I wrote before about the way unspoken assumptions about the purpose of government make their way into political debate. But ther eis an even more basic assumption which often colors debates about government even more, yet is very rarely explicitly mentioned. That is the way our view of other people influences our political views.

What we think of others lies at the heart of our political philosophy. Without certain views of people, many political philosophies would be impossible. For example, many theories of representative government rest upon the presumption of a rational electorate¹. Or, for a more personal example, my own federalist beliefs rest upon the belief that people are rational enough that superior political ideas will eventually spread from those states which originated them to the rest.

However, while these assumptions about human nature are part of every political philosophy, very rarely are they explicitly stated². Then again, the reason is easy to see. If someone were to tell you that we needed a minimum wage law because you were too stupid to know when you were being paid too little, would you embrace their ideas?³ While some academics may admit the negative presumptions about the masses inherent in their theories, they tend to hide the truth by using academic jargon rather than saying "people are too ignorant to govern themselves".

And that does seem to be the prevalent justification for most theories of government, the assumption of ignorance. In the past, the assumption of malice was a more common excuse for interventionist government, but that seems to have lost popularity is our nonjudgmental age. We still have a tendency to ascribe evil motives to corporations and a few other bogeymen, but in general we prefer to see people as ignorant or irrational than evil.

Of course, the shift from evil to stupid has changed political philosophy. Both support an interventionist, authoritarian state, but there is one significant difference. When we view man as evil, we can still build a state, even if there is no one good. All we need is a state powerful enough to keep us form fulfilling our sinister desires. However, when we assume stupidity that no longer works. With only stupid individuals to steer the ship of state, we are unable to form a functional government. So, along with the appearance of the doctrine of mass stupidity, we saw the emergence of another theory, that of a clever elite.

It was a necessary development, as with only irrational or stupid individuals we could not form a state which would work, but ti is definitely another reason we rarely hear a political theorist honestly state his assumptions. If it was going to be hard selling "you need minimum wage laws because you are too stupid", how much harder would it be to add "but I'm not"? The implicit arrogance makes it almost impossible to honestly state the thinking behind most modern political theories. When the world is divided into three groups, the vast ignorant majority, a few sinister exploiters, and the noble, brilliant leaders, very few people are going to gladly accept it. Well, the few who think they are in the final category will, but no one else.

It is the brilliance of modern theorists of the left that they have managed to convince so many that they fall into the small intellectual elite. The fact that the Democrats draw around 50% of the votes in any national election mean that half of all those voting think "the majority" is too stupid to run things themselves, yet place themselves in the category of the elite who know better. It is one fot he few places I know where 50% can still be a tiny minority, while the other 50% constitutes a huge majority.

And make no mistake, this arrogance is at the root of every modern Democrat policy. But as some may think I am being partisan, let us look at just a few to see how they fit into this arrogant view of our fellow citizens.

Social security is the perfect example. The justification is that "people" won't prepare for their retirement unless forced to do so. However, as people continue to recite this line almost all Americans who can afford to do so have some supplemental retirement policy, and those who cannot afford it often cannot afford it because social security is stealing almost 20% of their salary⁴. That means that almost all of those arguing for social security are saying "Of course I am preparing for retirement, but most people don't have my foresight."

Gun control is another great example of arrogance, as I wrote before. If asked, those who favor gun control would admit they are unlikely to shoot people on simple suspicion, or go on a shooting spree when frightened, but they will argue that there are "others" who would. In their mind, most people are ignorant, perhaps racist, yahoos who would turn the streets into the "wild west". They know they would not, but they see themselves as better than the rest.

Minimum wage offers an example of both categories who fall outside of the "elite". According to theory of minimum wage, employees are too stupid to leave a job which is underpaying them, or else employers are all evil enough that they would conspire to keep all wages too low. Of course those making these arguments will tell anyone who asks that they conduct business ethically, and that they would not stay at a job which underpaid them, but again, they are not in the evil or stupid groups, those are for everyone else.

Now, I am sure someone at this point is going to ask "So you think everyone is rational and good? That everyone prepares for retirement or gets the best salary? That no one would go wild with their gun?" But that is not my claim. I will freely admit there are people who are both ignorant and irrational, where I differ with those holding more liberal views is that I do not believe they represent the majority. They may exist, but they are far from numerous. As it is the purpose of the government to conform to the needs of the majority, not to the special requirements of a small minority⁵, unless one assumes these incompetents are the majority, there is really no justification for the level of state involvement we see today.

So, having said all that, what would be the alternative? What would a state look like that assumed its members were competent adults whose motives were generally honorable?

The answer is obvious. It would look like what we once had. The original state envisioned by the constitution, a confederation of sovereign states, answerable to their citizens, with a state limited in scope to those essential functions. If we assume that people can handle their own affairs, we need very little from the state, and, what we do need, should be provided on as local a level as possible.

But, as it has gone out of fashion to see man as rational, with all of our popular media, acadmeics and others agreeing that man is an irrational, senseless being, I have little hope of seeing a state founded on the belief in man's innate competence.

----------------------------------------

1. Von Mises actually makes an argument for representative government independent of assumptions about rationality, but he seems the exception, rather than the rule.

2. For all his shortcomings, Rousseau is remarkably forthright in stating his case. He, along with Rand, is one of the very few political theorists who state clearly their views of human nature.

3. Strangely enough, the "everyone is a racist" theory of the extreme multiculturalist movement is explicitly stated and embraced by those who it calls racists. However, as it has not spread very well outside of academia, it may be that the peculiar environment of the university allows an otherwise unpopular theory to thrive.

4. I know that supposedly half is paid by the employee and half by the employer, but that is just subterfuge to hide the true cost. the employer knows very well what the total cost will be and figures out how much he will have to contribute before agreeing on a salary. Had he not been compelled to pay that additional amount it would have been available to pay as salary. In other words, employees pay all of it, even if it does not say so on the pay stub.

5. Some will surely argue that as long as there is one irrational gun owner we should have gun control, but that is just absurd. If we write the law to conform to the absolute lowest common denominator, then none of us will be allowed to leave the house or feed ourselves.

----------------------------------------

POSTSCRIPT

This is hardly the first time I have addressed this issue. Specific aspects of this topic were the subject of the following essays:

The Essence of Liberalism
Arrogance and Gun Control
A Very Simple Truth
Private Versus Public Racism
The Limits of Technocracy
Dismissing Conspiracy Theories
Our View of Our Fellow Citizens
Hillarious!
Those Other People
Seeing People as Stupid
The Virtue of Humility
Our New Paranoia

Some of these deal with the topic in only a tangential way, but all, in some way, rest on the idea that our assumptions about others determine or political and social philosophies.