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.
- 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.