Deconstructing "Progressive " thought

[pbi]

I'm far more worried about the corporate state than the "entitlement" state. ...

So am I, if we're speaking about the sort of unfettered corporate powers that existed in, say, England or the US prior to the onset of unions and social legislation. I think it's really an exaggeration to claim that that is what we have in Canada today, regardless of what political party is in office. That sid, there is some wisdom in being wary of letting corporations dictate the whole agenda.

Nobody here should forget that unions, as much as we trash them today, arose to deal with horrendous practices by employers, who in turn often tried to bring the full force of the state against those workers who merely wanted some reasonable working conditions that any of us would take for granted today. I find the idea that these employers would "eventually have fixed things anyway" a bit hard to swallow. From time to time today, IMHO we see hints that maybe, if the opportunity were provided, some employers might be tempted to revert to less enlightened conditions.

Unions and the changes they fought for, and beneficial social legislation that was intended to help to deal with poverty, with totally nonexistent medical care, disgusting public sanitation, child labour, etc, all set out in the beginning to do good things for most people. And, in the beginning (and I might argue in many cases still today) these measures did great things, often with very broad popular support.

Take publicly funded medical care, for example. I see nothing wrong with this idea: it's actually a very noble one, again with the best of intent. We certainly expect that things like police service, fire protection, streets and sanitation are contributed to by all, in order to be available to all. I see no logical reason why this principle of "common good" can't apply to medical care as well. Again, the initial impulse in having publicly funded health care was to help, or to do good for people. (How well it actually gets managed could be a separate discussion...)

Utterly destroying the "entitlement state" is a fool's errand. To expect (for example) that a population of a metropolis of millions of people can be expected to revert to some sort of log-cabin rugged individualism and self sufficiency is nonsense. It isn't going to work. And that's where 80% of our people live today: in complex urban centres, where people are dependent upon systems and, ultimately, government managed functions, to survive.

The problem with all this well-meant social good is that we have people who want to abuse it. Some wish to abuse it from the bottom end, by cheating and defrauding the public. Others want to abuse it by giving themselves the power of petty tyrants to push other people around. The answer IMHO is more accountability and visibility at both ends. The answer is not blind, ideologically-driven hacking and slashing of programs without regard for the problems these programs were established to deal with.

There is a balance here, but in the end if I have to make a black-and-white choice between a political system that looks primarily after corporate interests, as opposed to looking primarily after the people, I'm tending toward the latter.

 

[Brad Sallows]

>And that's where 80% of our people live today: in complex urban centres, where people are dependent upon systems and, ultimately, government managed functions, to survive.

Urban centres are not the only complex things.  Corporations are a social good; they enable people to specialize in complex tasks, which raises productivity and wealth and thus, overall, health and well-being.  A corporation is what enables a machinist to concentrate on machining, instead of machining, advertising, selling his work door-to-door, answering phones, book-keeping, etc.  I agree that the state doesn't need to be organized to see first to the comforts and needs of corporations, but I am firmly set against the political factions and philosophies that set corporations up as some flavour of "evil".  Complex endeavours require complex organizations, which is what both government and corporations are.  Corporations have the advantage of being voluntary, and dissolving/collapsing when they outlive their usefulness, with no requirement for direct intervention - simple consumer neglect serves.  Government, for some reason, seems to be harder to keep in trim.

 

[pbi]

... Corporations are a social good; they enable people to specialize in complex tasks, which raises productivity and wealth and thus, overall, health and well-being. 

I would say rather that "corporations CAN be a social good", for the reasons you offered, provided that the corporation in question is run in an ethical manner, with at least a minimum level of compassion for its work force, and some sense of itself as a "responsible corporate citizen".

The underlying problem IMHO is that the raison d'etre of a corporation is to make money for its owners and shareholders. (That is meant as a statement of fact, not as a judgment.) Therefore, it's hard (if not stupid) for a corporation to totally ignore its bottom line in favour of what might seem like "soft" or "non-core" issues to people sitting around the boardroom table.

