail in the post-mystical age, we must remake it’s foundations so that they rely upon economic and cultural superiorities, not desire to return to the past.
Monarchs have been superior to elected leaders because they have a longer time preference. And with a longer time preference they can more wisely veto those fashionable changes which will, in the long term, harm the society, or transfer power between social classes.
Monarchy has a high correlation with Nationalism.
Under monarchy multiculturalism is not a problem, because cultures can form communities of interest in as many monarchies as they wish. And there is no threat from them, because they are denied access to political power, and must compete in the market, rather than politics. IN fact, this is the primary virtue of aristocratic society: people compete in the market to serve one another, rather than in politics to enslave one another. And the monarch profits from the fact that this competition, which he or she presides over, serves better to serve the people, than politics ever shall. Politics cannot create wealth. It an only create an an environment where wealth can be created.
So, under monarchies, and nationalism, people form nations, or states, which must compete against other states. These competitions then inform their value judgements – benefitting or punishing them for their decisions.
MONARCHY AND NATIONALISM
Now, why is that circumstance of nationalism a “good”? Because cultures consist of a series of hypothesis and value judgements. Each value judgement in the cultural catalogue asks each member of the community to suffer the cost to himself of forgoing opportunities to fulfill his self interest in order to ‘fund’ the social order. Social orders consist of these rules, and the associated costs in forgone opportunities. In nearly all societies these rules consist of forgoing opportunity to lie, cheat, steal, hurt, and murder. And in most advanced societies, we convert these social words into market language, and call them Fraud, Theft and Violence. But they are effectively synonyms. People can then use this market for behavior to form the society that they wish to. In other words, nationalism, or monarchies, allow people to form and join communities where they have shared values. And to enjoy the benefits of those values, and to bear the costs of those values. People are happiest when they know the rules, when they agree with them, when they can choose which community to belong to, and when it is possible to judge a set of values by their visible outcomes. Furthermore, diversity of communities does not require that we oppress one another. Diversity today is a mask for one group, largely the proletarian, for empowering the state to equally oppress everyone, and to transfer power from the meritocratic-ally endowed classes to those who are not using a false language of morality, that is framed in religious tribal language, but under analytical scrutiny simply is nothing more than exploitation. It is anything other than diversity. It is using the mask of diversity to institute their version of homogeneity.
“How Did Obama Lose Karzai?” … “Karzai now appears mistrusting of the West’s long-term commitment to his country. He considers the Americans to be hopelessly fickle, represented by multiple military and civilian envoys who carry contradictory messages, work at cross-purposes, and wage their Washington turf battles in his drawing room, at his expense, while operating on short fuses and even shorter timetables.”
We have a president, who is part of a philosophical wing, dominated by a left coalition, that believes ‘silly things’. Like jimmy carter, obama is a president who believes ‘silly things’. But what silling things?
The left’s feminine assumption is that we can all agree – like women in a tribal cave. They assume that there is a consensus to reach. Or that such a consensus would persist. Or that such a consensus is advantagous.
[callout]Only a fool thinks he can fly. But at least he is dangerous only to himself. It is the fool that thinks people can agree, who is dangerous to all of us.[/callout]
Except that to do anything substantive at all, humans must take risks to cooperate in large numbers. Groups require a hierarchy in order to make decisions. People attach utility and status signals to their positions in those hierarchies. They have many investments, both personal and collective, and those investments are in both means and ends. Having taken those risks, people have ‘interests’. Each person has a set of interests. Each group one or more interests. These interests include both means and ends. Means conflict even if ends do not.
Humans cannot agree in large numbers. Interests are always in conflict, because even if ends are not, the means and the organizations of humans needed to achieve those ends are not.
THe difference between silly people and sane people is in this simple understanding of the limits of human cooperation.
Our president, like all leftists, is a man raised on feminine rather than masculine virutues. He values the famlial model, not the political. Families can agree on ends and means. Political groups cannot agree on means, even if they can agree upon ends. And they rarely agree upon ends, because do to so would be to the advantage of some at the expense of others.
Marginalism suggests that if we have sacks of flour in store for the winter, every sack we sell has a different value, whth the first having the least, and the last having the most. It explains why water has much use value but little trade value, and diamonds have little use value but high trade value. But marginalism applies to human sentiments as well: humans recalculate their preferences each step you take toward achieving them. Humans seek opportunity. THey seek ‘relishes’.
