Conservatism

The religious have been a very important component of the progressive movement as well, possibly more so. The Catholic Workers, for instance, Dorothy Day in particular. The Rev. M.K. King, Rev. Adam Clayton Powell, and so forth.

In my native Texas, many persons who adopted racially tolerant positions did so out of religious motivations, rather than political ones. I am proud to number my grandmother among them, but she did it for Jesus, not for Mr. Roosevelt.

Scylla,

Thanks for your reply - looks like you’ve got your work cut out for you in answering other’s responses. I’ll try to be brief - other posters have made comments similar to what I wanted to say.

A couple of things - while I think you’ve made a good first attemtp at defining conservatism, I think your position would be stronger if you could focus on it as a principle or philosophical position regarding society as a whole. From what I understand of your position, is that conservatism (as you’ve presented it) would be a viable outlook/position to take regardless of scale (individual, group/institution, society). However, if that were true, then one needs to assume that the individual, group/insitution, society evolve in a similar fashion. Which is an assumption I can’t agree with. (I can’t remember if this violates the naturalistic fallacy or not).

If you could somehow demonstrate that conservative principles/philosophy hold at the various scales, I would be more convinced of your position (and I should note that I’m not asking you to - just that if could be demonstrated it would bolster your claim).

I get the impression (correct me if I’m wrong) that conservatism can be summed up thusly: “Conservatives are reluctant to change (hence the emphasis on perserving the status quo), but will change given the circumstances (“where necessary”) as they arise. However, whatever proposed changes that we wish to make must take account of the law of unintended consequences. If there is some degree of probability (whatever that may be) that the law of unintended consequences will “kick in”, then the proposed changes need either to be reassessed or dropped altogether”.

You might quibble with “reluctant to change”, which is fine, but I think my reading of your position would lend itself to interpreting that conservatives are more comfortable with small changes within society whereas liberals tend to accept/deal with a greater
level of change (whatever that may be).

As mentioned in your previous post, I think a sticking point is your “where necessary” component in conservatives assessing the need for change. If you could strengthen this part (such as delineating who decides the “where necessary” component), then I think your position would be stronger (particularly if you state with regards as society as a whole).

It only looks that way because that’s exactly what I did.

Jesus H Christ man! Gimme a Break!

Each one of those topics is a book of argument and debate in and of itself. There was like a list of 10 of them. Do you want me to right a thesis on each?

Do you think that’s realistic?

I just tried to hit a sentence or two, as you say relating it.

I wasn’t pretending to do anything else.

Why is that a problem?

Allright. I think we’ve done enough of the LUC now and we’ ve introduced the twin concepts of Personal Responsibility and self-reliance.

We seem to have gotten hung up on this “preserve the status quo” thing. It’s wrong to do so. As I said, this is simply a default position that is implied by the LUC. It is not a code of honor or a moral stance. It is a starting point.

Tom Wolfe makes an interesting essay on the LUC in his recent book Hooking Up

It seems that during the 60s in San Francisco there was a tremendous resurgence of forgotten diseases, Diseases modern Doctors had never treated in a modern country. Mange, Dysentery, etc. Turns out this resurgence came from the great social experiment of starting over and questioning everything. The hippies once again learned why it is customary to not share toothbrushes. Why we change bedding, why sanitation is such a hang-up.

In the absence of a strong reason to do things another way, it is probably best to follow the status quo. There may be a very good reason behind the custom that is not apparent, because the custom has evolved.

The other part of respecting the status quo is not to make a bad situation worse.

Since it got ignored the first time, I’ll repeat:

When my barn wall fell out of true, it was a dangerous situation. In seeking to fix the problem it was important to preserve what was good about it. What was good about it was that the roof was above the floor and still supported by the walls.

While the situation demanded fixing it was important that I not actually collapse the building while trying to repair it.

Now this may seem so inherently obvious as to be unworthy of mention, but it’s surprising how often this thing comes up.

The great example is to me the war on poverty and housing projects.

We took a bad situation, spent trillions of dollars over 35 years and turned it into a total catastrophe.

Much much much better had we done nothing.

But the status quo itself is not what is worth defending. It is the positive properties of the status quo and the recognition that foolish tampering has an unwavering tendency to make things worse.

It is putting rationality over compassion.

Another great example and perennial debate is the minimum wage.

Raising the minimum wage seems nice and compassionate.

It has all kinds of unintended consequences.

Yes, some people will get a raise and that will be good.

However, other companies may lay people off, reduce hours, look overseas for cheaper labor hurting out whole economy. Some small businesses just scraping by may go out of business.

Any discussion about raising the minimimum wage responsibly needs to start with the potential bad consequences. They need to be understood and measured and we need to have a strong degree of evidentiary conviction that the net effect will be positive before we can responsibly do it. We have to be able to responsibly demonstrate that it will do more good than harm.

If we just want to be compassionate and go ahead and do it without knowing, we are worse than fools. We are criminally negligent.

Therefore, the default position is not to screw with large and powerful interrelated forces unless we know what we’re doing. There is no room for a compassionate error. We must be rationally right. We must be sure.

