“don’t tell me what you value, show me your budget”
this post suffered from draft dodging, so it’s a bit old, but i wanted to finish and post it anyway:
i’ve been engaging in an interesting little political exercise over the past couple of days.
firstly, as a backdrop, i should tell you that david and i are conducting what we call “liberty class” as a part of my unofficial self-administered phD project. we have both become interested in the revival of interest in libertarian thought that seems to be occurring with increasing regularity among the generation that is now coming of professional age, perhaps most prominently in the business philosophy of john mackey, CEO of whole foods, but first really registering on my radar through the journalistic commentary of jonathan rauch.
because of jonathan rauch, actually, i first subscribed to reason magazine a few years ago (fwiw, rauch was very recently interviewed by reason on, in his own words “my philosophy of everything,” and the interview can be found here), and because i talked about articles and ideas from the magazine somewhat often, david picked up the subscription when i left the country for a while, and it became the first shared text for what would evolve into our liberty class.
somewhere in those same past few years, david took a few crosscountry drives and listened to atlas shrugged on tape in the car. i listened to book one (of three) before we took it back to the library, and agreed to read the whole thing eventually so that we could talk about it more, a committment which i finally honored just last week, and about which i intend to write a paper soon. in the meantime, david listened to another book on tape – Libertarianism: A Primer, which is a new book by one of the head honchos at the cato institute that was written to take advantage of the aforementioned revival in interest amongst the new generation. david also started doing things like reading john stuart mill for fun.
so class is in session, eh?
anyway, anyway, anyway, the political exercise in which i have been engaging over the last few days is listening to Libertarianism: A Primer for the liberty class while also watching the youtube/cnn debate that was held last monday night for the current democratic presidential candidates.
commentary on the format of the debate aside (which is a big aside… internet media coverage of this election is going to be a fascinating thing), this has been an interesting experience. i haven’t put much time into thinking about the election yet, and i think that is partly because i don’t really know how my shifting politics will impact my behavior in the upcoming months, and i have been postponing thinking about it all that much.
as a longtime (as longtime as one can be at 28) bleeding heart liberal and proud of it, it’s hard to contemplate association with a political philosophy that many people i respect see as tantamount to treason, or at least as selling out or succumbing to a nice brainwash. it’s hard for a lot of reasons that will take a long time to fully explore, but one of the top reasons has to do with money, and it is money that inspired me to write this post.
i am coming to believe, you see, that the liberal camp does quite a bit of damage by going to such lengths to distance itself from the pursuit of wealth. i agree that there are many important things in life that money cannot buy, and fixating on money as the sole pathway to happiness is silly, but neither of those beliefs imply that money itself is evil, and the idea that caring about profit requires not caring about people is dangerous in its ability to disarm us of the very tools most crucial to our defense.
money is a tool, and like any tool it is wielded most powerfully by those who are not afraid to grasp it with purpose. we could make a statement about the potential danger of sharp blades by refusing to learn how to hold a sword properly and flailing around wildly whenever anyone hands us one as a show of studied ignorance, but we are much more likely to lose fingers that way than if we allow ourselves to grip the handle firmly and learn to gauge the weight and edge for ourselves. perhaps more tragically, however, if we don’t take the time to learn such control, we place ourselves at the mercy of other’s protection in times of danger, and we open ourselves up to being fleeced in the process.
i think this happens a lot with people, myself included, who sometimes wear poor money management as a sort of badge of pride. “oh, i just don’t want to bother worrying about such things” is the ultimate statement of privilege, and we can’t really complain about the concentration of wealth in the hands of conservatives as long as we ourselves refuse to put effort towards the accumulation of our own. if we honestly don’t want to play the money game, that’s fine. i’m going to burning man this month (which operates on a gift economy), and i am quite happy to support models of community where something other than money is the focus of interaction. at the same time, however, i think that money is not an idea that should be tossed aside simply because it is possible (or even probable) for people to use it irresponsibly, and i don’t think that it is fair for us to shame people for their pursuit of wealth and then turn around and tell them that we think they should spend it on things they don’t really value.
