POLITICAL BALANCE

Today, for instance, I hear Marco Rubio saying in a speech, conservatives do not want to hurt people but want to help them. I hear conservatives say things suggesting they want small government; some even say the want to make it so small they can “drown it in a bathtub”. I hear them suggest that we would be better off without “government” regulations. In contrast, I hear liberals or progressives say they want environmental protection so they have clean water to drink, safe food to eat, a secure old age, they want a government to do for them things they cannot do for themselves. They want regulations to protect them from all kinds of aggression. They consider progressive taxation to be fair—the rich to pay more that the poor. Liberals and conservatives seem to be at opposite ends of every debate and have a different strategy for arriving there. It isn’t that every debate or fight has no consequences because they do, thus dominance shifts back and forth; however, isn’t that how society stays in political equilibrium, which does not mean fifty-fifty.  Democracy can work do other way?

We are a rich nation—the richest in the world. As children of that nation, we deserve to live better than people live in a poor nation, just as children of a rich family deserve to live better than children of a poor family live. In spite of different levels of wealth, a utopia where everyone was equal would not be a utopia; it would be a form of hell. I do not think any living American can believe that we will every live in such a place. In political terms, a perpetual conservative majority would be as bad as a perpetual liberal majority. As awkward as it sounds, we need our little battles, as long as they become more and more civil and, as Stephen Pinker claims in his book, The Better Nature if Our Angels, that is what is happenings. Violence has diminished with time and has all prospects of continuing that trend.

The objective of this post is to point out that because of our developing morality were moving from a culture of selfish individuals to culture driven by altruism: people who are still greedy but are more and more willing to share. We are moving from a bestial based culture where everyone needs an advantage over the next person to survive to a culture where we give up any inherent advantage of strength or intelligence and strive to be equal to the next person. Game theory predicts some sort of a reasonably arrived at equilibrium or Nash equilibrium will result between hawks and doves, if you want to use a bird metaphor. I do not mean to imply that this is a purpose but rather that it will be an unplanned result. The caveat is that we will never know when our innate drives are in equilibrium because we will be busy arguing, fighting, and killing each other while trying; to paraphrase Marco Rubio’s words as naive as they seem, “We do no want to hurt people but want to help ourselves”. 

URL: firetreepub.blogspot.com Comments Invited and not moderated