Are the Rich Necessary? · The finale
Eight questions, and not one of them had an answer at the bottom
That was on purpose. He says so at the end of the book: by declining to provide direct answers, it has attempted to promote thought, analysis, and dialogue. So this page does not tell you who was right either. It does something else. It turns around and asks how you decided.
Because you did decide, eight times, and the decisions were probably not random. People quite readily line up on one side or another of great economic debates. The question worth asking, and the one the last three chapters of his book are about, is how they choose.
Part one
What you said
Your answers from the eight lessons appear below if you took them in this browser. Anything missing, or anything you have changed your mind about since, you can set here. Changing your mind is not cheating. It is the entire skill.
Part two
A tally, and four reasons not to trust it
Each answer you gave was argued, in that lesson, by one of his four social systems. Counting them up produces this. Read the warning underneath before you decide it means anything about you.
Answer some questions above and this will fill in.
Why the number is soft
- Eight questions is a very small sample of anything
- Several questions had a system on both sides, and got assigned to one
- He says people are eclectic, often inconsistent, as well as inconstant
- You may have answered what you thought, or what you thought was expected
Why it is not nothing
- A pattern across eight independent questions is still a pattern
- The questions were about wholly different things
- You were shown the strongest objection each time and kept your answer, or did not
- Noticing a lean is not the same as being told what to think
Part three · chapter twenty-four
The four systems, in his own description
These are not political parties and they do not map onto left and right. They are sets of ideals, and every one of them is loaded with ideals. Read all four before deciding which is yours, because the one you like least is usually the one you know least about.
The oldest
Fraternalism
Dates from the very beginning of human history. The first and most commanding ideal is one of community, a community that provides safety and security for each of its members. It does not operate on a principle of share and share alike; on the contrary, it divides its wealth in ways which can be extremely unequal, but promises to look out for the poorest, weakest, or least intelligent members and maintains some kind of safety net for them.
Then order, since a community cannot function in chaos, which brings stability, strong leadership and authority with it. Then power, because insecurity and powerlessness are seen as twin evils. Life is hard and dangerous. We need each other. So like all primates, we subordinate our selfish desires sufficiently to come together under the guidance of powerful leaders.
He notes that it still overwhelmingly dominates advanced economies, and that in the United States the Democratic Party is largely Fraternalist in orientation, but so is the Republican Party, notwithstanding their differences, both real and rhetorical.
The eighteenth-century protest
Connectivism
The place to start is not with huddling together for safety. Yes, we all need each other; no one can stand alone. But in order to foster the right kind of cooperation, the place to start is with yourself, standing as far as possible on your own feet, avoiding being an unnecessary burden on others, and thereby earning self-respect and goodwill. Then, as a second step, seek to connect with other responsible people in circles of exchange.
It teaches that we serve ourselves best by serving others; that competition is healthy if channeled into constructive projects; that change should be welcomed, not resisted as socially destabilizing; that people should not be protected from the consequences of their own choices, because whenever they are, mistakes accumulate instead of being liquidated; and that trust, honesty, decency, self-discipline, thrift, saving and patience, what the nineteenth century called character, will eventually lead us out of poverty.
It has been called cold, heartless, soulless, greedy and warmongering. But a fair reading is that it is loaded with ideals, just different ideals than are to be found in Fraternalism.
The nineteenth-century protest
Equalitarianism
The philosophy of living on a complete share-and-share-alike basis. When people embrace it, they generally know that the way forward will not be smooth. They will have to overcome many obstacles in attempting to realize their vision. But what counts most to them is the vision itself, of helping others, living unselfishly. These are appealing ideals, appealing even for most opponents of equalitarianism.
These values are ancient, and gathered force as a protest against the Connectivist acceptance of human economic inequality. Complete economic equality is supposed to be compatible with either strong centralized government control or, alternatively, no government role at all. There is, however, much dispute about whether the government-controlled version is possible, since it requires coercion and coercion is inconsistent with full equality.
