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elfsIn my last post I discussed listening to Glen Beck, and Glen Beck's refrain, "I believe in America's future." Beck does not describe this future, ever. Partly, I believe Beck can't describe it: Beck is too shallow and lacking in creative thought to imagine a future. But I also suspect that Beck can't describe the future because doing so would betray his free-market conservatism.
Free market conservatives espouse the principle of the invisible hand. The idea is a simple one: we engage in trade we believe is beneficial to us. By doing so, we create market signals that cause the generation of more trade of that kind, until the market is saturated or until someone comes up with something better.
Adam Smith, who created the metaphor of the invisible hand, was arguing against trade restriction and government regulation, and we can see how government regulation has stifled telecommunications in this country horribly over the past fifty years, to the point where you must now get government authorization to roll out an innovation in that space.
There are four ways to talk about the future:
The future will not be "all right."
Think about yourself suddenly time-warping into America 175 years ago. Slavery is still around, and no matter where in the country you go, attitudes towards the way your fellow men treat minorities is, I would hope, deeply offensive to you. The way men treat women is outrageous, especially if you are a woman. Class distinctions are even more absurd then than they are now, especially if you live in a huge, stinking city with bad sewage, little running water, no artifical lighting at night, and medicine that hasn't advanced much since the Roman times. You might adjust, but it would always be deeply unsettling to you, this world so unlike your own, so unlikeable compared to your own.
The future given to the invisible hand is just as unsettling-- and for some, unlikeable. You and I feel it-- some of us embrace it, some of us fear it. This unsettling, disturbing, even weirder than now future of happy mutants is the conservative future, if we believe what the conservatives tell us. The liberal future, if we believe what the liberals tell us, always seems to entail a degree of freedom in those things that don't matter much and don't accomplish much, but goverment intervention in our schools, our mortgages, and our businesses limit what innovation and change the future will be permitted.
Both sides tell their base that the future will be "all right." The difference is that liberals can say how it will be, and damn the consequences. The conservatives can't or won't say how or why it will be, because they don't know how it will be, or they know it won't be.
Free market conservatives espouse the principle of the invisible hand. The idea is a simple one: we engage in trade we believe is beneficial to us. By doing so, we create market signals that cause the generation of more trade of that kind, until the market is saturated or until someone comes up with something better.
Adam Smith, who created the metaphor of the invisible hand, was arguing against trade restriction and government regulation, and we can see how government regulation has stifled telecommunications in this country horribly over the past fifty years, to the point where you must now get government authorization to roll out an innovation in that space.
There are four ways to talk about the future:
- The future will be more like the past.
- This is a popular one among paleoconservatives, but they're not a popular group because when they say "like the past," what they openly describe domestically is a de jure enforcement of a specific civil order, and that civil order will naturally be the one that has dominated their imagination for sixty years now: the Christianized segments of America circa 1950s.
- The future will be like the present
- This is really no vision at all, but a mere hope for stagnation. Very few people on either the left or the right want the status quo (or even a vaguely improved status quo, say an economic state of 1998 with our current technology) so this vision is usually left out of any discussion of the future. It's actually the vision most Americans are most comfortable with: "Let the world change, just let it all stay out of my home! If I must know about it, let it be on the other side of the screen!"
- The future will be (insert specific vision here)
- The problem with this one is that it is specific, and to the extent that it's a specific future, it's one that can only come about through government action. The invisble hand needs invisible handcuffs: we will get to the future the speaker wants only through regulation and restrictions, both commercial and personal. Other than the wacky Dominionist arm at the far right (of which Mick Huckabee is a member, never forget), no conservative dares breathe about this future too much. Aiming for a specific, concrete goal five or ten or twenty years down the line is something the Soviets did, it's something that only liberals do. You cannot beat your audience over the head with a contradictory message forever.
- The future will be weird.
- This is the outcome of public conservative policy, but it's so deeply unsettling to people like Beck and Hannity and so on that they don't dare really say this out loud.
The future will not be "all right."
Think about yourself suddenly time-warping into America 175 years ago. Slavery is still around, and no matter where in the country you go, attitudes towards the way your fellow men treat minorities is, I would hope, deeply offensive to you. The way men treat women is outrageous, especially if you are a woman. Class distinctions are even more absurd then than they are now, especially if you live in a huge, stinking city with bad sewage, little running water, no artifical lighting at night, and medicine that hasn't advanced much since the Roman times. You might adjust, but it would always be deeply unsettling to you, this world so unlike your own, so unlikeable compared to your own.
The future given to the invisible hand is just as unsettling-- and for some, unlikeable. You and I feel it-- some of us embrace it, some of us fear it. This unsettling, disturbing, even weirder than now future of happy mutants is the conservative future, if we believe what the conservatives tell us. The liberal future, if we believe what the liberals tell us, always seems to entail a degree of freedom in those things that don't matter much and don't accomplish much, but goverment intervention in our schools, our mortgages, and our businesses limit what innovation and change the future will be permitted.
Both sides tell their base that the future will be "all right." The difference is that liberals can say how it will be, and damn the consequences. The conservatives can't or won't say how or why it will be, because they don't know how it will be, or they know it won't be.