Because of that, unless compelled by law or the threat of labour action, most corporations are naturally going to default to their bottom line. That is why I believe that their basic impulses need to be regulated by government.

By "regulate" I don't mean crush under punitive corporate taxes, disastrously stultifying labour law, or acres of stupid red tape. I mean those reasonable and prudent measures, usually taken with broad public support, to ensure that corporations actually demonstrate those characteristics I mentioned in my first paragraph.

Like I said, there is a balance.

 

[Jed]

I would say rather that "corporations CAN be a social good", for the reasons you offered, provided that the corporation in question is run in an ethical manner, with at least a minimum level of compassion for its work force, and some sense of itself as a "responsible corporate citizen".

The underlying problem IMHO is that the raison d'etre of a corporation is to make money for its owners and shareholders. (That is meant as a statement of fact, not as a judgment.) Therefore, it's hard (if not stupid) for a corporation to totally ignore its bottom line in favour of what might seem like "soft" or "non-core" issues to people sitting around the boardroom table.

Because of that, unless compelled by law or the threat of labour action, most corporations are naturally going to default to their bottom line. That is why I believe that their basic impulses need to be regulated by government.

By "regulate" I don't mean crush under punitive corporate taxes, disastrously stultifying labour law, or acres of stupid red tape. I mean those reasonable and prudent measures, usually taken with broad public support, to ensure that corporations actually demonstrate those characteristics I mentioned in my first paragraph.

Like I said, there is a balance.

Excellent Post  :goodpost:

 

[Edward Campbell]

I would say rather that "corporations CAN be a social good", for the reasons you offered, provided that the corporation in question is run in an ethical manner, with at least a minimum level of compassion for its work force, and some sense of itself as a "responsible corporate citizen".

The underlying problem IMHO is that the raison d'etre of a corporation is to make money for its owners and shareholders. (That is meant as a statement of fact, not as a judgment.) Therefore, it's hard (if not stupid) for a corporation to totally ignore its bottom line in favour of what might seem like "soft" or "non-core" issues to people sitting around the boardroom table.

Because of that, unless compelled by law or the threat of labour action, most corporations are naturally going to default to their bottom line. That is why I believe that their basic impulses need to be regulated by government.

By "regulate" I don't mean crush under punitive corporate taxes, disastrously stultifying labour law, or acres of stupid red tape. I mean those reasonable and prudent measures, usually taken with broad public support, to ensure that corporations actually demonstrate those characteristics I mentioned in my first paragraph.

Like I said, there is a balance.

In fact it may be illegal for the "people sitting around the boardroom table" to "ignore its bottom line in favour of what might seem like "soft" or "non-core" issues." The corporation, as a legal entity, has a fiduciary duty to the shareholders, and the directors (the "people sitting around the boardroom table") owe a similar fiduciary duty to the corporation.

There are regulations in place today, affirmed, again and again by the Supreme Court of Canada. They are very similar to the regulations in place in America, Britain, Germany, Hong Kong, Norway and Singapore and so on. They do not satisfy the political left ... but the regulations which would satisfy the left might (some very smart people say would) destroy the very enterprises they are intending to milk for the "public good."

We, Canada, already take "reasonable and prudent measures, usually taken with broad public support, to ensure that corporations actually [are] run in an ethical manner, with at least a minimum level of compassion for its work force, and some sense of itself as a "responsible corporate citizen"." That's been the general rule, throughout the West, for over 50 years.

There is no evidence that many, much less most, Canadian corporations are anything but ethical and fair in their dealings. There is substantial evidence to suggest that the political left throughout the Euro-America West (which includes Japan and Singapore and so on) is both a) ignorant of economics, and b) dishonest. the political left actually does want to kill the goose that lays the golden egg because it, the left, almost always puts short term gain at the head of its list of socio-economic priorities.

