What Should We Expect: Selfishness or Selflessness?
Jul 13th, 2009 by Micah Tillman | 3 Comments |
Here’s a “stock answer” to the question, “Why is my side better than the other side?” that I’ve been struggling with recently:
Conservatism is better than liberalism, because conservatism actually understands the truth about human nature, and liberalism is naive about human nature.
(I know, I know. I’m supposedly not a conservative. I’m more a classical liberal or a libertarian or something. Whatever. I come from a conservative background, and I’m more conservative than liberal, for present purposes.)
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But that’s too vague. What is it really trying to say? I think it’s something like this:
Liberals think people are fundamentally good at heart — thus, you should expect people to be selfless — while conservatives think people are fundamentally selfish — thus, you should expect people to be selfish.
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Thus, conservatism will claim that you should set things up (”adopt policies”) so that all the selfishnesses “cancel out” (whether by limiting each other, or by meeting the selfish goals of others in the process of meeting their own goals).
That is, conservatism is expressed in a preference for “competition” (between three co-equal branches of government, between entrepreneurs in a free-market economy, etc.).
Competition uses the selfishness of each actor to limit the effects of the selfishnesses of others, and gives each actor a selfish reason to work with other selfish actors (thus helping others in the process of helping themselves).
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Liberalism, on the other hand, will claim that you should set up your political and economic systems to cooperate with people’s natural desire to give to each other (to be selfless).
You should have government programs to help the rich share their money with the poor, and to help businesses share their money with their communities.
You should expect people to be selfless, and thus should set up your political and economic systems so that people know what is expected of them.
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For conservatism, people “fail to meet expectations” in two ways:
First, by being stupid, and not actually doing what’s in their own self-interest.
Second, by being selfless, and doing what’s in other people’s best interest.
Failing in the first way shows you can’t even rise to the base level of human existence.
Failing in the second way shows that you have moved beyond the base level of human existence.
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Therefore, if you don’t like getting taxed for welfare programs, that’s to be expected, and conservatives will try not to make you angry (it’s not in their self-interest for you to be angry at them).
And if you freely give to charities’ welfare programs, that’s a pleasant surprise.
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For liberals, on the other hand, people can “fail to meet expectations” in only one way:
They can fail to be selfless by being selfish (doing what they think is in their own self-interest).
Therefore, you’re expected to like getting taxed for welfare programs, and if you don’t . . . well, you’re just not living up to legitimate expectations.
And therefore you deserve the pain of having your money taken from you against your will.
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Therefore, from the conservative point of view, “liberalism” will always mean things like “government coercion, theft, and violence,” because liberalism expects everyone to be something they’re not, and thus is willing to force everyone to live up to its expectations.
And, from the liberal point of view, “conservatism” will always mean things like “government promotion of selfishness, greed, and exploitation,” because conservatism (seems to!) want(s) everyone to be selfish, and constantly at each other’s throats in a competition to see who can make the most money.
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But, if I could put in a good word for the conservative side, all conservatism (at least in its libertarian, classical liberal strains) is claiming is that a political and economic system based on a realistic understanding of what human nature is, is more likely to work than one that is based on an ideal.
Given that people are generally selfish, what way of setting things up is most likely to work out best?
I find something somewhere between amusing and terrifying about both sides of the divide in all this. After they began with the basic assumptions that you describe, both conservatives and liberals do exactly the opposite of what they ought to do if their assumptions are correct.
Conservatives ought to want a big government in place to protect us from each other.
Liberals ought to want to a government to stay out of our way so that our niceness can manifest itself organically in every day life.
If I’m right, then what you say seems indeed to follow. I was wondering about that myself.
But I think we can still understand it, if we see things as follows:
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Conservatism (insofar as it is classically liberal, rather than just another variation of collectivism) thinks we should expect people to be selfish — and that includes people in government.
So it won’t want to empower people in government too much, or else we’d end up with a government monopoly, as opposed to a general balance of powers.
The government will only be needed to tame the random and occasional “stray hairs” (you might say), who get tired of playing the competition game, and decide to make an end-run around the system/market (by using a “brute squad” to scare away competitors, by stealing, by extortion, etc.).
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On the other end of things, if liberalism expects everyone to be good/selfless, then it will need to set a firm floor under that expectation.
If you expect people not to murder other people, you have to make it a law that murdering will lead to punishment. If you expect the rich to help the poor, you have to make it a law that people who don’t do so will get punished. (So, you turn giving to charity into government “taxation,” and you turn charities into government “agencies”; that way the goodness of the population is easier to enforce and track.)
When you have high expectations for people, you also have a very low threshold for what counts as degeneracy, social blight/infection/degradation. The disease of greed has to be kept in check by ensuring (by law) that everyone (or at least “those who can afford it”!) act(s) selflessly.
[...] Classical liberals are cynical, while [neo]liberals are naive. [...]