Our political economy on trial this election, with Trump playing executioner
If Trump wins, I will know who to blame. Not the people who vote for him, the downtrodden victims of his charismatic authoritarian personality, but economists and politicians who enable each other to shape our lives with disregard for human dignity. Those who have been treating human beings as mere variables, who, like any other variable, exist only within equations where productivity is the goal. In economic practice, these variables do not become human again until increased productivity is mathematically guaranteed. This is a mistake. Observe this Capuchin monkey reacting angrily to inequitable treatment:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=meiU6TxysCg
Now imagine millions of much smarter and stronger primates slowly coming to terms with the scale of economic inequality in America today. This should be a primary, not secondary, concern of economists and especially politicians.
The belief that human beings are capable of withstanding unlimited indignities and hardships, of adapting to any change, no matter how sudden or extreme, has been a driving factor behind the greatest disasters of the 20th century. Germany's chagrin with the terms of the Treaty of Versailles, for example, was a great motivator for the rise of Hitler. We are only animals, and even much less morally sensitive animals than us often have a keen sense of injustice.
Some argue that the our way of life is more fragile and its needs take precedence over a large swath of the human beings that make it up. That the system needs to be protected at any cost. The picture they paint is of world in peril, suspended on strings which are anchored on one end by liberty and by entitlements and comfort on the other. Contemporary Americans in particular believe that the system has never been closer to collapse. The writing on the wall today is that instead of easing the tension by electing moderates, people should throw their weight behind their anchor values, in hopes that when the system breaks, they will at least have their principles and their chosen institutions when the dust settles and it is time to rebuild.
Both conservatives and liberals are responsible for the abandonment of compromise. Liberals depend on the suggestion of institutional weakness to advance their causes. They need people to believe that the system can be radically changed in the next election cycle if they only come out on dlection day, and they push away classical liberals who are sensitive to revolutionary rhetoric when it is not what is called for. American conservatives tend to believe that human beings are capable of withstanding any indignity or trauma and should, if in doing so they help the current social system to prevail. This is problematic, and as the Capuchin monkey tells us, it is something that must be rectified. There will come a day of reckoning for the downtrodden, but the election of 2016 hopefully won't be the moment.
If Trump wins, the system may indeed break. It may turn out to have been too fragile to withstand the onslaught of the vengeful disenfranchised. But I believe that Trump will lose, because it is not time for an authoritarian leader in America. Look at the environment in which people like Putin and Hitler come to power. Is, every time, out of the ashes of catastrophe. We have no great, tangible catastrophe that we are reeling from. The financial crisis, 9/11, these things, while impactful, are not on the same scale as the dissolution of the USSR or the punitive sanctions against Germany after WWI.
If I'm wrong and Trump is elected it will be because of a different kind of disaster, a slow, insidious one, that is invisible to most econometrics. It will be because the social contracts by which we have lived have eroded. Various attempts to understand the more subtle shifts in American social life have been undertaken and they often point to a decline in family life and community engagement, but these problems are usually vaguely defined and unproven. See, for a centrist's take, Bowling Alone by Robert Putnam. The closest thing economists can come to addressing this is a sheepish mea culpa.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=meiU6TxysCg
Now imagine millions of much smarter and stronger primates slowly coming to terms with the scale of economic inequality in America today. This should be a primary, not secondary, concern of economists and especially politicians.
The belief that human beings are capable of withstanding unlimited indignities and hardships, of adapting to any change, no matter how sudden or extreme, has been a driving factor behind the greatest disasters of the 20th century. Germany's chagrin with the terms of the Treaty of Versailles, for example, was a great motivator for the rise of Hitler. We are only animals, and even much less morally sensitive animals than us often have a keen sense of injustice.
Some argue that the our way of life is more fragile and its needs take precedence over a large swath of the human beings that make it up. That the system needs to be protected at any cost. The picture they paint is of world in peril, suspended on strings which are anchored on one end by liberty and by entitlements and comfort on the other. Contemporary Americans in particular believe that the system has never been closer to collapse. The writing on the wall today is that instead of easing the tension by electing moderates, people should throw their weight behind their anchor values, in hopes that when the system breaks, they will at least have their principles and their chosen institutions when the dust settles and it is time to rebuild.
Both conservatives and liberals are responsible for the abandonment of compromise. Liberals depend on the suggestion of institutional weakness to advance their causes. They need people to believe that the system can be radically changed in the next election cycle if they only come out on dlection day, and they push away classical liberals who are sensitive to revolutionary rhetoric when it is not what is called for. American conservatives tend to believe that human beings are capable of withstanding any indignity or trauma and should, if in doing so they help the current social system to prevail. This is problematic, and as the Capuchin monkey tells us, it is something that must be rectified. There will come a day of reckoning for the downtrodden, but the election of 2016 hopefully won't be the moment.
If Trump wins, the system may indeed break. It may turn out to have been too fragile to withstand the onslaught of the vengeful disenfranchised. But I believe that Trump will lose, because it is not time for an authoritarian leader in America. Look at the environment in which people like Putin and Hitler come to power. Is, every time, out of the ashes of catastrophe. We have no great, tangible catastrophe that we are reeling from. The financial crisis, 9/11, these things, while impactful, are not on the same scale as the dissolution of the USSR or the punitive sanctions against Germany after WWI.
If I'm wrong and Trump is elected it will be because of a different kind of disaster, a slow, insidious one, that is invisible to most econometrics. It will be because the social contracts by which we have lived have eroded. Various attempts to understand the more subtle shifts in American social life have been undertaken and they often point to a decline in family life and community engagement, but these problems are usually vaguely defined and unproven. See, for a centrist's take, Bowling Alone by Robert Putnam. The closest thing economists can come to addressing this is a sheepish mea culpa.
Comments
Post a Comment