How Our Politics Misses the Point
An excellent CBC Ideas episode is a nuanced treatment of how we tend to become more "conservative" as we grow older. I felt that the entire discussion was missing the point, or at least the "lefties" and "conservatives" were talking past each other. We have lost sight of the real world around us and have grown to depend on utterly unreliable ways of thinking about it.
There is a lot to unpack here.
For one thing, words such as "liberal" and "conservative" suffer from "reification" - slipping into thinking that something is a "thing" just because we use a name. "Socialists" have famously never agreed on what "real" socialism is - they are always accusing each other of not being "real" socialists" The idea of "conservatism" is just as amorphous, as illustrated by its defenders in the CBC episode. Why, for example, is Trump "conservative". Of course, conservatives are quick to say he's not a "real" conservative. There are echoes of religious schism here ...
It seems to me that terms like "liberal" and "socialist" are used mainly by "conservatives" as pejorative terms for an ideology that may or may not exist as a cohesive political ideology. On the other hand, those who lean to the "left" misunderstand the nature of their opposition. To cite just one element of this, I rarely find a "leftie" who understands the religious core of the Republican party. There are many who will not vote Democrat because they honestly believe that God is a Republican.
My problem with the whole debate is that it is not really "about what it's about".
On the "left", the concern is officially about "social justice" - providing each citizen with a tolerable lifestyle and civil rights. "Lefties" regard the political project as engineering all aspects of the system toward this end. "Conservatives" tend to appeal to fundamental principles that they feel preclude the need for analysis. As with religious conservatives, political conservatives miss the rapidly evolving image of what things were like in the good old days.
On the "right", it's officially about money. Balanced budgets, GDP and taxes. They provide lip service to social justice but always want to know "who will pay". When talking to a "conservative", you always feel the implied answer: "Not me". Conservatives hate to pay taxes and they take it personally.
I think that other issues tend to "stick" to one side or the other out of a historical accident or careful "engineering" of the political climate. For example, there is no obvious reason why "conservatives" should oppose abortion rights or, specifically, the "right" of the government to have a say in the reproductive rights of an individual. There is no obvious reason why "conservatives" should be climate change deniers or gun rights advocates. It's a matter of strategic alliances.
The fundamental core division is, I think, over two ways of seeing the world: people who see the problems and opportunities of real people versus people who see the issue as a zero-sum game of who pays. This is unfortunate since you simply cannot see what is going on in the world through a lens of money.
In my reading of Galbraith, my "takeaway" was his insight that it's all about the "commons" - the assets we own together as a society. Political "left/right" fights, especially when taxes and balanced budgets come up, are about the "commons". For example, Should the "commons" include affordable medical care for all? Why do I have to pay for schools if I have no children? Why should I pay for libraries when I don't read?
Conservative opponents of "tax and spend" liberals tend to overlook the stunning expansion of the "commons" over the last two centuries, which has nothing to do with what kind of government is in charge. For example, a conservative that advocates that roads should be paid for by precisely the people who use them (toll roads everywhere) would be seen as a crackpot. We see this kind of thinking with privatized fire departments who watch buildings burn because the owner is not paying "insurance" to the right fire department. Perhaps we should have toll booths at the entrance to every park.
But that misses a deeper point. We have created an environment that is 99% artificial. Who are "we"? Increasingly, every object in our environment has been created by thousands upon thousands of faceless individuals in a production train. Sometimes we need to have our noses shoved into this fact by, for example, asking how we would make a toaster from scratch. I ask the reader to pick up any object nearby and ask if he could make it from scratch. A plastic spoon? A ballpoint pen? A sticky label? Do we have any idea how much every person in the production line of any of these things got paid for his contribution? Does such a question even make sense? The fact is that everything around us has been created by the human race. We have no idea who designed this stuff, who built it or how it came to be regarded as "ours". The money we paid for it is, generally speaking, an absurdly low estimate of its "worth". To a large extent, what we pay for things in this world is a pretty arbitrary measure of what their value is to us. We access the vast amount of that value for "free".
But how do we regard our money as "ours"? If we look closely, most of us are also involved in a production chain too Our own contribution is lost in a sea of other contributions, with some kind of value popping out at the other end as if by magic. For example, for 30 years I worked to improve aircraft safety. I have no idea if my contribution saved any one single life. It only makes sense to think of my efforts as a contribution to the work of millions in the transportation industry.
What I am left with is a vision of the "commons" as a vast universe of value. Each of us contributes and (maybe) gets paid for it. We withdraw things from the commons and (rarely) pay for that value.
We should have our political discussions around enhancing the value of the commons, reducing the cost of accessing it and fairly compensating those who contribute to it. Automation threatens to completely disrupt the "compensation" part of this system while driving down the cost of "things" that the commons produces. Some members of society see their access to the commons painfully restricted or eliminated while others seek to "fence off" the commons and call a chunk of it "theirs".
So why are some things so expensive and why do some people get paid almost nothing for their contribution?
