Don't Love America (There's a Reason)

Before I start, instead of asking that you just hear me out with an open mind, I merely beg you not to shoot me or throw things at me (but if you must, please choose the latter option).

Life is good, as is love. The sun, beautiful, warm and life-sustaining, is good. The light that comes out of the lamp beside me is good. America, however, is not good.

Goodness is a property that comes from something intrinsically noble and lovely. Life, love, happiness, and justice do not appeal to any higher authority to validate their goodness. They are in and of themselves good.

But a nation? Why on earth would we ascribe it such a label? It's easy to see why, actually. This nation has done some pretty impressive things. A founding document centered on the ideal of inalienable rights is pretty impressive. And who could forget that awesomely epic revolution we fought against a tyrannical Britain?

But it's still absolutely crucial that we don't misunderstand that history to believe that America is somehow good. Here's why.

Many of the things that America has done are good, and we ought rightly to be proud of those virtuous fragments of our heritage. We can rightly take pride in what our country has done right, but the moment we assume that rightness to rub off on the nation itself (which is nothing more than a landmass plus a government) we lose sight of the dark times in our past. We put on shades that bias our view of the past, present, and future.

In other words, it's not only absurdly false, but dangerous. When you view a country in and of itself as inherently noble, you look favorably upon its past transgressions, no matter how grievous. After our treatment of Native Americans in the nineteenth century, both sides' war crimes during the civil war, our terrible discrimination against the Chinese in the industrial revolution, and our mistreatment of blacks throughout the twentieth century, America has serious blood on its hands. I don't hate America for that, but I recognize that those evils happened. When you put on these rose-tinted glasses and look at the past with an "America is beautiful" frame of mind, you will try to scrub those transgressions away. You will rationalize them, try to ignore them, be discomforted by them, repress them, and irrationally deride anyone who acknowledges America's past sins. Your reactionary vitriol will be unappeasable—you'll call the truth-teller an unpatriotic, America-hating liberal before he even has time to blink.

But your view of the past won't matter nearly as much as your view of the present, which is shaped and colored by your view of the past. You won't think twice about the possibility that we may be wrong in any given war or conflict; whether Iraq, Afghanistan, or the war on drugs, America automatically gets the moral free pass. You'll implicitly care more about the lives of U.S. citizens than you will about the lives of foreigners, as if there was some difference in the inherent value of each human life. You'll ignore the hardships that our trade and immigration policies inflict upon the rest of the world, only focusing on how to line American wallets and alleviate American cultural discomforts. You'll close your ears to any possibility of a wrong deed on America's part.

You will, inch by inch, become blind to injustice.

This nationalistically induced blindness lies at the root of much of the world's present and past hardship. The Germans allowed the Nazi atrocity to march forward in one of the most terrible onslaughts of evil in human history, precisely because they believed in their country. The Confederate States of America was largely motivated not only by racism and greed, but the southern nationalistic view that they had to keep pure their southern way of living. Why? Because the "south" was inherently good.

To love one's country is only the collective, political extension of very human sins—pride and self-centeredness. Why should a corrupt, sinful human not extend his pride and egoism to his country? And it is also pervasive into the will and emotions. We feel uncomfortable, at first, detaching ourselves from something we so dearly cherish. It hurts to lay down our pride of the nation, just as much as of the self. But it must be done.

History tells tales of tragedy when this lesson is ignored, and our current political, diplomatic, and economic policies are largely contingent upon the degree to which we can abandon nationalism, and view all humans of all nations as equal. If we cannot get this mindset straightened out, I fear that we have a future awaiting us full of more needless suffering… only because, as a nation, we wanted to feel absolutely great.

It needn't be so.

Dad Gum Gub'mint

"Dad gum gub'mint," he says. His eyes squint and his lips curl into a grimace as he goes on, saying, "Gub'mint's the whole mess. Gittin' too big. Think they can run our whole lives!"

Then he proceeds to rant about [insert government program here]. Everyone thinks he's crazy, and to be honest he probably is. But he has something important in common with the Constitution, but not quite the same. What he has is more like the Declaration of Independence.

First, who is he? He's your crazy old uncle, or that neighbor with all the guns, or the sales clerk at Bass Pro. He might not even be a 'he.' She could be your home-schooled friend who's memorized the constitution and brings up at least of the amendments in every political conversation she has (but she probably prefers the tenth). He or she is whoever distrusts government.

Obviously, what he or she possesses is distrust of government, but how does that compare to the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence? Distrust is a real, legitimate check on the power of government. The Constitution supplies several legal checks, but it cannot supply social norms. Norms are not documents, they cannot be legislated into existence.

The Declaration on the other hand is a little more analogous. The Declaration expressed an idea, served as a tool of moral warfare, and was a morale lifting agent during the Revolutionary War. The idea was governmental distrust in a very blatant form—individuals superior to the state, and the state under threat of revolution by many individuals. The moral warfare was fought as the Declaration gave the country and the world a new set of eyes through which to evaluate the revolution in a positive light. By materializing these ideas into an eloquent statement, the Declaration became a rock upon which the soldiers could base their morale and courage. "What are we fighting for, anyway?" asks the one, to which another responds, "The rights of man! The inalienable rights that God gave us! We are overcoming a tyrannical government, as is our right and duty! Don't you remember our Declaration?" Because the very essence of the Declaration was and idea, it serves almost the very same purpose as the norms I am about to mention. What makes it so powerful is that its force lies in social norms, not legalese.

