Capitalism the game we play; Goverment the referee Part II

"The best government is that which governs least"*

John L. O'Sullivan editor of The Democratic Review

“The best government is that which governs best.”

                        Geoffrey Berg editor of the Food for Thought Blog

The first question that arises in this framework from the previous posts is how close do you want the game to be called. Do you want to “Just let them play.” or do want instant replay on every call?  That is do you want a minimal regulatory environment where it is up to the individual “player” to look out for his or her own interest (freedom to) or do you want a strict regulatory environment where each play is scrutinized to make sure that the game is scrupulously fair (freedom from).

Again, from the previous posts, how you feel about this, generally, starts with your emotional predisposition.  If you are a libertarian your response is “Let ‘em play!” If you are liberal you want to make sure no one is cheating so you want plenty of oversight of the action. Some level of oversight is needed so that the game doesn’t deteriorate into anarchy. On the other hand instant replay on every play would bring the action to a grinding halt.

“Given that you play by the rules, the object of the game is to win.”

                                                                                                            Joel Truman

However, since we are all players, we want to win the game. And since we choose democracy we all have a say in what rules we want, how and by whom we want them made and how we want them enforced. And, while we may be predisposed to one particular end of this continuum, when we are engaged in the game, which we are daily, the specific interaction may move us to a different place on that continuum.

Since we are in the game and we want to win, that can’t help but influence how we want the game to be called.  We may say we want them to call them the way they see them but what we really want is to call them the way we need them. The strike zone is always too small for our pitcher and too big for theirs. They are always charging on offense and blocking on defense. It was the temperature not the ball boy who deflated the footballs (or vice versa depending on who you are rooting for).

When we don’t have much skin in a particular part of the game we are somewhat agnostic if not mildly favorable toward a well-regulated industry.

For instance, most of us are quite comfortable with our highly regulated drug industry. Except for a few die-hard libertarians like Ron Paul, nobody wants to abolish the FDA and leave it to the good intentions of the pharmaceutical industry to give us safe effective medication. We don’t have the time knowledge or expertise to make rational judgments about the safety and effectiveness of medicine. 

On the other hand a pharmaceutical executive will want to loosen the regulatory framework that everyone else is comfortable with because it is impeding his ability to maximize his profits. His argument is that this over regulation is the moral equivalent of too much instant replay. He takes this position not because he is conservative but because it is in his immediate interest.

One can imagine that the “natural” herbalist would chafe at being subjected to the same regulatory environment that the pharmaceutical industry faces. In his game it is “Let us play!” On this particular issue the new age liberal is probably on the same point of the freedom from/freedom to continuum as the buttoned down Republican pharmaceutical executive.

"The best government is that which governs least" is really no government at all and otherwise known as anarchy (A position espoused, I would say somewhat disingenuously, by Thoreau). However, for the rest of us “The best government is that which governs best,” where best is in the eye of the beholder. We all have different views of what is best and what shapes our vision of best are our predispositions and our self-interest.

However, what we all have in common is that we want the game to be fair (Another concept that is in the eye of the beholder) because that is in our self-interest.

So when it comes to our relationship to government I am suggesting we take a look at how our predispositions and self-interest or lack thereof shape our views or blind us to the views of others.

Now we all have opinions on what the rules should be and how they should be enforced. However, we don’t make the rules or enforce them. It would be too cumbersome for us to have direct democracy in anything beyond the size of a small town, ** so we select people to represent us. (Perhaps another form of salutary servitude.)  Selecting the people who represent us is yet another game within the game.  We may select people who see things the way we do or even call them the way we need them.  However, since this is such a crucial part of the game this above all else is where the game should be fair.  It my next post I will take a look at that.

   

* This was paraphrased by Henry David Thoreau in the opening of “Civil Disobedience” as "That government is best which governs least."

** One of my favorite quotes is on this subject.  In Federalist Paper 55, a discussion on the size of the legislature, Hamilton or Madison say, “In all very numerous assemblies, of whatever character composed, passion never fails to wrest the sceptre from reason. Had every Athenian citizen been a Socrates, every Athenian assembly would still have been a mob.”