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elfsGlenn Beck this morning let the cat out of the bag when he said: "Where are the businessmen who put their company first, ahead of their government? Where are the businessmen who believe in freedom? Where are the businessmen who wake up every morning, read the paper and say 'Yeah! I've got a competitor! That'll make me even stronger!'?"
I can't imagine a more succinct description of everything that's wrong with modern conservatism.
One of the most inscient observations between classic Liberalism (nee "progressivism") and classic Conservatism is this: Conservatism places a strong emphasis on the fallibility, the corruptibility, of man in relationship to power. Classic conservatism (I have to keep writing that because modern "conservatism" is rife with examples of people who continue to be deeply corrupt, yet continue to get gigs on radio and in print) allows for redemption, even forgiveness, but always with checks and balances.
Liberalism, in contrast, places a strong emphasis on man's capacity for redemption, for doing good, and this often translates into a firm belief that if we get the good people into the best places, they'll be able to sort everything out.
President Obama has spoken about this split himself when discussing with David Brooks his reading of American theologian Richard Neibuhr. Neibuhr, who described himself as a liberal despite his deep Christian roots, believed as many do that political power corrupted, and prescribed certain paths one could take through the political process to make use of the evil you must weild to undo greater evil, and get out with your soul intact. More than once, President Obama has described this as the course he has undertaken.
Beck's rant falls into the Neibuhrian trap, but in an odd way, backwards. He wants a radical overthrow of the American Way, to replace our current business practices in the hopes (and Beck uses the word "hope" on his radio show about as often as Obama did during the election cycle) that if we get good businessmen running the right businesses, then they'll make not just the economy, but our moral structures all right.
Maybe Beck's right, and for the first four to six years of his business the entrepeneur wakes up and says, "Yeah, competition is great!" But eventually the war becomes wearisome. Whether we argue this is sin or a relic of our Darwinian heritage, at some point when we have enough food and water and shelter and family, we come to believe in our own just deserts. The businessman turns to his neighbor, the politician, and says, "I've been here six years; I'm part of the tax base. I've paid my dues to the fire and police and water and government. Doesn't my business deserve protection from this kind of disruption?" A few excuses later, a Deal is made.
This doesn't feel "evil" to either man: they're doing themselves favors, and in the process protecting their community from the turmoil of job, locale, and economic dislocation. Homo Libertarianus is no more realistic than The New Soviet Man.
There's been a lot of analysis in modern economic literature about the difference between Homo Economicus and Homo Sapiens, about the "ideal, calculating, opportunity-maximizing agents" of traditional economy and the way real human beings respond to incentives. But much of that has been about short-term exchanges of offer, incentive, and reaction. What we don't see is how one's own incentives change as one ages, as circumstances change, and how these incentives become a slow poison we rarely resist.
p.s. I'm astonished at another part of Beck's rant, I mean, I thought his people were deathly afraid of Darwinism.
p.p.s. One of the things that struck me throughout this post was how often I wanted to invoke Dubner & Levitt's Freakonomics. I ultimately cut it out because it distracted from the point I was making, but it's still worth mentioning. The authors have taken a lot of heat (pun intended) for their recent mangling of climate science and their embrace of an almost reflexive "contrariness," but the original took heat for is boutique analysis that got away from, well, "economics" as certain reviewers understood it. But that was the point: Neuroeconomics and anthropological economics, economics that studies how economies really react to incentives, rather than pretending that they're made up of perfect opportunity-maximizers, are important additions to the economists' arsenal. Freakonomics was a valuable exploration of the small-scale, individual, micro-economic consequences of how human beings and incentives interact. There's nothing wrong with it if you understand that that's the point.
I can't imagine a more succinct description of everything that's wrong with modern conservatism.
One of the most inscient observations between classic Liberalism (nee "progressivism") and classic Conservatism is this: Conservatism places a strong emphasis on the fallibility, the corruptibility, of man in relationship to power. Classic conservatism (I have to keep writing that because modern "conservatism" is rife with examples of people who continue to be deeply corrupt, yet continue to get gigs on radio and in print) allows for redemption, even forgiveness, but always with checks and balances.
