Subject: delayed posts
Date: Mon, May 26, 2014
Msg: 101030
Sorry for the length of this post, but four of my previous posts were delayed. Thanks.
Michael Briand Chico, CA 95928 530-345-3709
1. I share Steven's concerns and skepticism, but I also dislike waste, especially when the practices responsible for waste seem to benefit those who need and deserve public subsidy the least, while at the same time failing adequately to benefit those who need it the most. I regard all the "Cap and ____ " prescriptions warily, because we know that, whatever theories say--whether capitalist, socialist, or any other "big idea"), in practice people find ways to "work the system" (or even "game" it, as Ross Douthat points out). I do agree with Rick and others that incentives are important and that the "administration of people and things" by large bureaucracies, public or private, has a very substantial down side. (I think of myself as an "Aristotelian libertarian socialist.") But I cling to the (fading) hope of government as the effective tool of genuinely deliberative, participatory democracy out of fear that the clever folks among us will continue finding a way to exploit the rest of us. I know there are arguments intended to reassure persons like Steven and me on this score--I'm just saying we have doubts and worries it will take time to assuage.
Michael Briand
2. I want to highlight the following brief excerpt from Lawry's note to John:
"...I was assuming...that this community is committed to coding messages in accord with the mainstream economic and political idiom. ... I want to influence
that idiom, and I see more opportunity to accomplish that from inside the mainstream debate than from outside."
This is an important matter, one that affects both the content of our efforts to communicate with each other and our readiness to continue trying. My own inclination is the same as Lawry's, but others (I'm thinking of my friend Tom Atlee) believe (if I can paraphrase him accurately--and if I don't he will let us know...) that mainstream discourse is so rooted in particular assumptions, perceptions, commitments, and the like that we need to use language in novel ways to avoid remaining caught in the conceptual and epistemological "box" that is mainstream discourse. Fortunately, because we are all speaking English (or "American"), translation between conventional and new discourses is possible--provided we understand that our communications are indeed acts of translation and that we take proper care to carry out this task as well as possible.
Michael Briand
3. This is a long way to put my own spin on the Lawry-John exchange:
For my immediate purpose, let me stipulate a definition of "capitalism" as a socio-political-legal institution--i.e., a set of values, priorities, principles, practices, laws, habits, proclivities, expectations, and aspirations--that serves some felt need or purpose within a social group (community, society, culture, civilization). Capitalism--or, more precisely, free-market capitalism (FMC)--is a particular form of a more general type of institution: an "economy" or "economic system." "Religion" is also an institution, as are specific religions, such as Christianity, Judaism, Buddhism, and Islam. So are "sport" and "football." Each of these is an example of what Wittgenstein called a "game"--i.e., a rule-governed activity.
Consider the institution, or practice, of (American) football. It is both a game in the colloquial sense and in the sense Wittgenstein intended. It consists of purposes, values, priorities, principles, practices, habits, proclivities, expectations, and aspirations. Football is not part of the "furniture of the universe." It is a human construct, something human beings have created and sustain. It exists because it produces (at least for those human beings who go in for it) experiences that help satisfy certain naturally-occurring needs, desires, and proclivities. The game is sustained by authorities who set rules and enforce them, and by participants who adhere to them. At some level, everyone realizes that the game would decline and perhaps even cease to exist if the rules were not reasonable and acceptable to all, or if the making and enforcement of the rules were to be corrupted so that many participants come to believe that it's no longer worth playing.
Free market capitalism* (FMC) is like football. It consists of purposes, values, priorities, principles, practices, habits, proclivities, expectations, and aspirations. It is not part of the "furniture of the universe." It is a human construct, something human beings have created and sustain. It exists because it produces certain experiences that help satisfy certain naturally-occurring needs, desires, and proclivities. It is sustained by authorities who set rules and enforce them, and by participants who adhere to them. It would decline and perhaps even cease to exist if the rules become unreasonable and cease to be acceptable to all, or if the making and enforcement of the rules were to be corrupted so that many participants come to believe that it is no longer worth "playing."
An important difference between free market capitalism and football, of course, is that it's a lot easier to opt out of football and to find an alternative.
Because football is the game it is, it inevitably favors certain characteristics, abilities, and skills: size, strength, speed, agility, etc. Not everybody possesses these in the same measure, of course. Especially at the high school level, where the number of participants is the greatest, certain schools (usually small ones in rural areas) may struggle to field teams that can compete with powerhouses like Miami Northwestern, Long Beach Poly, Hoover (AL), Jenks (OK), Katy (TX), Oaks (Westlake Village, CA), or Concord (CA) De La Salle.
Fortunately, the rules that constitute the social practice that is the game of football allow for inventing and constructing alternative "games within the game" that enable schools with fewer resources (human and material) to compete. In Paradise, CA, where I help coach the freshman team, the high school is about half the size of those that perennially field the best teams in the northern part of the state. Yet it consistently competes effectively with the big schools by perfecting an old-fashioned offense (the Wing T) suited to under-sized players and by adopting an attitude and an ethos of excellence that is shared by schools like Permian High School in Odessa, Texas (Friday Night Lights).
