One thing that annoys me about the current political divide is the fact that either you're an individualist, or you're a collectivist. While there are shades of in between, I feel like there's no coherent theory in between.
The right are "ethical egoists". Everything is self interest, self interest, self interest. Greed is good. The common good is served by fulfilling your self interest. Blah blah blah, tide that raise all boats arguments. The right is an ideology that assumes that the individual is paramount to sociopathic levels, and that collectivism is the source of all evil.
In some ways, I can't argue against their points. I mean, I look at the soviet union and extreme forms of collectivism, and I see authoritarianism. I do believe for liberty to flourish, and I consider myself to be pro liberty, that we need some level of ethical egoism and acting in one's rational self interest to reach maximal human happiness and well being. I dont believe the collective always knows better than the individual, and I do think the left sometimes overreaches with its collectivism.
At the same time, the right also overreaches. Individualism taken to extremes leads to a world in which we are not taken care of, and must constantly work for the owners of all property just to survive. It represents, in itself, a hellish existence in which the majority of humanity are de facto enslaved by property owners.
Now, collectivism. Collectivism happens as an overcorrection of individualism, rather than a society in which everyone is their own entity and can live as they want, people are seen as parts of a whole. In some ways, this can be taken to terrifying extremes, to the point that individuals are expected to self sacrifice for the collective. You mgiht see this in sentiments the modern left uses like telling people to check their privilege and vote blue no matter who, or you might see it in stuff like communism and socialism where the individual is just flat out denied and forced to be an expendable part of the whole.
I actually have a strong dislike of extreme collectivism, and believe we need a sane middle ground. And hence, I'm going to introduce the concept of enlightened self interest. Enlightened self interest is...self interest, but unlike the short sightedness of extreme individualism, in which any form of collectivism is denied, some collective efforts are encouraged under the basis that they serve every member of the whole. If everyone joins a union, everyone can collectively bargain, and everyone does better than they would bargaining themselves. if we pool everyone's money via taxes and redistribute it back to them as a basic income, there would be no functional poverty. If we do that with healthcare, everyone gets healthcare, AND IT WOULD COST LESS. And so on and so forth.
Sometimes the left tends to pick the worst arguments with framing its perspectives. For example, it will go on about privilege and bash me for not having more "empathy" and blah blah blah. basically, for these lefties, I dont have the same moral basis as them because my morality aint based primarily on feels. It's not that I don't have any feels, but as I always like to say, you can't force people to care.
If the left wants to make inroads with moderates, it needs a different approach, rather than being a "cult of caring" as I sometimes like to call it, where "privileged" people are expected to care and self sacrifice and take one for the team for the greater good, I'd rather meet people where they are and explain how, in some cases, collective efforts also benefit individuals. And that in the long term, these collective efforts will help most people, if not everyone.I admit, my ideas are, quite frankly, not going to be appealing to the wealthy, or even the upper middle class (one of the reasons the dems IMO need to stop appealing to these college age suburbanites who are fiscal conservatives, no matter how much they pontificate "caring" with their social justice ideology, the second you meaningfully raise their taxes, they suddenly become republicans, imagine that), but let's face it, and this is where the strength of my ideas come from: there are FAR MORE PEOPLE who would benefit than who would not. My UBI plan would benefit 73% of individual income earners, and translating to families, we could be seeing 80%+. Universal healthcare would have similar distributions. Same would free college, more housing, etc. Ultimately, yes, someone has to pay for my proposals. In net, the most wealthy would. Maybe they won't be happy about it. Tough. But my ideas would greatly improve the rest of the country's income and wealth distribution, eliminate poverty, give people more freedom, etc. To quote Gandalf in lord of the rings, "I'm not trying to rob you, I'm trying to help you."
Maybe conservatives who are hyper individualistic to the point of stupidity will argue against this, claim its tyranny of the majority, etc., but their ideas are the tyranny of the minority. And literal full scale collectivism that requires people to give more than reasonable amounts of taxation to make their ideas work, is just tyranny in general.
But ultimately? my ideas are for the individual. I just understand that sometimes collective efforts lead to better results...for individuals.
So when someone proposes an idea, feel free to be selfish. Ask "what's in it for me?" If they cant give an answer, I dont fault anyone for not supporting it. The left should not be afraid to embrace self interest. However, sometimes collectivist answers to problems are what's needed to achieve good answers for individuals.
Maybe the most wealthy would have to sacrifice some of their wealth to make my ideas work, but that's a sacrifice I'm willing to make. As should 70-80% of people if only they think it through rationally. I dont fault the other 20% for opposing, but with a 75-25 divide, under a real democracy, the pro 75% initiatives should win in a landslide.
Also, it's not like in my ideal society those other 25% would be BAD off. They'd face the same rules as everyone else, it's just that their extra wealth and privilege mean they have to pay more to foot the bill for everyone else. They still get the same benefits everyone else does, and if they theoretically lost their wealth, they would be taken care of.
In a lot of ways, this enlightened self interest is very much in line with Rawls' veil of ignorance (or whatever variation people like Karl Widerquist and Phillippe Van Parijs support). It is designed to help those who are worst off in society, and anyone who happens to fall to such a level will always be taken care of. Maybe the rewards at the top won't be as grandiose, but when those rewards come at the expense of the rest of society, yeah, maybe it is in the self interest of most of society to change that dynamic.
I just feel like this gives a better insight into my politics and how it diverges both from the right and left. The right is obsessed with individualism to the point that it seems to side with those 25% at the expense of the rest of society. The left's collectivist appeals are unappealing to large numbers of people, including people who should theoretically help. And my ideas give everyone skin in the game, where they support mildly collective efforts because they help them and preserve their liberty too.I just feel like this is something that is, again, missing in our modern American politics. The right is individualistic and greedy. The left seems to demand self sacrifice out of a lot of its followers, and honestly we need a form of collectivism that appeals to peoples' individual self interest. I call this enlightened self interest because it shows a sense of enlightenment. That something that seems collectivist and potentially against my interests in the short term is actually good for me long term.
No comments:
Post a Comment