| Home | My photos | Forex | My trading | Contacts |
|
|
You Can't Become Rich In Your Pocket Until You Become Rich In Your Mind | ||||
|
Our cynicism with respect to government is understandableHUMANISM AND GOVERNMENT A HUMANISTIC RATIONALE FOR GOVERNMENT Despite its primary concern with the individual, humanism differs from laissez faire and libertarianism in that it is not implacably opposed to government. Rather than regarding government regulations as necessarily counterproductive, an unhealthy intrusion of incompetent politically motivated micromanagement, a humanist view encompasses the awareness that many of these regulations were adopted to protect individuals from the law of the jungle, from flagrant exploitation by unscrupulous profit maximizers. Rather than regarding government as essentially depraved, a humanist appraisal of government follows from its fundamental respect for the individual. The Kantian dictum of treating persons as ends in themselves does not extend to institutions. Whereas persons are always to be treated as ends rather than merely means, institutions are no more than a means to enable people to improve their quality of life. To the extent that an institution has the opposite effect, it should be changed or eliminated. This applies to government; and the imperative to change or eliminate institutions which no longer served the desired end was regarded as a sacred civic duty by our founding fathers. Seeing the primary source of value as the individual and seeking to change governments that suppress that value does not make humanism opposed to government, not even to interventionist government. But from a humanist perspective government has no intrinsic value. Its value lies in what it can add to the lives of its citizens. The ideal is a synergy between society and individuals, society providing an environment conducive to individuals’ developing their potential, individuals appreciating that environment and helping to sustain and improve it. In the spirit of this symbiosis, and unlike laissez faire and libertarianism, humanism is willing to entertain a positive role for government. The notion that government can play a positive role is accepted in much of the world. But it is controversial at best in the U.S. Here the suggestion that government can add value borders on heresy. The term “bureaucrat,” positive Europe and Asia, is a demeaning slur in the U.S. Our cynicism with respect to government is understandable. Its egregious waste is undeniable. Consider, “Waste and Mismanagement - the $436 hammer. Bought by the U.S. Navy, this ordinary hardware-store hammer cost $7 plus: $41 to order; $93 to determine that it worked; $102 for something called manufacturing overhead; $37 to insure the availability of spare parts; $90 to pay a contractor’s general administrative costs; $56 to pay a finder’s fee; and $7 for the capital cost of money. The total: $436.” (Figgie and Swanson, Bankruptcy 1995, p. 47.) The sinister side of the misuse of power, spying on citizens or using government agencies to harass politically unpopular groups, has received its own publicity. Injudicious use of political power has inspired bumper stickers that read: “I love my country, but fear my government.” Some of this is culture. We are predisposed to fixate on the negatives of government. There are similar instances of waste and misuse of power in Europe and Japan. But revelations of such misconduct do not create the furor that would rage here. Many Europeans reacted to Watergate with bemused cynicism, acknowledging that this sort of thing goes on all the time and wondering why we were making such a fuss. Reciprocally, Americans marvel that European and Japanese pedestrians will wait at an intersection for a “walk” sign, even when there is no traffic. These attitudes run deep. Most histories are political histories of elites. The cultural artifacts of civilizations in the East as well as the West were built by ruling aristocracies, the primary patrons of the arts. The association of culture with aristocracy and government typifies these civilizations. “Culture is simply the aristocratic ideal of a nation, increasingly intellectualized.” (Jaeger, Paideia, v. 1, p.4.) By contrast, we are more congenial to plutocracy than aristocracy, like the Texan at the art gallery who, when asked by a gushing connoisseur, “What could be more wonderful than the ability to create magnificent works of art?” growled: “The ability to buy them.” Our collective attitude toward aristocracy is best distilled in the pointed jibe of Theodosius Dobzhansky: “I for one do not lament the passing of social organizations that used the many as a manured soil in which to grow a few graceful flowers of refined culture.” (Mankind Evolving, p. 325.) Even our most accomplished aristocrat, Jefferson, endorsed antiaristocratic sentiments. Despite our antipathy to aristocratic culture, our country has produced outstanding artists, authors and composers, acceptable to even aristocratic sensibilities. Whitman, Poe and Dickinson are among the great poets of the past two centuries. Melville, James, and Faulkner are among the major novelists. In music and philosophy, moreover, we have achieved a uniquely American contribution, one of the common people. Blues and country western have their roots in the lives and music of ordinary people, often living at the margins of society. In philosophy, self-reliance and the value of the common person and common labor characterize our homebred religions and are central themes in the writings of the Transcendentalists. These themes stress the irrelevance, at best, of social status. The poetry of Whitman delights in the ordinary, in both its form and its substance: If you want me again, look for me under your soles. You will hardly know who I am or what I mean, But I shall be good health to you