17 November 2008

These thoughts hit me today while I was reading The Economist Magazine - well, the book section actually.  I have to get them down quickly or I forget them.  And so why do I bother?  It gives me pleasure, whether anyone reads or not.  That fits right in, whether logically or not.

The charm of liberty and freedom lies with the people.  They are illogical, emotional, ignorant and ruled by perception.  I have spent a lot of time trying to understand what is best, what is logical, and what works.  Uh uh.  Where there is freedom and liberty that has relatively little to do with it.  In fact, even without freedom it doesn't - it's just a matter of a different set of people's illogic, biases, emotions and perceptions.  That, after all, is really all that matters.

Are people concerned with facts?  Noooooooo.  I even read recently that politicians that try to feed voters facts inevitably lose.  Voters are concerned with...yup, you guessed it.

People don't care about what is, they care about what seems to be and what they think is.  History?  Economics?  Even math.  It's not what is but what they perceive is.  And try to change their opinion.  Nope, perception is too strong - bias is too strong.  They believe what they want to believe.  Education?  Forget it.

It really makes people charming, if you can get by the frustration, and if you are not concerned with getting anything done.  Of course when things go bad, when their biases and perceptions are wrong, who is blamed?  Themselves?  Nahhh.  They always find someone else to blame - anyone else.  And their logic is strong - it's their fault, whoever they are.

Why does democracy work?  Sort of?  Because there are enough people with different perceptions so that it all balan ces out in the end.  Think about the Constitution for example: it is heavy in trying to keep people from screwing things up, not getting things done; there is a reason for that.

God bless people; but don't take them too seriously.

16 November 2008

Sir Alex Fraser Tytler (1801):

"A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government.  It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largess from the public treasury.  From that time on the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury, with the results that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, always followed by a dictatorship.  The average age of the world's great civilizations has been 200 years.  These nations have progressed through this sequence:

From bondage to spiritual faith

From spiritual faith to great courage

From courage to liberty

From liberty to abundance

From abundance to selfishness

From selfishness to complacency

From complacency to apathy

From apathy to dependency

From dependence back again to bondage."

Looking at "democracies" in today's world one has to question how democratic many of them really are/were: imperfections have  enabled bypassing  steps in some cases.  Tytler didn't have all that many examples to view, and I suggest he omitted an important one: anarchy.

Consider the classic examples being presented in Africa, among them Somalia that  is already sliding into anarchy, as are, perhaps, several other central African states.  Anarchy, however, is not a natural state that can last for long, since before too long one or another of the war lord clans/gangs becomes stronger than the others and forms some semblance of dictatorship, until another topples it.  And others, such as Russia, that only became a quasi-democracy.; Iran skipped that step.  So is Tytler wrong?  Merely a little too general, and  a little too theoretical perhaps.  And, after all, the first four steps are relative.   So where would we place Somalia?  And does this apply to Europe?  He provides plenty to think about on the economic side, but maybe not enough in terms of greatly imperfect democracies, those that have voting, but little else that is required.  And  it leaves out the power of clans and gangs.  What effect, for example, drug cartels?  

The testing of Tytler's theory is underway, and probably is entering the make another hypothesis stage.  For awhile we thought democracy was going to be the answer from which we would never go back.  We do that a lot, think we have finally arrived.  But that is not the way things progress.  Democracy is too nebulous a term; but then so is dictatorship.  Complacency, apathy and selfishness are not, however; they exist always in some form or other.  And anarchy?  I would contend that it, in some form, is a fairly common state between democracy and dictatorship.  Surely the world will be roiled with democracies, dictatorships and anarchies all trying to exist on the same stage; a fascinating unfolding if you are observing from a distance far enough.

Bernard le Bouvier de Fontenelle (died 1757):

"A philosopher sees the earth as a large planet, traveling through the heavens, covered by fools."

Just so.

15 November 2008

Perhaps it is the inevitable result of modern (classical) liberalism; we don't like to see people struggle or get hurt.  We want all to be content and happy, and to us that entails liberty.  The fact that some other cultures see things differently, and use our sense of justice against us is problematic, but that's a subject for another day.  The inevitability is that we are inclined to want to take care of those that can't take care of themselves.

That's noble.  But as with those who would use our justice against us, there are many in our own culture who would happily use our generosity against us.  These are those who can take care of themselves but choose not to when they discover an easier way.  Our proclivity to worshipping equality feeds  such a choice: why struggle when you can have it given to you?

In a free market culture people are left to their own devices, and those that are able, and make the effort can achieve beyond those that don't or won't.  And some get hurt.  We might not feel bad when failed risk takers get hurt, but they inevitably drag others down with them, and we feel bad for them.  The fact that in the long run free markets really do make it better for almost all is lost in the concern for those who slip and fall in the short run.  This struggle between long run and short run will always exist and keeping a balance is challenging.