We do not act until we are sure.

It may seem selfish and sad and uncaring to see a man working his ass off for a pittance while others get rich off his labor and do nothing.

Acting foolishly is worse.
In my next post I’ll try to interrelate some of the earlier concepts to Dan’s Pillars and talk more about Conservatism and the individual. Because yes, conservatism is focussed almost exclusively on the individual.

And what are these dreadful consequences from which we cringe? Dogs and cats, living together? The erosion of the Spirit of Entrepreneuership, and the subsequent Collapse of Western Civ.?

Well, they’re unintended, of course. Conservatives warned darkly of mob rule when the voting right was extended to people who had no property! Gasp! They grumbled and blamed that radical Tom Paine, and lived with it as best they could. And the sky falleth not.

When Child Labor laws were first put forth, Conservatives warned darkly of America losing the competitive edge and the dreaded failure to instill the work ethic in the young. And the children were taken out of the mines and mills and into the schools…and the sky falleth not.

When Labor demanded such wild eyed radical entitlements as an 8 hour day, pensions, etc. the same dire warnings were dusted off and pressed into duty, the workforce would grow slack and lazy, competition would suffer, lean and hungry barbarians from the East…etc. And yet, here we are.

If we try, we may fail, but we cannot cringe our way forward.

Please. Seriously. Do me a favor.

I listed a whole bunch of negative consequences.

I don’t understand why you’re asking me what they might be when I listed them.

I’m not trying to give you a hard time, about this but if I write

I am happy to field all kinds of objections, and people taking issue with it.
The reaction though that I’m not expecting is for somebody to sarcastically ask me what the consequences are.

It’s genuinely frustrating.

So… maybe… would you please… try to actually read my post and see if I answered your question before you fire off a sarcastic rejoinder?

Would that be a reasonable request?

Shodan: A strong military as it is understood by conservatives is most certainly NOT enshrined in the Constitution. The Constitution lays very heavy emphasis on relying on the militia as organized by Congress and supervised by the States - otherwise known as the National Guard in our day - as our first line of defense. It has a number of obstacles in the way of a permanent standing army, and the original intent of giving the President the title of Commander In Chief wasn’t so that he could send the Army hopscotching around the world. It wasn’t even envisioned that he would have an army at his disposal in times of peace. The title would only come into play if an army was raised and used, or in the event of nationalizing the militia in a time of emergency and using them for defense.
Therefore, the position of strictly interpreting the Constitution and being for a strong military as defined in modern conservatism are directly at odds with each other.

Friend Scylla, I am so sorry, I had not idea you had developed such a sudden delicate vulnerability to sarcasm. It must have been pretty recently, seems to me just lately I see you dishing out the sarcasm with a generous spoon. But I digress.

As to your consequences, I thought I made reference in passing, the same old arguments every time. Minimum wage, eight hour day, child labor…look it up. Almost identical to your litany of certain disasters.

And yet here we are.

Besides those, you refer warily to unknown and unknowable consequences, but it is not needful. You fulfill the role of a conscientious, hence worthy, conservative when you advise caution.

But have you any doubt that in the instances I mentioned that the Conservative opinion was flat out wrong, both socially and morally?

The great social changes in America were not handed down from the high and the mighty onto thier grateful subjects. They were seized by our fellow Americans, always at considerable cost.

And the Conservative voice always droning “Go slow! Watch out! Here comes anarchy!”.

Is this is what your offering as a track record for prescience, I’ll pass.

Pantom, cite me some of that. Not challenging or anything, just very interested in that line of thought.

Of course, elucidator, the flip side of the coin is, just maybe, sometimes when the conservative gets his way, he was right. But how do you propose to test this? Your data sample is self-selecting. You can never be sure that any particular predictions are accurate unless you ignore them; you seem to assume that because some bad consequences failed to materialize, we can safely assume that they needn’t be considered at all.

When we take the liberal approach, and liberals are right, one notices. When one takes the liberal approach, and liberals are wrong, one notices. When one takes the conservative approach, and conservatives are right… one has no way of noticing.

There have been cases where doing nothing has been, well, a disaster. There are certainly cases where rapid change has been all to the good. And there have been cases where rapid change has been, well, somewhat less than optimal, shall we say.

So if selective sampling and over inflated rhetoric are what you are offering as evidence, I’ll pass.

I have offered several instances in our history when the liberal point of view was both morally and socially correct. Do you dispute any of those examples? I further purport, with “the calm confidence of a Christian with four aces”, that no dreadful disasters overtook the Republic. In each of these instances, the Conservative opinion offered the same set of boogy-persons to scare with. In each instance utterly, completely, absitively and posolutely wrong.

As to your contention that conservative correctness cannot be observed, that sort of buggers the question, doesn’t it? You can’t hope to trump an argument based on historical examples with an argument based on thier absence.

However “self selecting” my “data sample” may be, I’ve got 'em and you either don’t or haven’t yet bothered to present them. Some evidence is more than none. There’s probably a Latin phrase for that.