Only a fool thinks he can fly. But at least he is dangerous only to himself. It is the fool that thinks people can agree, who is dangerous to all of us.
Curt
Whence comes Property?
The answer is a strong army and navy, a strong diplomatic corps, a strong currency free of debasement
Trade rests on trade routes. Trade routes rest on the military.
THe purpose of militarily established order is to create teh institution of property, and the market for trading it.
It’s purpose iis to deny corruption of the market to others.
The purpose of government is to determine which form of corruption wins.
the puprpose of an ancient repubic, which means, property holders, is to disallow corrutpion of trade and trade routes.
a republic of shareholders was the first and remains the only means of preserving trade.
It is a private government.
In a nation with no institutions other than tribal alliances, only members of the existing hierarchy can replace a leader, because the only institution that the society relies upon is loyalty to individuals, and religion, not to principles.
In fact, this is the entire problem with the primitive civilization we call Islam. There is loyalty to family and tribe, loyalty to religion, but no loyalty to principles of government.
We forget in the west, how miraculous and uncommon is our transfer or power between regimes. The anglo world is unique in it’s stability. Western culture is unique, and it’s method of government is unique. It is, since antiquity, based upon the balance of powers.
The rest of the world lives under precisely the opposite postion: the concentration of power.
We cannot hold others up to our standards.
We can only help them understand that if they wish our economic prosperity, them must adopt our forms of loyalty.
Loyalty first, to principles.
Leading an organization of human beings of any size, is a complex and difficult task.
Human events are kaleidic. The common people have complex and conflicting motivations and incentives.
Leaders must convey near omniscience because their followers are moved at the lowest cost in the shortest time under the assumption of near omniscience.
Power is obtained by a mixture of discipline, cunning, compromise, threats, perseverance, demographics and luck.
Power is held by a mixture of habituation and limited, tacit consent – almost entirely because the alternatives are uncertain and therefore more risky, costly and frightening.
THE UPPER CLASSES, HISTORY, INSTITUTIONS AND LAW
Those who are the victors, and those who create the rules rules, do not write philosophy — they take actions, make decisions, speeches, art, and policy.
They create institutions: The administrative tools of human cooperation.
Their followers write history.
History is the only form of philosophy with any substantive truth content.
There are very few books of Aristocratic philosophy: Aristotle, Machiavelli, Pareto, Weber. Perhaps some of the scholastics.
In the west, administrative philosophy of the church is divided from the military and commercial philosophy of the Manor-Kings.
The writers of the church are members of the middle class or the aristocracy.
But history and the record of history is the writing of the nobility.
THE MIDDLE CLASSES AND PHILOSOPHY
The vast number of works of political philosophy have been written by the upper middle and middle classes.
Nearly all political philosophy is by definition revolutionary – there is no need to use verbal coercion when one has the means by which to enact ones will without verbal coercion.
Western philosophy is an advisory program. It counsels. It suggests. It persuades.
Western philosophy is utilitarian. It is moral and most importantly it is both technical and commercial.
Western philosophy establishes the contract terms of the middle class, by which they are willing to be administered by the aristocracy.
THE LOWER CLASSES AND RELIGION
All religion is political philosophy. It is the philosophy of resistance.
Religion establishes the contract with the peasantry. It sets the terms by which they are willing to be administered by the aristocracy.
The power to resist. To refuse to act. Is a power. It is the power of the weak. But in vast numbers. It is a vast power.
Religious symbols are resistance movement symbols. Whether dress, or icon, mythical figure or scripture. Religious movements are resistance movements. Resistance through unity.
VIOLENCE RULES
But we must be cautious when consuming philosophical writing. It is largely acts of justification. To defend ourselves against it, we must ensure that we study our history as well, because philosophy influences and justifies —- but violence and law rules.
All legal products, all philosophical products, all religious products – all political products of all kinds, are an effort to rotate elites for the purpose of class benefit.
Marx was right that there exists a class struggle. He was wrong that it will end.
He was wrong that the proletariat would ever win.
The fact is, that there are vast differences in ability between individuals. That these differences are genetic. That our classes are a genetic hierarchy. And that genes regress toward the mean.
For these reasons, we will always have class rotation.
And law, philosophy and religion will be the means by which each group seeks to hold or obtain power.
