Three Key Concepts to a Better Life
- Positive sum outcomes occur in nearly all human actions.
- Cooperation is the mode of modern commerce.
- The American model of government is an improvement over all others.
Every day of my life I have had to deal with people who fail to understand these three fundamental principles of reality.
Every child starts out saying ‘mine’ and adults have to teach sharing because the world doesn’t work for anyone if there is no sharing. Multiple children can share a single toy but when they don’t share only one is happy and that is not real happiness; it is power over others.
Most games are zero sum. Only one winner. But in the real world, with technology and commerce, there are multiple winners. When three people make bread there is more than three times as much as when one person makes bread. Specialization allows for non-zero (positive) sum output. So does technology. The 90 car freight train can pull thousands of tons more of anything per worker than a single tractor trailer truck.
Many young people rant against ‘capitalism.’ All societies have capital; the idea that some are based on capital that is owned by the state is an historical error of language and politics. Socialism has been tried in the biggest country, the country with the largest population, an island country, a country with the greatest resources and every other element and always fails. The word should be commerce not capitalism. Every society has it, and some are better run than others.
All societies have commerce. The ownership of capital is seldom any different among them. The ones that promote commerce the most are the ones with the greatest wealth and the greatest ethnic and social diversity, like the U.S. and Israel.
Commerce thrives with cooperation, not competition. In any business, including some with a million employees, the employees work together, the businesses work in cooperation with their suppliers, landlords, banks, neighbors and broader communities. Commerce is 99% cooperative and only competitive in 1% of all transactions. That is reality.
America has generated thousands of homeless on the streets since 1978 and the number of billionaires has increased from a dozen to 750 in the same period. There is no possible connection. One billionaire could not be created with all (by confiscating) the lifetime production of a hundred thousand homeless people living on the street.
Two giants, Standard Oil and AT&T, were broken up by the government and two decades later they were back to the original voluntarily, because it was so much more efficient.
The American model of government is seldom appreciated. But it is the longest stable government on the planet. While America created the Japanese government and the UN, the model its creators used was the English parliament with the parliament selecting the government. The UN doesn’t work.
In the American model there is a local plebiscite for the executive office and two legislative bodies. The high court is chosen by a combination of both. In Israel the judiciary selects itself and has failed to maintain its popular survival.
The reason for the great success of the American form of government has been its weakness: with power divided against itself and among the states. Liberty and individual freedom has been able to thrive with a weaker and more inefficient government. Few people in the world appreciate this, especially immigrants who hope for a good president, not for a weaker government. The U.S. survived for four years with no president (Biden).
Yet these three aspects of reality mean nothing to the wokie leftist ranting about the evils of America and capitalism.