Scylla, I for one have no problems with people looking at worst case scenarios and wrning of Dire Consequences and the slipperiness of slopes that we liberals say should be taken.What truly aggravates me is the Coulteresque name-calling and accusations of nefarious motives for daring to exercise my freedom to hold a different political view. You have been one conservative who has never stooped to that level. But you’re well aware others have, I’m sure.

In short – make your case, and I’ll listen respectfully. But don’t impugn my motives.

And don’t threaten me with your 1980s Style Ray Gun, either! :wink:

You never expect the Spanish Inquisition’s Ray Gun.

The LUC, respect to the status quo are pretty much the basis from which the rest of conservative thought follows.

Because of these Conservatives tend to believe that governmental interference should be minimized. Freedom, and choice should be maximized.

Early in the thread Fear itself chided me about the pessismistic nature of conservatism and that risk taking was responsible for advancements. He was right to do so concerning where I left off.

What I did not make clear is that this applies strictly to government activism.

The LUC stongly implies and it is also evident for its own reasons that an individual is as a rule far more qualified to make his own decisions concerning himself than the entity of government.

Hopefully this is a given. Who should decide what you have for breakfast? You, or some guy in Washington. Who can better decide what carpeting you should put in your living room? You, or Ted Kennedy?

We are a free country because not only do we believe that you are capable of making your own decisions, but that it is both your right and responsibility to do so. Self-Determination is a fundamental concept. It goes directly to Freedom, and liberty.

I see no way to get around the fact that this freedom, this right comes with a responsibility. That’s personal responsibility. You are responsible for your own actions. You reap the rewards, and you face the consequences.

The necessary laws and actions of the government must serve to increase protect and promote the freedom and right to self-determination of it’s citizens.

Freedom and consequences.

If you take one away, you take away the other.

This noninterference principle and this respect for sovereign rights of individuals, this well-founded distrust for government bureaucratic meddling means that the primary focus of the conservative is on the individual.

A conservative tends to favor capitalism because of this. Capitalism, while not perfect has something else going for it. It tends to work better than anything else.

An individual can make their own decisions better than the government making them for him.

Capitalism also has going for it the alignment of interests. In a properly functioning capitalist economy everybody’s interests are aligned. When I act in my own best interests, I also act in everybody else’s best interests. Ideally I work hard and my work supplies me and my family with the things I need. By earning income I help the economy several ways: I provide tax income for the preservation of the commons. I produce a product or a service that is desired. I have money from which to purchase products or services that others produce, thus contributing to the well-being and interests of the people producing them. Money inflates, the economy grows and things improve.

The other nice thing about a capitalist economy is that it is inherently self-correcting and efficient. If people no longer wish to buy my goods and services it is no longer in my interests to produce them because I won’t get paid. It is in my interests to produce goods and services that are needed and desired because they return me money. In a capitalist economy then, people acting in their self-interests are always searching for inefficiencies, for unfulfilled needs, for more efficient ways to do things, because they tend to be rewarded for making the system better.

These two principles are the driving forces behind what makes capitalism work: The alignment of interests and the self-correction.

Capitalism of course has lots of weaknesses and problems. The alignment of interests is only a strong tendency, not a ubiquitous fact.

Capitalism does not work unless there are controls against market manipulation, monopoly, etc etc. Oddly enough almost all of these abuses and problems can be categorized as unfair exercises of control that interfere with the freedoms of others.

People in a capitalist economy are breaking that ecomomy and violating its principles when they interfere with the self-correction and self-determination of others.

The economy is experiencing an inneficiency or a potential abuse when the alignment of interests breaks down.

It is necessary therefore that the government step in for the common good, and for the protection of individual freedoms when these problems or abuses occur. When doing so, it must avoid or minimize infringements of the system that work against personal freedoms, self-determination, and self-correction.

Government interference in market action is inherently bad. Sometimes it is better than the alternative, but it is always inherently bad.

Let’s use an example:

Pretend that for the last three years there have not been enough oranges. This has occured for a combination of reasons. The weather was bad, nobody wanted to grow oranges, and oranges were not in fashion.

When interest resurged in Oranges there weren’t enough. Prices went through the rood. People suddenly wanted to grow oranges because of all the money to be made.

Tons of people get into the orange business, and suddenly the weather turned.

Pretend that this year a bumper crop of oranges was produced. More than ever before. There are oranges everywhere. You can’t give them away. The price plummets.

Suddenly there are tons of hardworking people that got into the orange business who are going to go broke and lose everything.

While this sucks, conservatism doesn’t pretend that we can do anything about it. Those people made a personal choice based on self-interest. They exercised their freedom. They are responsible for the outcome even if it’s not fair and it’s their own fault.

But… There is a problem here that we can and should do something about. Indeed, we need to.

If this situation is truly severe we have hit one of the problems of capitalism. That is the perpetuation of increasing boom/bust phases.

