Flame — HabitableZone

Flame » in reply to Understanding the Conservative economic agenda.

re: Understanding the Conservative economic agenda.

Well, you're a bit over the top, and just slightly exaggerated, but there is some truth in what you say.

But I do have to disagree with your main point, I don't think this is necessarily a problem with conservative politics, although the contradictions there are often the most obvious, for reasons I will get into later.

In truth, this is a human problem, we all have personal requirements but we must satisfy them in the context of social relations, human beings are social creatures, they do nothing on their own. Everyone is part of some kind of a team, which in turn interacts with the society as a whole. There is always a conflict between what you have to do and what you want to do, and you have to satisfy your masters and make compromises. Even the rugged individualist solo entrepreneur cannot get there on his own, he has to have employees, customers, stockholders, suppliers, partners, creditors and so on. And there's always the tax collector and the health inspector and the bank that holds the note on the building.

I'm sure we've all run into this conflict, I know I had it when I worked for private industry as an employee, and when employees worked for me as a manager. But I've also been in the same place when a student, when in academia, when working for the government, and even when serving in the military. There is always the struggle between doing your job the way your boss wants you to, the way you want to do it so it benefits you the most, and doing it right. Lucky is the man who can do all three, and even then, his master, peers and employees may not necessarily agree.

Conservative businessmen are not intrinsically any worse in this regard than anyone else. The reason they get so much bad press is that some of them somehow seem to have convinced themselves that the very nature of what they do is naturally, intrinsically, virtuous. "I'm doing the right thing, therefore HOW I do it is justified." It's also the song of the revolutionary, the robber baron, and the King by divine right, and sometimes even of the President of the Nation.

When ideology steps into the picture, when it becomes a matter of principle, all moral barriers can be side-stepped; conservative politics denies the supremacy of social relations and delegates them to mere economic transactions, and for the conservative, these transactions are by definition strictly voluntary. As long as you don't break the law, or lie, anything goes.

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