Paradigms of Social Justice and Obligation

VI. Public vs. private good (& bad)

    A simple political process accounts for much bad government. The very nature of laws and public programs is to replace a plurality of individual choices and priorities with a monolithic "public" decision. The effects of such dictates are 1) to favor particular industries or groups - diminishing competitive progress 2) to divert resources from individual consumption - their free-market distribution 3) to treat everyone as the worst social elements may need to be treated. [Friedman] Diversity and freedom inevitably suffer.

    Government also dictates a sort of private good for public harm, or at the expense of the public. The interest individuals have in a government policy may be expressed by their advocacy, dollars, or votes. Whichever, the relatively few benefactors of "special interest" policy have much greater interest in their policy than does the rest of society. This also applies to "public bads" such as pollution, food contamination, or despoliation of public reserves; the harm is spread thinly amongst the public while a few gain tremendous advantage. The individuals who take advantage weigh the small personal harm they have shared with everyone against the large benefit mostly to themselves.

    The submersion of individual identity within the group (here, "the Public") causes inestimable suffering. In the mediocritization of public good, lost potential and loss of initiative, creativity, and individual achievement are inevitable. Public education, for example... Individual goals and hopes are thwarted, producing apathy, anxiety, and lost self- esteem. A kind of herd instinct has grown from tribal, to community, regional, national, and now global proportions as everyone seeks desperately to be the same. "Group-mindedness" finds expression in behavioral strategies which use conformity, hierarchy, networking, and xenophobia. Such strategies are inappropriate, and uncritically arrived at, when for example, belonging to the group is more important than the self-destructiveness such belonging might engender. All too frequently orders within a hierarchy are followed regardless of what the individual might feel is right.