Understanding the Modern US

Looking at the Premise posts, it is fairly easy to understand that the underlying theory of society and economics presented there is that the grand majority of people in this society are motivated by what they consider their rational self-interest. For some of them, this may be as simple as their own economic survival and perhaps preservation of their own basic liberties. For others, it may be more complex if they believe in the righteousness of their ideologies and seek to "help" or "save" others from some perceived threat or persecution. For the majority of Americans, the truth lies somewhere in between, either some form of compromise between ideology and self-advocacy, or more often a synthesis of the two. In any case, however, the pursuit of ideological righteousness can still be simplified to rational self-interest. A religious person trying to convert others to her faith, an economic liberal working to bring what he perceives as social or economic justice to minorities, even extremists who look to exterminate or disenfranchise some group of people because they see them as counter-progressive or dangerous - without delving into morality or the logic behind these motivations, the majority of them can be said to engage in these activities because it makes them feel happy and accomplished, even if they claim not to pursue any immediate earthly gain. Earthly gain is not limited to economic success or even tangible things that are thought to make people happy. The belief that they are accomplishing what is comparable with their religious, political, or social ideologies can be a very powerful motivator, and can be easily lumped in with self-interest, even if those who don't share their beliefs find it irrational. So, with this in mind, what contributes to the continuous proneness of the United States toward inefficient methods of accomplishing the optimal society described in Premise 3? It is easy to blame the ideologies and that their teachings are often obsolete, over-generalized, or simply contrary to efficiency. But people aren't born ideological, and even most ideologies don't come pre-packaged with promoting closed-mindedness and seeing anyone with a divergent opinion as the enemy. What contributes to this hostility between different schools of thought, and what are its effects?

UNDERSTANDING ECONOMICS
Most economic discussions in this country - whether between individuals, on some form of media, or between politicians - never get past the tier of uninformed accusations. Economics is a complex and intricate science, and it is understandable that most people who haven't studied it to some extent are not very well-versed in it. However, this does not stop them from being affected by it in their daily lives - taxes, changes in prices on consumer goods, reductions in government services they may depend on, laws regarding wages, business regulations, etc. Seeing as economic well-being ranks pretty highly in most people's books when it comes to rational self-interest, the effects of the economy that are contrary to this tend to upset and anger people. Once this occurs, it is very easy to fall into a web of misinterpretations and oversimplified concepts that are common ignorance, and people then tend to see anyone positively affected by economic trends by which they themselves are penalized not only as their adversary, but as belonging to some mythical enemy camp, often one presumed to be a massive conspiracy to rob the camp they see themselves as belonging to. Examples of this include conservatives vs liberals, capitalists/free market advocates vs socialists, workers/unions vs corporations, and so forth. The majority of people who use such terms, however, have no concept of what they even MEAN. Let's try to address some common economic myths:

Capitalism/Free Market Economics: This term refers broadly to economic systems that operate on a model of minimally restrained competition. "Restrained" refers to government regulations that affect the economy - tax codes, labor laws, prohibitions or restrictions on any sort of product, etc. The unrestrained movement of "capital" does not only refer to money, but literally anything with economic value, including resources and even anyone able to produce labor. The United States has NEVER operated under this kind of economic system. Some scholars refer to the pre-Civil War era as resembling a Free Market, but an economic system in which the law specifically strips large groups of people of equal property rights, including the proprietary right to THEIR own labor as in the case of slavery, cannot POSSIBLY qualify as a system of competition unrestrained by laws. Myths about "capitalism" claim that it promotes everything from slavery to modern corporate welfare laws ranging from tax loopholes to bailouts to laws that eliminate effective competition for the clear benefit of a large corporation. Politicians in favor of these laws often refer to them as "free market" or "capitalistic," so it is no surprise that people who see themselves victimized by these policies call capitalism oppressive and see anyone who sees free markets or capitalism as beneficial as their enemy. Often, they see various regulations supposedly meant to "level the playing field" for the working class as the only alternative to what victimizes them, and see anyone who does NOT see these as beneficial as a "capitalist" who seeks to "oppress" them.