nevertheless And filter and fibre your blood… (“Song of Myself”) Just as our suspicion of aristocracy is compatible with outstanding cultural achievements, our wariness of political power is compatible with effective democratic institutions. The U.S. Constitution and Bill of Rights is a remarkable essay in limiting the power of our own elected government. As such, it represents an important legacy and tool for the protection of civil liberties. It reflects a feature that pervades American political history: our values maximize the scope of individual freedom, even at the expense of constraining our elected representatives. Within the context of our historic suspicion of government, consider the sentiment voiced by Sir Karl Popper in The Open Society and Its Enemies: “I am inclined to think that rulers have rarely been above the average, either morally or intellectually, and often below it. And I think that it is reasonable to adopt, in politics, the principle of preparing for the worst, as well as we can.… How can we so organize political institutions that bad or incompetent rulers can be prevented from doing too much damage?... Democracy... provides the institutional framework for the reform of political institutions. It makes possible the reform of institutions without using violence, and thereby the use of reason in the designing of new institutions and the adjusting of old ones.” (v. 1, p. 121-2.) Based on this view, even a deep-seated skepticism about the quality of politicians need not emasculate democratic government. Our proclivity to protect individuals against untrustworthy governors has not paralyzed our polity. Our government functions despite the common knowledge that while some laws and programs have been well conceived, others have been dismal failures. For the most part we have been realists, recognizing that government has achieved both good and bad and refusing to throw out the baby with the bathwater. Part of that realism is the understanding that whether laws will have lasting effect is determined less by how they are instituted and more by how successfully they address real needs. Even major changes forcibly imposed on people have had little lasting influence. The French Revolution shattered the old aristocracy and changed who became the exploiters and who the exploited. But it did little to change the exploitation itself, and it was to be generations before the structural changes imposed in 1789 by the Estates General/National Assembly had an effect on the lives of the common people. “Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose” was a theme of Tocqueville’s The Old Regime and the French Revolution. The same has been said about the Russian Revolution, comparing Stalin with the tsars. Yet government intervention, even before the French Revolution, when it addressed needs felt by ordinary people, had lasting and positive effect. In the fourteenth century Venice built cargo vessels with state funds in her Arsenal and made them available to private enterprise. The Venetian government also strictly regulated the guilds, insisting on high standards of quality that contributed to the long-term reputation — and prices — of Venetian goods. In the same vein, despite the failure of the French Revolution to achieve the ideal society of the philosophes, legislation of that period produced lasting benefits. The Napoleonic Code of Law, still the basis of legal systems in continental Europe and Latin America, simplified legal structure and made it possible for any citizen to know what were his (theoretical) rights, even against his own government. Similarly, the replacement of archaic currencies and weights and measures by new decimal-based standards had practical value and was retained throughout continental Europe after the defeat of Napoleon. Modern governments support infrastructures in which individuals benefit indirectly from a sound and healthy community. They develop programs to foster a middle class, including social security and state-funded education. They even support basic research — fortunately, for it is often of dubious value for the private sector to spend on basic research. Not only is there uncertainty as to whether that research will generate value, but even if it does, there is no assurance that the company itself will benefit. Yet rates of return on basic research have been calculated as high as 50%. It was government, the Department of Defense, not the free market, that developed the technology underlying the Internet (originally called the “Arpanet,” after DARPA). Generations earlier, during World War II, it was government, again the Department of Defense, that developed the foundational technology for computers. Despite our faith in the free market, it is our government that fostered many of the most important technology breakthroughs of the last century. Even now, government accounts for nearly half our R&D spending. Other areas of beneficial government intervention include legal protection against flagrant misuse of physical or economic power, protection for the environment and for workers, minimum safety standards in food, drugs and other sensitive consumables, and a social safety net that upon occasion has mitigated large-scale disaster. They also include the protection of rights we have long taken for granted. Unfortunately, laissez faire has so exacerbated our mistrust of government that we are barely able to acknowledge even these accomplishments. Worse, this paradigm has undermined government’s ability to perform its legitimate roles. For, it entails that public spirit is not part of rationality, which begins and ends with individual economic goals. We may complain that politicians are corrupt. Yet corruption is only rational, according to laissez faire, for we are all trying to maximize our immediate economic benefit. And that, we are