The Mouse on "Conservatism" (Final Installment)
Plato – a human, like John Marshall and you and me – struggled to find a universal meaning for the word “justice.” We can learn from his effort. His mouthpiece, Socrates, opined that keeping one’s promises might always be considered a just act, but in less than three pages of dialectic Plato disposed of that easy solution. He had Socrates argue that if a friend entrusts to you his weapon and you give him your word that you will return it when he asks for it, some circumstance may arise in which you would certainly be justified in not keeping your word. If the friend asked for the weapon at a time when he was in hot anger, and you were of the opinion that he would, if given the weapon, commit an act he would later regret, you would certainly be wrong to keep your promise. In other words, we are, each of us, faced with the problem of having to decide what is right and what is wrong. There was in Plato’s time, as now, no escape from the necessity to think.
In proceeding with our thoughts we might wonder – as many have – whether making outright gifts to poor people in the form of welfare is in their best interest. We might wonder whether the Costco idea of paying its employees more than the prevailing wage and of providing benefits its competitors would never dream of paying, was in the company’s best interest, not to mention the inflationary effects the practice would have on the whole economy. We might wonder whether the Grameen Bank in Bangladesh that makes unsecured loans to destitute poor people is serving the best interest of its investors. We may acknowledge a deep and abiding devotion to Christian charity, and yet still wonder if in identifying people as “the poor” we’re not leading the poor to regard themselves as a helpless hoard, unable to sustain itself in this progressive and complicated world. We might, after a brief analysis, realize that Costco, in bidding up the price of labor, has broken no rules, has in fact conformed to orthodox capitalist practice. But Muhammad Yunus, the guiding light of the Grameen bank, broke those rules, demonstrating by his action the meta-rule that ideological rules can be obeyed or broken and success be obtained by either path. He challenged the most fundamental guideline of good banking and in doing so made positive inroads into poverty in one of the poorest nations on earth. We might wonder about thousands of real and vital issues that confront us as a people, and in doing so, might also wonder – in what some might call a meta-wondering – whether we are doing the right thing when we try to cram every answer we come up with into an existing ideological frame. And we might realize – after centuries of struggle – that the real road to serfdom lies on the path we follow when we obey without questioning them the endlessly repeated slogans and rhetorical persuasions of philosopher-kings.
We cannot, for example, truly eliminate poverty unless by an almost impossible leap of the spirit we overcome the mental inertia created by the Biblical prophesy that “the poor will be with you always.” In the U. S., where the problem of poverty is essentially benign, Clinton thought he had taken a giant step toward a solution with the Welfare Reform Act of 1996, but critics quickly claimed his efforts had only succeeded in denying needed assistance to the poor. Yunus (as a trained economist and a human just like the rest of us) must have found it doubly difficult to believe that poor people might repay their loans just because they said they would.
I am not trying to make an inspirational talk here. I’m simply illustrating just how truly difficult is the road away from the serfdom of accepted belief. Those entrepreneurs and politicians went against a deeply cut grain. Clinton’s party – especially its progressive wing – has consistently favored direct assistance to the poor with no strings attached; Clinton attached strings. Bankers – mine and yours – have always demanded either firm collateral or co-signers with the means to pay if the borrower doesn’t; heaven knows what led Yunus to think he could get away with lending money to “deadbeats,” but he did it and has apparently made a success of the practice.[1] And I wonder what stream of consciousness led Costco’s managers to overcome the fear that must have surrounded their decisions: “What in the world will we say to the board of directors if this strategy fails?”
And their strategy may fail. Everyone, corporate CEOs, home-owning entrepreneurs, even those who “go with the flow” – especially politicians – must deal with the inevitability of the unexpected. Those hired as our political leaders, better equipped to deal with change than those who hired them, can seek to minimize occurrences of outright rebellion by keeping on hand a good supply of flags and anthems they can use to calm the passions of the masses when change pinches them where it hurts. They may coax a friendly legislature into throwing a barely gnawed bone to corporate wolves when their bottom line has been turned pinkish by the down cycle of an economy that seems to obey no master. A particularly bold leader may even kick a few foreign asses to kindle the odd minor skirmish, the costs of which may add fuel to the economy’s flickering fire. Or, in a more sheepish moment, he may simply turn on the charm, never flinching in eye or smirk when “all about him are losing their heads and blaming it on him.”
These options, and as many more as clever men may conceive, may or may not work on any particular occasion to relieve the tensions of a plan gone wrong. The success of a given horse in a given race, like the goodness of a particular idea, is determined after the starting gate opens. Stamina and speed, like sound economic theories, are measures of probable success, not assurances. The world does not obey theories or systems. It obeys the forces of the moment. It is, thus, only a vaguely predictable place.
