Ian Welsh

When we want to change the world we’re usually reacting to a problem. Even positive visions usually come out of negatives. We want liberty because we have tyranny. We want health because we have sickness. We want prosperity because we have poverty. We want equality because some people have way more than they need and others less than need.

When we solve a problem it’s generally mediated by a principle. Very often the principle is just the problem stated slightly differently.

Problem: Some people have more than they need, others have less than they need.

Principle: Make sure no one has more than they need while anybody has less than they need.

A principle tells you, generally speaking, what you should be doing about a problem. It doesn’t tell you how to do it.

So, for the example above, post-war Welfare states generally came upon the solution:

Solution: Tax the rich heavily and put the poor on Welfare, controlled by social workers and other bureaucrats because poor people can’t be trusted to use money wisely.

If you think poor people aren’t stupid, then you have another solution, basic income + progressive taxation.

Restate the problem slightly by removing having too much as a problem, and the principles and solutions change:

Problem: some people don’t have enough.

Principle: Make it so that everyone has enough, or more than enough.

Solution: Just give everyone who has less than enough money, enough money. (Basic Income.)

Solution: If we make the rich even richer, enough will wind up flowing down to take care of everyone else. (Trickle Down Economics.)

Solution: The rich should give away most of their money over time, on good works or to organizations which do good works. (Charity.)

The difference between welfare and a basic income is instructive: one trusts those without enough money to spend it themselves, the other doesn’t. It’s mediated thru a view of why people are in poverty. Welfarism assumes poor people are somehow defective, basic income assumes they’re fine, they just don’t have enough money.

The first solution assumes having too much is bad, the second solutions all assume that some people having too much isn’t wrong, it’s that others don’t have enough

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Let’s look at another Triune, closely related, which focuses on being rich or powerful as the problem.

Problem: rich and powerful people use their power and wealth to take control of society and direct the benefits to themselves, hurting everyone else.

Principle: Keep the rich poor and the powerful weak.

There are a lot of different solutions to this and solutions are often in used together. Those that work usually only work for a while.

Solution: If they have enough money to influence politics or society, take it from them. (Specific policies like progressive taxation, estate taxes, wealth taxes, and so on.)

Solution: Don’t let the rich spend their money on politics. (Public finance laws, donation limits and so on. Doesn’t work all that well, but does have some effect.)

Solution: Don’t let the rich have private specialists in violence.

Solution: Don’t let rich people happen at all. (Proposals for maximum income and maximum wealth taxes.)

But wealth isn’t the only type of power, so something also needs to be done about people who control rich or powerful organizations. If I only have 3x as much money as median, but control a large bank, that’s all bullshit. I’m rich, I just have some limits on how I can spend that money. And this is where you come up with things like anti-trust law, limits on how large any organization can be, limits on corporate political spending, separation of church and state and so on.

Let’s move to another problem, primarily from the 18th and 19th century.

Problem: industrialization requires large numbers of people willing to work in factories but most people don’t want or need to work in factories because they can support themselves thru agriculture on common lands and factory jobs involve much more work in horrible conditions.

Principle: Large numbers of people must not be able to support themselves without working in factories.

Solution: Take away their commons rights so they must take any other job.

Note that other principles and solutions could have been tried. Perhaps:

Principle: Make factory work more desirable than agricultural commons work.

Solution: concentrate on safety and wages and don’t have 6 1/2 twelve hour shifts a week.

Pay them better and treat them better, in other words. The argument against is that it wouldn’t have been profitable, but profit is a function of political and social choices.

In fact, in post WWII America, that solution was tried, and it worked. China had to deal with this problem, and used both principles and solutions in concert.

Problems suggest principles, and principles suggest solutions, but there relationship isn’t 1:1, it’s mediated thru ideology, which is to say how the decision makers think the world is and should be.

I’m going to write a series of articles on the principles which would create a good society: the Fundamental series.

But it needs to be understood that every principle is based on a perceived problem or vision. Every principle is based on a set of assumptions about the world, an ideology, and that solutions are extensions of principles.

You don’t discard problems unless you don’t think they’re problems.

You don’t discard principles unless you disagree with their underlying ideology.

You blow thru solutions until you find some that work, and work without creating problems you can’t mitigate.

When FDR was in charge he knew what he wanted to do, but if a solution didn’t work, he’d throw it out and try something else. He wasn’t wedded to specific solutions.

There are non-negotiable means, mostly along the lines of “don’t torture or rape”, but mostly the question is “are you actually solving the problem and doing so while respecting the principle?”

This three part design is the first fundamental.