Consider what will happen if we do nothing: Next year, nobody is going to want to grow oranges. There will still be a need, but there will be few people willing or able to do it. If this huge drop in orange producing people is accompanied by say a frost, than we can have a tremendous and precipitous shortage. That shortage will drive prices even higher than before. Then of course, the next year everybody in the world will start to grow oranges to make a fortune and the cycle will repeat. There will never be enough oranges. There will always be a huge shortage or a huge surplus.

Now, these things do tend to be self-correcting. However, it can take a long time, and it can be massively damaging to the economy and everybody in it.

So, it seems natural that we would want the government to absorb inneficiencies of this type to mitigate them for the good of all. Indeed, it is a natural and proper role.

If the government buys some of the excess oranges and destroys them, they create an artificial demand that stops the boom/bust cycle. Not everybody goes out of business and next year a reasonable amount of oranges are produced, and things chug along.

I said this was inherently bad, though, didn’t I? While necessary, it is bad. Let me show you why.

A person who is working for his self-interest in the economy would do well to watch for such inneficiencies. If he could predict the boom/bust phase, he can take advantage of it. His self-interest will align with that of everybody in the economy by doing so. This guy looks to make a bet and be intelligent and make a lot of money by taking a chance and growing oranges when nobody wants them because he predicts a need.

And he’s right.

But what happens when the government steps in? Suddenly the government steps in and this guy is not paid for his prescience and intelligence. Because of government activism he is not rewarded for being smart. It is no longer in his best interests to take chances and look for and fill market inefficiencies. If it’s not in the interests of the guy to do it, he won’t. The market, and the whole economy has just lost some of its ability to self-correct. That’s a bad bad thing.

But it gets much worse.

Do you remember before how I said that individuals were more qualified to make decisions for themselves than the government? Let’s put that to the test.

This guy that predicted the orange situation was a smart guy. He was predicting, the government was reacting. This guy lives or dies by his abilities. He lives the orange business. He is not some Senator that looks at the situation for ten minutes who knows nothing about the orange business.

Who do you think understands the Orange business better, this guy or the Government (represented by the Senator?)

This guy is no fool. Chances are the orange growers despite having made a mistake are no fools either. Both know more about Oranges than the Government.

But what the government has suddenly done is stepped in and become the major dominating force in the Orange business.

People are going to respond to that. They are going to react and adapt and correct for it. They are going to predict it. They are going to take advantage of it.

Suddenly, it’s ok to be a fuckup in the orange business. If you’re not smart, the government will bail you out. The relation between supply and demand has been cut loose and the government now buys excess oranges and keeps the price steady.

The orange business is now a very safe and secure place to be. In a very very real way everbody else in the whole economy is now paying for that security. We now have a market that doesn’t work as well, and where the two principles of self-interest alignment and self-correction are failing. In such a situation it is not in the best interests of everybody for the orange growers to continue to produce excess oranges. But it’s in their best interests to do so. We’ve lost self-correction because it is no longer in anybody’s interests to watch out for inneficiencies because you can’t profit from them.

But it gets worse. The government is now propping up the orange business. If they don’t continue to do what they are doing the market will collapse and there will be a worse disaster than if the government had done nothing. If the government stays the economy also suffers and the rest of the economy pays the price.

But it gets worse. Now it gets real bad. Remember that smart guy that predicted the orange shortage, tried to take advantage of it, and got shafted?

Well, he’s still smart. He’s still looking for inneficiencies. But now there is a brand new kind of inneficiency in the market place, and it’s a doozy. It is called “the one way bet.” The government has taken action. It is hogtied supporting the orange market. This guy know exactly what the government is going to do.

He literally has tomorrow’s racing results today. He can’t lose. He is going to make a big bet. There is a huge surplus of oranges. The government buys them all. This guy is going to get an interest or buy outright every orange in the world and make the government pay him for it. He may get really smart (and remember the government is dumb.) Why does he need to have oranges? WHy should he grow them? Doesn’t the government just let them go to waste?

After years of buying and dumping oranges, won’t the government be delighted to sell them and get some of the money back that it’s losing?

He counts on it.

The government buys oranges, and the guys sells them to the government. The funny thing is, that he doesn’t have any. He sells all the oranges he can.

Next up the guy goes to the government and offers to buy all the rotten oranges that the government is dumping for half of what the government paid for them.

So he takes them, shows up in his truck with the oranges and says “Here’s all those oranges I sold you.”

And it gets worse.

This guy’s doing well selling the government’s oranges back to it. But all of a sudden he realizes that he spent a lot of time waiting for the government to step in and correct this inneficiency that allowed him to make so much money.

If the government is going to correct inneficiencies and give free money, why should he wait for them? Shoudn’t he help them along? All of a sudden it is now in this guy’s best interests (and a lot of other people’s) not to correct inneficiencies, but to create them. A smooth market is no longer a good thing.

And those orange growers catch on to the idea as well. Why wait for problems? Problems are good. If the government is going to bail them out when they get into trouble, there’s no risk in risk anymore is there?

An Orange grower can now take incredible amounts of imprudent risk and if we wins, he wins big. If he loses, the government will save him. It’s another one way bet. There is no such thing as risk.

