My Political Beliefs: A Thought Experiment
At the moment, there are quite a few interesting political events occurring in the world. At some point during my university career, I've become somewhat more of a political creature -- which is typical of many, I guess -- so I've been keeping an eye out on what's been going on, in a minimal sense. The three things that one is constantly bombarded with in the news at the moment is: the rise of Trump in the American presidential candidate race, the unstable conditions in the Middle East causing mass emigration from the affected areas, the United Kingdom threatening to leave the European Union should the referendum swing that way. I'm the first to point out that commenting on and having opinions on political matters is a deeply difficult thing to do: to be able to speak trustworthily, you need to know about the social conditions in the country you're talking about (which in itself is multifactedly and "soft" - insofar as things will depend on context, so general claims will be difficult to make), you need to know about the legislative conditions of that country, the economic decisions of the government and their consequences, and the opinions of political organisations and specific politicians. This is to say nothing about the specific areas of policy you would need to have minimal information about in order to be able to talk coherently about them -- environment, education, economics, international relations. That is a lot for a single person to be able to contain if they aren't students of politics or if they don't in some way spend a significant portion of their waking life thinking about politics. It almost makes you wonder how on earth democracy is supposed to function when, for the people to make informed decisions about who to pick to govern their country, they would have to spend all their time thinking about just that rather than doing anything else. It puts you in a difficult bind. You end up having to pick somewhat blindly, with the additional sour taste in your mouth that perhaps even the people you're picking don't have time to think about all those things in as much detail as would be required to govern as excellently as possible. It's a long chain of uninformed people trusting uninformed people to hopefully ask more informed people what decisions to make. Ideally our politicians would be maximally learned polymaths, but this is almost never the case -- so we must make do with people who studied politics and economics, and hope they make decisions based off of informed advice rather than ideological commitment. Alas, that won't be the case, because they will have been forced by the necessity of pragmatism to think generally and align with teams, rather than think specifically and turn over every individual topic there is to think about. I don't really know what a better political system would be, though. That is perhaps a thought for another time. For now, let's move on to my original point for this post: I want to do the work of thinking generally about my political positions, so that I have a clearer sense of what teams I (out of pragmatic necessity) should team up with. There are quizzes on the internet to help you with this, and I've done quite a few of them, so this isn't my first time thinking about it, but I wanted to do it in a more free-form way, where the most important points fall naturally out of my mind, rather than presented by someone else for me to think about.
Okay, first of all I should think of a question to frame this post in to give it structure. The best question I can think of is: realistic conditions allowing, if I could create someone to put in power of the country I live in, what values would I give them? I say realistic conditions allowing because obviously the easiest to that question is something like what I said earlier: the maximally learned human being with unwavering rationality and a keen eye for how to make things good for everyone. That's not really that helpful. The "realistic conditions" constraint is useful then.
Although, something interesting did come out of even that completely unrealistic answer to the question. "A keen eye for how to make things good for everyone". I think if we break this down into something more realistic, a value that I would want my political leader to have is a genuine desire for fairness. Obviously fairness has to be defined here. At its most basic, I mean the politician should seek where possible to improve the living conditions of people in all lots of life. What follows from this is obvious: people in worse conditions, having more to be improved upon, should be allocated more resources and attention. I think that's just what fairness is. The government should have two goals: 1) keeping life stable and allowing people to live as they please (without harming others) and 2) make life in that society fairer by making improvements where improvements are able to made (which will mean focusing on the worse off).
Thus the government should have a stability function and an improvement function. Otherwise society will either stagnate or simply perpetuate into improvement for those who are better off and detriment for those without the tools to improve themselves.
So this means my ideal politician would encourage public spending with a particular eye for helping poorer areas. Of course, increased public spending has to be paid for. I think it is legitimate for this to be paid for through taxes if the people of the country in general believe it's important to help the worse off, to govern fairly. A tax is just you, as a member of society, saying: "Sure, I'm willing to pay for this larger governing body to help people out and improve society." And taxes are more effective than charitable donations, because whereas a tax is secure, a donation depends on the goodwill of the donor, and not everybody is inclined towards fairness or has a goodwill. In this way, for the betterment of the worse off, I am happy to require those who do not naturally have a goodwill to contribute towards the payment of public programmes through taxes. This is not unlike how society already works, but I think my ideal politician would realise that we aren't doing enough to improve the lives of the worse off, and so more taxes should be raised and smarter public programmes should be implemented.
