Lane Kenworthy on why we’re headed toward social democracy

Human nature

“Just curious, what encourages people to work hard, learn continuously, save/invest, take financial risks, take personal risks, etc in this heavenly social democracy that you envision?”

John, people have been doing these things for millions of years. They’re not going to stop just because they have a decent public education system and vacation time. On the contrary. By the way, in a free country, people aren’t required to live the lives you think they should live, they can pursue their own lives.

History and work ethics by Ilya and John

I’m afraid Ilya and John are making a series of flawed assumptions about everything from economics to human nature.

To begin with, no spending can take place outside of economies. By definition commerce (i.e. spending be it direct or indirect) is economic activity that cannot take place “outside” the economy. I know that Liberandian’s (libertarian/Ayn Rand acolytes) like to pretend that public and private sectors of the economy compete rather than compliment each other but that is yet another ill informed pseudo-economic principle. Walmart recently discovered this when the Food Stamp cuts took a bite out of their profits.

This notion of economies being organized and driven by individual wealth building is likewise incoherent because it assumes that economies are driven by a small percentage of actors who build wealth while everyone watches because their not motivated enough. This is merely Protestant work ethic pretending to be economics. The reality is that economies are complex enterprises with massive and diverse participation on many levels. Within those economies and societies some individuals are simply more interested in building wealth than others. Social Democracies don’t suppress wealth, but they do manage wealth disparity.

Speaking of Protestant work ethic, this impulse to discipline EVERYONE into conformity as some kind of worker bee is simply tyrannical and contrary to the whole notion of a free society. Since it’s based on religious values rather than legitimate economic principles it also happens to be unconstitutional here in the United States. This is dictatorial social engineering pretending to be compassionate conservatism, we’ve seen that before.

Since this isn’t my first dance I’ll anticipate the comments regarding social engineering. The difference between Liberandian social engineering and Liberal social engineering is that one seeks to suppress individuality while the other seeks to accommodate it. Look at John and Ilya’s notion of utopia and try to imagine how an artist who’s not interested in being wealthy would survive for instance. There’s no room in Liberandian societies for people who want to pursue interests instead of wealth. Several science fiction writers have imagined nightmare societies like that, in fact there’s a Dr. Who episode that comes to mind…

Finally the most obvious flaw in this line of reasoning is that it assumes that there is some kind of inverse relationship between affluence and productivity. If this were the case, those countries with highest degree of social democracy would NOT be the wealthiest nations on the planet. Furthermore, logic would dictate that if affluence is the enemy of hard work, creativity, and motivation, the ideal society would limit extreme wealth rather than promote it. This idea that affluence is good for a small number of wealthy people but detrimental to everyone else is simply class warfare pretending to be anthropology. The suggestion that the wealthy work harder or are more intelligent than everyone else is too absurd to comment on.

Basically the Liberandian notion of good society is one organized around greed. History has shown us repeatedly that societies like that always collapse. We can have a society that accommodates greed but its sheer folly to make it an organizing principle.

By the way, almost every single religion in the world, including Christianity denounces greed. I’ve always thought is was weird to see so many Christians convert greed into a Christian value over the last couple decades. It’s actually a mortal sin if I’m not mistaken. The attempt to impose religion is weird, but the attempt to impose sin takes it to a whole new level. Listen: The only religion I know of that doesn’t denounce greed is Satanism… go figure.

Upside down and backwards

Ilya: “You think that if you want something to work, it will, regardless of people’ nature. History shows that it does not.”

Actually history shows us that the countries with robust social democracy and effective central governments are the wealthiest nations on the planet while the countries following your principles look like Somalia and Bangladesh. And in point of fact while they lagged behind Western Europe people living in the Soviet Union and even Cuba enjoyed a higher standard of living than many other people in the world living with “free market” economies. You can complain about Cuban political oppression if you want but at least the Cubans got a great health care system out of the deal. People living throughout Latin America from the death squads in El Salvador to the Disappeared of Argentina got just got crushing poverty on top of the oppression.

The problem with Ilya and John’s Liberandianism is that it inverts basic principles. We’re told that people who work to near exhaustion 60+ hours a week and collect food stamps are “freeloaders” while executives who go golfing, dodge responsibility at every turn, and crash whole industries if not world economies with their incompetence are the “hard” workers who should be making the big bucks. On TOP of that Liberandian’s fight at every turn any attempt to secure fair wages for the REAL hard workers in the economy. Look, in theory no safety nets would be necessary at all if workers were paid fair wages and retirement pensions. But our Liberandian’s think labor unions that negotiate fair wages and pensions are expressions of communism and any laws that protect labor or establish living wages are violations of all that is holy in the universe. It’s not a coincidence that wages have stagnated in the US at the same time Union participation has collapsed. This isn’t economics and it never was, it’s class warfare, maybe not French Revolution class warfare, but it does impose unnecessary hardship that does in fact kill people.

And again, I say it’s been the liberal participation in this class warfare that’s been the big problem. Even Jimmy Carter signed off on Neo-Liberal economic theories that deregulated and privatized public interests. Clinton and the DLC embraced some of these principles with such gusto that we ended up with almost no opposition to class inequity in the US until very recently.