Survival of the Fittest?

Hard core conservatives and virtually all Libertarians lament the existence of most social programs. Leg-up programs like Head Start and Affirmative Action are bad enough in their view, and full-blown entitlement programs like Welfare are wholly unacceptable.

On a good day, those on the far right put on their “compassionate conservative” hats and cite the ways that entitlements and even leg-up programs countermand the American dream, robbing the poor of the personal victory that can only be won when they pull themselves out of poverty or disadvantage without outside help.

On a bad day, though, the most blunt and least delicate of conservatives reveal their real philosophy. Survival of the fittest, baby! SOTF. It’s a hard, hard world, and not everyone can be rich. Heck, it’s not even possible for everyone to be middle income. Some folks will be always be poor. That's just the way it is. Life is tough.

At least subconsciously, these conservatives and Libertarians recognize what economists of the central tradition have known since the time of Adam Smith; inequity and misery are inevitable in our economic system. The system on which our economy is based allows for-- and in fact encourages-- great disparities in personal wealth amongst its populace, and the very design of this market-based economy ensures that all individuals will not start life with equal advantages of birth, family wealth, intelligence, culture and opportunity. Even Smith understood that true equity could only be achieved by artificially leveling the playing field.

Recoiling reflexively away from all things redistributive, fearful laissez-fair conservatives shun the idea that an un-level playing field might be unfair in some way. They cling desperately to the immutable law of natural scarcity like a philosophical life raft, and they regress to a bastardized version of Social Darwinism as a way to cleanse their collective conscience. Survival of the Fittest. It's the only solution. What else can be done without us all becoming socialists?

Such Social Darwinists see life as a kind of sporting event, in a way. It's a game, folks. Play like winning is the only thing. If you lose (i.e., failing to excel in life, remaining poor or homeless or without health care or an education), it is because you were weak and ill-prepared. Tough break.

And if you win (i.e. succeed in life, earning well, having health insurance, owning a home, having your kids in decent schools, taking vacations and sending those kids to college). . . well, you worked hard, by God. Unlike those who failed, you did what you had to do, and you deserve your success.

Survival of the Fittest is comfortable enough to most of us when we're watching documentaries on television about life and death on the Serengeti. But the moral rub comes when the lions and zebras in the equation are human beings. The Survival of the Fittest concept brings with it two suppositions that are problematic in my view. First, it assumes that those who don’t survive weren’t fit to begin with. And more troublingly, it assumes that those who aren’t fit do not deserve to survive.

That should be troubling to anyone. Anyone who might just find himself unfit some day, at least.

Those who rail against redistributive social programs as being anti-American or worse would surely denounce my claim that they do not care for the poor and disadvantaged. They'd point to charities or private enterprise as ways that the poor can be cared for without using the strength of the federal government to involuntarily redistribute wealth.

I argue that such "solutions" are empty of any applicability to life here in 2008. And I contend that those decrying social programs and touting the private sector as the solution don't really even believe that the solutions really lie there. I believe these are just vacuous responses to difficult questions, meant to ease the conscience of the Survival of the Fittest crowd while providing no real answers for those who, often through no fault of their own, come up short in life's fitness test.

Post Script: Charles Darwin didn't coin the phrase "survival of the fittest" as part of his evolutionary theory. It was a political theorist who formed that little gem, which seems about right. Look it up if you don't believe me.

Do We Need a Third Party?

Expressions of dissatisfaction with the federal government are common. Many believe that it has overreached its rightful boundaries and become corpulent by feeding on the American public. Individuals expressing such thoughts often see the modern political process in the US as a cause. They see politics as dominated by two political parties that no longer adequately represent the varied preferences of the American people.

The conclusion typically reached in such arguments is that increasing the number of viable parties in the political process would be a step in the right direction. If there were three or four parties, people would have a better chance of finding a candidate that adequately represents their own wants and desires for the country, and the excesses of government could finally be reigned in.

More would be better.

Nobel Laureate Milton Friedman, who is widely considered the most influential economist of the twentieth century, spent a career expressing similar dismay at the ways in which the federal government has been allowed to expand. Friedman saw the proper role of the federal government in a free society as being something that could be comfortably summarized on a cocktail napkin. The government should serve as umpire and rule-maker where necessary and look after “madmen and children.” Everything else, in Friedman's view, should be left to the care of market dynamics.

Friedman rejected as inappropriate nearly all allocation functions of government; social security, welfare and cash payments, federal subsidies and tax breaks. . . all were anathema to true freedom in Friedman’s view.

Most of the individuals demanding smaller government and more party options in the political process would likely agree with Friedman, I think.

Yet interestingly, the political process itself was something under which Friedman chaffed. Noting that all governments are inherently coercive by nature, Friedman lamented that “the use of political channels [for any purpose], while inevitable, tends to strain the social cohesion essential for a stable society.” The political process, he posited, always results in wide-spread dissatisfaction for those on the losing side of each and every vote.

So let us look at presidential politics and consider what Friedman might think about our two-party system. With our recent tendency toward very close elections, it is likley that the vote will be roughly evenly split in the 2008 presidential election. About half the country will be happy with the outcome and the other half will be dissatisfied. If the election bucks this trend and shows a wide margin of victory for one candidate, then we might expect 58 to 60 percent of the population to be on the winning side, with 40 percent or more dissatisfied.

Some argue that adding more parties to the mix would help increase overall satisfaction with the process and the popularity of the eventual president. But I (and perhaps Friedman) would argue just the opposite.

Introduce a third party into the mix, and instead of an election win requiring a majority of electoral college votes, such a win might require only a simple plurality (34 percent of the electoral college vote). That could leave roughly two thirds of the country dissatisfied with the election results. Introduce a fourth party into the equation, and our next president could be elected with 26 percent of the electoral vote, leaving three quarters of the country opposed to their new leader.

I honestly do not know how our electoral process would handle three or four or five parties. There may be rules in place that would prevent a candidate from winning with just 24 percent of electoral college votes in a four-party race.

But from just a logical perspective, is more better in this case? If the political process is coercive and leaves the losers of each exchange dissatisfied, then adding parties to the process would necessarily leave more voters on the losing side of the election. More parties means more losers.

We only have to look to other countries and their parliamentary processes to see what elections look like with three or four or five (or ten) parties in contention. It could be argued that few people win in such cases.

More is better? I’m thinking not.