The government now has no choice. It cannot continue to do what it is doing. It is hemmorhaging huge sums of money and damaging the economy. It must take over the orange business or let it collapse. So, it takes over. It tells everybody what to do.

The orange market now operates without the alignment of self-interests and without self-correction. The Senator in Washington who knows nothing about Oranges now decides everything.


Sheesh. That’s a long example. It’s an important one though. Unfortunately it’s not just an example. This has happened pretty much as I’ve described it, over… and over… and over. Variations of it are happening now.
I did say this kind of interference was necessary sometimes. Hopefully you see why it’s not desirable. Every control the government exercises has consequences that reverberate throughout the system.

The clear lesson on government activism within a capitalist economy is that “less is more.”
Dan:

I did promise that I’d tie this with your principles, didn’t I. Hopefully this does a fairly good job of explaining why conservatives tend not to like communism. It is effectively the opposite. No freedom to the individual, and maximum government control over the economy.

And, compared to capitalism, it simply doesn’t work. People will work in their self-interest, and they exploit the system in similar ways to what I’ve described in my example.

You want military and morality next, right?

Military is simple. You cannot preserve what you cannot protect. The government’s primary role is to protect the freedoms and choices of the individuals it represents. It needs to be strong to do so.

Morality is a little more involved. I’ve talked about the individual and capitalism, which I thought was important. I’ll try to cover morality next, if you still want me to.

You probably got a taste of it already. We endorse tradittional morality for two reasons.

  1. It works. It’s gotten us this far. It’s obvious why rules like “don’t steal, don’t murder” have become tradittional parts of morality. Others, like the family unit also make sense. It’s an efficient way to raise kids. It’s a mutual protection pact. It’s an alignment of interests.

Beliefs in God and religion also make sense from a purely secular standpoint. They are a form of imposing morality. What better way to impose the rules onto people than to convice them theirs an omnipotent entity waiting to punish them for any transgressions?

Some of these things have purposes that are not so obvious. Tradittionally we’re supposed to respect our elders. Why? What can some senile old man do for us? Taboos on sex, personal versus communal property, sharing, eating habits and utensils, the role of the sexes. Various ceremonies.

All of these things have purposes. All of these evolved for reasons. Other aspects of morality may seem arbitrary, and perhaps some are. Some of these things may be obsolete. They may protect or compensate for things that are no longer issues, and they may be wholly useless. Others may be protecting you against things, or serving purposes that you’re not aware of.

“When in Rome, do as a Roman” is a tradittional piece of morality that directly addresses this issue. The places with the deepest most restrictive customs and moralities tend to be those that are in more extreme envrironments. It is hazardous not to do as the locals do. They live there. They know how it works.

Again, let me give you a mechanical analogy. I learned to work on cars from this guy who had this big tendency to do things the exact same way over and over. He seemed horribly wasteful and inneficient. I would ask him why he did something a certain way, and he’d shrug and say that’s the way he learned.

For example, he was in the habit of assembling all the engine and drivetrain components before he put them in the vehicle. So, I’m helping him fix his truck and we’re bolting stuff onto the engine and assembling all this crap, and I think to myself “Boy, this is stupid. How hard is it going to be to put the engine in the engine compartment with all this stuff hanging off of it. It’s going to be everywhere and it’s going to get in the way. All this stuff is going to be a danger as well. It will get crushed or damaged, block the engine mounts, and we’'re going to have to readjust all this stuff once in it’s in there, anyway. Why are we doing it now?”

I knew he would say “this is the way I was taught,” so I didn’t bother. Sure enough it was just as big a pain in the ass as I thought it wold be. It was a huge hassle.

So about a year later I uncrated an engine for my truck, and decided to apply some intelligence. I dropped that sucker in. Mounted it, attached the transmission and exhaust lickety split.

Then I found out why my neighbor did it the customary way. As hard as it is to install an assembled engine, it is infinite harder to assemble it after the fact. Some parts are impossible. There was a good reason for what seemed like a nosensical custom.

I ended up removing the engine and assembling it just like he did.

So I have a tendency to respect and follow customs even if they seem nonsensical.

It may seem annoying to follow a custom you don’t understand. It is generally much worse to find out why they do it the way they do.

"So that’s why they do it this way!’ is a cry of anguish I don’t like making.

I man learns from experience. A wise man learns from somebody else’s. Only a fool discounts the latter.

The LUC, respect to the status quo are pretty much the basis from which the rest of conservative thought follows.

Because of these Conservatives tend to believe that governmental interference should be minimized. Freedom, and choice should be maximized.

Early in the thread Fear itself chided me about the pessismistic nature of conservatism and that risk taking was responsible for advancements. He was right to do so concerning where I left off.

What I did not make clear is that this applies strictly to government activism.

The LUC stongly implies and it is also evident for its own reasons that an individual is as a rule far more qualified to make his own decisions concerning himself than the entity of government.