The neoconservative-fascists of modern times have grossly miscalculated in believing that their great scheme for the enrichment of an investor class will produce its planned effects. The world – especially its economy – moves by the rational action of thousands upon millions of loosely related forces. Some of those actions work and others fail, while still others dawdle along trying to make ends meet. Clinton’s welfare reform is a dawdler. Costco’s employment experiment may survive, its chances somewhat more intuitively appealing than Yunus’ banking policy. But any plan – whether socialist, fascist, or pseudo-capitalist – that seeks to control the fundamentals of the economy by broad and sweeping governmental controls is certain to result in painful disaster.
Unfortunately, we are at present undergoing a fascist experiment that may in its madness succeed in destroying the once great hopes the American ideal presented to the world. The liberties of speech and religion are being abused by people who know exactly what they wish to make of the world. It is to our great misfortune that the monster they hope to create will destroy all that was true and beautiful in the ideas promulgated by Madison, Jefferson, Washington, and the other founding fathers. The modern puppeteers think they have found the philosopher’s stone, a magical potion called “massive capital formation” that they believe will do what Hayek, Smith, and von Mises said could not be done. They seek to replace the rational trials and errors of a complex human society with the snake oil of crack-pot economics. Tobacco taxes, Social Security, welfare reforms, not even NAFTA/CAFTA – none of these in their individuality, or when taken as a whole, comprises a “central plan,” but rather represent small parts of that conglomerate of rational causes and effects that Hayek referred to as the dispersed knowledge of humankind. Some of those ideas are bound to fail, and some of their failures will trace to economic and/or moral contradictions. Some of them will succeed because they are backed by the force of arms, others because they have found a sweet spot in the human soul. They are, nonetheless, ideas conceived by someone and believed by many to be aspects of the good.
By way of getting a better understanding of the method humans ought to apply to their governmental decisions, look briefly at Medicare. Anyone who would say of that program that it is not of the socialist tint would be wrong. The services and products offered by physicians, hospitals, and pharmacies are indeed resources and any arbitrary law that seeks to control or guide their usage is by nature socialist. But we must finally admit that Medicare is less an economic concern (aside from its dollars and cents cost) than a political concern. Does it serve the general welfare to assure the good health of the older population? Is Medicare something worth doing, both for the good of the elderly and of society in general? The increased costs that will be brought about as a result of removing medical care for the elderly from the free market must also be figured into the equation, as must the inevitable temptation that will arise to put price controls on the products. It cannot be argued that the program is bad simply because it is socialist. It must be considered on the basis of a comparison of its cost and manageability against its value to the general welfare.
The same goes for NAFTA/CAFTA. It may very well be that those programs are good for the general welfare. The NAFTA/CAFTA provisions that are, in my opinion, downright wrong, would perhaps have been written out of them if the programs had been openly and honestly presented to the public mind.
These questions could be debated until time stops, but if we are to remain human beings, guiding our choices by the rational use of reason, we must eventually come to closure. In deciding, we should be guided both by the principles of good economic theory and by our interpretation of what the words “general welfare” mean. To do otherwise would be to shy away from the hard problems, and to take the path of least resistance, the one that marches us lock-step where our ideology takes us.
Ideas are, after all, paramount in the government of human society. We, as individuals, must think, and to think that we can escape the necessity to do so is to think ourselves into a totalitarian regime. The fascists are achieving their goals by the power of their wealth, not by the power of their ideas. They perhaps know this, since they have been reluctant to openly declare their purposes, preferring to hide behind the lies and distortions of NAFTA/CAFTA-like plans. They are good at doing what they do, and that is – perhaps – all the worse for their victims.
Let me explain that “perhaps.” It could be the case that the verbal acrobatics and rhetorical lies of our political masters are all that stand between us and perpetual rebellion. We are after all, absolutely and existentially free, bound in our behavior by nothing other than our impressions, ideas, and passions – causes and effects. If we cannot, as individuals, consciously and widely apply the Spinoza/Lonergan method to the conduct of our lives, perhaps the comforting lies of our philosopher-kings are necessary. So long as they do it well, their lying may at least maintain order long enough for the American people to wake up without having to undergo the pain and suffering of another revolution.
To me, it seems reasonable to expect that we will find a way to accept our obligation to think and, with it, our commitment to the truth. It seems to me, in fact, impossible that any web of deception woven by mortals can forever keep its hold on the inquisitive human mind. The “some of the people” who are fooled “all of the time” is still an indeterminate number. It may change in size, and if my intuitions are correct, the changes will all be in the direction of smaller. People will not forever be sucked in by “conservative” spinning of Hayek’s thoughts. We will eventually come to see that a duck is indeed something that looks and quacks like a duck, and that fascists are exactly those who seek to monopolize the total power of government – guns and all – for their own designs, general welfare bedamned.