The one that never got a door
Philanthropism
Charity is an ancient ideal, with the explicit authority of the Christian New Testament, and these values of charity, altruism and service have been approved, to a greater or lesser extent, by every known human society. They are especially recommended by all leading world religions.
Yet even they have their critics. Some charge that charity degrades the receiver and creates dependency. The naturalist Alexander Skutch argued that in an ideal society universal friendly cooperation would prevail, but material charity would be rare, since almsgiving fosters feelings of inadequacy and dependence, and is as likely to generate envy as gratitude.214 Others charge that philanthropists are Pharisees, hypocrites, egoists, even surreptitious power seekers.
He notes that charity becomes embodied in institutions, and that the nonprofit sector is a separate and complementary economic system, distinguishable both from private ownership and from government, one that could play an even more meaningful role than it does.
Part four · chapter twenty-five
Seven ways we confuse ourselves
All four systems may claim a specific ideal for their own. But if so, they will usually define, interpret, or rank it differently. Connectivists will insist that they too believe in equality, albeit an equality of opportunity rather than outcome. And so it goes, with words being continually redefined and values traded off one against another. Then it gets worse.
- Continually reconsidering everything.
- Deceiving ourselves or others about what we want or believe, especially when it increases our income or social standing.
- Failing to live up to what we profess to believe, because it requires effort or risk.
- Forming temporary alliances with others through the expedient of glossing over or ignoring differences in what we want or believe.
- Refusing to admit that ideals of one system may be incompatible with those of another.
- Refusing to admit that the ideals of our favored system may be incompatible even with each other.
- Failing to acknowledge that human life is paradoxical, so that pursuing one ideal may lead to more of its opposite, and that unintended consequences are as much the rule as the exception.
The sixth is the hardest one, and it is aimed at whoever is most certain. Not that your opponents contradict themselves, which is easy to see, but that your own side does, which is not.
In the end, we choose between alternatives because we have to, because life will not simultaneously give us both complete independence and a warm feeling of community. Long-term studies of chimpanzees, by Jane Goodall in the wild and Frans de Waal in captivity, suggest that any group of primates must make choices between independence and community, stability and change, social power and reciprocal cooperation. The choices they make are quite eclectic, often inconsistent, as well as inconstant. As human beings, we think we operate on a higher plane.
Am I being swept away emotionally by the ideals of one or more of these four systems?
Without denigrating emotion, am I closely inspecting whether my favored ends are realistic or reasonable, whether they are consistent with the world in which we actually live?
Am I aware of the logical contradictions and paradoxes between or within systems?
When I evaluate economic questions, am I thinking like an economist? Am I attempting to separate means from ends and so far as possible to apply reason alone to my choice of means? Do I even aspire to do so?
One thing the tally could not have told you
Look at the fourth bar again. It is empty, and it was always going to be empty, whatever anybody answered.
Eight questions, sixteen doors, and not one of them was opened by Philanthropism. Charity, altruism and service are recommended by every leading world religion and approved by every known human society, and they did not get to argue a single economic question in this entire course. That is not an oversight in the book and it is not a trick in this page. It is a fact about how we argue about money, and it is worth sitting with. The nearest any door came was lesson five, where a defence of profit-making turned out to be built on the words serve, respect and nurture, and lesson eight, where both sides ended up claiming the poor and neither was doing it dishonestly.
He ends by saying he would be especially gratified if Fraternalists feel that he is clearly one of them while Connectivists, Equalitarians, and Philanthropists feel that he is one of them, and that this has indeed been the usual reaction to earlier editions. Then he hands it over, and specifically to you: it is now up to the reader, and I hope the young reader in particular, to consider a position, undertake any additional study needed, then proceed to choose and rank.
As David Hume noted, it is ideas that ultimately rule the world. Even dictators with murderous weapons and prisons fear public opinion. Changes in public opinion can seem to be a glacial process. Continuity seems to triumph, then suddenly common beliefs shift with shocking rapidity. What everyone thinks has some impact on this process. It is never too late to start thinking for ourselves.
Are the Rich Necessary? · Hunter Lewis