Hopefully this is a given. Who should decide what you have for breakfast? You, or some guy in Washington. Who can better decide what carpeting you should put in your living room? You, or Ted Kennedy?

We are a free country because not only do we believe that you are capable of making your own decisions, but that it is both your right and responsibility to do so. Self-Determination is a fundamental concept. It goes directly to Freedom, and liberty.

I see no way to get around the fact that this freedom, this right comes with a responsibility. That’s personal responsibility. You are responsible for your own actions. You reap the rewards, and you face the consequences.

The necessary laws and actions of the government must serve to increase protect and promote the freedom and right to self-determination of it’s citizens.

Freedom and consequences.

If you take one away, you take away the other.

This noninterference principle and this respect for sovereign rights of individuals, this well-founded distrust for government bureaucratic meddling means that the primary focus of the conservative is on the individual.

A conservative tends to favor capitalism because of this. Capitalism, while not perfect has something else going for it. It tends to work better than anything else.

An individual can make their own decisions better than the government making them for him.

Capitalism also has going for it the alignment of interests. In a properly functioning capitalist economy everybody’s interests are aligned. When I act in my own best interests, I also act in everybody else’s best interests. Ideally I work hard and my work supplies me and my family with the things I need. By earning income I help the economy several ways: I provide tax income for the preservation of the commons. I produce a product or a service that is desired. I have money from which to purchase products or services that others produce, thus contributing to the well-being and interests of the people producing them. Money inflates, the economy grows and things improve.

The other nice thing about a capitalist economy is that it is inherently self-correcting and efficient. If people no longer wish to buy my goods and services it is no longer in my interests to produce them because I won’t get paid. It is in my interests to produce goods and services that are needed and desired because they return me money. In a capitalist economy then, people acting in their self-interests are always searching for inefficiencies, for unfulfilled needs, for more efficient ways to do things, because they tend to be rewarded for making the system better.

These two principles are the driving forces behind what makes capitalism work: The alignment of interests and the self-correction.

Capitalism of course has lots of weaknesses and problems. The alignment of interests is only a strong tendency, not a ubiquitous fact.

Capitalism does not work unless there are controls against market manipulation, monopoly, etc etc. Oddly enough almost all of these abuses and problems can be categorized as unfair exercises of control that interfere with the freedoms of others.

People in a capitalist economy are breaking that ecomomy and violating its principles when they interfere with the self-correction and self-determination of others.

The economy is experiencing an inneficiency or a potential abuse when the alignment of interests breaks down.

It is necessary therefore that the government step in for the common good, and for the protection of individual freedoms when these problems or abuses occur. When doing so, it must avoid or minimize infringements of the system that work against personal freedoms, self-determination, and self-correction.

Government interference in market action is inherently bad. Sometimes it is better than the alternative, but it is always inherently bad.

Let’s use an example:

Pretend that for the last three years there have not been enough oranges. This has occured for a combination of reasons. The weather was bad, nobody wanted to grow oranges, and oranges were not in fashion.

When interest resurged in Oranges there weren’t enough. Prices went through the rood. People suddenly wanted to grow oranges because of all the money to be made.

Tons of people get into the orange business, and suddenly the weather turned.

Pretend that this year a bumper crop of oranges was produced. More than ever before. There are oranges everywhere. You can’t give them away. The price plummets.

Suddenly there are tons of hardworking people that got into the orange business who are going to go broke and lose everything.

While this sucks, conservatism doesn’t pretend that we can do anything about it. Those people made a personal choice based on self-interest. They exercised their freedom. They are responsible for the outcome even if it’s not fair and it’s their own fault.

But… There is a problem here that we can and should do something about. Indeed, we need to.

If this situation is truly severe we have hit one of the problems of capitalism. That is the perpetuation of increasing boom/bust phases.

Consider what will happen if we do nothing: Next year, nobody is going to want to grow oranges. There will still be a need, but there will be few people willing or able to do it. If this huge drop in orange producing people is accompanied by say a frost, than we can have a tremendous and precipitous shortage. That shortage will drive prices even higher than before. Then of course, the next year everybody in the world will start to grow oranges to make a fortune and the cycle will repeat. There will never be enough oranges. There will always be a huge shortage or a huge surplus.

Now, these things do tend to be self-correcting. However, it can take a long time, and it can be massively damaging to the economy and everybody in it.

So, it seems natural that we would want the government to absorb inneficiencies of this type to mitigate them for the good of all. Indeed, it is a natural and proper role.

If the government buys some of the excess oranges and destroys them, they create an artificial demand that stops the boom/bust cycle. Not everybody goes out of business and next year a reasonable amount of oranges are produced, and things chug along.

I said this was inherently bad, though, didn’t I? While necessary, it is bad. Let me show you why.

A person who is working for his self-interest in the economy would do well to watch for such inneficiencies. If he could predict the boom/bust phase, he can take advantage of it. His self-interest will align with that of everybody in the economy by doing so. This guy looks to make a bet and be intelligent and make a lot of money by taking a chance and growing oranges when nobody wants them because he predicts a need.

And he’s right.

