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Hello Old Friend,
I am reading the book “I wish I’d made you angry earlier – essays on science and scientists” by Max Perutz. I just finished one essay which is sticking with me, about Natural Laws versus the laws of man.
I often find myself perplexed by how governments are organized, and especially by systems of laws which are convoluted and contradictory. It’s a little like how, in order to develop a model of the geocentric universe, the Greeks needed all these fudge-factors and adjustments. It was a long time before the sun became widely accepted as the proper center of our solar system, because there’s a human instinct to view things from our own perspective. It is easy to thus fool ourselves.
I cannot imagine I am the first to propose a government based on natural laws, that is, principles which are used like formulae. These principles, to the greatest extent possible, are based on what is actually happening to us, rather than being based on a desire based on a single perspective.
As an example, my town wants to protect itself from unwanted development. Rather than putting the emphasis on what we fear: specific companies and industries, types of development, we could instead focus on what we want to preserve and foster: natural resources, kinship, job opportunities – and crucially, how we intend to detect, or measure, changes in natural resources, kinship, and job opportunities.
Yes, I said I want to measure “kinship”.
The key here is the distinction between a rule and a principle. The principles are the simplest, clearest possible expression of a goal or purpose.
The innocent belief that words have an essential or inward meaning can lead to appalling confusion and waste of time. Let us take it that our business is to attach words to ideas and definitions, not to attach definitions to words.
Pierre Tielhard de Chardin “The Phenomenon of man”
The principle which underlies all government is the protection of personal and communal freedoms, that is – maximizing life and livelihood for current and future generations. This has been spelled out in the past as Life, Liberty, and Property (Locke) or as Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness (unalienable rights of the Declaration of Independence).
But we must go even a step further, by turning this principle into a formula. The goals of unalienable rights, however lofty, must be interpreted not by the ideal but by the reality: the laws must be from the reference of where we are and where we strive to be, not just by where we are. In other words: we know people are not equally free, but we strive for greater equality. This requires a measure – a generally agreed-upon way of seeing if things are becoming more or less free.
Here is an example: Hospital care. People whose diseases can be treated and cured are generally agreed to be more free than people who are ill. In our present system, many people who suffer the fate of profound illness find it inexorably linked to yet another impingement on freedom: debt.
This gives us our purpose, we can derive from our simple axiom of human freedom more specific measures pertaining to healthcare systems. Reducing illness and reducing debt will make us more free.
One step further: reducing the burden by the greatest amount for the people who suffer the greatest burden, will make us more free than large reductions of the burden on people who suffer little.
There is one other great cognitive leap we must make here: Since the days of Thomas Payne we have had it drilled in us that government’s primary role is to restrict people from impinging on the freedoms of others. This is fallacy. If a democracy has any chance of survival, the people have already recognized that what benefits the many benefits the individual. This is the premise of socialism which has become so warped and maligned. Let us refer again to example.
If you live in a country with horrible healthcare, where more people are sick, you will receive worse healthcare than your peer in a country with better healthcare.
The difference between average and excellent care in a well-managed social health system is a smaller difference than the difference between the finest socialized healthcare compared to the finest corrupt healthcare.
If I get average healthcare in a country with an excellent health system, it will be far better care than the best money can buy in a place with generally poor health services.
A system with better healthcare is predictive of the best healthcare in that system also being better.
In other words, it is in the self-interest of the wealthiest and most powerful people to have better options for everyone.
A way to test this theory would be to look at the top 1% of rich and famous people in Norway and Australia and compare their health outcomes to those of the wealthiest 1% in the USA.
It is possible my understanding of health systems is wrong. I don’t see how you can question the model though: a sufficiently advanced society will make magic available to the layperson (smartphones anyone?) and a sufficiently dysfunctional society will lead to restricted freedoms for even the most privileged (a king in medieval Europe suffered greatly compared to a middle class American today).
The clear principle here is that “a rising tide lifts all boats” – what is good for the people is good for the powerful.
Tied to this is the belief that human ingenuity and inventiveness are, for practical purposes, inexhaustible: there is much room for us to improve our lives. Wall Street is the antithesis of this, focused not on creation of wealth and value, but on capturing what already exists. The populace must be convinced against scarcity mindset and belief in a zero-sum-game with winners and losers.
When people believe and understand these principles, then the role of government no longer needs to be the restriction of our most base and evil principles: we will organize ourselves to do this.
It is tautological: government is there to protect us from ourselves, but if we control government then how are we ever really protected?
In my vision for government, we would be focused on what happens when people make certain decisions- the role of government becomes that of guidance and research. It is founded on a belief that people who look at a situation with clear understanding will make a sensible choice.
We must strive to understand where we are, and why, and then we can easily find common ground for progress. I for one enjoy the search.
Warmly,
Brad