LEGITIMATE LIMITS ON RIGHTS

 

The last posting, relying on the work of Charles Taylor,[1] made the argument that a radical or near radical belief in rights – that one can do what one wants to do – is relatively short lived.  This is due to the disposition of people holding this view.  That is, especially in societies where such beliefs become common, those people have license to behave in ways that undermine or prove to be destructive of societal institutions that protect or advance rights to begin with. 

For example, people so disposed might very well undermine family ties for selfish ends which in turn seriously weaken the emotional bonds that a family would otherwise have.  If that became common behavior, the institution of family would be threatened and not able to function as a caring and nurturing relationship. 

One can think of other societal arrangements that could similarly be threatened such as businesses, educational entities, and governmental agencies and their authorizing statutes.  People, since these connections are mostly preserved through norms, don’t give them much thought until they are threatened and then are left with a “what’s going on here?” sort of reaction.

To take up Taylor’s argument, he cites Thomas Hobbes and Hobbes’ point out that people seek life to basically prolong their desire to be agents of desire.  And here is an extension of what life is or why it is sought to be continued.  Taylor explains:

 

Social theories require a conception of the properly human life which is such that we are not assured it by simply being alive, but it must be developed and it can fail to be developed; on this basis they can argue that society or a certain form of society is the essential condition of this development.[2]

 

So, what is meant by a right to life that is not a list of detached rights (speech, religion, movement, employment, etc.), but a holistic state.  A state where the societal arrangement exists in which a sentimental life – a life in which one can have the cherished right to feel both physically and emotionally – can exist and prosper?

          To be clearer:  If one restricts this concern over rights to the right to merely continue breathing or staying alive, then addressing the more life defining concerns – how one socializes, how one expresses his/her talents and proclivities, how one seeks importance and fulfilling one’s social ambitions and obligations – one is limiting such concerns to manifestations of specific rights being supported or by being threatened.  By doing so, one dismisses their underpinnings, i.e., the social mechanisms and structures that promote such rights and what supports them.

          But when the emphasis is on societal processes geared to identify and promote such concerns, the wherewithal by which the necessary social mechanisms and structures not only are recognized but their continuance becomes more likely by assisting them to function viably.  If ignored or even debased, they go wanting to the extent they become nonfunctional, at least to a level where societal health is affected negatively.  

One can even visualize, if not cite specific examples, where such dysfunction becomes fatal to a polity or system of governance (for example, one can argue, the former Soviet Union of Russia was such a case).  And here one can legitimately consider the apparent dysfunctions of the American system that many commentators are warning has become of great concern or worry.

          A more encompassing view of rights strays one away from emphasizing rights individually, such as property rights (e.g., right to contract), but toward quality-of-life rights (e.g., right to profess independent convictions).  As a matter of fact, the former type of right, irrespective of John Locke’s view, is not essential to viable living.

 See, for example, communal societies from all the way back to the paleolithic hunting clans to the Inca empire, and even to commune living in China today.  Ironically, the right to life is better secured in these communal settings than in many individually based societies (Taylor compares China with Chile or one can compare it currently with El Salvador and Jamaica, ranked one and two in murder rates[3]).

But before one lists Taylor as a defender of collectivist countries such as Communist China, he adds:

 

But the real point is this:  supposing a proponent of the right to property were to admit that the above was true – that the right to property does not as such secure life – would he [or she] change his [/her] mind?  And the answer is, in the vast majority of cases, no.  For what is at stake for [that person] is not just life, but life in freedom.  My life is safe in a Chinese commune, he [or she] might agree, but that is so long as I keep quiet and do not profess heterodox opinions; otherwise the risks are very great.  Private property is seen as essential, because it is thought to be an essential part of a life of genuine independence.[4]

 

That is, not as an independently considered right.  And in this, such a defender of natural rights might recognize the irony involved.  Generally recognized rights – however they might be viewed as separate qualities – ultimately rely on the social landscape where they are manifested and possibly challenged.