Socialism: This term refers to an economic system that is entirely or almost entirely state-run, not by virtue of regulations and limitations, but by virtue of the state owning the majority of the means of economic production - farms, industry, stores, service providers, etc. This was the system practiced in the USSR through the majority of its existence, the government claimed to be "building" a Communist society but openly admitted that they ran a socialist regime that was supposed to eventually evolve into Communist through a Marxist model. The idea of this system was to eliminate competition and place all essential economic decisions under the umbrella of the government, which was presumed as neutral and NOT self-interested and would hence distribute fairly and without judgment. The realities of this system where it has been attempted, such as the USSR, have proven that it fails drastically at what it attempts to do, because bureaucrats ARE self-interested and giving them the power of distribution simply creates a parallel black market system that is far more unfair and brutal than any legal competition, while productivity plummets because the official currency is not worth anything in the black market and no one is concerned with getting work done as it does not directly benefit them - leading to shortages which reinforce the power of the black market. However, regardless of failed attempts elsewhere, the United States has NEVER practiced anything resembling this system EITHER. Those who claim to be socialists are simply ignorant unless they support the overhauling of the economy to be completely government-run as presented above. Even the Western European States, often dismissed as socialists by opponents of socialism and hailed as an example of socialist success by its advocates honestly do not even come CLOSE to meeting this definition, they have high taxes and a variety of services dubbed as "essential" under government control, but the majority of their means of production remain in private hands.

Communism: This term refers to an ANARCHIC system with no government AND no private property, in which all property and means of production are agreed upon as communal and all members participate economically according to their abilities and consume according to their needs. It is very important to note that Communism's main premise is voluntary participation, and that it sees enforcement of non-competition and lack of private property as contrary to its principles. This system is PURELY theoretical and has NEVER been practiced in known history on a national scale, although a few very small communities inside larger States, such as the Israeli "Kibbutzes," can be said to be examples of it. However, it is important that membership in such communities is voluntary and people who no longer find them to their liking are free to leave without penalty at the hands of the larger state within which they operate.

So, where does that leave the modern economy of the US? I don't see the necessity of coming up with an economic term to define the system in place, as long as it is clear that it does not fall under the definition of any of the three above. The US economy IS heavily based on competition, but rather than free market competition, it is a competition in which the government is a very important player, and the regulations through which it shapes the economy are tools of various interest groups and conglomerates to compete with each other. In an oversimplified view, Republican politicians are seen as the competition tools of the very rich - corporations, large business owners, sometimes government contractors that serve the military, and so forth - and their policies benefit this sector of the economy through tax exemptions for the rich, government spending that turns them a profit such as military projects, bailouts when these corporations are on the verge of collapse or infusions of tax money to help them expand, and so forth (reminder: THAT'S NOT CAPITALISM). Democratic politicians are seen as the competition tools of the working class - industrial workers, farmers, service workers, and so forth - and their policies support labor unions in their advocacy for worker benefits, "essential" services such as shelter, food, and health care for people who otherwise could not afford them at taxpayers' expense, and so forth (reminder: THAT'S NOT SOCIALISM). The small band of politicians that can be considered closer to free market or libertarian in their approaches are occasionally seen as the competition tools of the middle class - small business owners, freelance professionals and contractors, and so forth - and their policies try to eliminate the regulations set by the two groups above as both tend to disenfranchise them economically, either by virtue of higher taxes and labor laws that their large-business competition has a far easier time handling, or tax-breaks and subsidies for large businesses that, again, make them impossible to compete with. Lifting the oversimplification and looking at reality, however, the system is far more intricate and does not follow these general predictions very well. Large businesses compete with each other, and hence many have their own puppet politicians whose policies are aimed to favor one large business over the other. Labor unions are private organizations formed by workers to allow collective bargaining with employers, and short of protecting their right to exist do NOT need government support to do their work. In many corporate industries, they are largely a thing of the past as they have long since bargained the oppressive corporations out of existance, and the competition that has risen up to replace them usually makes a deal with their employees to offer a standard of quality benefits and safety in exchange for pledging NOT to unionize. The unions that still exist are for the most part government employee unions (where there is no competition to render them obsolete) or in certain latent industries, such as automobile corporations, that are riddled with inefficiency. Powerful, rich, and self-interested, many modern labor unions have their own puppet politicians on either side of the aisle, and the policies meant to benefit them largely sum up to giving them an edge over their own non-union competitors (like bailouts for corporations who would otherwise be driven out of business by union costs and replaced by more efficient non-union alternatives) or preserving their jobs such as opposition to policies that cut government services (education, prisons, etc.). Many policies often mistakenly seen as benefitting the working class, such as minimum wage hikes, are well-proven by history to have little effect on the lives of minimum wage earners, but they do tend to give large businesses a competition edge over small businesses as their volume of operation allows them to swallow up the costs easier. Hence, large corporation politicians often support such policies, although this is seen as counter-intuitive. To not leave the middle class off the hook or without blame, free market politicians tend to garner support by proposing drastic changes that immediately positively affect their constituency, and may in theory be more efficient, but in practice need to be implemented slowly and thoughtfully to avoid unaccounted for immediate affects, as with deregulation or privatization of certain rationed services that results in skyrocketing prices because the infrastructure is not in place for the higher consumption of competitive pricing rather than rationing. An efficiency-based approach to American economics, then, is not to "see the benefits and shortfalls of each ideology," but to divorce oneself from them altogether and examine how each economic policy will truely effect society. Dismissing them as a conspiracy or oppression by one overgeneralized group or class or another, or even as a specific move by some special interest, is very narrow-minded; and what's worse, inefficient policies of every kind THRIVE on this kind of ignorance because politicians and special interests don't need to convince their consituencies that the policies are actually beneficial, it suffices to convince them that they are lifting some sort of oppression or inequality at the hands of an invisible enemy oligarchy, or more moral than an opposing special interests' policy suggestion - as if there are no other choices and everyone is somehow represented by one of these two.

