Ranting to /dev/null

Discussion continued

This continues yesterday's discussion, involving responses to both Josiah and Kevin. It's really long. Sorry about that.

Josiah: I’m not saying that personal conviction is wrong, nor am I saying that personal conviction should not affect public policy. If anything, I really want it to. But I am decidedly opposed to having a high enough view of one’s own personal convictions to think that they warrant massive and revolutionary reconfigurations of society. As an example (that I do not want to get into, it’s just an example, and a general one at that) I think that homosexuality is wrong. I think that public policy should not do anything to mainstream it. But I do not think that my moral convictions are significant enough to be willing to execute anyone to see that happen. But more on this distinction later: I think I’ve got something that will clarify things a bit.

Kevin, you have missed my point, though I admit that I can completely understand why my argument would produce a response such as yours. You are saying that by objecting to the dictatorial enforcement of a particular moral perspective on the part of socialist/communist/liberal parties I am also disqualifying myself from countering with my own perspective.

And you would be right, except that this is not the crux of my argument. My objection to the government interfering with economics isn’t because they aren’t allowed to, but because they are allowed to. The problem is that the more the government gets its fingers in the market the more it fucks things up. The government is capable of intervening in economic affairs to whatever extent they desire, and they aren’t inherently immoral for doing so. But the more they act, the worse things are. What I’m afraid of isn’t the fact that the government can interfere with the economy, but of people who are so convinced of their own enlightened perspective that they are willing to use the power of the government to enforce their desires on everyone else. We call these people dictators, and I don’t like them.

This being said, I am not in favor of an entirely lassiez-faire approach to the economy. The government needs to take a hand in certain areas to keep markets free and functional. This isn’t because people don’t know how to spend their money, but because there are certain things that are basically money sinks that no one would choose to invest in. Some things are so essential that it is worth the government screwing with them to ensure their provision – regulation of standardization, health inspectors, pharmaceutical regulation, obviously what counts in this category is controversial – because there isn’t any money to be made there. There is no profit motive for establishing regulatory standards for gasoline production, but that is something that everyone is better off for having around. Now I wouldn’t say that this is a moral good, but it is an economic good. Likewise, it is generally economically good for society to have as educated a populace as can be managed though again, I’m not sure I would call this a moral good. I don’t really think that the government itself should be taking the role of educating them, but it should require schooling and provide financial incentives to make as easy to educate children as possible. I like vouchers. Again, there is no profit margin on education, but we need to have it. I’m in favor of as much charitable activity on this front as possible, but recognize that some level of government involvement is probably needed.

What I want from government are rulers who, aware of the power that they wield, use it as little as possible to ensure the liberty and prosperity of the people they govern. The attitude I want to see from government is a real distaste for interfering with the lives of the governed in general and the economy in particular, viewing such interference as a necessary evil bound to introduce inefficiency and corruption. It should be the attitude of a gardener: we’ve got ourselves a societal tree here, and it’s been around for a long time, and we want it to bear as much fruit as is healthy for it. To that end, there are things that need to be pruned. But too much pruning or pruning without wisdom can be harmful. It’s a balance, and less is usually better than more.

On the other hand, Communism/socialism/modern liberalism is so convinced of the moral rightness of their perspective that they assume other people are not capable of running their own lives. They see the tree and decide they’d rather grow something entirely different, so they tear it out of the ground. The problem with this is that you can’t have a functioning, prosperous society in which people can and want to live. It may be true that one has to break some eggs to make an omelet, but in the words of an observer in early Soviet Russia, “I see the broken eggs. Where is this omelet you speak of?” (The same cannot be said of the neo-cons. They think they’re right of course, but they think that means they need to leave the citizenry alone and kick dictators asses. I’m kind of okay with that most of the time.) Essentially, I think that the status quo is damned fluid as it is. We don’t need to go screwing with it all the time because we don’t like the way things are.