Obama was warned by Bush, along with the other democratic candidates, that once he gained office he would not be able to exit either country. The one who paid attention to that warning was Clinton. Obama softened slightly but was more reliant on the radical left. So he wasn’t as careful. Now that he’s in office he can’t fulfill his promises to his radical left supporters.
Contrary to some of the nonsense I’ve been reading from the left lately, we aren’t colonizing the muslim world. We wouldn’t want to. It’s thankless work. It’s expensive. And they’re too primitive to be of value to us as colonies. The labor is too ignorant and uneducated to function as laborers. The people are too poor to function as consumers for advanced goods. The institutions and infrastructure are too corrupt and unreliable to assist in production and distribution.
So, It isn’t colonialization. It’s containment. Americans spent the last century containing communism, and the result was a conversion of the marxist economies to totalitarian capitalism, and perhaps the greatest shift in human standard of living since the invention of farming. While communism was a religion masquerading as a political movement, Islam is a political movement masquerading as a religion, and is the current replacement for marxism – a means of the world underclass to counteract the effect of modernization on their primitive social orders. Like marxism, islam is a primitivist and economically destructive political movement – perhaps more destructive than was it’s prior instantiation, which we call Roman era christianity.
The underlying military and political problem is that Islamic Civilization does not have a core state, and that of the core state candidates (iran, pakistan, saudi arabia and turkey) three choices are corrupt, despotic and terrible, and the fourth is unlikely. The impact of the schism is still with the civilization. From a strategic geopolitical position, Core states can be pressured to keep fringe states in line and out of military action. Islam (magian or perhaps magical civilization is a better term) cannot be contained without a core state. Therefore Islam is the new communism until there is enough of a reformation in one of the states that a reliable core state can be formed. THE STRATEGY IS TO DESTABILIZE UNTIL A CORE STATE CAN FORM DUE TO INTERNAL PRESSURE.
This is probably too grown-up an analysis for people who think that people who have grown up, real jobs, and real responsibilities, are not acting on emotional or antiquated mystical fantasies like ‘colonialization’ rather than pragmatic economic and security concerns. But that doesn’t mean that the truth shouldn’t be told to those who actually have the capacity for such understanding.
The best answer is for us to build 200 nuclear power plants and to get off of oil, and let the middle east fall back into barbarism until they are ready to abandon their magianism and join the modern world.
CURT
There have been a large number of police deaths lately.
“It’s not a fluke,” Richard Roberts, a spokesman for the International Union of Police Associations, told MSNBC.com. “There’s a perception among officers in the field that there’s a war on cops going on.”
This is not rocket science, but it cannot be attributed to one thing alone. Instead:
It is not one issue on it’s own. It is the cumulative effect of the changes in american society due to a century and a half of policy. That policy was enacted during a period in which the USA had a strategic economic advantage. Because of that advantage, the class, race and cultural factors were suppressed by a period of extraordinary temporary wealth. But now that the circumstances have been reversed, and the consequential renormalization of human behavior has emerged as that economic advantage has been removed by the spread of capitalism’s economic institutions – particularly to Asia. The result is that the west is being destabilized again, just as it was when the american west opened up to development and caused shocks and price recessions in Europe.
Add to that, that white folks are now starting to act like a diasporic minority, and less willing to support their system politically or fund it economically.
In western literature, holding together a stable political system is an advantage. But it is also a high cost to the holders and comes at great sacrifice and discipline. The west (england and germany) has the most stable political system ever developed by man. But it comes at high cost. And people are no longer willing to pay that cost.
Thorsten Veblen and Joseph Schumpater were correct. The political class will inevitably destroy the civilization under democracy.
THIS IS FALSE: “capitalism is not a political concept” – Andrew J Galambos.
THIS IS TRUE: Capitalism is not a *rhetorical* concept that relies upon the process of debate for the purpose of decision-making about the use of resources within a geography. However, capitalism is a political concept, because it relies upon the **absence** of rhetorical debate for the purpose of decision-making about the use of resources in a geography. And it requires agreement upon the *absence* of authoritarian property definitions, and managerial administration of property and transactions. Any principle that requires unanimity of compliance in a population is by definition political.
Property rights require unanimity of compliance in a population. And creating those rights (albeit expressed differently in different cultures) is the purpose of government. Some governments create horrid property rights, others egalitarian. All nations have property rights of some sort. But few have individual property rights. And it’s individual property rights that permit economic calculation and incentives in a vast division of knowledge and labor.