          And even more contextualized as to what the immediate environs are – in a family, at school, at the workplace, in the town square or the shopping mall – it becomes a question of capacity.  Can one exercise rights within these settings?  The answer, it turns out, they cannot be limited to those settings, but “only develops within an entire civilization.”[5]  Taylor goes on: 

 

Think of the developments of art, philosophy, theology, science, of the evolving practices of politics and social organization, which have contributed to the historic birth of this aspiration to freedom, to making this ideal of autonomy a comprehensible goal men [and women] can aim at – something which is in their universe of potential aspiration (and it is not yet so for all men [or women], and may never be). …

            I am arguing that the free individual of the West is only what he [/she] is by virtue of the whole society and civilization which brought him [or her] to be and nourishes him [or her]; that our families can only form us up to this capacity and these aspirations because they are set in this civilization; and that a family alone outside of this context – the old patriarchal family – was a quite different animal which never tended these horizons.  And I want to claim finally that all this creates a significant obligation to belong for whoever would affirm the value of freedom; this includes all those who want to assert rights either to this freedom or for its sake.[6]

 

So, the final message Taylor puts forth seems clear. 

That is, if one wants one’s rights respected, one needs to depend on a healthy social environment.  In the modern age, that would be a healthy national polity that enjoys its ability to carry out functional processes and sustain functional structures.  That, in turn, relies on a populous that is willingly satisfying the norms, duties, and obligations upon which a healthy polity relies.

Further, in a system which honors individual rights, most of those duty-bound behaviors count on voluntary compliance.  So, the irony lives on to the extent a populous is willing to “play ball.”  Or as Taylor states it:  “… we exercise a fuller freedom if we can help determine the shape of this society and culture.  And this we can only do through instruments of common decision.”[7]

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[1] Charles Taylor, “Atomism,” in Communitarianism and Individualism, eds. Shlomo Avineri and Avner de-Shalit (New York, NY:  Oxford University Press, 1992), 29-50. 

[2] Ibid., 39.

[3] “Murder Rate by Country,” Data Panda, n.d., accessed January 25, 2024, URL:  https://www.datapandas.org/ranking/murder-rate-by-country.

[4] Taylor, “Atomism,” in Communitarianism and Individualism, 41.  Emphasis added.

[5] Ibid., 43.

[6] Ibid. 43-46.

[7] Ibid. 47.

RIGHTS RELY ON LIMITS

[This posting is subject to further editing.]

Ironies abound in life.  According to the philosopher, Charles Taylor, probably no more important irony exists than that which has to do with basic rights.[1]  Specifically, he finds that the basic belief in a natural rights view – the claim that every individual has the right to do what that person wishes to do as long as that person does not deprive that right to others – to be false. 

How?  By living one’s life through such a credo and utilizing it, if one so chooses to undermine the bonds that hold a society together, to the degree it is successful, that person is undermining the necessary prerequisites for such a society to survive and therefore protect such rights.  The position of this blog is that this nation is on the road to proving Taylor correct.

Why would a person wish to do that?  Perhaps the wish is not directly to fulfil that aim, but instead for things – behaviors or conditions – that prove to be destructive of those bonds irrespective of one’s motives or understandings.  In this case, it is the results that count.  And those behaviors or conditions can have the antisocial consequences about which Taylor warns his audience. 

Examples might include when one might choose to engage in legal but harmful practices such as being disrespectful of others’ religious practices or practicing business activities that disregard the living standards of employees.  The number of examples one might sight is countless.

This blog with this posting revisits this Taylor argument that was initially posted in 2019[2] (interested readers can check on that previous posting by using the archive feature).  As described, Taylor presents a reasonable argument that traces how the quality of justice would be subjected to abuse in a society where atomism becomes prevalent.  Atomism is the belief that a form of individualism should hold rights as primary especially as expressed or acted upon when a person strives to satisfy self-defined ends. 