I do not object to governmental interference in economics because it is inherently immoral, but because it’s damnably inefficient and dangerous. Dangerous because a readiness to interfere in the lives of others whenever one feels the need is exactly that attitude which lead to the imprisonment, execution, and starvation of millions and millions of people in the 20th century, not to mention several major wars. Germany: 8 million, plus war casualties. Russia: 30-50 million plus war casualties. China: untold tens of millions. Cambodia: 2 million. Latin America: at least hundreds of thousands to starvation. Cuba: hundreds of thousands to starvation. North Korea: millions. Vietnam: unknown thousands, plus war casualties. All of these were governed by “revolutionaries” so sure of themselves that outright genocide was a price they were willing to pay in the blood of the innocent.

Someone will probably make the charge that there’s a big difference between nationalized health care and the gulag. And there is. But the attitude that leads towards those things tends to be the same. Even the people who created Solzhenitsyn’s archipelago thought they were doing a good thing. I mean, come on, these are enemies of the people we’re talking about, right? Right? Hmm. The similarity is that there is a willingness to sacrifice society in order to save it. Also, both modern liberals and their radical cousins are possessed of the idea that their perspective is important enough to warrant violence and upheaval. Case in point: the 60’s liberals who weren’t useless hippies were terrorists. There were a lot more of the former than the latter, but the difference is one of degree, not kind.

And Kevin, you’re wrong: no government is permitted to slaughter millions of its own citizens, divine ordination be damned. If you think that your perspective on the ordination of earthly governments allows this then I don’t care how Scriptural you think it is, because you’d be wrong. I will take a moral stand on that one, and affirm that any government engaged in such activity needs to be brought to a violent end as quickly as possible. The only problem is finding a way of doing that so that we don’t cause more suffering than we prevent. That’s why we never did anything about Russia. True, we probably knew they were slaughtering millions. But going against them would result in the deaths of even more people, conceivably billions. Ending the suffering of millions is a positive moral good, but someone plunging the world into unending nuclear winter doesn’t seem like it would be a good idea somehow.

Right now, I’m really conflicted about what to think about China. They’re a brutally oppressive government responsible for some of the worst treatment human beings are currently subject to. And we do billions of dollars of business with them every year. I don’t like this. I don’t think they should have been given MFN trade status. I think we should be far more critical of them than we are. But invasion? The phrase “land war in Asia” comes to mind.

Now, the obvious objection to this entire thing is that I’ve got a moral perspective which is influencing my own assertions and is thus disqualified by my own argumentation. Maybe, maybe not. I will, however, expose those moral criteria for examination. I believe that society should be geared towards providing a safe, prosperous environment for as many people as possible. This, I am willing to assert, is an ethical assertion grounded in some sort of ontology. I happen to believe that the best way of doing this is a constitutional government (not necessarily representative) overseeing a mostly free market, but those opinions are not ontological, because I am willing to be proven wrong (good luck though). I guess I would try to get out of the charge I’ve leveled against myself in this paragraph by saying that the scope of my moral foundation doesn’t actually mandate any particular political or economic system, it’s just strongly suggestive of constitutionalism most of the time. But it does preclude me from destroying the society I’m trying to save.

And I guess this is another big difference between conservatives like myself and liberals/radicals. I think that society needs to be tended and cared for. I think it could use a lot of improvement. But I’m not willing to sacrifice the society I’m trying to save in order to save it. That’s the kicker. The mindset present in liberal thinking is willing to make radical changes and have other people pay any cost to achieve its end. I want to use the system to change the system, because I believe that 1) I’m not important enough, wise enough, or significant enough to think that I’m capable of something like that; and 2) I am not willing to endanger the society I am trying to save, even to save it. A little pruning, a little pain here and there is probably a good thing. Societies change, and someone always loses. But it is a good thing to include in one’s goals for society the minimization of that loss. My goals aren’t important enough to discount the lives of others. It isn’t arrogant to say that my moral convictions are right and to let them influence the public policies I suggest and support. It is arrogant to say that my moral convictions are so important that other people and their suffering doesn’t count.

And this, Josiah, is what I was getting at. Yes, we need men of conviction in office. But there’s a big difference between allowing one’s convictions to influence one’s actions – even political actions – and allowing one’s convictions to dictate the actions of others. We need the former and should fear the latter.

Damn, that was long. But heck, I had fun writing it. If anyone has objections or critique, fire away. This is just getting interesting.

Posted by ryan at May 7, 2004 02:48 PM | TrackBack