Libertarians typically disagree with that thinking because it involves the notion of forcing somebody to act in a way they perhaps wouldn't like to. Libertarians would rather limit public spending to the bare minimum, so that only #1 of my 2 functions listed above are met. They are more concerned with the freedom of individuals that they would (either implicitly or explicitly) forego governing to improve the lives of the worse off. They don't want to force the guy who lacks goodwill pay taxes to help the worse off -- he should only do that if he wants to, through donating to some organisation that offers to do that. So it is that they place a massive amount of trust in the forces of the freemarket. They believe that if you simply let people spend money as they please, through market forces, society will be given what they want and deserve. In this way, the people freely organise society through purchasing things -- the government simply oversees the matter so that nobody hurts anybody.
I can see why this is an attractive view, but unfortunately people are naturally inclined to helping only those closest to themselves through goodwill. Thus leaving the improvement arm to the freewill of the people and their economic choices seems to me likely to result in pockets of society of people who aren't very close to anybody simply perishing and being unhelped. I think we see this in the lower classes having a higher rate of single parent families and broken homes. It isn't because that's just what the lower classes do -- break up -- it's more that people with weaker social networks tend to become lower class. By only focusing on freedom, we unfairly condemn people with weaker social networks to worse lives. This is why my ideal politician cannot be an unbridled libertarian, but must see that it is justified to reduce liberty via taxation to improve the conditions of those who are worse off.
The method of taxation must be fair too. It won't do to tax the worst off the same as you would tax those who are doing most excellently, even if the money goes towards social projects to help them. What might result is a circle in which you take from the worst off just after having given, leaving them stagnant, and not improving their lives after all. As such, my ideal politician would tax the worst off less and (it follows) the better off more. This would have to be done in such a way that it doesn't make the better off feel as though they are being punished for being better off. I think the most effective way would be to tax the populace progressively, so that those who are best off pay the most tax, but make sure to create public programmes that also benefit the better off. Of course, the majority of public programmes would go towards improving the lives of the worst off, but I believe in order not to alienate the best off, they should feel an obvious reward to their taxation too. I think things like universal, free healthcare and higher education would be examples of programmes that would satisfy this provision. For this reason, my ideal politician would be in favour of such free public programmes that benefit the better off as well as the worst off.
Of course, given my obvious commitment to fairness, my ideal politician would be committed also to defending against any kind of discrimination based off of factors somebody cannot control, such as: race, sexuality, gender, or physical and mental disability. For this reason, my ideal politician would seek to improve the lives of those who face discrimination based off of these factors, because they fall under the rubric of worse off. My ideal politician would not be opposed to: quotas encouraging participation and representation of those who are discriminated against for factors they cannot control or legislation that prohibits discrimination solely on the basis of uncontrollable factors.
Abroad, my ideal politician would have to straddle the middle point between complete disregard for the way other societies are governed and overzealous meddling. I think a complete disregard is bad because people are people whether they belong to your society or not, and as such deserve the kind of treatment you think your own people deserve, but at the same time, I believe that if you are not contributing to something or if you don't have a personal stake in something, you aren't justified in meddling or interfering. For this reason, my ideal politician would minimally be for aiding foreign societies for the improvement of their societies, while otherwise generally avoiding intervention in their affairs.
My ideal politician would welcome unifying forces with nations that share values of fairness, so that with unified resources, they can improve the lives of more people. The extent to which my ideal politician would be willing to join forces with foreign nations would be proportional to how deeply and how many values are shared between our nation and the foreign one. On one extreme: if the foreign nation shares our values entirely and are willing, in principle I do not see why unifying as different provinces of one nation would be a bad idea. On the other extreme: if no values are shared at all, the most must be done to cut off relations. For this reason, a single market across Europe, for example, is something I would like my politician to endorse -- while ideally my politician would endorse the diminishing of ties with countries such as North Korea and Saudi Arabia to the level of non-existence or complete minimality as required by necessity.
My ideal politician, of course, would endorse any kind of programme that results in bettering the planet as a whole -- such as research and development in renewable energies -- because the result of this is a kind of improvement of that which is worse off.
So far I've touched on: internal affairs such as taxation and public spending; external affairs such as intervention, aid, and unions; and the environment. I can continue with this thought experiment going through every single topic related to governance, but I think a pattern is forming, so I can extrapolate from that:
If it helps the worse off, fund it. Repay the better off in thank yous of the form of free public utilities that benefit everyone as much as is possible without diminishing the primary purpose of raising money: helping the worse off.
One word on economics: I still want the markets to be as free as possible, like the libertarians do -- I simply believe the government should do more in improving the lives off the worse off. So, my ideal politician would want restrictions on the market to be reduced as much as possible insofar as markets aren't created that make people worse off in a structural way. It's important to say structural instead of worse off in any way -- because it should be fine to make the poor decision to, for example, buy alcohol and get wasted to the point of black out; but it shouldn't be fine to sell people into slavery, for example. So the markets should be maximally free so long as they are not causing structural damage to any people.
With all this information in place, I think I can finally come to a conclusion on what team my ideal politician is on.
