Danger, U.S.!
Our left’s distrust of our economic system and our right’s distrust of democracy have us heading for an unprecedented tragedy.
The governance of our Liberal (as opposed to liberal) nation is premised on the necessariness of liberty and equality for justly governing society. There are Liberals who are libertarians, conservatives, liberals, and democratic (non-Marxist) ‘socialists’ (but not really socialists, as they have no desire to abolish private property). All accept the necessity of both of those values for a just society.
Despite a plethora of narrower political ideologies within Liberalism, those two foundational values are not fundamentally incompatible. A belief in equality must underlie ‘equal liberty for all’ (the liberty of any person/entity — such as a corporation — ending at the person/property of any other). To maximize the liberty of all individuals is to respect the moral equality of human beings by respecting their capacity to decide for themselves how to live their lives (as long as they are doing no harm to any others).
At the same time, an undeniable tension does exist between those two values. Liberty is a grant to exercise power; as such, it represents the possibility of constant, ongoing threats to persons/property. On the other hand, equality engenders a constant threat for society to become overprotective, thereby limiting liberty more than is necessary for justice.
Up till now, at least, an uneasy but stable compromise has existed in the U.S. Equality has been the foundation of our democratic political process and, under the banner of ‘free (as possible) markets’, liberty has been the predominant value in the economy. Those two sides in that compromise have always roughly divided ‘left’ and ‘right’ politically in this nation.
At the founding of this nation, outside the existence of slavery the economy was as ‘free’ as it is humanly possible in a civilized society (as opposed to small groups of hunter/gatherers). That caveat is morally devastating. It also can’t be economically diminished: at the start of the (unsuccessful) War for Succession (usually called the ‘Civil War’) slaves, as ‘property’, represented more than half of all ‘capital’ in this nation, in terms of dollar value, i.e., more than all other forms of capital combined: slaves were accounted for in ‘the books’ like machines — or draft animals — were, not as ‘labor’. Still, concerning the economy per se (the production/acquisition of goods/services), regulation was basically nonexistent.
At its founding this nation was not a democracy. It was a republic, but one where there were arbitrary restrictions on participation in the political process, such as property, gender, and ‘race’. We now have a fully democratic political process: all arbitrary restrictions on participation in that process have been removed. So, we have slowly gone from a nation with a republican form of government within an undemocratic political process to a nation with a republican form of government within a democratic political process. That development has been driven by one word: equality.
It is a development that has been viewed with distrust by many people, for different reasons. All people who fundamentally mistrust democracy must be counted as ‘conservative’ in a historic sense, but there is, as noted above, such a thing as ‘conservative’ within Liberalism. Still, to be politically conservative for any reason is to be inclined to be distrustful of democracy: it is in its essence a vehicle for (nonviolent) social change.
From the start, there have been people in this nation — whom we now call ‘liberals/progressives/democratic socialists’ — who have mistrusted (to different degrees) ‘free markets’, i.e., too much insufficiently restrained economic power (which, like all power, also doth corrupt). From the start, there has been vigorous debate over the role government, especially the federal government, in any form in the economy/its outcomes for society as a whole. From the start, even though Modern capitalism was only just getting started back then, there have been people who wanted the offices of government to be used on behalf of ‘the poor’, workers, consumers, and the environment.
Of late, that mutual mistrust stemming from the latent tension that does exist between equality and liberty seems to be coming to a head. It seems to be developing into a threat to the very fabric of the nation as presently constituted.
That mistrust is leading to a missed opportunity of historic proportions.
There is a way that we can achieve a stunning improvement in our nation*: eliminating unemployment and poverty (for all adult citizens) while eliminating (or at least resetting at zero) taxes and public borrowing at every level of government and at the same time systemically increasing environmental sustainability while making the economy fully self-regulating. All of that would be achieved with the existing economic system — and political system — in place. It could be instituted ‘overnight’, with a single legislative Act.
All of those outcomes are absolutely, positively guaranteed. There is no ‘downside’; no tradeoffs are necessary. Liberty would be increased and democracy would be enhanced.
Yet, that proposal is languishing. No editor has allowed for its publication (editors being ‘security guards’ for the status quo, armed with the power to deny). No politician or political party will endorse it. No individual (other than myself) is willing to advocate for the proposal (as far as I am aware).
It might be the case that it looks too ‘leftist’ for conservatives (and others on the political right) and too ‘rightist’ for liberals (and others on the political left). It does call for retaining the existing economic system, with markets to be as free as possible. It does entail extending the ‘democratic distributive principle’ to the economy, in the form of a democratically distributed income: i.e., a guaranteed minimum income income (that a person could actually live on).
Yet, the fact is that it would unquestionably achieve all of those outcomes noted previously. Not one of them is anything that any sane person can abhor. Even so, the political mistrust that has always been present in this nation is apparently leading people to fail to act on behalf of this proposal, seemingly too afraid that it is some kind of trap set by the other side. If that political behavior persists, and this chance for us to make ours a yet “more perfect Union” is missed, it will be, plainly and simply, the greatest tragedy in the history of civilization.
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*For more about the economic proposal: “A Most Beneficial Economic Change” (a “2 min read” here in Medium with links to more about it): nothing I publish here is behind the paywall.