But what happens when the government steps in? Suddenly the government steps in and this guy is not paid for his prescience and intelligence. Because of government activism he is not rewarded for being smart. It is no longer in his best interests to take chances and look for and fill market inefficiencies. If it’s not in the interests of the guy to do it, he won’t. The market, and the whole economy has just lost some of its ability to self-correct. That’s a bad bad thing.

But it gets much worse.

Do you remember before how I said that individuals were more qualified to make decisions for themselves than the government? Let’s put that to the test.

This guy that predicted the orange situation was a smart guy. He was predicting, the government was reacting. This guy lives or dies by his abilities. He lives the orange business. He is not some Senator that looks at the situation for ten minutes who knows nothing about the orange business.

Who do you think understands the Orange business better, this guy or the Government (represented by the Senator?)

This guy is no fool. Chances are the orange growers despite having made a mistake are no fools either. Both know more about Oranges than the Government.

But what the government has suddenly done is stepped in and become the major dominating force in the Orange business.

People are going to respond to that. They are going to react and adapt and correct for it. They are going to predict it. They are going to take advantage of it.

Suddenly, it’s ok to be a fuckup in the orange business. If you’re not smart, the government will bail you out. The relation between supply and demand has been cut loose and the government now buys excess oranges and keeps the price steady.

The orange business is now a very safe and secure place to be. In a very very real way everbody else in the whole economy is now paying for that security. We now have a market that doesn’t work as well, and where the two principles of self-interest alignment and self-correction are failing. In such a situation it is not in the best interests of everybody for the orange growers to continue to produce excess oranges. But it’s in their best interests to do so. We’ve lost self-correction because it is no longer in anybody’s interests to watch out for inneficiencies because you can’t profit from them.

But it gets worse. The government is now propping up the orange business. If they don’t continue to do what they are doing the market will collapse and there will be a worse disaster than if the government had done nothing. If the government stays the economy also suffers and the rest of the economy pays the price.

But it gets worse. Now it gets real bad. Remember that smart guy that predicted the orange shortage, tried to take advantage of it, and got shafted?

Well, he’s still smart. He’s still looking for inneficiencies. But now there is a brand new kind of inneficiency in the market place, and it’s a doozy. It is called “the one way bet.” The government has taken action. It is hogtied supporting the orange market. This guy know exactly what the government is going to do.

He literally has tomorrow’s racing results today. He can’t lose. He is going to make a big bet. There is a huge surplus of oranges. The government buys them all. This guy is going to get an interest or buy outright every orange in the world and make the government pay him for it. He may get really smart (and remember the government is dumb.) Why does he need to have oranges? WHy should he grow them? Doesn’t the government just let them go to waste?

After years of buying and dumping oranges, won’t the government be delighted to sell them and get some of the money back that it’s losing?

He counts on it.

The government buys oranges, and the guys sells them to the government. The funny thing is, that he doesn’t have any. He sells all the oranges he can.

Next up the guy goes to the government and offers to buy all the rotten oranges that the government is dumping for half of what the government paid for them.

So he takes them, shows up in his truck with the oranges and says “Here’s all those oranges I sold you.”

And it gets worse.

This guy’s doing well selling the government’s oranges back to it. But all of a sudden he realizes that he spent a lot of time waiting for the government to step in and correct this inneficiency that allowed him to make so much money.

If the government is going to correct inneficiencies and give free money, why should he wait for them? Shoudn’t he help them along? All of a sudden it is now in this guy’s best interests (and a lot of other people’s) not to correct inneficiencies, but to create them. A smooth market is no longer a good thing.

And those orange growers catch on to the idea as well. Why wait for problems? Problems are good. If the government is going to bail them out when they get into trouble, there’s no risk in risk anymore is there?

An Orange grower can now take incredible amounts of imprudent risk and if we wins, he wins big. If he loses, the government will save him. It’s another one way bet. There is no such thing as risk.

The government now has no choice. It cannot continue to do what it is doing. It is hemmorhaging huge sums of money and damaging the economy. It must take over the orange business or let it collapse. So, it takes over. It tells everybody what to do.

The orange market now operates without the alignment of self-interests and without self-correction. The Senator in Washington who knows nothing about Oranges now decides everything.


Sheesh. That’s a long example. It’s an important one though. Unfortunately it’s not just an example. This has happened pretty much as I’ve described it, over… and over… and over. Variations of it are happening now.
I did say this kind of interference was necessary sometimes. Hopefully you see why it’s not desirable. Every control the government exercises has consequences that reverberate throughout the system.

The clear lesson on government activism within a capitalist economy is that “less is more.”
Dan:

I did promise that I’d tie this with your principles, didn’t I. Hopefully this does a fairly good job of explaining why conservatives tend not to like communism. It is effectively the opposite. No freedom to the individual, and maximum government control over the economy.

And, compared to capitalism, it simply doesn’t work. People will work in their self-interest, and they exploit the system in similar ways to what I’ve described in my example.

You want military and morality next, right?