What is a social norm? It is an idea, shared by the multitude, about what is right, wrong, commonplace or acceptable in a given situation. We shake hands with the right hand. We say, "how are you doing?" when we begin conversations. We don't talk about religion and politics among diverse company (a norm I am known to flout regularly). And we don't trust the government.

We once distrusted government. This distrust is so crucial because it is used to prevent tyranny just as much as our constitutional checks and balances are. Furthermore, when our constitutional checks are violated, as can happen to any legal document, society's norms remain. We've still got the people who say, "No! That government's gotten way too big, and gone way too far!" Judicial, executive, and legislative checks aren't enough; means outside the government are crucial as well.

Those norms are fading away.

Under the false pretense of reason, we are encouraged to separate our emotions entirely from our thoughts. That is not 'reason,' it is lunacy. Government possesses the greatest claim on the use of force. It is dangerous. It is not a simple, harmless institution; it is very able and, as history clearly shows, very willing to go too far.

Americans are now okay with regularly showing government officials an ID. We're fine with filing mind-numbing loads of official paperwork to run a business. We are okay with getting searched and patted down at airports. Where's the distrust? Where's the "back off, I don't want your official nose in my business, my personal life, my home, or my junk"?

There should, regarding government, be a feeling similar to that which motivates you to cross the street when a suspicious-looking character is coming from the opposite direction. This brand of distrust motivates you to lock your doors in a bad neighborhood. It motivates you doubt government's stated intentions and dread its power. There is nothing irrational about that.

Not only is this apathy harmful, but it’s self-propagating. In other words, it's not only the match; it's also the wind which carries the fire. The more people accept government intrusion into their lives, the more their children will. The more they will accept in the future. Acceptance of governmental intrusion into every aspect of our culture, personal lives, and finances is simultaneously its own cause and effect.

So don't marginalize the admittedly crazy redneck who gripes about government day in and day out. Don't make fun of the kid who talks about the constitution non-stop. Give him or her a pat on the back sometime—say, "Thank-you, friend, for standing up for our rights." Then just smile as the rant continues.

Beautiful Imperfection

Markets do not operate like computer programs. They are not cleanly executed, easily monitored, or reliably predicted. Markets are, in a word, sloppy.

In our introductory economic textbooks, we pretend that they are. This lets us simplify and understand the world. Much like a beginning physics student will assume a lack of air friction while studying moving objects, the economics student pretends that prices are nailed to equilibrium points. He pretends that prices for the same good are uniform, and that everybody knows what all the prices are.

But just as the physicist one day recognizes that air resistance can make or break a vehicles performance, the economist sees that market imperfections have serious effects on market outcomes. In fact, market inefficiency is much of what policy-makers are looking at today. They want something to fix, and the economy seems like a perfect candidate.

Here's a cursory list of some of these inefficiencies: Prices are not uniform. Not everyone is aware of competing prices. The same type of goods and services vary enormously in quality. People act (even financially) for emotional reasons. Information (about prices, quality of services, or available alternatives) is not evenly distributed among society.

Economists must look at the systems and institutions by which resources are allocated and determine whether they are promoting the common welfare in terms of efficiency (creating the most, best wealth) and equity (fairness, justice). So is all this acceptable?

Market inefficiencies can help and hurt. When do they hurt? When they fail to enable intelligent people to create technologies and ideas. When they prevent competition from pushing firms to the limits of efficiency and quality. When asymmetrical information prevents consumers from knowing if the companies they patronize are dealing fairly with them.

But I stand by the help these imperfections bring, which redeem them, which make them laudable. The market's evolution is constantly weeding out the bad. We are always becoming better able to efficiently allocate resources. Companies are being forced to act more competitively. The rising economic status of the consumer has made his voice so loud that companies must bend to his or her will. So the bad is fading away… but the imperfections themselves will always remain in some form, for good purpose.

That's because we are humans. We cannot attain anything perfect. Even a perfectly engineered, coordinated system would be subject to human error, and a true market falls short in the same way. Human action, no matter how systemized, has serious limits—thank our biology and the physical state of the universe for that. So what on earth is so great about the imperfections?

Can a computer program change? Can it adjust itself to be fair? No. It is deterministic—what is going to happen is predestined and perfectly efficient (if it's well designed). If a market were that way, the poor would be screwed. Those who possess inferior intelligence levels only by reason of their DNA would be screwed. The smartest people, who could afford the most advanced education would rise to the top of the economic hierarchy which was predetermined before they were even born. The below average in intelligence, who never went to the best schools, who weren't born with trust funds in their names, would remain in mediocrity.

What does this have to do with market imperfection? Everything. If you are average in wealth and intelligence, you can exploit opportunities that no one else has yet exploited. You can target clients with a slightly different product than your competitor offers. Your business won't be automatically crushed by the more efficient megacorporation from different state, and your job won't necessarily be nabbed by an overseas worker who works at a lower cost. All you need is to be more willing to search out the crevices for needs that haven't been met by the more efficient or productive economic agents.

You can view the sloppiness in our economy to be a vice. You can also view every little splotch as an opportunity for some enterprising, determined individual to make his mark on the world by filling the niche no one else had yet claimed. The moment everything becomes hyper-efficient, there is no such thing as opportunity. There is only the brute fact that as a human with intelligence x, stamina y, a personality z will fit into a predestined position in the economic sphere.

Is that justice? No. It is bondage.

I find it remarkable, though. Really, who would have thought that imperfection itself would be one of the most beautiful elements in the spontaneous social order that we call the economy?