Episode #047 - Transcript

Thank you for wanting to know more today than you did yesterday, and I hope you love the show.

So, our ship crashed. We’re on an island with no hope of rescue. We’ve decided that having a government is going to be more beneficial than not having a government. And we’ve decided that the structure of this government is going to be Rousseau’s favorite kind, the elective aristocracy. Now what? Well, to answer that question, I want to ask you a question. When was the last time you went to Ikea? Yes, Ikea, the furniture store, you heard me right. I’m serious. When was the last time you waddled through that giant, Swedish maze that they make you go through? You feel like a rat inside of a maze when, instead of looking for cheese at the end, you’re looking for like a cheap coffee table or some piece of furniture. When was the last time you walked through their giant store and you sat down at all the preconstructed living rooms and dining rooms, and you felt if only for a moment like you were a different person, like you had a different life, one where you felt alive again?

The reason I’m asking this is because whenever you buy one of these cheap coffee tables from Ikea, they come with two things in the package: one, all the parts you need to build the thing, and two, the instructions on how to put it all together. We’ve all seen these instructions before. There’s no words on the instructions. Apparently at Ikea headquarters they didn’t want to make a Japanese version of the instructions and an English version and a Spanish version. So they all came together, and they tried to harness a universal language that spreads across all of humanity to teach you how to put together your furniture. And apparently it involves a lot of arrows and happy faces.

Look, the point is, we’ve talked about the different parts of government, right? The coffee table comes with wood, screws, an Allen wrench—all the things you need to build it. We’ve talked about how the different parts of government are assembled: the coffee table comes with a universal picture-instruction manual. But nothing in the coffee table package tells you what the function of your coffee table should be. Nobody at Ikea, nobody in their blue vest is going to come up to you and tell you what to do with your coffee table once you’ve assembled all the parts at home. And if the typical function of a coffee table is to, I mean, hold coasters and novelty books that nobody’s going to read, what is the function of our island government? What the heck do we want this thing to do for us? That’s what I’m asking you.

Thomas Hobbes said it was to maintain order. John Locke said it was to protect our natural rights of life, liberty, and property. And Rousseau said it was to serve the general will of the people. Now, at first glance it may seem pretty obvious what Rousseau’s talking about here. “Oh, the general will. That just means the government’s job is to do whatever we want the government to do, right?” Well, it’s not that simple. And really, what did you expect from philosophy at this point, especially when it comes down to so many moving parts? I mean, think about it. It’s hard enough to try to take into account the thoughts of every single citizen equally. But then, from there to try to distill it down into one thing that the government can act upon? I mean, come on. That’s just asking for every philosopher that lives after you to criticize you. And funny enough, that’s exactly what happened to Rousseau.

This concept of what the general will is and how to adequately arrive at it—it’s one of the most commented-on things in the history of political philosophy. And there’s far from a clear answer when it comes to knowing exactly what Rousseau was talking about when he wrote about it. In fact, at times it can even be downright confusing. But by looking at all the different arguments and by understanding what makes it confusing, we can all arrive at a solid understanding of what the general will is—albeit an imperfect understanding, but a better understanding than most people, and definitely a better understanding than somebody who claims to know exactly what Rousseau was talking about in the 1700s.

So, to get started, there’s not just one thing that’s unclear about Rousseau’s concept of the general will. Now, as I said before, this is one of the most commented-on things that you could possibly find from Rousseau. And once all the commentators say their peace, if you wanted to identify one of the big areas of confusion about defining the general will, it wouldn’t be a bad place to start to ask this question. If what we’re trying to do is take the individual wills of all the individual citizens and arrive at the common ground between them all, which one of their wills should we even be looking at? Rousseau talks about it at length. I mean, think about it. People are complicated. As humans, we don’t just identify ourself as an individual and then ignore everything outside of that. People oftentimes have multiple causes that are very important to them, causes that might influence what they think they want from government.

Let’s think about it in terms of our island that we’re on, right? Aside from everything else, every person on this island identifies themselves as a person, an individual with needs and wants and all that good stuff. This personal will, as we’ll call it—if these people were naïve enough to allow it to—this personal will that they have could shade what they think they want from their government.