I agree that the "needs" of the bottom 20% of society are not being met. We will never, can never meet the "needs" of the bottom 2% but for the remainer, the 90% of the bottom 20%, there is one simple solution to almost all their problems: a job. Not welfare, not EI, a job. Maybe not a "nice" job, maybe not a "good" job, almost certainly not a clean, warm, "easy" job, but a job that pays enough to keep a (regrettably poor) roof over a small family's head and keep (equally regrettably poor, but adequate) food on the table. Almost all (well intended) social programmes in Canada (and America and Britain, and, and, and ...) are both a) a waste of money, and, actually b counter productive because they discourage work and make jobs less and less attractive for the able in society.

I, broadly and generally, support a "guaranteed minimum income" for those who are employed for 35 or ore hours per week. I also support lower and lower welfare payments as an essential component of that "guaranteed minimum income" scheme. In my "perfect world"™ those who don't want to work would actually suffer for it. That who cannot work should not, of course, be punished for a disability.

 

[tomydoom]

ERC, I couldn't agree more with your post. Are you running for "Regent of Canada"?

 

[GR66]

Interestingly Conservative Senator Hugh Segal was on CBC Radio this afternoon discussing his support for the idea of a minimum income (http://www.cbc.ca/player/Radio/The+180/ID/2411626759/).

I agree that done right a guaranteed minimum income makes more sense than a variety of different income supports that act as disincentives to working.  The biggest problem in implementing such a scheme though will be overcoming the modern idea that the government needs to provide equitable outcomes for people instead of just providing a minimum security net.

 

[Edward Campbell]

Interestingly Conservative Senator Hugh Segal was on CBC Radio this afternoon discussing his support for the idea of a minimum income (http://www.cbc.ca/player/Radio/The+180/ID/2411626759/).

I agree that done right a guaranteed minimum income makes more sense than a variety of different income supports that act as disincentives to working.  The biggest problem in implementing such a scheme though will be overcoming the modern idea that the government needs to provide equitable outcomes for people instead of just providing a minimum security net.

You're right. We, Euro-Americans in general, it seems to me, are reluctant to enforce standards in return for support.

Equitable outcomes are a fantasy. And even if they were possible ~ and they are not ~ they would break the bank ... every bank.

What we can, and in my view should do is: reward effort (work) and punish sloth (idleness) ... at the same time being very careful to distinguish between those who cannot help themselves and those who choose to not help themselves. The former deserve our charity ~ and let's call it what it is ~ and the later do not.

Remember George Bernard Shaw's undeserving poor monologue? He spoke the truth ...


Edit: formatting

 

[Brad Sallows]

>Therefore, it's hard (if not stupid) for a corporation to totally ignore its bottom line in favour of what might seem like "soft" or "non-core" issues to people sitting around the boardroom table.

Leaving aside the legal imperatives, even when a corporation pursues best-in-class fiscal and ethical stewardship and praiseworthy ecological and social goals (aimed, I expect, at promoting its image, and thus indirectly the bottom line) - and is widely recognized for its leadership in these respects - it doesn't necessarily generate much gratitude and sympathy among the very people who might clamour for ecological and social responsibility.  Consumers also are bottom-line conscious.

 

[a_majoor]

The money line is in the last paragraph: " and moralism is often a cover for power-seeking". Progressiveism is so often cloaked in moralism; telling us how to live, what to eat, what sorts of transport to take, always for our own good of course:

http://opinion.financialpost.com/2013/10/15/peter-foster-not-smart/

Peter Foster: Not smart!

Peter Foster | 15/10/13 | Last Updated: 16/10/13 8:46 AM ET

Bill Keay/Postmedia News filesOne danger of technologies such as “smart meters” is that they might be used not merely to economize on energy usage but “out” alleged excessive use, an electronic form of the Scarlet Letter.

Sometimes the word “smart” is just a marketing tool. Everybody loves their smartphones (except when the service goes down, as it did last week at Rogers). But “smart” has also become a ubiquitous weasel word that, like “social” and “sustainable,” conceals a multitude of political dangers.