That earlier posting ends with the following:

 

In terms of when it is legitimate to exercise natural rights in pursuing self-centered interests, that would be in securing justice.  Why?  A total answer would probably constitute a whole other argument and another posting.  Suffice it to write, justice is advanced by an adversarial system where the parties are free to pursue their interests.  Advocacy for those interests should be allowed to be pursued unfettered as long as the procedural rules of the proceedings are respected.[3]

 

But here lies the basis of the irony one can associate with this concern.  Justice is not just a value associated with natural rights but with federalism, as a mental construct relating to ideal governance and politics, as well.  Perhaps both trains of thought, natural rights and federalism, approach the quality from different points of view and hence the duality of meaning. 

Federalism sees it as a precondition that motivates one to join a union – an associated arrangement – and become part of a grand partnership.  On the other hand, the natural rights view sees it as guaranteeing or protecting one’s rights especially as they come into conflict with the rights of others.

          And in this a basic distinction can and should be made.  The “partnership” view tends to demand a more wholistic sense of what rights are.  Yes, one can innumerate basic rights – speech, movement, religion, association, etc. – but they can be more readily seen, within a federalist perspective, as expressions of a free life or of the right to life. 

On the other hand, the natural rights view seems to beg for a more granular approach and relating to these individual rights it becomes more important to innumerate and treat them as separate claims.  As such, they are seen more legalistically than culturally, more from a contractual view than a compact-al view.  And by so doing, rights lose the advantage of being considered as a quality-of-life attribute.

          Federalism holds all of these more specific rights as being more readily assumed or included in what one is referring to, they are a full package or an element of life one associates with a life of quality.  As such, they can take on a more basic sense of what it means to be federated, that is, it defines a quality necessary for a viable life. 

This federalist sense is also needed to maintain the health of a society and of its polity in that to be so concerned among a citizenry means one has a populous, to meaningful degree, sharing a sense that they are in it together.  Taylor describes this distinction:

 

How would it do for a scientist [for example] to say, “Well, I have respected his right to life, it is other rights (free movement, exercise of his profession, etc.) which I have violated?  For the separation in this context is absurd.  True, we do sometimes enumerate these and other rights.  But the right to life could never have been understood as excluding all these activities, as a right just to biological non-death in a coma.  It is incomprehensible how anyone could assert a right to life meaning just this, “Who calls that living?”[4] 

           

Robert Novick, as Taylor describes his argument, represents the natural rights’ side of this disagreement.  He holds that such a view as expressed by Taylor is misguided.  He, Novick, uses an example to illustrate his point.  That is, individuals have the right to dispose of their possessions as they individually wish without any sense or establishment of bonds to society or to other citizens, and, in addition, this ability is commonsensical. 

Taylor retorts that this claim is insufficient.  It doesn’t establish the level of self-sufficiency that individuals would need to secure – establish and maintain – if the institutional structures that needed to exist in allowing for such a disposal were disregarded.  And that level of reliance on such structures can be extended to just about all sorts of behaviors individuals might wish to enact.

            Of course, this back and forth is conducted on a philosophical plane.  At a more cultural level and in how this issue affects current day politics, a good deal of rhetoric, at least to this blogger’s ear, reflects Novick’s argument or view.  If one logically breaks down what is commonly bantered about, Novick’s treatment of rights seem to handily prevail among American discourse – Americans tend to speak of rights as a list of sacred prerogatives.   

That messaging seems to assume one has little to no reliance on the importance of those institutional structures, much less any appreciation of what supports them and allows them to function.  Any reference to those structures is usually couched in delegitimizing language.  When was the last time that the reader heard someone refer to regulatory agencies, for example, in a positive way?

Currently, for example, the Supreme Court is considering to rule in such a way that will debase the ability of government to regulate the actions of corporations by shifting that function from regulatory agencies to unelected jurists.[5]  These are the type of issues one should strive to insert a federated/partnership perspective – particularly in how that perspective addresses the health and even survival of the polity as it is constituted.