Military is simple. You cannot preserve what you cannot protect. The government’s primary role is to protect the freedoms and choices of the individuals it represents. It needs to be strong to do so.

Morality is a little more involved. I’ve talked about the individual and capitalism, which I thought was important. I’ll try to cover morality next, if you still want me to.

You probably got a taste of it already. We endorse tradittional morality for two reasons.

  1. It works. It’s gotten us this far. It’s obvious why rules like “don’t steal, don’t murder” have become tradittional parts of morality. Others, like the family unit also make sense. It’s an efficient way to raise kids. It’s a mutual protection pact. It’s an alignment of interests.

Beliefs in God and religion also make sense from a purely secular standpoint. They are a form of imposing morality. What better way to impose the rules onto people than to convice them theirs an omnipotent entity waiting to punish them for any transgressions?

Some of these things have purposes that are not so obvious. Tradittionally we’re supposed to respect our elders. Why? What can some senile old man do for us? Taboos on sex, personal versus communal property, sharing, eating habits and utensils, the role of the sexes. Various ceremonies.

All of these things have purposes. All of these evolved for reasons. Other aspects of morality may seem arbitrary, and perhaps some are. Some of these things may be obsolete. They may protect or compensate for things that are no longer issues, and they may be wholly useless. Others may be protecting you against things, or serving purposes that you’re not aware of.

“When in Rome, do as a Roman” is a tradittional piece of morality that directly addresses this issue. The places with the deepest most restrictive customs and moralities tend to be those that are in more extreme envrironments. It is hazardous not to do as the locals do. They live there. They know how it works.

Again, let me give you a mechanical analogy. I learned to work on cars from this guy who had this big tendency to do things the exact same way over and over. He seemed horribly wasteful and inneficient. I would ask him why he did something a certain way, and he’d shrug and say that’s the way he learned.

For example, he was in the habit of assembling all the engine and drivetrain components before he put them in the vehicle. So, I’m helping him fix his truck and we’re bolting stuff onto the engine and assembling all this crap, and I think to myself “Boy, this is stupid. How hard is it going to be to put the engine in the engine compartment with all this stuff hanging off of it. It’s going to be everywhere and it’s going to get in the way. All this stuff is going to be a danger as well. It will get crushed or damaged, block the engine mounts, and we’'re going to have to readjust all this stuff once in it’s in there, anyway. Why are we doing it now?”

I knew he would say “this is the way I was taught,” so I didn’t bother. Sure enough it was just as big a pain in the ass as I thought it wold be. It was a huge hassle.

So about a year later I uncrated an engine for my truck, and decided to apply some intelligence. I dropped that sucker in. Mounted it, attached the transmission and exhaust lickety split.

Then I found out why my neighbor did it the customary way. As hard as it is to install an assembled engine, it is infinite harder to assemble it after the fact. Some parts are impossible. There was a good reason for what seemed like a nosensical custom.

I ended up removing the engine and assembling it just like he did.

So I have a tendency to respect and follow customs even if they seem nonsensical.

It may seem annoying to follow a custom you don’t understand. It is generally much worse to find out why they do it the way they do.

"So that’s why they do it this way!’ is a cry of anguish I don’t like making.

I man learns from experience. A wise man learns from somebody else’s. Only a fool discounts the latter.

It was so important, I said it twice.

[sub]that felt like giving birth[/sub]

I think you’re missing my point. I can certainly cite examples where rapid change was a Bad Thing. I can certainly cite examples where the rapid change was a Good Thing. You’ve named a few already. What I can’t cite is where not having made a proposed rapid change was either good or bad because it’s pretty much by definition untested.

But since you want examples of disasters coming about from rapid changes, let me toss a few things out. I do not, by the way, claim these all to be things that the modern liberal would support; I claim these to be examples of rapid changes that some people obviously liked at the time but which were in retrospect not the most wonderful of things.

The great leap forward. That worked out well, don’t you think?
A little closer to home, how about Scylla’s earlier example of housing projects?
Turning to California, the decision to tinker with energy policy doesn’t seem to have been an unqualified success.

One could continue, but I trust you see my point: there are cases where taking bold action that sounds like a wonderful idea at the time has in retrospect been not so great after all. The naysayers will have been sometimes right, and sometimes wrong. To dismiss the naysayers based on when they’ve been wrong and not acknowledge when they may have possibly been right is just as ridiculously foolish as to praise the naysayers when they’ve been right and ignore when they’ve been wrong.

The latter, obviously; I thought it intuitively obvious to the most casual observer upon initial inspection that bold change has not always been for the best, just as it has not always been for the worst.

There’s nothing wrong with bold change.

Foolish and counterproductive bold change suck and is to be avoided.

Hopefully we can agree to that proposition.

I should hope we can; my point in mentioning it is to illustrate that foolish and counterproductive bold change does happen. The law of unintended consequences isn’t just some pie in the sky notion, but rather something which is manifest in history. And we really do ourselves a disservice to pretend otherwise.

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Scylla - can you honor us with your presence in Quasimodem’s thread (about 3 down from this one).
It’s a long, long story…

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