Currently, for many reasons, the balance is drifting left.  Honest concern for others is clearly one reason; ignorance of and bias toward free markets and how they work is another; a strong belief in general egalitarianism is a third.  Furthermore the non-achieving, being more numerous than the achieving, provides a large constituency for those to whom power is more important than anything else.  The founders of our country were concerned about that, calling the potential the tyranny of the majority.

Recently we underwent a historical sequence of events that have nudged the balance even further left.  A combination of actions  by government, individuals and businesses, all basically feeding on human greed caused an untenable growth of wealth that reached its inevitable end, and because of the size of the problem and the general and severe pain that letting markets take their course would have produced, government took steps to attempt to avert the most dire circumstances that could have resulted, steps that were socialistic in nature - temporarily so, if followed to the logical conclusion upon which they were initiated.

But at the same time, and probably largely because of the perceptions that surrounded the financial crisis, perhaps the most liberal government that has ever existed in the United States came to power - controlling both houses of our legislature and the executive branch.  This confluence of events will clearly give our natural drift to the left a strong supporting nudge, perhaps merely speeding up the inevitable.

The question is, will it destroy the balance between big government controls and free market freedoms?  The difference?  History has made it clear, if narrowly understood, that excessive government controls dampen economic growth; there simply is too much to control, and government can not do it effectively.  But the complexity of world trade, urban living and international stresses and inequities, and pure size of the problem of living demand that  government take a hand where necessary.  Where necessary; and where is that?  At the balance point, admitedly a circular argument.  As one economist put it, we are all in agreement as to what it is we want to achieve - the best possible for our populace - but we are in disagreement as to how that is to be achieved.

Middle ground, balance point, thoughtful compromise - call it what you will; it is the secret of our success to date and it will determine our success in the future.   For let there be no doubt, success and economics are one and the same: it's the economy stupid, and always will be, because economics determines quality of life.

Our slow drift leftward - toward a socialistic philosophy - has just been given a sharp impetus in the same direction.  Whether that is dampened toward a continued rough balance between government control and free markets, or allowed free reign toward increased government control will determine our future - perhaps not immediately, but eventually; balanced?  or not?  One way or the other this historic confluence of events has offered us a test.   How we react to it will be long studied and often debated.

10 November 2008

Today Baghdad experienced its highest violence death toll in months from three separte bombings in the north end of the city.

The first thought that hit me was, ah ha, the bad guys are already feeling their oats through expectations of a more compliant US regime and early American troop exits.  Maybe?  And maybe not.

It is something that will bear watching, though.  Politicians are famous for disregarding forecasts of probable cause and effect.  They even ignore proven cause and effect if it doesn't meet their personal expectations, requirements and spoken views.  Which all reinforces that perception is more important than fact, and boy oh boy, do we ever do the perception thing.  Politicians speak and media reports - or criticizes, depending on their own perceptive proclivities.

Let us see what happens.

6 November 2008

I read an article today about how our drift strongly resembles that espoused by Fabian Socialism, and looked it up: essentially a slow and steady drift toward, rather than through radical action.

That got me to thinking of something I read several weeks ago.   It was a study (that I unfortunately can  no longer attribute) using questions about employment for college students.  They were given a choice between working for a company that paid high wages, but where they would earn less than their peers; and one where the actual pay level was lower, but they would be paid better than their peers.  The preference was for the latter.  Presumably, better to be a big frog in a small pond than a small frog in a big pond, or something similar.

This fits comfortably with what we all see every day and that is keeping up with the Jones - success respect.  A little bigger house, a "nice" car and enough of whatever to brag about; but not so much more as to be reviled for it.

Thus Socialism - that is, philosophical Socialism as opposed to traditional Socialism - not necessarily government ownership, but government control.  Eliminate poverty but also egregious riches, even if that slows down the engine of progress.  Put bluntly that suggests we might not be so uncomfortable with legislated medicocrity as long as we were all roughly equal.  Or as they used to see about Eastern  Europe: shared poverty.  As long as everyone is poor, it's endurable, "poor" of course being relative.

I also note (regularly) that election results show socialist tendencies strongest in urban areas.  That makes sense too, when you think about it.  And since urbanization is on the increase, so is the tendency toward philosophical socialism; or what is evident in most of the East: paternal democracy.

And under the Fabian plan it happens slowly over time.  In fact one of the reasons Fabian Socialism per se disappeared is that most of their goals were incorporated into the British Labor Party platform and came to pass, so their mission could be called completed.  It has also been pointed out that most of the platform planks of the American Socialist Party have also now been incorporated into our culture.

Perhaps this is the true will of the people, and will be accepted easily as long as it doesn't happen too radically.  We call it egalitarianism and it seems to be our most favored goal, so maybe we're almost there.