As promised, here is the followup to the Comparitive Government article. When we left off before, we were stuck in the predicament of enduring a few years of hardship in a democracy for great long term gain, no small task considering the majority of the people who decide the fate of a democracy are only interested in and cannot (or will not) see beyond their immediate self-interest.

We in America are infatuated with notions of Jacksonian Democracy - the idea that every man(/woman) from the least to the greatest has an equal say in representative government. But let’s look at where this has gotten us, especially in the media age. We now live in the era of celebrity politics. Politicians have to worry just as much (if not more) about likability as their platform. Real ideas and debate for which the common man has no patience have been cast aside. Instead, platforms are built on cliches and slogans like “Change” (everyone likes change) or “No new taxes” (no one likes those) without the slightest consideration of their content or consequences.

This slogan-driven brand of politics has, by tickling the ears of the unthinking majority who desire at the same time lower taxes and more government benefits and see no conflict between the two, given us an astronomical national debt that will only continue to get worse as long as the same types of people wield voting power. The dollar is collapsing around us, and yet the budget deficit continues its meteoric rise to a record $490 billion because politicians won’t risk offending their constituents either by raising taxes or cutting spending.

The voting test however, though an apparently obvious solution, remains taboo not only because of a strong Jacksonian mindset in America, but also because of its more recent history as a way to keep blacks from voting. This, however, was a flawed implementation and not an inherent flaw in the voting test: it was only selectively applied at the discretion of the voting administrator. A fair voting test would necessarily be administered to every voter. Shall we then exclude the voice of the unthinking from government? Certainly not. To be effective in bringing about change (with the added bonus of quelling political unrest), a voting test must be graded. Though guaranteed one vote by virtue of citizenship, one may earn further votes (with a reasonable cap) by performance on the test. This way it is not an arbitrary line drawn between “thinking” and “unthinking”, but rather a gradient allowing finer tuning.

What would be on such a test? The citizenship test tests only factual knowledge, and thus is a good starting point: basic knowledge of the political structure of the US and basic current events pertaining to the election would be required. But further than this and even more importantly, a critical thinking section. From reading comprehension to logical quandaries, it is paramount that every political faculty is tested and graded, and a certain number of votes from 1 to the maximum is awarded based thereupon.

The results of such a structure would be drastic and instantaneous. Without the burden of reaching the disconnected or apathetic voter, media (the number one campaign expenditure) will become increasingly irrelevant, lowering the barriers to political entry and widening options. Knowing that those with the most voting capital are those who seek information, the entire American political discourse will change. Real issues will emerge to the forefront of political discussion, and debate about content and consequences will flourish. This gives us not only better politicians, but better informed people all around as well. The government will be free to work for the electorate’s long-term best interest rather than quelling every immediate ache at the expense of future prosperity.

It almost seems like there’s no downside to a well implemented voting test. Why then is it so unpalatable? Is there moral justification for the one-person-one-vote principle? Check back soon for why governments founded from moral first principles don’t work, and the last qualms with the voting test may be put to rest.

With the postmodern movement in full swing, it almost seems as if new religions are springing up faster than new followers can be made. Especially hot on the market is custom religion - tailored from an eclectic mix to fit your own needs and desires; something deep enough to make you look sophisticated (”spiritual but not religious”), but not enough to affect your life in any meaningful way.

Let’s look at this trend a little deeper. The first problem is that adhering to a custom religion is a sign that the adherent does not grasp the severity of religious choice. Religion encompasses many categories of belief, not the least of which is the existence and nature (or lack thereof) of the divine or supernatural, and any sort of afterlife. Whether or not one arrives at any particular religious conclusion, it is not a consideration to be taken lightly. Custom religion, for the reasons we will soon see, is not a serious answer to what is possibly the most important question in life. In fact, there are only three feasible religious models:

1) Agnosticism is the only purely epistemological conclusion, and inevitably so: with no starting point or frame of reference, we can reach no endpoint, and thus all we can truly know is that we can know nothing.

2) Atheism or Deism. Custom religion is laughable simply because the probability that an individual could hit truth dead on without divine revelation is ridiculous. There are infinite possible religious permutations, but the plausibility of atheism and deism rests in statistical probability: of all possible natures of the divine that could be arrived at without revelation, the two most likely are that it does not exist, and that it does not intervene. To assume any further intervention beyond deism would require…

3) Divine Revelation. If we are to assume that the divine or supernatural exists and affects our world (the only remaining possibility), it would not make sense to make any further assumptions about its nature except what has been revealed by that same divine. In the absence of a logically consistent revealed word, custom religion under scrutiny can only devolve into agnosticism.