Liberalism, in contrast, places a strong emphasis on man's capacity for redemption, for doing good, and this often translates into a firm belief that if we get the good people into the best places, they'll be able to sort everything out.
President Obama has spoken about this split himself when discussing with David Brooks his reading of American theologian Richard Neibuhr. Neibuhr, who described himself as a liberal despite his deep Christian roots, believed as many do that political power corrupted, and prescribed certain paths one could take through the political process to make use of the evil you must weild to undo greater evil, and get out with your soul intact. More than once, President Obama has described this as the course he has undertaken.
Beck's rant falls into the Neibuhrian trap, but in an odd way, backwards. He wants a radical overthrow of the American Way, to replace our current business practices in the hopes (and Beck uses the word "hope" on his radio show about as often as Obama did during the election cycle) that if we get good businessmen running the right businesses, then they'll make not just the economy, but our moral structures all right.
Maybe Beck's right, and for the first four to six years of his business the entrepeneur wakes up and says, "Yeah, competition is great!" But eventually the war becomes wearisome. Whether we argue this is sin or a relic of our Darwinian heritage, at some point when we have enough food and water and shelter and family, we come to believe in our own just deserts. The businessman turns to his neighbor, the politician, and says, "I've been here six years; I'm part of the tax base. I've paid my dues to the fire and police and water and government. Doesn't my business deserve protection from this kind of disruption?" A few excuses later, a Deal is made.
This doesn't feel "evil" to either man: they're doing themselves favors, and in the process protecting their community from the turmoil of job, locale, and economic dislocation. Homo Libertarianus is no more realistic than The New Soviet Man.
There's been a lot of analysis in modern economic literature about the difference between Homo Economicus and Homo Sapiens, about the "ideal, calculating, opportunity-maximizing agents" of traditional economy and the way real human beings respond to incentives. But much of that has been about short-term exchanges of offer, incentive, and reaction. What we don't see is how one's own incentives change as one ages, as circumstances change, and how these incentives become a slow poison we rarely resist.
p.s. I'm astonished at another part of Beck's rant, I mean, I thought his people were deathly afraid of Darwinism.
p.p.s. One of the things that struck me throughout this post was how often I wanted to invoke Dubner & Levitt's Freakonomics. I ultimately cut it out because it distracted from the point I was making, but it's still worth mentioning. The authors have taken a lot of heat (pun intended) for their recent mangling of climate science and their embrace of an almost reflexive "contrariness," but the original took heat for is boutique analysis that got away from, well, "economics" as certain reviewers understood it. But that was the point: Neuroeconomics and anthropological economics, economics that studies how economies really react to incentives, rather than pretending that they're made up of perfect opportunity-maximizers, are important additions to the economists' arsenal. Freakonomics was a valuable exploration of the small-scale, individual, micro-economic consequences of how human beings and incentives interact. There's nothing wrong with it if you understand that that's the point.
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no subject
Date: 2009-10-28 08:25 pm (UTC)Yet, if you ask him about a public option...
no subject
Date: 2009-10-29 06:35 am (UTC)Hmmm. I love the distinction, I'm not sure the labels quite fit the current uses of "conservatism" and "liberalism", not as they are used here nor as they are used in any other place in the world.
I'm struggling to find a succinct name for each type, more succinct than your observation, though. Systemizers vs. individualists? No, that can't be right, either.
Hmmm.
no subject
Date: 2009-10-29 09:27 pm (UTC)Exactly.
I came to this very conclusion 20 years ago. The socioeconomic systems of the 20th century each presupposed an ideal-human, each of a different form … and none of which existed in reality.
I'm also reminded of something a grad-school cohort once said to me, "Given the choice between Big Business and Big Government, I will choose Big Government, because I can't vote Big Business out." We seem to have forgotten this.