When it comes to smart grids, smart cities and smart growth, we are dealing with concepts that are potentially subversive, or dumb, or both. One example that is merely annoying is those electronic signs above the highway that were originally designed to warn of traffic hold ups, but now sport slogans telling us that our children are precious, and that we should buckle up and drive sober.

As Tom Adams and Kathy Hamilton pointed out on this page on Thursday, the notion of a smart grid covers both ideological thrusts – such as the promotion of electric cars – as well as attempts to compensate for previous policy disasters, such as the promotion of energy storage related to the proliferation of heavily-subsidized and inefficient wind and solar projects.

Cities are traditionally organic in nature, although there inevitably has to be an element of planning and coordination in infrastructure. The question is always one of balance. Jane Jacobs is most often associated with a revolt against master schemes that put planning above people, and neglected the importance of neighbourhoods.

Technologies have had a profound impact on the shape of cities. The most obvious is that of the automobile. Significantly, much “smart” thinking is anti-automobile (except if it is electric). At the same time, however, we are told that technology will soon enable driverless cars. We already have the power to regulate traffic and “price” roads via satellite.

Technology will obviously continue to shape the city, but the dangers of “overspecification,” that is inflexible top-down design, are highlighted in a recent pamphlet, “Against the smart city,” by New York based urban designer Adam Greenfield.

The pamphlet examines three cities that were planned in minute detail, with predictably problematic results: New Songdo in South Korea, MasdarCity in the United Arab Emirates, and a settlement in Portugal called PlanIT Valley.

Mr. Greenfield describes New Songdo thus: “It’s as if someone took [the movie] Minority Report as a shopping catalogue or a punch list rather than a vision of dystopia, and set the results on a few thousand acres of reclaimed mudflat lying just offshore.”

Masdar City is the brainchild of a government-owned sustainable energy concern, a “technologically-enabled oasis” where an “airport-style, all-electric personal rapid transit network eliminates any need for conventional automobiles.”

At PlanIT Valley, which is still at the conceptual stage, “the moment-to-moment flow of experience is to be coordinated by nothing less than a unified Urban Operating System that, at least in theory, manages the interactions of every connected space, vehicle, device and garment in the city.” (They obviously have never studied ecologies, climates, markets or any other complex adaptive system, or understand the "Local Knowledge Problem"

Mr. Greenfield does a wonderful job of explaining the manifest shortcomings and dangers of the overdesigned smart city, but his critique ultimately flies off the rapid transit rails because he sees these urban monstrosities as an offshoot of the “neoliberal agenda,” a Chomskyan phrase that speaks volumes about anybody who uses it.

His suggestion that grand plans of city control are intimately related to the promotion of free trade, privatization, lower taxes and deregulation is not just muddled, it’s upside down. This “neoliberal agenda” is in fact a response to the economic destruction wreaked by trade barriers, high taxes, and overregulation, not an ideological masterplan to conquer the world. Privatization of municipal services isn’t a plot to maximize shareholder value at others’ expense; it’s a response to lousy public provision.

Mr. Greenfield conflates this vague neoliberal agenda, which is promoted by unnamed “ideologues,” with the alleged dark powers of the companies involved in providing smart-city services, such as IBM, Cisco Systems, Siemens AG, Samsung, Intel, Philips and Hitachi.

Corporations are certainly to be feared when they get into bed with government but they have no political power except through government. These companies are ultimately merely responding to demand. The problem is the kind of demand generated by governments. If governments want armaments and surveillance, the private sector will supply it. It will also offer innovation that makes governments more deadly or intrusive, but the fundamental problem lies not with the technology, but its potential abuse by the state. Also, the idea of a city filled with efficiency-checking sensors and carbon footprint monitors is much more closely linked with the neosocialist agenda of sustainability than anything “neoliberal.”

