The Brilliance of the American Culture, Economy, and Political Order
What is brilliant about the structure of our government, economic order, and the culture they helped to create, is not that they have properly balanced or harnessed man's natural proclivities. It is that they have zeroed in on a mechanism to help perpetuate themselves and an order that both uses and creates this mechanism. Allow me to explain briefly.
Whatever merit there is to the common notion that people are inherently "self-interested" it is near irrelevant today for the workings of a system that relies on the "self-interested" actions of its subjects (note quickly that you will be hard-pressed to find a sensible theory of the "self" that does not rely on cooperation with other beings). There may be an inherent drive in people which one can fairly characterize as "self-interest," I will not pass on that for now, but the brilliance of our system is that it creates or intensifies the self-interest it relies on. It is like a fire which creates its own oxygen to fuel itself. I am a firm believer in the idea that man, as a conscious-being, has the tools at hand (or more properly, "in her mind," or "on her tongue") to work to construct his "nature" in the process of being. Whatever is natural to man, man has become unnatural. In any case, just to rehash, our system is a web of "checks and balances," "supplies and demands," etc., which rely on self-interested actors to drive the engine of state proper...the brilliance of our system is not that it has harnessed the mechanism of self-interest, but that it perpetuates and intensifies self-interest (it has made self-interest into an inexhaustible resource).
Of course, this also has some rather unseemly consequences. For one, our society contains many features that rely on cooperation, rather than individualized competition, to sustain themselves. A few examples: the family, community, religion, and culture...all these things are not structurally designed to harness self-interest, and the end result is that pure egoism tends to rot these institutions from the inside-out unless they are transformed or cooperation is emphasized as a virtue. Unfortunately, these institutions tend to be conservative and, hence, are not likely to adjust, and cooperation is not emphasized as a virtue in our society. Another problem is that the institutional diffusion of individual egoism and self-interest as a social ethos creates the seeds for the destruction of those very institutions. Remember, our constitution and economy is set-up with a very delicate balance of power that is meant to defend against the evils of self-interest (and use the energy self-interest creates to turn the wheels of the state). The defenses were the ingenious creation of man, they were not handed down by a deity or demanded by the necessity of pure reason. What man can construct man can also destroy, and a self-interested man will work tirelessly to promote himself even if it is at the expense of the very system that created him.
So in conclusion, self-interest as a mechanism for the operation of society is brilliant not because it harnesses man's "nature," but because it creates the conditions required for its operation and then harnesses those conditions. Under this system several problems emerge. One such problem is that our society still contains phenomena that do not work well with, or against, self-interested subjects (remember also, as I suggested earlier, personhood itself and consciousness are likely derivatives of the cooperation among humans). A second problem is that this results in a kind of "cold war" between man and his institutions where "mutual assured destruction" is the delicate balance that governs their relations. The self-interested man will seek to undermine or collapse a system that keeps him from the optimal harvest of his interests, but without this system his very existence is threatened. This is more than just in the sense of a Hobbesian "war of all against all," but, as a construct of the system, his dynamic essence is without any value if not relative to the system that needs it in order to operate...most of our pre-institutional arrangements emphasize cooperation.
Whatever merit there is to the common notion that people are inherently "self-interested" it is near irrelevant today for the workings of a system that relies on the "self-interested" actions of its subjects (note quickly that you will be hard-pressed to find a sensible theory of the "self" that does not rely on cooperation with other beings). There may be an inherent drive in people which one can fairly characterize as "self-interest," I will not pass on that for now, but the brilliance of our system is that it creates or intensifies the self-interest it relies on. It is like a fire which creates its own oxygen to fuel itself. I am a firm believer in the idea that man, as a conscious-being, has the tools at hand (or more properly, "in her mind," or "on her tongue") to work to construct his "nature" in the process of being. Whatever is natural to man, man has become unnatural. In any case, just to rehash, our system is a web of "checks and balances," "supplies and demands," etc., which rely on self-interested actors to drive the engine of state proper...the brilliance of our system is not that it has harnessed the mechanism of self-interest, but that it perpetuates and intensifies self-interest (it has made self-interest into an inexhaustible resource).
Of course, this also has some rather unseemly consequences. For one, our society contains many features that rely on cooperation, rather than individualized competition, to sustain themselves. A few examples: the family, community, religion, and culture...all these things are not structurally designed to harness self-interest, and the end result is that pure egoism tends to rot these institutions from the inside-out unless they are transformed or cooperation is emphasized as a virtue. Unfortunately, these institutions tend to be conservative and, hence, are not likely to adjust, and cooperation is not emphasized as a virtue in our society. Another problem is that the institutional diffusion of individual egoism and self-interest as a social ethos creates the seeds for the destruction of those very institutions. Remember, our constitution and economy is set-up with a very delicate balance of power that is meant to defend against the evils of self-interest (and use the energy self-interest creates to turn the wheels of the state). The defenses were the ingenious creation of man, they were not handed down by a deity or demanded by the necessity of pure reason. What man can construct man can also destroy, and a self-interested man will work tirelessly to promote himself even if it is at the expense of the very system that created him.
So in conclusion, self-interest as a mechanism for the operation of society is brilliant not because it harnesses man's "nature," but because it creates the conditions required for its operation and then harnesses those conditions. Under this system several problems emerge. One such problem is that our society still contains phenomena that do not work well with, or against, self-interested subjects (remember also, as I suggested earlier, personhood itself and consciousness are likely derivatives of the cooperation among humans). A second problem is that this results in a kind of "cold war" between man and his institutions where "mutual assured destruction" is the delicate balance that governs their relations. The self-interested man will seek to undermine or collapse a system that keeps him from the optimal harvest of his interests, but without this system his very existence is threatened. This is more than just in the sense of a Hobbesian "war of all against all," but, as a construct of the system, his dynamic essence is without any value if not relative to the system that needs it in order to operate...most of our pre-institutional arrangements emphasize cooperation.
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