The Invisible Hand that Rocks the Cradle

What is a "Free Country?" In America that sort of depends on who you ask. According to Reagan-wannabe conservatives like Fred Thompson, a free country is a country that is "based upon the value of a market economy, and free people doing free things in a free society, unafraid to trade with their neighbors... based upon the notion that we don't tax and regulate our people to death." America isn't about "dividing up the pie and rich vs. poor and boss vs. employee and all that kinda stuff," it's about working together as members of one nation, "making the pie bigger and going out there and enjoying a free country."

There's no such thing as social class, we're all just Americans. The Invisible Hand sets all the tables, a rising tide raises all ships... that, the Reagan Economists tell us, is how American works. The Adam Smiths and Milton Friedmans of the world are always there to remind us how competition keeps prices low and values up, how private industry is the most creative and efficient force for progress in any society. They remind us that there's no such thing as "class struggle;" that America owes as much to its industrial elites as it does to the working class. After all, without the highly educated and skilled elites, there'd be no innovation, and without the working class, that innovation wouldn't get anywhere. It's all a symbiotic relationship: the investor class opens a factory and the working class... well, works. That's why the "private sector"--euphemism for the capitalist "Invisible Hand"--should take over for cumbersome government bureaucracies, because a strong economy requires a free and unregulated market. A strong economy means a rich country, and when the country gets rich, everyone wins.

Bullocks. That'll slide with the New England Yacht Club and the West Coast Yuppie Convention. Hell, it might even slide with the rags-to-riches self-hatred crowd. Most commonly it'll appeal to anyone who believes--or wants to believe--that nothing that happens to anyone in this world is anyone else's fault. But the majority of us who have actually lived in America's basement and seen the machinery the makes this country run know better, even if we can't fully explain why. Experience gives lie to the claim that the "free market" produces greater prosperity for everyone, or the mythology of individualism that drives most conservatives almost to the point of denying the existence of society in favor of "six billion sovereign souls."

The key thing to understand about economists (especially the Reagan-Bush variety) is that they believe that every man woman and child on Earth is, fundamentally, some sort of economic entity. Therefore, so the theory goes, if the economy is stronger, more money is being exchanged, and more economic activity means more benefits for all these little economic entities within the economy. Sounds good at face value, except that it has one really important flaw: people are not economic entities. People are social entities, and the economy--in any form--is one of the means of social interaction and exchange. Not all exchanges are economic in nature, and in fact some of the most important ones--in terms of familiar, emotional and spiritual relationships--have no economic value of any kind. More importantly, it means that what happens in society, or even small parts of society, can directly affect other members of that society in ways they are otherwise unable to control. An "economic entity" is theoretically limited only by its liabilities and should be able to perform according to its assets; there's no reason to assume that such failure to perform could have any other causes, like, say, discrimination or lack of opportunity. I mean, if some company refuses to hire you, it's not discrimination, it's because as an economic entity you have failed to adequately represent yourself as an asset in the competitive job market (easily fixed, it turns out: just check the box on the job application that says "Hispanic").

This misunderstanding is small, but in terms of the nature of capitalism it has one devastating consequence. You see, in capitalism, the purpose of economic entities in the Free Market is to make profit. Anything an entity does to help it make profit is termed "productivity" and anything it does that is unprofitable is "waste." The entity that is most productive--that turns the biggest profits overall--is the most successful, and has better access to new markets and commodities it can exploit in order to make more profit. In this system, all of these little entities are in direct competition, so the ones that are less productive are at risk of being squeezed out altogether by the ones who are not. Basically, the most productive entity is expected to be the most innovative, or the most efficient, or the most productive, or the most whatever.

It's not actually that different from the economic system used by, say, a pack of wolves or flesh-eating bacteria. It would work extremely well in a country inhabitted mostly by pack mules who had nothing better to do than work, eat and sleep. But humans live in societies, not barns, and "survival of the fittest" is not exactly a time-honored moral virtue. Nearly every one of the world's major religions and cultures has at least one moral concept in common: reciprocity, also known as "The Golden Rule that tells us that we should treat everyone else the way we want to be treated. This concept is so universal among humans because first imperative of a society is to protect itself and all of its members; each person individually devotes his or her resources when needed to help one struggling member of that society, because each understands that everyone else would do the same for them. They treat other peolpe well, because they want to be treated well. Same goes for the notion of justice: treat other people badly, and you will be treated badly. Profit is not the primary goal of a functional society, stability is. And because societies--and not markets--created states, governments and institutions, we now have things called laws and standards that tell us what a stable and functional society is supposed to look like. Through trial and error, human cultures have discovered that the most stable societies are the ones that treasure reciprocity: the strong help the weak, the weak become strong, the newly-strong help the newly-weak.

On the other hand, a dysfunctional society is one that has become unstable, with huge swaths of its population being cheated out of the resources controlled by their society, with other groups profiting hugely at their expense. Under this system, reciprocity is strictly voluntary: the strong exploit the weak and only help them if it happens to be in their own best interest. That, unfortunately, is where America is currently headed: Reaganomics is what happens when "Economics" is mistaken for a science and the needs of society are reduced to a materialistic zero-sum game. In the logic of neocon-utopianism, there's no such thing as "society," except insofar as The Leader needs to have a group of Followers. Anyone whose sole purpose in life is not to make profit can be--and should be--ignored and ridiculed; after all, productivity is important for a healthy economy, and the economiy is the only thing that matters to anyone. Too bad if you're too old and frail to remain productive; you should have squirreled away your money every day of your entire life so you could afford to retire. Too bad if you want to spend extra time with your kids; you should have hired a Nanny for that, at least then somebody would be (economically) productive. Too bad if you can't compete with the competition; you should have bought an education from an accredited university. Too bad if your city gets destroyed by a Hurricane and you wind up homeless; you should have bought flood insurance and a boat. Too bad if you get sick and can't afford medical treatment; you should have bought better coverage from your insurance company (oh wait, you don't have insurance? Sucks to be you!)

In the end, Reaganomics--like most strains of conservativism--boils down to a bizarre marriage of libertarianism and penny despotism. It was fueled and conceived by complete and utter contempt for humanity and a fanatical obsession with wealth and power. And maybe the scariest thing is that most conservatives assume that everyone else in the world thinks exactly like them, except for a small but vocal lunatic fringe that bullies weak-minded fools into pretending to agree with them. Even if the opposite turns out to be the case, in every situation when they are given power, they will continue to display complete antipathy for just about everything that we--both as human beings and as Americans--have ever loved or cherished.

To the conservative, I can only concede: like many people I despise being forced to do things I don't want to do just because someone else thinks it's important. But that's the tradeoff I get for living in a society that can also mobilize its collective power to save my ass when I run into something you can't handle. Quid pro quo: you contribute to the group, then you have the right to ask the group to help you. If you can't stand the idea of having to listen to your neighbors tell you how to live your life, then you have no business having neighbors. Take your money, take your market, go live in a cave and live by your own rules. As for the rest of us, we have to live together, which means like it or not, the Haves and the Have-Mores are expected to part with a bigger share of their profits so the Have-Nots can survive. It's not because it's the law, it's not because we (the Have-Nots) deserve it, and it's not because they owe us anything in particular. It's only because, as Americans, we would do it for them if the situation were reversed.