Because free-market capitalism is the game it is, it inevitably favors certain characteristics, abilities, and skills: drive, persistence, creativity, intelligence, determination, etc. Not everybody possesses these in the same measure. Like the rules of football, those of FMC allow for inventing and constructing alternative "games within the game." Cooperatives, for example, enable members and employees to operate within the larger capitalist system while eliminating from daily life many of the stresses that people in the most prevalent form of business organization find objectionable.
Again, if football ceases to provide participants with the rewards it once offered, they can always take up rugby or lacrosse, or even invent a new version of football. In contrast, it's not quite as easy to escape the effect of FMC on our lives. A.O. Hirschman spoke of "exit," "loyalty," and "voice" as the three options open to people who find themselves at the limit of their ability to accept the conditions of an institution or organization. Football permits all three. FMC makes "exit" difficult, offers little "voice" to participants (except those in cooperatives), and in many cases makes "loyalty" nearly unbearable. (Well, at least for me it does.)
A more-participatory democracy would improve people's "voice," enabling them to constrain, redirect, or reform the institution of FMC. Government, which in principle is the institutional tool by which the members of a democracy should be able to effect their choices and implement their decisions, has fallen into a condition--perhaps by overreaching, perhaps by growing too large, perhaps by becoming too remote, perhaps by spinning out of control, perhaps just by realizing the less desirable aspects of its nature-- that renders it not only ineffective and inefficient, but in some instances actually pernicious.
To me, it makes little sense to argue about what government is or isn't, does or doesn't do, should or shouldn't do, until we reach a shared recognition that government is neither the question nor the answer. The question is, how shall we live together in a manner that fosters the flourishing of all persons? The answer, I believe, lies in an understanding of how we can ethically, humanely, fairly, and justly reconcile the values of individuality and community ("freedom" and "order"). Unless we are prepared to defer to some authority who, Solomon-like, will decide for us, we have no alternative but to work out the answer democratically, deliberatively, and consensually.
* Free markets may be necessary for capitalism and vice versa, but they are conceptually distinct.
Michael Briand
4. Every action generates consequences. Some benefit ourselves, some benefit others, some benefit both.
Brian Barry introduced the terms "self-regarding" and "other-regarding" into the political philosophy literature in 1957. As he used the terms, self-regarding actions are those a person takes with the intention and expectation that he or she will be the chief beneficiary. Other-regarding actions are those a person takes with the intention and expectation that someone other than him or her will be the chief beneficiary. This distinction tracks roughly with the conventional notions of prudential and moral action.
Certainly, self-regarding actions can have beneficial consequences for others, and other-regarding actions may turn out to benefit others as little as or even less than they benefit oneself. (Think of Henry Ford's decision to pay his workers more so they could buy his cars.) Whether either is praiseworthy depends on both the intended and actual consequences. Before the evidence is in, we have only intended and probable ("reasonably foreseeable") consequences by which to judge the agent and his or her action.
When Tocqueville observed America in the 1830s, he saw what Adam Smith's theory had predicted: self-regarding actions having beneficial consequences that the actors had not intended. This isn't surprising, because Smith's theory assumed a competitive market and capitalists without the means to influence the market except by increasing or decreasing production, increasing or decreasing their prices, etc. The monopolies and oligopolies of Smith's day were the mercantile organizations, one of the earliest and most successful of which was the British East India Company. This is the company of which the owners might have said, as Charlie Wilson did of General Motors, that what was good for the company was good for the country. The historian A.J.P Taylor once wrote that the policies of the East India Company were the policies of Great Britain.
We are a long way from the competitive markets featuring small capitalists that Smith imagined and Tocqueville observed. We are also a long way from the capitalism of Andrew Carnegie. Unlike Rockefeller, Morgan, Mellon, and other capitalists of the late 19th century, Carnegie's actions were influenced by a moral sense that tempered his economic motivations. (Not coincidentally, perhaps, Carnegie, like Smith, was a Scotsman.) The library a few blocks from my house was built with Carnegie's money, not Rockefeller's or Morgan's.
It's significant that Carnegie and Smith were imbued with an ethical sense (more theistic in the case of the former, more deistic in the case of the latter). While praising the early American economic system, Tocqueville noted that the ethics of Americans depended more on their religious convictions than on the happy coincidence that their self-regarding actions usually had beneficial consequences they didn't consciously envision. Tocqueville worried about what would happen in America as the religious spirit waned and Americans were left with no counter-weight to their self-regarding economic motivations. As it turns out, what he worried would happen did happen: the Carnegies grew fewer and less influential, the Rockefellers and Morgans grew more numerous and more influential.
It seems odd to me that we speak with pride of governments "of laws, not men," but seem to imagine that the "self-regulating discipline of the market"--not laws, and not personal ethics--suffice for the task of ensuring that the consequences of self-regarding actions in the economic sphere, taken by men who are bound by societal and organizational rules to put profit above all other values, are always benign or beneficial. That appears to be true only in the early stages of a market, when entry is easy, competition to survive is the dominant imperative, and no single actor, or group of actors, is able to change these basic facts.
One of the great lessons of the modern Western world is that we must avoid value monism. Whether it's material prosperity, the national interest, freedom, competition, equality, information, or any other good, we can end up with too much of a good thing. That's what "nemesis" meant originally, back in the day when Aristotle was urging us to seek the golden mean between virtue and excess.
Michael Briand
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