told, is best for society as a whole. It is in reaction to this perceived rationality of acting only in our immediate economic self-interest that we have tried to make our laws maximally specific, eliminating flexibility in order to minimize opportunity for corruption. It may seem odd, but this is a cause of mediocrity in government. Placing the tightest constraints on government employees makes such positions less attractive to capable persons who want to exercise responsible judgment. Even for competent bureaucrats, the personal risk-reward ratio is so skewed to inflexibly following standard procedure that their most prudent course of action may be incompatible with what is best for the community. Sometimes government cannot act even in the face of immediate peril. In the early morning hours of April 13, 1992, in the heart of Chicago’s downtown Loop, the Chicago River broke through the masonry of an old railroad tunnel built in the last century. Several hundred million gallons of water from the river were diverted from Lake Michigan into the basements of downtown office buildings, knocking out boilers, short-circuiting countless electrical switches, ruining computers, and turning files into wet pulp. Total losses were over $1 billion. Several weeks before the accident, the leak in the tunnel had come to the attention of John LaPlante, Chicago’s transportation commissioner, a public servant with thirty years of exemplary service. He knew that the river was immediately overhead and that a break could be disastrous. He ordered his engineers to shore it up. As a provident administrator, he also asked how much it would cost. The initial guess was about $10,000. His subordinates then went to a reputable contractor, who quoted $75,000. Although the amount was a drop in the bucket of his huge budget, the discrepancy, seven times the original estimate, gave Commissioner LaPlante pause. He knew exactly what to do. He put it out for competitive bids. Two weeks later, before the process had even begun, the ceiling collapsed. (Howard, The Death of Common Sense, p. 59-60.) This approach to public service runs counter to democratic tradition, which regards individuals as competent and honest, even public spirited, at least until proven otherwise. Our early codifications of law were brief by modern standards. They did not try to spell out the appropriate action for every eventuality, but rather indicated the spirit of the law. It was assumed, as a matter of course, that the public servant understood this. He could be trusted to go to the store to buy a hammer, and he would be held accountable for his performance. Perversely, in seeking to insure good government by eliminating all flexibility, we have compromised government’s ability to deal with unforeseen circumstances and to grapple with issues that threaten the spirit, if not the letter, of the law. We have also raised the cost of government enormously. Philip Howard notes that several years ago the Department of Defense spent $2.1 billion on travel and an additional $2.2 billion on paperwork to insure compliance with written policies. All of this reflects the spirit of laissez faire. Unfortunately, this spirit — which regards public servants as officious and bumbling and politicians as rogues looking out for only themselves — can too easily generate self-fulfilling prophecies. Our previous laissez faire-fest, in the 1920s, elected Coolidge and Harding, among our least capable presidents. A broader horizon suggests that laissez faire and rogue politicians may be anomalous. For most of our history the free market was not the universal standard and we had a better opinion of our political leaders. Is this only appearance? Were we just more naïve then? Or might there be some relationship between expectations and performance, even in public service? It is hard to believe it has been just a perceptual change from idealistic naïveté to realistic cynicism. We were not that naïve in the days of Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln, or Roosevelt. People often perform to expectations, even in government. As national needs increase and as political leaders rise to the challenge of meeting them, the reputation of politics improves and government attracts individuals of greater capability and higher personal standards. This increases respect for and expectations of government, which leads to further improvement. It is plausible that such expectations are partly responsible for the higher standard of public service in much of Europe than in the U.S. Presently, with expectations that politicians lack minimal standards of integrity and that civil servants lack minimal standards of competence, we assume capable people with high personal standards do not enter politics or government. Government is then left to the mediocre and to those for whom personal or sectarian religious agendas are a higher priority than civic duty. Attempting to improve government by narrowly circumscribing the range of action of government employees preserves a situation in which the desire for a low-responsibility sinecure outweighs civic responsibility. This is ironic. Our actions, based on our disparagement of government, have created that which we disparage. Simple common sense — regarding public servants as public-spirited and capable, empowering them to uphold the intent of laws, and holding them responsible for their actions — would be more viable. Common sense would also be aware of the accomplishments of government. It would not be bound by the dogmas that government is necessarily evil and that less government is automatically better. It would be open to the possibility that only an interventionist government could resolve some of our most serious problems. |
|
|||||||||||||||
Previous Issues
|
| ©2007 Olesia | Home • My photos • Forex • News • My trading • Contacts |