My ideal politician supports keeping the country secure, helping the worst off improve their lot in life, and maximally free markets so long as they do not cause structural damage to people. My ideal politician is a social democrat. With my limited knowledge, I think at the moment the Scandinavian countries govern most similarly to the way discussed above. In my own country, I believe the SNP govern most similarly to this manner in Scotland and in England, of the two parties that ever stand a chance of winning elections, the Labour Party (especially under Jeremy Corbyn) is closest to endorsing this kind of governance. In the U.S., of those in the race for the presidential candidacy, Bernie Sanders is closest to this style of governance.
So it goes. I can either move to Scandinavia, settle in Scotland, or vote Labour if I really must live in England. Alternatively, if Bernie Sanders becomes president, perhaps some liberal state in a liberal neighbourhood in America might accept me. Ha.
Anyway, I think I've got a clearer notion of my political leanings now. I think this activity has been good, useful. It would be better to publish it in some more public place than this private blog. It's much too long for a Facebook status, though. I'll keep it in mind. If not, oh well.
I struggle with signing off my posts. I almost always say something like, "Until then". Perhaps I should consider improving my endings.
*dives into a shadow; disappears in both shape and form*
Okay, first of all I should think of a question to frame this post in to give it structure. The best question I can think of is: realistic conditions allowing, if I could create someone to put in power of the country I live in, what values would I give them? I say realistic conditions allowing because obviously the easiest to that question is something like what I said earlier: the maximally learned human being with unwavering rationality and a keen eye for how to make things good for everyone. That's not really that helpful. The "realistic conditions" constraint is useful then.
Although, something interesting did come out of even that completely unrealistic answer to the question. "A keen eye for how to make things good for everyone". I think if we break this down into something more realistic, a value that I would want my political leader to have is a genuine desire for fairness. Obviously fairness has to be defined here. At its most basic, I mean the politician should seek where possible to improve the living conditions of people in all lots of life. What follows from this is obvious: people in worse conditions, having more to be improved upon, should be allocated more resources and attention. I think that's just what fairness is. The government should have two goals: 1) keeping life stable and allowing people to live as they please (without harming others) and 2) make life in that society fairer by making improvements where improvements are able to made (which will mean focusing on the worse off).
Thus the government should have a stability function and an improvement function. Otherwise society will either stagnate or simply perpetuate into improvement for those who are better off and detriment for those without the tools to improve themselves.
So this means my ideal politician would encourage public spending with a particular eye for helping poorer areas. Of course, increased public spending has to be paid for. I think it is legitimate for this to be paid for through taxes if the people of the country in general believe it's important to help the worse off, to govern fairly. A tax is just you, as a member of society, saying: "Sure, I'm willing to pay for this larger governing body to help people out and improve society." And taxes are more effective than charitable donations, because whereas a tax is secure, a donation depends on the goodwill of the donor, and not everybody is inclined towards fairness or has a goodwill. In this way, for the betterment of the worse off, I am happy to require those who do not naturally have a goodwill to contribute towards the payment of public programmes through taxes. This is not unlike how society already works, but I think my ideal politician would realise that we aren't doing enough to improve the lives of the worse off, and so more taxes should be raised and smarter public programmes should be implemented.
Libertarians typically disagree with that thinking because it involves the notion of forcing somebody to act in a way they perhaps wouldn't like to. Libertarians would rather limit public spending to the bare minimum, so that only #1 of my 2 functions listed above are met. They are more concerned with the freedom of individuals that they would (either implicitly or explicitly) forego governing to improve the lives of the worse off. They don't want to force the guy who lacks goodwill pay taxes to help the worse off -- he should only do that if he wants to, through donating to some organisation that offers to do that. So it is that they place a massive amount of trust in the forces of the freemarket. They believe that if you simply let people spend money as they please, through market forces, society will be given what they want and deserve. In this way, the people freely organise society through purchasing things -- the government simply oversees the matter so that nobody hurts anybody.
I can see why this is an attractive view, but unfortunately people are naturally inclined to helping only those closest to themselves through goodwill. Thus leaving the improvement arm to the freewill of the people and their economic choices seems to me likely to result in pockets of society of people who aren't very close to anybody simply perishing and being unhelped. I think we see this in the lower classes having a higher rate of single parent families and broken homes. It isn't because that's just what the lower classes do -- break up -- it's more that people with weaker social networks tend to become lower class. By only focusing on freedom, we unfairly condemn people with weaker social networks to worse lives. This is why my ideal politician cannot be an unbridled libertarian, but must see that it is justified to reduce liberty via taxation to improve the conditions of those who are worse off.
