It was such a simple idea, I don’t know why I feel that it was revelatory for me. Furthermore, I feel as though I must have read it somewhere, but I can’t remember where. It just seems too obvious, and yet it took me several posts to really grasp it. Anyway, I’m going to restate it here, more clearly I hope.

Government is a system for unequally dividing the wealth created by civilization and for creating more wealth from the unequal abilities and efforts of the citizens than they would be able to create on their own.

Almost every aspect of human behavior, religion, education, science, classes, racism and prejudice, and morality gets involved in justifying or explaining this reality. And if you want to extend the definition of wealth created by civilization beyond material things to rights and freedoms, the reality still holds. When you look at the two poles, capitalism and communism, you see mirror images of each other. Capitalism, at least as conceived by modern, western, liberal democracies, maintains that the wealth created by civilization belongs mostly to the individuals who are supposed to have created that wealth through their own efforts. The reality, which is that any large fortune was obviously dependent on the structures created by the civilization, from the roads to the social, military and government structures, this reality is camouflaged by the myth of the individual “earning” their fortune. I’m less familiar with communist ideology, but clearly the idea that people would work as hard and productively for the collective as they would for their own self interest is as delusional as the idea that some massive fortune is the result of one person’s extraordinary effort and ability. Both systems immediately develop elaborate fictions, the one to justify the fortunes captured by the capitalist and the other to explain the poverty created by ignoring the force of self-interest.

But in truth they are both answers to the same problem, how to unequally divide the wealth created by unequal abilities working together. The problem is that people working together are enormously more productive than people working individually, hence civilization. But also, individuals have greatly varying abilities. You want the productivity of combined effort and at the same time you want the motivation of self interest and reward for individual effort. The question is how to manage this contradiction.

So far capitalism’s answer is winning hands down, but now the Chinese who are, technically or at least ideologically communist, are gaining very quickly. Of course in practice neither western capitalism nor Chinese communism bears much resemblance to their cherished ideologies, and this is exactly my point. We should abandon the ideology and look to pragmatism and morality. Within the constraints of our morality, what is the most effective system for increasing wealth and dividing the excess? It has always been both a moral and a practical question which is why, i suspect, the ideologies are held to with such religious fervor.

And now climate change adds a huge new factor which is also both practical and moral.