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[1] Charles Taylor, “Atomism,” in Communitarianism and Individualism, eds. Shlomo Avineri and Avner de-Shalit (New York, NY:  Oxford University Press, 1992), 29-50.

[2] Robert Gutierrez, “A Derivation for the Sake of Justice,” a posting, Gravitas:  A Voice for Civics – blog, 2019, accessed January 20, 2024, URL:  https://gravitascivics.blogspot.com/2019_09_29_archive.html.

[3] Ibid.

[4] Taylor, “Atomism,” in Communitarianism and Individualism, 38.

[5] See Allison Frankel, “U. S. Supreme Court Just Gave Federal Agencies a Big Reason to Worry,” Reuters (June 30, 2022), accessed January 20, 2024, URL:  https://www.reuters.com/legal/government/us-supreme-court-just-gave-federal-agencies-big-reason-worry-2022-06-30/ AND Melissa Quinn, “Supreme Court Signals Openness to Curtailing Federal Regulatory Power in Potentially Major Shift,” CBS News, (January 17,2024), accessed January 20, 2024, URL:  https://www.cbsnews.com/news/supreme-court-chevron-deference-oral-arguments-federal-regulations/.  Yes, Americans don’t elect regulators, but they do elect those who hire them. 

BEYOND CHARACTER?

 

This posting is an opportunity to give David Brooks the stage.  It does so by offering two quotes from his book, The Second Mountain,[1] in which he makes a meaningful distinction.  In sharing his words, it might sound as if he is diminishing a central element of an ideal person.  That is, that that person should have character.  The opinion he expresses is, as with all human qualities, that none of them indicate perfection or enjoy an unqualified standing within one’s estimations.  Life is not that simple.  So, what does Brooks have to say about the human quality of character?  

          Here is the first quote:

 

When I wrote The Road to Character [published in 2015], I was still enclosed in the prison of individualism.  I believed that life is going best when we take individual agency, when we grab the wheel and steer our own ship.  I still believed that character is something you build mostly on your own.  You identify your core sin and then, mustering all your willpower, you make yourself strong in your weakest places.[2]

 

In the few years that have transpired from this earlier mode of thinking, Brooks apparently has gone through a transformation of sorts.  And in doing so, he has not only experienced a change of heart, but also a change of understanding what life can be or should be.  No, he didn’t abandon the importance of character, but perhaps, one can say, augmented what it means to him and how it functions for him in determining what he should be about.

          In a few lines following the above quote, Brooks adds:

 

I now think good character is a by-product of giving yourself away.  You love things that are worthy of love.  You surrender to a community or cause, make promises to other people, build a thick jungle of loving attachments, lose yourself in the daily act of serving others as they lose themselves in the daily acts of serving you.  Character is a good thing to have, and there’s a lot to be learned on the road to character.  But there’s a better thing to have – moral joy.  And that serenity arrives as you come closer to embodying perfect love.[3]

 

In this blogger’s opinion, Brooks makes important definitional points.  One is that character is complex and comprises various attributes.  Some of them, if seen from an individualistic perspective, home in on what one can and should do irrespective of social conditions.  It gives one an air or burden of ascending above how those around one are doing.  That is, irrespective of the travails one observes, one should act according to principle and not merely respond to the daily challenges one encounters. 

And yes, there is that element of character, but it is not an unqualified attribute of goodness that Brooks previously ascribed to it.  Character also, and this is Brooks’ second point, is subordinate to moral obligations he terms “joys.”  And usually that means being concerned and motivated to see how others are faring in relation to what concerns them.  Here Brooks writes of “surrendering” to those demands and describing what important role one’s culture plays in disposing oneself to such thinking and feeling.

