I’ll agree with you that a certain degree of meritocracy is a good thing, people should be able to realize their potential, whatever their motivation is – humanism or greed or vanity, whatever.

But subjecting people to risk in order to improve them is a completely different thing. Aside from serious moral issues, this technocratic idea simply doesn’t work, for the same reason communism doesn’t work – intricacies of the human nature.

Nor do conservatives call for the “demise” (“well-deserved” or otherwise) of “the weak, corrupt and defected [sic].” They call for those who have made foolish or malicious choices in the past to make better choices in the future – that is, to be better and to do better.

I don’t understand why you are so anxious to put into my mouth words that I reject. I don’t think that I have expressed myself unclearly. If anything I have said is wrong, then you should be able to criticize it without resorting to paraphrase.

The ability to politicize and externalize risk means that every interest group has a vested interest in making sure they don’t have to take it; corporations want to know that tariffs, subsidies, or regulation will protect them and encumber their opponents. Labor wants to know that workers will be protected, etc.

And presto – “interest group liberalism” which remains the best description of what we’ve got that I’ve seen. Of course it cuts both right and left…

A.L.

Some of the most risky public policies ever devised have come from so-called “Liberal/Progressives” (misnomers?). Any political movement that overlooks the deadweight losses associated with taxation, the unproductive tendencies of bureaucracy, the harmful effects of class warfare and the disincentives that the “corrective and just” policies to level the playing field bring, and to all of the other anti-growth measures that the Left can drum up, I’d have to say that today’s liberal is decidedly not averse to risk.

This is basically a dystopia the opposite of the communist utopia where…

…nobody has one exclusive sphere of activity but each can become accomplished in any branch he wishes, society regulates the general production and thus [enables] me to do one thing today and another tomorrow, to hunt in the morning, fish in the afternoon, rear cattle in the evening, criticise after dinner, just as I [wish], without ever becoming hunter, fisherman, herdsman or critic.

Quite apart from state action, Ken Lay and the defrauded investor should also be treated differently by the community – the former with censure, the latter with sympathy and, if necessary, support. The same goes for other cases where economic failure results from irresponsibility or malfeasance, on the one hand, or from bad luck or victimization, on the other.

You talk about bearing the costs of risk-taking. Ken Lay took a risk. The investor who was fooled into throwing his money into the drain called Enron also took a risk. One person committed a moral wrong, the other did not. Yet you’d treat both the same way. What’s the use of distinguishing moral and economic failure if it doesn’t translate to a difference in policy?

Can you explain why you thought that I was conflating economic and moral failure?

Conservatives do not value risk as such – let alone “fethishize” it. On the contrary: conservatives welcome social and technological advances that reduce risk as much as anyone else does.

Yet risk remains. I.e., for all our advances, certain courses of behavior still remain more likely than others to lead to bad results. (Conceiving children outside of committed relationships, for example.)

So the issue between left and right is not: “shall there be more risk in life, or less?” It is, rather, “who shall bear the costs of risk-taking?”

The conservative answers: “those who take the risks.” The liberal answers: “the state.”

The conservative answers as he does because he wishes to encourage the development of the virtue of prudence.

The liberal answers as he does because he cannot tolerate the possibility that someone might be punished for bad luck rather than moral failure.

That is the real issue here.

Simple as that, really. It’s not that conservatives have a different attitude toward risk. It’s that rich people are in a better position to face risks.

And besides, it seems that what’s happening in the US isn’t that much different from the dictator situation either. Or maybe it’s worse. It’s like, people need to convince the Democrat higher-ups to adopt good PR practices. And the good PR practices are in turn aimed to convince the people to vote for good policies… Yeah, now we have two levels of persuasion to take care of.