Yet though some custom religion is indeed sourceless except for the whims and tastes of the adherent, some comes from pseudo-legitimate sources. What then cannot be trusted as a source of religious truth?

1) Personal Experience without external corroboration is useless. Dreams and visions and experiences happen to everyone, and unless it adheres to an external revealed word (atheism, deism, and agnosticism preclude religious experience), there is nothing to make one experience more valid than another that conflicts with it.

2) Tradition is custom, not truth: it has no divine authority behind it, and basing a religion thereupon is just following someone else’s custom religion. Sadly, the “for America and for Jesus!” crowd - not only them, but the majority of self-identifying Christians, even - is just as guilty of this as the most ardent Odinist, though perhaps not as intentionally so. Christianity has become so ingrained in the West that it has come to play second fiddle to and merge with cultural traditions, giving patriotism and other such trivialities an undeservedly religious bent.

This last list is by no means exhaustive; these are simply the most widespread: banana pudding cannot be trusted as a source of religious truth either, but it would not be worthwhile to include. In conclusion, I would implore anyone reading this to at least take the religious question more seriously. Know what you believe, why you believe it, and be sure it’s logically consistent.

I was out driving the other day with the radio turned to a Christian radio station, when a song lyric jumped out at me: Because you would rather die / Than to ever live without me. Lines like this have never sat well with me, but I always attributed my discomfort to a question of perspective - a focus on God versus a focus on man, for example. It was only that day it dawned on me that there is a fundamental error in this song lyric - the same that thousands of Christian self-esteem messages spring from; the same that tickles our ears with popular notions of self-worth and esteem. The difference between a haughty spirit and a humble spirit before God ultimately lies in how you answer the question, why does God love us?

The explanation for why God created the human race that I always heard growing up hinges on choice. First the question is posed, would you want a spouse to love you because she had to - a robot, if you will - or because she wanted to? The argument then goes on to contrast our worship with that of the angels: the angels are simply programmed to worship God and can do no other, the reasoning goes, while we can choose to love God - therefore our praise is preferable to that of the angels because ours is voluntary.

So God loves us because we have choice? This runs into several problems (we’ll even ignore the fact that Lucifer and a third of the angels didn’t adhere to their “programming”). First, our choice is constrained by sin. In the flesh - in our own effort - we cannot choose God (Romans 8:7-8). We have no capability in ourselves to love God. He enables us to love Him by the Holy Spirit for the very reason that we cannot by ourselves do so.

Second, this reasoning would imply that God loves us because of some innate good within us, namely, choice. There is nothing good within us that would commend us to God (Isaiah 64:6, Jeremiah 17:9), and we are certainly not in an inherently better position before Him than the angels. The belief that God loves us because we are made in His image - because we have some “spark of the divine” - even so far as to say that God loves us because we (can) choose Him, is to say that at some level we deserve God’s love, and this is fundamentally no different from the pride of Lucifer.

But God obviously loves us, as we see throughout the Bible (John 3:16). Why then, if we have nothing to commend ourselves to God, does He still pursue us? The answer is not within us, but in God. God does not love us because of who we are, but because of who He is. One thing I am indebted to John Piper for is the proof and justification of a selfish God (Deuteronomy 6:15): If God, being at the same time omniscient and the highest good in the universe, had as His ultimate aim anything other than the highest good in the universe, He would no longer be a good or perfect God. Therefore God’s ultimate goal can only be His own glory. His duty is not to us, but to Himself.

So how does mankind factor into God’s glory? God’s love of and offer of salvation to mankind is not so He can enjoy the pleasure of our company, but in order to demonstrate His power to redeem that which had nothing good of its own to boast. Paul tells us that salvation is entirely the work of God for this very purpose: “Not of works, lest any man should boast” (Ephesians 2:9). The glory is entirely God’s.

With this in mind, our focus shifts away from ourselves and towards God. Prayer becomes less of our will and more “Your will be done”, in faith that God makes all things to work together for the good of those that love Him (Romans 8:28). Father, forgive me, not because I’m coming to You, but because You have brought me to Yourself. This is a humble spirit before God: unpretentious gratitude that while we were yet sinners, while we were enemies of God with nothing worthy of love about us, Christ still died for us.

The news has been filled recently with stories like minimum wage jumping 70¢, or California banning trans-fats in restaurants, all ostensibly for the sake of the common employee/consumer. Things which sound nice and warm and fuzzy on the surface - who doesn’t want to help out the bottom rung of society, or to make Californian children healthier? - until you consider the long-term consequences of this kind of thinking.