          Of course, as this blog argues, a culture ensconced in individualism, such as how the American culture holds as prominent the natural rights view, reaching or even recognizing Brooks’ “second mountain” – this surrender to an other-centered disposition – seems unlikely to take hold.  Hopefully, efforts such as Brooks’ book – and even, to some degree, this blog – can make a difference in people approaching and even climbing that “second” communal “mountain.”

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[1] David Brooks, The Second Mountain:  The Quest for a Moral Life (New York, NY:  Random House).

[2] Ibid, xix.

[3] Ibid., xix.

BEYOND SELF

 

This blogger can personally vouch for the truthfulness of what this posting reports.  When he was younger, as a young adult and supported by a culture that prevailed in those years – and he claims is still prominent today – he saw life as a journey to fulfil self-defined aims and goals.  The general direction was to attain success over what personal challenges were currently present on the way to achieving life-long ambitions. 

Some of those ambitions were about personal life – a successful marriage and parenthood – and some about how he advanced in general society – a successful career.  Many would argue that all of this was not determined by this younger person.  It was just what was prevalent among the American population, and he accepted it as what should be or what was normal for a person with his income and family background.  Therefore, little meaningful reflection was involved.

          That general perspective on how most people mature was more or less supported by general psychological and sociological models that enjoyed general followship at that time.  For example, there was Abraham Maslow’s hierarchy of needs model that traced how one would be progressively motivated, assuming initial motives or needs were satisfied. 

People start with basic physiological needs and advance, with the satisfaction of interim needs, toward self-actualization.  Loving and belonging were only intermediate needs and for many not totally satisfied, meaning that most would be stymied short of experiencing the ultimate need for self-actualization.[1]  

          This blogger’s expertise is not along these lines; he is not questioning the validity of Maslow’s model.  Take this offering as merely a questioning exercise that suggests a different emphasis – from a self-centered focus to a more communal focus.  Initially, this blogger found Maslow’s model to be powerful.  But he has gone through a basic reevaluation of how one should lead one’s life and although he doesn’t dismiss Maslow’s view, he qualifies it. 

In his former view, this blogger was ensconced in a behavioral – ala B. F. Skinner – view of motivation but has shifted to a more communal bias which highlights federated relationships with those people with whom he interacts.  Those relationships range from family and friends to people he encounters in everyday life.  Overall, he presupposes that those he encounters, at some level, are partners in this thing called social life.

          And he finds, in his readings and research, that the general popular literature has shifted in this direction as well.  More and more writers are opting for the utilization of a more communal language or perspective.  One such writer is the journalist, David Brooks.  In 2019, he came out with a book, The Second Mountain, which presents an other-centered message – one that places in importance the needs one has in establishing and maintaining strong interpersonal relationships, from one-on-one encounters to overall communal living.

Amazon, the bookseller, summarizes this book with the following:  “On the second mountain, life moves from self-centered to other-centered.  They want the things that are truly worth wanting, not the things other people tell them to want.  They embrace a life of interdependence, not independence.  They surrender to a life of commitment.”[2]  Yes, this depiction does not technically counter Maslow’s ultimate motivation, self-actualization, but perhaps further defines what that means. 

Actually, this blogger thinks this description was what Maslow was arguing since he, Maslow, describes this final motivational stage as being beyond ego.  It is toward who one truly is.  There is the notion that everyone is truly a social being and one can find a lot of professional counseling assuming this aspect of human nature.  If so, self-actualization would presuppose a recognition of this element of needing others and cater to satisfying whatever that element’s requisites are.

Perhaps the entire question boils down to a matter of degree.  How other-centered does one need to be in order to attain one’s happiness or contentment?  Brooks claims that his book is to, first, make the argument that people need to recognize this need, i.e., to serve a cause larger than oneself, and second, to instruct people on how to accomplish this aim.  And here is where his book gets its basic focus.