Mr. Greenfield notes how new smart city plans appear to have learned so little from the grand conceits of “high modernism,” with its bleak plazas and dangerous concrete tenements (a cause where Prince Charles was, for once, on the right side), but high modernism was a conceit of the left. It is no coincidence that its grand master, the French architect Le Corbusier, designed the concrete cornflake box cum political rat’s nest of the UN building in New York.

One danger of technologies such as “smart meters” is that they might be used not merely to economize on energy usage but “out” alleged excessive use, an electronic form of the Scarlet Letter. The smart city may be a cover for the moralistic city, and moralism is often a cover for power-seeking. Indeed, the overweening ambition of “seamlessly coordinating everything” is the very model of sustainable development as conceived by the likes of Canada’s former UN mastermind Maurice Strong. It is a vision that has absolutely nothing to do with free markets or minimal government.

 

[vonGarvin]

Relativism.  And it changes flavour by the day, month, year and decade. 

 

[pbi]

I guess it depends on what we think we mean when we say "progressive". Just like, perhaps, determining what we mean when we say "liberal".  IMHO these are being used more as epithets (the political discourse in the US being an extreme example: I can't imagine a political party there calling itself the "Liberal Party"), and less and less as objective descriptors. (If that's an accurate term)

The danger here, I think, is that in the zealous rush to condemn people who come up with silly ideas like overly-designed cities run by Urban Operating Systems, or rabid "Political Correctness" mongers,  we may overlook or forget some of the very good, and, I think, important tenets of what might pass as the "progressive" platform.

Things like:

-protection of the environment. I don't know about you, but I like clean air and clean water. I don't like toxic waste dumps or acid-laden smoke spewing around my community. There are plenty of "brown field sites" around this country to remind us of what went on before we decided to do something about it;

-laws that protect people from being discriminated against for invalid reasons. I have an adult daughter and a gay adult son: I want both of them to be able to work at whatever career they are fit for, or marry whoever they wish to, without having the door slammed in their faces based on prejudice; and

-laws that give people safe places to work, and reasonable wages for that work.

It seems to me that all of these things have had to be put in place by means of laws, which IMHO were originally championed by people who might fall under the classification of "progressive" or even "liberal". Without these progressive or liberal impulses, I fear society might be a much more miserable place for many more people.

 

[Kirkhill]

In Europe "liberal" is also an epithet ... but it means "reactionary", "conservative", "fascist" and occasionally "anglo-saxon".

 

[pbi]

Like "Liberal Democrats"?

 

[Kirkhill]

Like "Liberal Democrats"?

Yahhhh Ptui. Ptui.

I fart in your general direction.

Edit: Besides everybody knows that Europe starts at the other side of the Channel.

 

[a_majoor]

Terms have evolved or been coopted over time. Todays "Conservatives" are espousing the values of "Liberal" philosophers like John Locke, Adam Smith, Jean-Baptiste Say, Thomas Malthus, and David Ricardo, among others. Try applying those philosophies to the "Liberal" party or "Liberals" today.

An amusing anecdote; I once attended a seminar hosted by the "Institute for Liberal Studies" (http://www.liberalstudies.ca/) given at the University of Windsor. During one of the breaks a group of young people came in and sat down to listen to the next session. Many looked confused, and most left after the session. I spoke to one of the ones who remained afterwards, who confessed he and his friends had thought this was a meeting of the "Young Liberals".

Perhaps the institute did convert one person that day, the young man enthusiastically attended the rest of the sessions and I believe he signed up for membership as well.

 

[Brad Sallows]

"Progressives" are interested mainly in social engineering, based chiefly on speculation about what they think a "better society" might look like.  There is little evidence of empiricism or deep forward thinking to examine possible consequences of their ideas.

I credit technologists - scientists, engineers - for improvements in air and water equality.  People throughout history have always done whatever they needed to in order to survive.  I doubt many were indifferent to living in proximity with garbage and pollution, but they lacked alternatives; as alternatives are developed, they are applied.  The desire for improvement is always there, but not always the means.