[1] According to Ode magazine (July/August 2005 issue) the Grameen Bank made a profit of US$5.6 million in 2004…which by another exercise of “insane” behavior, it donated to a worthy cause.
In proceeding with our thoughts we might wonder – as many have – whether making outright gifts to poor people in the form of welfare is in their best interest. We might wonder whether the Costco idea of paying its employees more than the prevailing wage and of providing benefits its competitors would never dream of paying, was in the company’s best interest, not to mention the inflationary effects the practice would have on the whole economy. We might wonder whether the Grameen Bank in Bangladesh that makes unsecured loans to destitute poor people is serving the best interest of its investors. We may acknowledge a deep and abiding devotion to Christian charity, and yet still wonder if in identifying people as “the poor” we’re not leading the poor to regard themselves as a helpless hoard, unable to sustain itself in this progressive and complicated world. We might, after a brief analysis, realize that Costco, in bidding up the price of labor, has broken no rules, has in fact conformed to orthodox capitalist practice. But Muhammad Yunus, the guiding light of the Grameen bank, broke those rules, demonstrating by his action the meta-rule that ideological rules can be obeyed or broken and success be obtained by either path. He challenged the most fundamental guideline of good banking and in doing so made positive inroads into poverty in one of the poorest nations on earth. We might wonder about thousands of real and vital issues that confront us as a people, and in doing so, might also wonder – in what some might call a meta-wondering – whether we are doing the right thing when we try to cram every answer we come up with into an existing ideological frame. And we might realize – after centuries of struggle – that the real road to serfdom lies on the path we follow when we obey without questioning them the endlessly repeated slogans and rhetorical persuasions of philosopher-kings.
We cannot, for example, truly eliminate poverty unless by an almost impossible leap of the spirit we overcome the mental inertia created by the Biblical prophesy that “the poor will be with you always.” In the U. S., where the problem of poverty is essentially benign, Clinton thought he had taken a giant step toward a solution with the Welfare Reform Act of 1996, but critics quickly claimed his efforts had only succeeded in denying needed assistance to the poor. Yunus (as a trained economist and a human just like the rest of us) must have found it doubly difficult to believe that poor people might repay their loans just because they said they would.
I am not trying to make an inspirational talk here. I’m simply illustrating just how truly difficult is the road away from the serfdom of accepted belief. Those entrepreneurs and politicians went against a deeply cut grain. Clinton’s party – especially its progressive wing – has consistently favored direct assistance to the poor with no strings attached; Clinton attached strings. Bankers – mine and yours – have always demanded either firm collateral or co-signers with the means to pay if the borrower doesn’t; heaven knows what led Yunus to think he could get away with lending money to “deadbeats,” but he did it and has apparently made a success of the practice.[1] And I wonder what stream of consciousness led Costco’s managers to overcome the fear that must have surrounded their decisions: “What in the world will we say to the board of directors if this strategy fails?”
And their strategy may fail. Everyone, corporate CEOs, home-owning entrepreneurs, even those who “go with the flow” – especially politicians – must deal with the inevitability of the unexpected. Those hired as our political leaders, better equipped to deal with change than those who hired them, can seek to minimize occurrences of outright rebellion by keeping on hand a good supply of flags and anthems they can use to calm the passions of the masses when change pinches them where it hurts. They may coax a friendly legislature into throwing a barely gnawed bone to corporate wolves when their bottom line has been turned pinkish by the down cycle of an economy that seems to obey no master. A particularly bold leader may even kick a few foreign asses to kindle the odd minor skirmish, the costs of which may add fuel to the economy’s flickering fire. Or, in a more sheepish moment, he may simply turn on the charm, never flinching in eye or smirk when “all about him are losing their heads and blaming it on him.”
These options, and as many more as clever men may conceive, may or may not work on any particular occasion to relieve the tensions of a plan gone wrong. The success of a given horse in a given race, like the goodness of a particular idea, is determined after the starting gate opens. Stamina and speed, like sound economic theories, are measures of probable success, not assurances. The world does not obey theories or systems. It obeys the forces of the moment. It is, thus, only a vaguely predictable place.
The neoconservative-fascists of modern times have grossly miscalculated in believing that their great scheme for the enrichment of an investor class will produce its planned effects. The world – especially its economy – moves by the rational action of thousands upon millions of loosely related forces. Some of those actions work and others fail, while still others dawdle along trying to make ends meet. Clinton’s welfare reform is a dawdler. Costco’s employment experiment may survive, its chances somewhat more intuitively appealing than Yunus’ banking policy. But any plan – whether socialist, fascist, or pseudo-capitalist – that seeks to control the fundamentals of the economy by broad and sweeping governmental controls is certain to result in painful disaster.