Brooks writes:

 

Our society suffers from a crisis of connection, a crisis of solidarity.  We live in a culture of hyper-individualism.  There is always a tension between self and society, between the individual and the group.  Over the past sixty years we have swung too far toward the self.  The only out is to rebalance, to build a culture that steers people toward relation, community, and commitment – the things we most deeply yearn for, yet undermine with our hyper-individualistic way of life.[3]

 

And this becomes conscious for a person as that person strives toward relationships not based on concrete rewards, but on satisfaction of some love interest for a vocation, a spouse and/or family members, a philosophy or belief (as with a religion), and/or a community.

          As with most human quests or ambitions, some people are very good – even outstanding – at satisfying these aims.  Most, though, can only achieve adequacy.  What is important is that the effort is made to be communal, collaborative, and cooperative with others who are engaged in striving for their conscious goals; that can include merely making it till tomorrow. 

What everyone can do is to set related goals according to high standards.  Yes, tomorrow is important, but lasting and meaningful relationships over time enrich and fill out a substantial life for oneself.  And, with high standards, if one falls short, Brooks argues, it will be because of one’s talents and abilities, not due to setting impoverished ideals.

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[1] For example, Saul Mcleod, “Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs,” Simply Psychology, November 24, 2023, accessed January 13, 2024, URL:  https://www.simplypsychology.org/maslow.html. This site introduces an even higher need, that being “transcendence needs.”  Here, according to this source, “they represent the human desire to connect with higher reality, purpose, or the universe.”  Perhaps this is more in line with communal needs and ambitions.

[2] Amazon advertisement for The Second Mountain:  The Quest for a Moral Life, accessed January 13, 2024, URL:  https://www.amazon.com/Second-Mountain-David-Brooks/dp/0812993268.

[3] David Brooks, The Second Mountain:  The Quest for a Moral Life (New York, NY:  Random House), xvi-xvii.  If one goes back sixty years as this quote indicates, one is in the year 1964.  This blog claims that the nation shifted in its basic view of governance and politics to the natural rights view in the late 1940s.  Its palpable influence would take some time to hold sway in how people behaved and that might coincide with the late 1950s to early 1960s.

CONTRACT VS. COMPACT

 

This posting is a short follow up to the last posting, “Spending and Saving.”  In that prior posting, a simple economic factor was pointed out and related to what government’s role should be in the economy.  Here is not a restatement of that relationship, but a further analysis of a point that posting made.  That is, that the construct, parochial/traditional federalism, a dominant view that Americans shared in the years before World War II, was inadequate for the more modern times of American governance and politics.

          In this clarification, the term parochial is central.  To cite Wikipedia, one finds the following:

 

Parochialism is the state of mind whereby one focuses on small sections of an issue rather than considering its wider context. More generally, it consists of being narrow in scope. In that respect, it is a synonym of "provincialism". It may, particularly when used pejoratively, be contrasted to cosmopolitanism.[1] 

 

It is a term this blogger originally was introduced to in his growing up years within the Catholic tradition. 

He went to parochial schools for 13 years.  What little questioning he expressed at the time solicited a sense that parochialism referred to the local church and local concerns – much in line with what Wikipedia states.  What he was to learn and appreciate was how central this idea was to American culture until, as the last posting pointed out, the realities of a national and now global economy made this provincialism untenable.

          It particularly applies to views of governance and politics in the US, since for various reasons, localism was held to be central to the American experience.  The federalism that grew in the US was originally based on the local settlements that sprung up on the eastern seacoast of the North American landmass.  Each was the product of settlers joining together and formulating a polity based on what was considered a sacred agreement.  The word, compacts, applies to these agreements.

          More specifically, as Daniel Elazar explains, these agreements were a type of compact, that being covenants.[2]  In that they resembled Judeo tradition, covenants established a union in which whatever members did, they were part of that union.  The signees of the agreement called on God to witness the agreement which solemnized it. 