Let’s assume that for the foreseeable future there will be legal competition in the world - that is, more than one country. In fact, for the sake of the argument and to make things simple, let’s say there are just two countries: a socialist country with the entire set of touchy-feely employee-and-consumer protection laws, and a libertarian country with a minimalist government and little legislation, a good police force, and (why not) a public school system and antitrust laws. Let’s also assume that these countries are identical in population and natural resources, so that we can isolate how people respond to government. We’ll also assume that both governments are initially well liked and supported by their people, and that immigration is completely open.

Cut loose from these starting conditions, the socialist country would initially enjoy a much better aggregate standard of living. Each person is, of course, guaranteed a job and a minimum wage and standard of living, while in the libertarian country nothing but rule of law is guaranteed. Though everyone is not necessarily perfectly equal, the spoils of the economy are well distributed across the entire population through multitudinous social benefits. Each person is reasonably happy, and the leaders are satisfied at the achievement of their goal.

But as happy as the most people are, all is not well in Socialist land. The more productive among the populace are not happy sharing their spoils with the unemployed and unproductive, and the more ambitious are not happy with all the regulatory hoops they have to jump through with their companies. Two things will soon begin to happen: The egalitarian wealth redistribution in the form of public benefits has created a moral hazard for the productive. Why be productive if I can live well being unproductive? If I’m guaranteed a certain standard of living, why excel? The smart, talented, and hardworking individuals of the socialist country will begin to disappear into mediocrity. The ambitious, meanwhile, fed up with being stifled and lured by perhaps less than altruistic reasons, will begin an exodus to the libertarian country in search of purer profits.

Thus the dichotomy between the two systems emerges. Nature itself favors the ambitious and productive, and the libertarian government even more so, because it takes out much of the element of uncertainty with rule of law. The socialist country favors the common man. Thus just as the ambitious flee from the socialist nation to the libertarian, the unambitious and impoverished will flee to the socialist nation in search of benefits and an easier life. The libertarian country will have a perpetual labor shortage, while the socialist will have a perpetual labor surplus.

At this point, the socialist government has several options. With its jobs leaving, it can do one or more of the following:
1) Nationalize all industry and become fully Marxist, thus preventing the further flight of industry.
2) Lock down the borders, preventing the ambitious from leaving and the freeloaders from entering.
3) Cut social benefits. Because the freeloaders now so outnumber the ambitious, there is less productivity and thus less money to hand out.
4) Go into debt and keep the benefits coming.

Each of these is strongly undesirable. Nationalizing industry removes the element of competition, making everyone less productive and further diminishing economic growth. Locking the borders creates political unrest, which could potentially be more damaging than anything economic. Cutting social benefits defeats the purpose of socialism, and could also potentially lead to political unrest. Finally, going into debt is unsustainable, and because there’s only one other country, it means their fate is in the hands of the other nation.

Meanwhile in libertarian land, the cutthroat Capitalist environment has settled down. Because of the labor shortage and the flock of new industries moving in, businesses must give benefits in order to attract employees - benefits comparable to those handed out by the socialist government. Because of the flock of new industries, competition is high, thus productivity is high, and thus the standard of living continues to increase as the socialist government collapses under the weight of its handouts.

But how does this stack up to reality, you ask? Has any of this ever happened? Certainly industrial flight wouldn’t happen on such a devastating scale. Rewind to the Soviet Union of the 1980s and 90s. After a series of Gorbachev’s reforms denationalizing government industries and opening the borders for trade, this is exactly what happened. The ambitious either sold the industries to foreigners or moved themselves, leading to the collapse of the Soviet Union.

The United States is facing a choice between options 3 and 4 right now with the social security predicament. No one will talk of cutting benefits, so we continue to rack up astronomical debt to countries all over the world, with whom our relationship is becoming increasingly strained. Furthermore nearly every country in the world restricts its borders to some degree, from both incoming and outgoing immigration: much of the immigration debate in the US comes from the flood of alleged freeloaders coming in.

Marx was more correct than modern Communists give him credit for in that socialism can only exist if the entire world is socialist - that is, if there is no competition. People respond to incentives. Though it is obviously better in the long run to reward productivity and ambition than complacency and laziness, no one is willing to try a pure libertarian system, because the intermediate years of weaning society from the government’s teat would be much too difficult.

Coming soon: How to accomplish weaning without being voted down, or, how to protect a Democracy from its people.