bottom line: if we think money can do some good, let’s shut up and work on getting our own; if we really don’t think money is the answer, let’s stop asking for people to give it to us.
anyway, this is turning into quite the rant, and i know i need to take the time to articulate myself more clearly and succinctly. i know, for instance, that there are many liberals who are quite happy to manage their money and do so with aplomb, particularly among the rising tide of my own generation (which is indeed why the increased interest in libertarianism is so intriguing). i also know that this is a rather unintuitive position for me to be honing during a time of voluntary unemployment and self-imposed poverty, and to that argument i can only offer my word that reconciling that conflict is indeed the focus of my current energies, and i’m doing it the best way i see how. so perhaps irate commenters will provide me with the motivation to clarify my positions as i go. :)
in the meantime, i exercise my license to blather about ideas in progress, and i now turn to the actual source of inspiration for this post, which was a comment joe biden makes in the following clip about taxes:
the comment, as i’m sure the title of this post has already revealed, is his father’s quote: “don’t tell me what you value, show me your budget” which is really basically just the flipside of “put your money where your mouth is.”
i started thinking about all of this because my kneejerk reaction to that quote was a kind of snorting noise, driven by an emotional upswell on the order of: “as if Money is the most meaningful reflection of my values!!”, to which the part of me that was also listening to libertarianism: a primer, promptly rebutted: “hold up, who said anything about most. what does your budget reflect if not your values? why does the idea that you should be open about money make you defensive?”
and that really got me started. why do i relinquish the decisions about where my money goes to the goverment anyway?! why don’t i see it as my responsibility to ensure that i am supporting my values in whatever ways i can?! how do i get off telling people that they don’t know how to handle their wealth when i don’t even want to look at how much i spend on candy or beer because i might not like what i see?!
and the clincher revealing the true extent of my current political shift:
what makes me think that supporting my values is anyone’s job but my own?
basically, if i choose to spend money but i’m not certain that my budget reflects my values, how can i honestly say that i know what my values are? wearing a blindfold when we open our pocketbooks because we associate money with depravity and we’d rather be above it is ridiculous and irresponsible, and i just need to grow the hell up.
this led me to two immediate conclusions:
1) the complexity and obscurity of the national budget is a disgrace
2) i should follow senator biden’s advice
so herein begins a monthly experiment in disclosure:
i need to figure out how to wrap in credit card expenses, which are unfortunately rising this month due to aforementioned unemployment. and i’ll try to break down “other” a bit more.
but it’s a start, eh?
we can talk about whether this means i’m turning against taxes later. :)
July 31st, 2007 at 4:47 pm
As you know too well, I’m one who is suspicious (to put it mildly) of libertarian philosophy.
Here’s just one place my flags went up. “if we think money can do some good, let’s shut up and work on getting our own; if we really don’t think money is the answer, let’s stop asking for people to give it to us”
It perpetuates the notion that the only people who don’t have money are those who aren’t working for it and that any one is a lazy, whiny, irresponsible baby who thinks that government’s job is the protection and building of the commonwealth rather than private wealth.
July 31st, 2007 at 10:07 pm
well, i should definitely clarify that mostly? for this post at least? i am not talking about people who don’t have money. i am talking about people who have money but don’t put energy into thinking about managing it.
as for the government’s job, yeah… this is the tricky part. i don’t think “the commonwealth” is something that can be designed. the government’s job is to keep people from standing in other people’s way. after that, it’s up to us. that is the fundamental brain shift. and i know it sounds, well… dismissive, or intolerant, or arrogant, or blind.
but it’s not. it comes from a place of deep respect. and with a full awareness of the difficulty. i know you disagree, but as i said when you were here, this is only the beginning of me figuring out how to talk about it, so on we go.