As the American people became a bit more secular – to a degree the product of the Enlightenment – this element was put aside, making the newer agreements straightforward compacts. A comparison that illustrates this turn is that the Declaration of Independence (1776) is a covenant, and the US Constitution (1787) is simply a compact.  In both cases, the purpose was to hold those agreements in solemnity.

The distinctions one can make between or among the founding documents (including, for example, state constitutions) and the terms one uses to classify them have consequences.  And to illustrate, a legal matter comes to mind.  To further distinguish what is being described in this posting, it introduces yet another term, that being contract.  Here, a historical turn – an unfortunate one – muddles the waters.  And sure enough, the French have a role.  No, French influence is not at odds with fortune, but in terms of constitutional principles, it does have another tradition.

The origins of this difference can be traced to Jean-Jacques Rousseau and how he envisioned the ways and reasons people organized to form polities.  In doing so, they give up some natural rights – the ability to behave as they wish – to practically allow them to live under a set of laws or restrictions.  This language casts a different sense from what the Judeo tradition called for.

With a social contract, one deals with a quid pro quo – something for something (personal rights for societal arrangement).  This stands in distinction to a more communal sense of the Judeo model.  But if applied to the Constitution, it casts that agreement with a more contractual sense and diminishes its compact-al or communal orientation.

On a practical level, for example, with a social contract – the more contractual approach – the courts, usually at the hands of conservative jurists, have elected to interpret the Constitution and laws in a literal fashion, like one interprets a contract.  This is called textualism.  It holds other ways to interpret – such as historically, traditionally, structurally, prudentially, morally or based on precedent – as being illegitimate to some degree. 

In this singular way, one can see how this other view – the natural rights view – has drained, from the American experience, the bonding force of a communal constitutional framework.  The consequences have been numerous and have most recently included the palpable sense of a politically polarized citizenry.  As the last posting concluded, a form of federalism – a compact approach – would benefit the American people by reintroducing a more communal sense – with hopefully less parochialism – to its constitutional view.

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[1] See “Parochialism,” Wikipedia (n.d.), accessed January 9, 2024, URL:  Parochialism - Wikipedia.

[2] This blog has repeatedly cited Elazar.  For a more recent citing, see “Compact Theory of the U.S. Constitution,” Center for the Study of Federalism (n.d.), accessed January 9, 2024, URL:  https://encyclopedia.federalism.org/index.php/Compact_Theory_of_the_U.S._Constitution.

SPENDING AND SAVING

 

In a perhaps tortured posting, “Is That a Bubbling Noise?,”[1] this blogger attempted to present an overall view of economic motivations as they relate to downward trends in a national economy.  Brave readers can look up that effort (use the URL in the citation) and work their way through that text.  This current posting will simplify things by making a related point.

          That earlier effort relied on the work of Richard Posner[2] as does this one.  Here, he, in turn, relies on John Maynard Keynes.  Citing that economist’s book, The General Theory, Posner points out that there are two economic options people have when they act economically.  They can consume or they can save.  For most such actions, that means people spend or save their money.

          Further, Keynes identifies motivations or concerns for each option.  In terms of consuming, a person might seek enjoyment, generosity, shortsightedness, ostentation, extravagance, and/or they might simply miscalculate.  As for saving, there is a desire or concern for precaution, calculation, independence, foresight, improvement, enterprise, independence, and/or pride or avarice.  Surely, readers have at one time, or another, felt each of these motivations or inclinations.  

They can reflect or recall how they behaved at such times.  If money was involved, did they consume or did they save?  Ideally, when should one consume (which this blogger will call spend or spending) and when should one save?  Perhaps if one generalizes and thinks aggregately, the question becomes:  when should people spend and when should they save?  Well, Posner states, for the good of the economy, they should save in times of prosperity – the good times – and spend during times of recession – the bad times. 

Spending during times of recession helps by increasing economic activity.  Saving during times of prosperity helps put at bay inflationary forces.  But that’s not how they behave.  By placing oneself in one or the other condition, minimal reflection tells one why counter behaviors prevail. 