Therefore Capitalism is a political concept even if it does not include a dependence upon the process of debate for the purpose of allocating resources. Capitalism is a process of utilizing and allocating resources and providing incentives to serve one another. It is a political concept. It simply does not depend upon the decision-making of politicians – managers. Even totalitarianism is a political process because some number of people must be incentivized to comply with the totalitarian edicts for the purpose of compelling those people who are non-compliant.
The capitalist system simply acknowledges that the market is superior to both managerial socialism, authoritarianism, and classical republican rhetorical debate. Because the purpose of the market is to allow us to cooperate in large numbers WITHOUT debate when our minds are incapable of possessing sufficient knowledge, and we are not capable of coordinating actions in a vast division of knowledge and labor.
Nor is debate capable of providing the individual incentives needed for peaceful cooperation, since there is no ordered agreement on the use of resources in a population, nor can there be agreement on the use of resources other than under market prices.
This is the fundamental criticism of socialism that brought about its end. it is not that socialism is immoral. It is that it is IMPOSSIBLE for people to cooperate, to calculate, and to possess incentives for increasing production that then causes decreases in prices by any other means, whether rhetorical or dictatorial. – CD.
We have given up on socialism, which means the destruction of private property. We have instead, adopted redistributive socialism, which treats all property as collective, and where individual property is a temporary right for the purpose of cooperating and coordinating, and where rights to commissions on the use of property are determined by the state.
This democratic socialism is simply a slower way of destroying a civilization than individual property rights.
That there may be limits on the concentration of capital is not unreasonable. If money and property can be used to distort the market, or for political ends, then this is the exercise of power that is not in the interest of citizens. Therefore there must be limits on the use of capital. Especially under fiat money, where all money is effectively borrowed from average citizens.
I captured this post in it’s near-entirety from Think Markets. It’s the first succinct and meaningful post of the year that I’ve come across. And I captured it for my own reference, for posterity.
Of course, my answer to this problem is the calculative rather than political society. Unfortunately, unless I devote full time to this solution to the Hobbesian problem from within an institution I will never turn Hayek’s analysis into a sufficiently and articulated solution to be meaningfully employed by others.
But at least Mario has correctly and simply stated the issue, if not the solution to it. It is not that we need a minimal state. It’s that there is a maximum number of people wherein political discourse is a logical means of achieving ends. Beyond that limited number, like all other aspects of human behavior, we need tools to calculate that which we cannot perceive.
… There are some simple facts the commentators cannot or will not face. The reason we cannot have a coherent, comprehensive plan to solve the political and economic difficulties of the federal government (and of the state governments) is that people do not have a coherent, comprehensive hierarchy of values beyond the basics of social order. Hayek made this argument in The Road to Serfdom with regard to the problems of comprehensive economic planning.
To a large extent, we are now facing this problem in reverse. We have attained the current level and extent of the welfare state as an accretion of special interest legislation and short-sighted but popular redistribution programs. All of this took place over a long period of time with little or no thought to the overall effects, to what kind of society we have been building.
But now the threatened fiscal messes at both the federal and state level are requiring some form of “orderly” reduction in the size and scope of government. But, as I opined here in the final days of the Bush Administration, the “reform” of the welfare state will not be orderly. It will be driven by a war among the various interests groups who, as is their habit, do not see the other person’s point of view. But why should they? They got their largesse from the government by being single-minded and self-interested. Bad habits (from the social perspective) are hard to break.
The “unreasonableness” of the discussion stems from the fact that there is no underlying objective code of values (or at least not one that can be accessed by the political system). Most players are guilty of avidity and partiality. We all have hard-luck stories to portray to the media. Most people’s minds are too concrete-bound to see the larger, somewhat abstract, picture.
The unreasonableness, or so it seems, of our political culture is, to a large extent, a product of the kind of special interest redistributionist society we have built. Some commentators have rationalized the welfare state in terms of notions of distributive justice. But these are the mental spinnings of academics. These ideas have not been the driving political and economic forces that have created our culture. Those forces are derived from an abandonment of the traditional concept of the “common good,” that is, the good of each and all.
There is very little beyond the minimal state that is truly in the interests of all of us. Every movement beyond that takes us into the unreasonable territory of the exploitation of one group by another. No wonder discussion is not civil.
Whatever a man sows, this he will also reap.