July 31st, 2007 at 10:15 pm
And, the framing of values as belonging solely (like everything else) to the private sphere is another bone I have to pick with libertarianism. Of course, we each have our own values. But our private individual values are not the basis of our public policy. What counts when we are creating the institutions and workings of our government are the values we share. Libertarians might say they are concerned with our shared values of liberty and certainly private property. In other words, our shared values of leave me the hell alone and keep your hands off my stash. I know I am prone to hyperbole in these matters but even stated more calmly I submit, that these are not sufficient values for the design of humane government and that most people actually share other highly pertinent values such as the well-being of other people and the planet. Most people value very highly every opportunity to cooperate for the well-being of other people and the planet. Few people value the experience of living in the dog-eat-dog world that values only private wealth and power. Guess which few?
Of course, I am picking out the things that I want to argue with. I agree with very much of what you are saying and I particularly liked this:
“money is a tool, and like any tool it is wielded most powerfully by those who are not afraid to grasp it with purpose. . . . if we don’t take the time to learn such control, we place ourselves at the mercy of other’s protection in times of danger, and we open ourselves up to being fleeced in the process.”
July 31st, 2007 at 10:29 pm
Okay. Just one more and I promise I’m done for awhile.
Who says the job of government is to keep people from standing in other people’s way? In a libertarian worldview, the job of government is precisely and solely to stand in the way of those who would act to protect people and the planet from private profiteering. That’s what Major General Smedley was talking about when he said that his career was a soldier was all about making the world safe for profiteering. He killed people in the name of freedom so that private industry could exploit the land that native peoples relied upon for their very lives. Speaking for myself, I want a government that will stand in the way of those who would lock the most vulnerable members of society into sweatshops and “free trade zones” and claim that labor protection laws are an infringement of their liberty. I want my government to stand in the way of those who claim to own the water and therefore have the right to profit from my thirst. I want my government to stand in the way of those who would destroy the wetlands, clear cut the forests, level the mountains, drill in the Arctic and poison the soil, the air, and the water for nothing other than their own private gain. I could go on but I know you get the picture.
August 1st, 2007 at 9:25 pm
i don’t think any libertarian would argue that we don’t have shared human values such as the well-being of other people and the planet. they would just wonder why we need (or even why we would Want) to entrust the realization of those values to something as inefficient, distant from our everyday behavior, and entwined with power and politics as the national government. libertarians love to cooperate and believe it to be a natural element of human interaction. but cooperation and delegation are different matters.
and i know this has been said so many times that it feels like a kneejerk copout, but it remains true that the only way that profiteers can succeed is if we buy goods that are produced under standards that we profess to abhor. the problem with the current arrangement is not that government is not regulating enough, it is that we think it’s their job to regulate rather than our job to pay attention. i don’t want my government to stand in the way of exploitation. i want to do it myself. i am drawn to libertarianism not because it says that we shouldn’t work to realize our shared values, but because it says that indeed, we are the only ones who can.
values do not belong solely to the private sphere, but morally grounded collective action does not belong solely to the public sphere either, and to believe otherwise strikes me as tragic. the government is not synonymous with collective action. the government is carefully granted coercion, and it should only be entrusted with powers that we absolutely cannot wield on our own. trade and environmental standards do not qualify. you can say that companies are pillaging right now all you want, and you’re right. but the government right now is far from what any libertarian would endorse, so that’s not fair. acting in our own best interest is not at all synonymous with greed or profiteering, and that’s where my mouth is when i want to put my money to match.
August 2nd, 2007 at 6:38 am
One question is this. When we are cooperatively standing in the way of exploitation and the police are called, whose side are they going to be on?
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=07/08/01/1435246
August 2nd, 2007 at 10:34 am
I generally feel pretty good about a radical libertarian. However, I object a little to the notion that socialists or communists are doing damage.
There are many ways to skin a cat. You provide some good argument that money can be wielded. Fine. Good. Go for it. But that doesn’t necessarily mean that people who distance themselves from wealth-wielding are doing damage. What evidence do you have for that?
We, as a culture, have a hard time separating in our heads “I’m not going to do that” from “No one should do that”.
August 3rd, 2007 at 10:37 am
Are you familiar with Bernard Litaer and his work on complimentary currency models?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernard_Lietaer
November 12th, 2007 at 9:41 pm
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