The method of taxation must be fair too. It won't do to tax the worst off the same as you would tax those who are doing most excellently, even if the money goes towards social projects to help them. What might result is a circle in which you take from the worst off just after having given, leaving them stagnant, and not improving their lives after all. As such, my ideal politician would tax the worst off less and (it follows) the better off more. This would have to be done in such a way that it doesn't make the better off feel as though they are being punished for being better off. I think the most effective way would be to tax the populace progressively, so that those who are best off pay the most tax, but make sure to create public programmes that also benefit the better off. Of course, the majority of public programmes would go towards improving the lives of the worst off, but I believe in order not to alienate the best off, they should feel an obvious reward to their taxation too. I think things like universal, free healthcare and higher education would be examples of programmes that would satisfy this provision. For this reason, my ideal politician would be in favour of such free public programmes that benefit the better off as well as the worst off.
Of course, given my obvious commitment to fairness, my ideal politician would be committed also to defending against any kind of discrimination based off of factors somebody cannot control, such as: race, sexuality, gender, or physical and mental disability. For this reason, my ideal politician would seek to improve the lives of those who face discrimination based off of these factors, because they fall under the rubric of worse off. My ideal politician would not be opposed to: quotas encouraging participation and representation of those who are discriminated against for factors they cannot control or legislation that prohibits discrimination solely on the basis of uncontrollable factors.
Abroad, my ideal politician would have to straddle the middle point between complete disregard for the way other societies are governed and overzealous meddling. I think a complete disregard is bad because people are people whether they belong to your society or not, and as such deserve the kind of treatment you think your own people deserve, but at the same time, I believe that if you are not contributing to something or if you don't have a personal stake in something, you aren't justified in meddling or interfering. For this reason, my ideal politician would minimally be for aiding foreign societies for the improvement of their societies, while otherwise generally avoiding intervention in their affairs.
My ideal politician would welcome unifying forces with nations that share values of fairness, so that with unified resources, they can improve the lives of more people. The extent to which my ideal politician would be willing to join forces with foreign nations would be proportional to how deeply and how many values are shared between our nation and the foreign one. On one extreme: if the foreign nation shares our values entirely and are willing, in principle I do not see why unifying as different provinces of one nation would be a bad idea. On the other extreme: if no values are shared at all, the most must be done to cut off relations. For this reason, a single market across Europe, for example, is something I would like my politician to endorse -- while ideally my politician would endorse the diminishing of ties with countries such as North Korea and Saudi Arabia to the level of non-existence or complete minimality as required by necessity.
My ideal politician, of course, would endorse any kind of programme that results in bettering the planet as a whole -- such as research and development in renewable energies -- because the result of this is a kind of improvement of that which is worse off.
So far I've touched on: internal affairs such as taxation and public spending; external affairs such as intervention, aid, and unions; and the environment. I can continue with this thought experiment going through every single topic related to governance, but I think a pattern is forming, so I can extrapolate from that:
If it helps the worse off, fund it. Repay the better off in thank yous of the form of free public utilities that benefit everyone as much as is possible without diminishing the primary purpose of raising money: helping the worse off.
One word on economics: I still want the markets to be as free as possible, like the libertarians do -- I simply believe the government should do more in improving the lives off the worse off. So, my ideal politician would want restrictions on the market to be reduced as much as possible insofar as markets aren't created that make people worse off in a structural way. It's important to say structural instead of worse off in any way -- because it should be fine to make the poor decision to, for example, buy alcohol and get wasted to the point of black out; but it shouldn't be fine to sell people into slavery, for example. So the markets should be maximally free so long as they are not causing structural damage to any people.
With all this information in place, I think I can finally come to a conclusion on what team my ideal politician is on.
My ideal politician supports keeping the country secure, helping the worst off improve their lot in life, and maximally free markets so long as they do not cause structural damage to people. My ideal politician is a social democrat. With my limited knowledge, I think at the moment the Scandinavian countries govern most similarly to the way discussed above. In my own country, I believe the SNP govern most similarly to this manner in Scotland and in England, of the two parties that ever stand a chance of winning elections, the Labour Party (especially under Jeremy Corbyn) is closest to endorsing this kind of governance. In the U.S., of those in the race for the presidential candidacy, Bernie Sanders is closest to this style of governance.
So it goes. I can either move to Scandinavia, settle in Scotland, or vote Labour if I really must live in England. Alternatively, if Bernie Sanders becomes president, perhaps some liberal state in a liberal neighbourhood in America might accept me. Ha.
Anyway, I think I've got a clearer notion of my political leanings now. I think this activity has been good, useful. It would be better to publish it in some more public place than this private blog. It's much too long for a Facebook status, though. I'll keep it in mind. If not, oh well.
I struggle with signing off my posts. I almost always say something like, "Until then". Perhaps I should consider improving my endings.
*dives into a shadow; disappears in both shape and form*
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