Unfortunately, we are at present undergoing a fascist experiment that may in its madness succeed in destroying the once great hopes the American ideal presented to the world. The liberties of speech and religion are being abused by people who know exactly what they wish to make of the world. It is to our great misfortune that the monster they hope to create will destroy all that was true and beautiful in the ideas promulgated by Madison, Jefferson, Washington, and the other founding fathers. The modern puppeteers think they have found the philosopher’s stone, a magical potion called “massive capital formation” that they believe will do what Hayek, Smith, and von Mises said could not be done. They seek to replace the rational trials and errors of a complex human society with the snake oil of crack-pot economics. Tobacco taxes, Social Security, welfare reforms, not even NAFTA/CAFTA – none of these in their individuality, or when taken as a whole, comprises a “central plan,” but rather represent small parts of that conglomerate of rational causes and effects that Hayek referred to as the dispersed knowledge of humankind. Some of those ideas are bound to fail, and some of their failures will trace to economic and/or moral contradictions. Some of them will succeed because they are backed by the force of arms, others because they have found a sweet spot in the human soul. They are, nonetheless, ideas conceived by someone and believed by many to be aspects of the good.
By way of getting a better understanding of the method humans ought to apply to their governmental decisions, look briefly at Medicare. Anyone who would say of that program that it is not of the socialist tint would be wrong. The services and products offered by physicians, hospitals, and pharmacies are indeed resources and any arbitrary law that seeks to control or guide their usage is by nature socialist. But we must finally admit that Medicare is less an economic concern (aside from its dollars and cents cost) than a political concern. Does it serve the general welfare to assure the good health of the older population? Is Medicare something worth doing, both for the good of the elderly and of society in general? The increased costs that will be brought about as a result of removing medical care for the elderly from the free market must also be figured into the equation, as must the inevitable temptation that will arise to put price controls on the products. It cannot be argued that the program is bad simply because it is socialist. It must be considered on the basis of a comparison of its cost and manageability against its value to the general welfare.
The same goes for NAFTA/CAFTA. It may very well be that those programs are good for the general welfare. The NAFTA/CAFTA provisions that are, in my opinion, downright wrong, would perhaps have been written out of them if the programs had been openly and honestly presented to the public mind.
These questions could be debated until time stops, but if we are to remain human beings, guiding our choices by the rational use of reason, we must eventually come to closure. In deciding, we should be guided both by the principles of good economic theory and by our interpretation of what the words “general welfare” mean. To do otherwise would be to shy away from the hard problems, and to take the path of least resistance, the one that marches us lock-step where our ideology takes us.
Ideas are, after all, paramount in the government of human society. We, as individuals, must think, and to think that we can escape the necessity to do so is to think ourselves into a totalitarian regime. The fascists are achieving their goals by the power of their wealth, not by the power of their ideas. They perhaps know this, since they have been reluctant to openly declare their purposes, preferring to hide behind the lies and distortions of NAFTA/CAFTA-like plans. They are good at doing what they do, and that is – perhaps – all the worse for their victims.
Let me explain that “perhaps.” It could be the case that the verbal acrobatics and rhetorical lies of our political masters are all that stand between us and perpetual rebellion. We are after all, absolutely and existentially free, bound in our behavior by nothing other than our impressions, ideas, and passions – causes and effects. If we cannot, as individuals, consciously and widely apply the Spinoza/Lonergan method to the conduct of our lives, perhaps the comforting lies of our philosopher-kings are necessary. So long as they do it well, their lying may at least maintain order long enough for the American people to wake up without having to undergo the pain and suffering of another revolution.
To me, it seems reasonable to expect that we will find a way to accept our obligation to think and, with it, our commitment to the truth. It seems to me, in fact, impossible that any web of deception woven by mortals can forever keep its hold on the inquisitive human mind. The “some of the people” who are fooled “all of the time” is still an indeterminate number. It may change in size, and if my intuitions are correct, the changes will all be in the direction of smaller. People will not forever be sucked in by “conservative” spinning of Hayek’s thoughts. We will eventually come to see that a duck is indeed something that looks and quacks like a duck, and that fascists are exactly those who seek to monopolize the total power of government – guns and all – for their own designs, general welfare bedamned.
[1] According to Ode magazine (July/August 2005 issue) the Grameen Bank made a profit of US$5.6 million in 2004…which by another exercise of “insane” behavior, it donated to a worthy cause.
posted by Benedict S. at 8:45 AM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home