During good times, people are apt to have secure employment, enjoy higher levels of confidence, and more apt to see little risk in indulging or satisfying material or experiential desires.  Of course, the opposite exists during the bad times when confidence is likely to be challenged and risks are augmented, at least psychologically if not in reality.

While the actual economics of these trends and their cyclical character can be quite complex for civics students in secondary schools, this broad explanation of spending and saving can be readily understood so that they can at least appreciate the counterintuitive nature of these factors. 

And included in those factors is that their individual behavior will not tip the national scale one way or another; they are just one among hundreds of millions of people.  This is important because students need to consider how people, not individuals, decide these questions and decide what their behaviors will be.

It also introduces the need for governmental interference with how the economy will behave.  How?  By governments providing counter incentives – e.g., by manipulating interest rates so that people spend less in inflationary times and spend more in recessionary times.  But in doing so, government policy defies pure laissez faire economics or small government politics.  Posner, who in the past was considered a conservative (small government advocate), questions maintaining limited government responses to economic challenges. 

He writes, for example, in response to such economic nightmares as the 2008 recession (which he calls a depression) the following:

 

And it was a failure of government and of the economics profession rather than of business, as business foresight is rationally truncated …

            In sum, rational maximization by businessmen and consumers, all pursuing their self-interest more or less intelligently within a framework of property and contract rights, can set the stage for an economic catastrophe.  There is no need to bring cognitive quirks, emotional forces, or character flaws into the causal analysis.  This is important both in simplifying analysis and in avoiding a search, likely to be futile, for means by which government can alter the mentality or character of businessmen and consumers.[3]

 

And these realities further spelled the doom of how Americans viewed governance and politics.  Up until the Great Depression of the 1930s, the parochial/traditional federalist view dominated in how Americans understood those concerns.  In the minds of most Americans, America was a rural, agricultural society.

Then, after the depression, came World War II with huge central government expenditures which brought an end to the depression and undermined how Americans had understood their government and the politics it practiced.   More specifically, that war brought to an end the unrealistic notion that America was a society of small, local communities. 

It became obvious that any such view was doomed.  Parochial/traditional construct over-relied on local governance to meet the governmental and the economic needs of the population and almost overnight it was considered old- fashioned and inadequate.  Its basic tenets were developed during the colonial period and held up relatively strongly regarding the nation’s economic realities until the Great Depression. 

Yes, that was true to lesser degrees as the years progressed, and the economy became more and more national and then global.  Surely, the events of the Great Depression and even of World War II made that obvious.  In its end, it became not only dysfunctional but dangerous vis-à-vis the nation’s ability to survive or maintain its health. 

Today, that view is totally inadequate and what took its place, the natural rights view, falls short as the Posner quote indicates.  The natural rights approach lends itself to laissez faire thinking, limiting the role of government to basically police powers.  Posner, by just looking at the basic behaviors of spending and saving, demonstrates how inadequate natural rights thinking is.  While that view has not prevented an active governmental role in the economy, it has undermined that role’s legitimacy.

So, that leaves the American people with a challenge.  How can they retain (in some cases reestablish) the cooperative, collaborative, and communal qualities of federalism, but adopt a view that realistically accommodates the economic world that exists today?  This blog’s proposal is for the nation to adopt what it calls liberated federalism.  The blog’s purpose has, to date, been to offer an overall rationale that supports that construct.  And that will continue to be its aim.

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[1] Robert Gutierrez, “Is that a Bubbling Noise?,” a posting, Gravitas:  A Voice for Civics, a blog, September 24, 2019, accessed January 6, 2024, URL: https://gravitascivics.blogspot.com/2019_09_22_archive.html.

[2] Richard A. Posner, A Failure of Capitalism: The Crisis of '08 and the Descent into Depression (Cambridge, MA:  Harvard University Press, 2009).

[3] Ibid., 111-112.