It seems to me that it boils down to personal, individual, one-on-one service. You can't mass produce cancer care or Nobel Prize winners. But there is no shortage of people who will work in warehouses or flip hamburgers.
That's the status of my current thinking on this issue. The devil is in the details.
There is a lot to unpack here.
For one thing, words such as "liberal" and "conservative" suffer from "reification" - slipping into thinking that something is a "thing" just because we use a name. "Socialists" have famously never agreed on what "real" socialism is - they are always accusing each other of not being "real" socialists" The idea of "conservatism" is just as amorphous, as illustrated by its defenders in the CBC episode. Why, for example, is Trump "conservative". Of course, conservatives are quick to say he's not a "real" conservative. There are echoes of religious schism here ...
It seems to me that terms like "liberal" and "socialist" are used mainly by "conservatives" as pejorative terms for an ideology that may or may not exist as a cohesive political ideology. On the other hand, those who lean to the "left" misunderstand the nature of their opposition. To cite just one element of this, I rarely find a "leftie" who understands the religious core of the Republican party. There are many who will not vote Democrat because they honestly believe that God is a Republican.
My problem with the whole debate is that it is not really "about what it's about".
On the "left", the concern is officially about "social justice" - providing each citizen with a tolerable lifestyle and civil rights. "Lefties" regard the political project as engineering all aspects of the system toward this end. "Conservatives" tend to appeal to fundamental principles that they feel preclude the need for analysis. As with religious conservatives, political conservatives miss the rapidly evolving image of what things were like in the good old days.
On the "right", it's officially about money. Balanced budgets, GDP and taxes. They provide lip service to social justice but always want to know "who will pay". When talking to a "conservative", you always feel the implied answer: "Not me". Conservatives hate to pay taxes and they take it personally.
I think that other issues tend to "stick" to one side or the other out of a historical accident or careful "engineering" of the political climate. For example, there is no obvious reason why "conservatives" should oppose abortion rights or, specifically, the "right" of the government to have a say in the reproductive rights of an individual. There is no obvious reason why "conservatives" should be climate change deniers or gun rights advocates. It's a matter of strategic alliances.
The fundamental core division is, I think, over two ways of seeing the world: people who see the problems and opportunities of real people versus people who see the issue as a zero-sum game of who pays. This is unfortunate since you simply cannot see what is going on in the world through a lens of money.
- The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness.
- The only function of economic forecasting is to make astrology look respectable.
- Under capitalism, man exploits man. Under communism, it's just the opposite.
John Kenneth Galbraith
Conservative opponents of "tax and spend" liberals tend to overlook the stunning expansion of the "commons" over the last two centuries, which has nothing to do with what kind of government is in charge. For example, a conservative that advocates that roads should be paid for by precisely the people who use them (toll roads everywhere) would be seen as a crackpot. We see this kind of thinking with privatized fire departments who watch buildings burn because the owner is not paying "insurance" to the right fire department. Perhaps we should have toll booths at the entrance to every park.
But that misses a deeper point. We have created an environment that is 99% artificial. Who are "we"? Increasingly, every object in our environment has been created by thousands upon thousands of faceless individuals in a production train. Sometimes we need to have our noses shoved into this fact by, for example, asking how we would make a toaster from scratch. I ask the reader to pick up any object nearby and ask if he could make it from scratch. A plastic spoon? A ballpoint pen? A sticky label? Do we have any idea how much every person in the production line of any of these things got paid for his contribution? Does such a question even make sense? The fact is that everything around us has been created by the human race. We have no idea who designed this stuff, who built it or how it came to be regarded as "ours". The money we paid for it is, generally speaking, an absurdly low estimate of its "worth". To a large extent, what we pay for things in this world is a pretty arbitrary measure of what their value is to us. We access the vast amount of that value for "free".
But how do we regard our money as "ours"? If we look closely, most of us are also involved in a production chain too Our own contribution is lost in a sea of other contributions, with some kind of value popping out at the other end as if by magic. For example, for 30 years I worked to improve aircraft safety. I have no idea if my contribution saved any one single life. It only makes sense to think of my efforts as a contribution to the work of millions in the transportation industry.
What I am left with is a vision of the "commons" as a vast universe of value. Each of us contributes and (maybe) gets paid for it. We withdraw things from the commons and (rarely) pay for that value.
We should have our political discussions around enhancing the value of the commons, reducing the cost of accessing it and fairly compensating those who contribute to it. Automation threatens to completely disrupt the "compensation" part of this system while driving down the cost of "things" that the commons produces. Some members of society see their access to the commons painfully restricted or eliminated while others seek to "fence off" the commons and call a chunk of it "theirs".
So why are some things so expensive and why do some people get paid almost nothing for their contribution?
It seems to me that it boils down to personal, individual, one-on-one service. You can't mass produce cancer care or Nobel Prize winners. But there is no shortage of people who will work in warehouses or flip hamburgers.
That's the status of my current thinking on this issue. The devil is in the details.
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