THE ROLE OF THE MEDIA
It is very important to explain the role of information distribution in the above model. Most people who commit the fallacy described above of overgeneralizing economic classes and division lump most facets of mainstream media in with one such class or the other, often accusing the conglomerates that disagree with them as being cronies of some oppressive oligarchy, while seeing the ones who agree with them as fair and balanced and reporting "real news". Unfortunately, this laughably oversimplified model forgets that large media conglomerates, regardless of political affiliation, are private corporations and, at the end of the day, driven by PROFIT. Their profit is generated by selling advertisement, and the prices at which they can sell it, in turn, are dictated by the volume of patrons they can attract that would then see these advertisements. Ideally, reporting that is blatantly biased or misleading should alienate patrons, driving down advertising revenue, which would make it contrary to effective competition. However, practice shows that reporting of the news in a less biased, more scientific sense tends to bore and confuse the average uneducated patron; large amounts of attention are attracted by playing upon people's fears and prejudices with emotional displays of agreement and fanaticism (a la Glen Beck or Michael Moore). Hence, is it really any surprise that large media outlets tend to lean so heavily toward one mainstream point of view or another? Once again, this attracts the most attention, which drives up advertising revenue on which their profits are based. One suggestion to counter this trend, often blamed for the emotional political polarization of the country, is to hand over the reporting of the news into government hands which would make it less dependent on profit. However, as we have seen in our discussion of practices of socialism above, the bureaucracy IS self-interested, even if not directly profit-driven, and the plaguing trend of government-run media in historical examples is to become an instrument of inducing conformity to the policies of whoever is in charge, even in countries where subversive speech is NOT illegal and there is competing private media that is very subversive. The point is simply that, while the media may claim to have responsible journalism at the heart of their principles, at the end of the day it is driven by its own self-interest like every other actor in the economic system described above, and whether this interest is profit or government-approved conformity will not make them any less self-interested and unbiased or responsible. A balanced picture can honestly only be acquired through one's own eyes, and if this is impossible, then the seeker of unbiased news should limit himself to the facts and actual tangible observations presented by the news, or seek out smaller news outlets that present more facts and observations and less opinions and interpretations. This can be difficult, and getting all the facts about any situation, including those conveniently omitted by one side or the other may require looking at a variety of sources before reaching one's own interpretation. This process is time-consuming and often leads to ambivalence and the realization that the person does NOT have the information or expertise to make a decision regarding where they stand on an issue. People are driven to insecurity when brought face to face with their own ignorance, and don't have the time to construct an informed opinion but nevertheless continue to be victimized by various economic policies. Hence, they choose the "easy" solution of watching the likes of Shawn Hannity or Oprah Winfrey scream and gesticulate wildly as they pretend to "understand their pain," not realizing that this is analogous to popping a daily dose of Alka-Seltzer to deal with ever-worsening digestive tract problems, but not putting in the time and effort to eat anything other than junk food.