 

[pbi]

"Progressives" are interested mainly in social engineering, based chiefly on speculation about what they think a "better society" might look like.  There is little evidence of empiricism or deep forward thinking to examine possible consequences of their ideas.

And isn't "a better life" the goal of most political or social movements? I mean, try having a platform touting "a worse life". The question probably is "whose idea of a better life?"

I guess it depends on what you mean by "social engineering", but this seems like a pretty sharp dismissal of all those individuals and groups throughout history who fought for changes to make things better for people. Perhaps we have come to take so many things for granted that we have forgotten that somebody once went out and created the social and political pressure to bring about those changes.

It seems like we are living in pretty dismal times when "progressive" or "liberal" are shameful terms.  Perhaps these good words have been hijacked by extremists, or are convenient "attack words" for use by people who themselves don't really engage in any "empiricism or deep forward thinking to examine possible consequences of their ideas."

I credit technologists - scientists, engineers - for improvements in air and water equality.  People throughout history have always done whatever they needed to in order to survive.  I doubt many were indifferent to living in proximity with garbage and pollution, but they lacked alternatives; as alternatives are developed, they are applied.  The desire for improvement is always there, but not always the means.

Technologists have certainly identified the technical and scientific aspects of the problem (where the issues were technical or scientific in the first place...), and obviously provided the physical means for solutions (water purification, sewage treatment, vaccination, industrial safety systems, etc.) but IMHO they have had little or no power to introduce these measures without social or political support for them.

I agree that people were not indifferent to living next to garbage dumps and pollution, and I also agree that they lacked options. But, IMHO, not only did they lack options, they lacked any belief that anything could be done. It was only when somebody sat up and said "people shouldn't have to live like this anymore", and converted it into social or political change (usually involving legislation somewhere along the way), that they had options.

 

[Kirkhill]

The problem with "Progressives" is that they require Progress.  Progress demands change.  If change doesn't happen than no progress has occurred. 

But what happens if you have progressed to an Optimum?  Not a maximum or a minimum but simply the best possible.

For the "Progressive" leadership to demonstrate to their "Progressive" followers that they are still worthy of support they have to demonstrate change.  But if you are at an Optimum then all change can only take you further away from "the best possible" situation and render the situation worse.

But change has been demonstrated.

Ultimately the issue whose ideas will rule your life?  Your own or somebody else's?  Usually the fights occur between two people who want to run your life.

The Greta Garbos of the world don't start wars.

 

[Brad Sallows]

"Better society" and "better life" are not synonymous.  One man's necessity is another man's garbage; one man's kink is another man's belly laugh.  Problems begin when people seek to define objectives for others.

The goal of most political and social movements is to acquire status - even if it is merely the status of "see how noble I am".

I am a harsh judge of progressives and activists who fail to account for the opportunity costs and unintended consequences of their actions, and to undo their mistakes without reservations.  I will stipulate that every cause brings some good to someone - just as I will stipulate that every dollar of public spending does some good for someone.  The same question remains to be answered: was it the best possible expenditure of effort/resources, and did it create problems that went unanswered/unexamined because the only thing the disciples could see was their own goal?

"Liberal" has lost its proper meaning in the US, and partly also in Canada, and become synonymous with what most people understand to be "progressive".  But "progressives" can become downright "conservative" once they move the ratchet.  Try talking a Canadian progressive into any health care reform except exactly the reform which the progressive demands (generally, more money), and see how far you change his view.

My key beef with progressives is that if your answer to them is "No, now leave me alone" they won't lay off.  To them, every issue is open for discussion until they get what they want.  Then "the debate is over".

Here are two examples of what progressivism has wrought: destruction of family formation among American blacks, and de-institutionalization of mentally unstable people into the streets of Canada and the US.  I need not reach back into the 1930s.  Progressives have a lot for which to answer.  Good luck even getting them to admit their policies are the causes of the effects.