For example, any one person on our island could say, “Okay, you know what I want from my government? My government would make sure that I never have to do anything. I want there to be zero taxes. I want to never have to contribute to society in any meaningful way. I want my government to ensure that I never have to work. I want my government to make sure that I am constantly entertained for every second of my life. I want—you know what? I want the government to assign me 12 people. We’ll call them my disciples. And they’ll follow me around. And they’ll do everything for me. They’ll fan me with palm leaves. They’ll massage my feet. They’ll feed me. They’ll build a better shelter for me when I need it. They’ll collect coconuts for me. They’ll do whatever I want them to do. And that’s what I want from my government.”

Well, this is an extreme case, but I think you get the point. We can all imagine how someone thinking in terms of only themselves could be led to expect things of their government that don’t necessarily correspond with the common good. I mean, what an example of something that would be a massive expenditure of government resources on something that really would only benefit that one person. And it would possibly hurt other people.

Now, this is important because the second will that Rousseau thinks we can think on behalf of—the second way that someone can identify themselves that would affect what they expect from their government—is by identifying themselves as one part of the whole society, one citizen that wants the government to do what’s best for the collective body of citizens, one citizen that sets aside their own personal, selfish desires so that instead there could be a set of laws that allow for all the different parts of this whole to have an equal amount of freedom. Now, if this was an ideal world, this is how everybody would think. But Rousseau says to expect people to actually think that way is a complete waste of time. Nobody’s going to be wise enough to always realize that this is the best way to think about your relationship to the state.

And one thing we got to be careful of is that in the same way that people can identify their will with that of everybody in a society, they can also attach themselves to other groups as well. Rousseau talks a lot about this. This is a huge thing to be worried about when we’re forming a society. For example, they could become a single-issue voter. They can champion the cause of anti-gay marriage. They can champion the cause of food stamps for the poor. They can attach themselves to a particular company that they work for or even a rival state, for that matter.

The point is, with all these different potential wills hanging in the balance, it becomes very difficult for individual citizens to come together as single pieces of an assembly and arrive at a set of laws that treat everybody equally. In other words, it’s tough for us as admittedly flawed human beings with biases and agendas to arrive at a set of laws that actually reflect the general will. This is something that’s extremely important for us to understand right now. The set of laws that we agree upon on the island are a reflection of the general will of the people. It’s not hard to imagine on our island how differing values and priorities between people might eventually lead to laws that unfairly restrict one person or one group of people. And this is a problem to Rousseau.

You know, he says that in order for it to be truly considered the general will, it must come from all and apply to all. But this is much easier said than done. Even if we arrive at a place where no one group is being unfairly scrutinized, this problem can go both ways. Like, we have to create a set of laws that not only don’t unfairly scrutinize people but also don’t unfairly benefit one group of people over another, which would be easy in the infant stages of a society like our island government.

But you can imagine how much more difficult that becomes the more layers that you add to this society, the more complex and diverse this society gets. Like, as we talked about a couple episodes ago, just as an example, Rousseau thinks that even something as simple as private property is impossible to make equal laws about. Because as long as one of the things we want our government to do is to protect our private property, that law can never be equal because it’s always going to unequally benefit people that have more property.

Much of the confusion between future commentators when they’re talking about Rousseau, it’s centered around the question of, well, how do we arrive at what Rousseau calls the general will? How do we get there? And usually, they think about it in one of two ways. These two ways have become known to history as—should we think of it as the democratic general will or the transcendental general will? And let me explain what they mean by both.

So, on one hand, the general will could be what results from when all the citizens come together in some sort of assembly. You know, we all congregate on our island. We argue. We talk about priorities. We talk about values. And we come to some sort of agreement about what we want that it’s the government’s job to execute. This is known as the democratic general will.

Now, on the other hand, the general will could be something that’s a little bit more abstract, right? I mean, exterior to what any one person actually wants from the government, you could make an argument that there is some general will out there that is transcendent of anything that we could ever arrive at in an assembly as citizens collectively coming together. For example, the citizens of a state could all come together and be talking about some sort of new fuel tax. They could all decide that they don’t want to pay that new 25 cents for every gallon of gas that they buy. But the citizens paying that tax of 25 cents per gallon ultimately might be better off for the common good. Is that what the general will is?

One other thing that’s confusing about this interpretation of the general will is, whose job is it to determine what the general will is? Who decides what’s best for the common good? If in fact you think that the general will is not democratically arrived at through an assembly of people and that there’s actually some transcendent thing, who’s the guy or gal that determines what that thing is? Because it’s not always clear who that person is. And we’ve tried a lot of different things throughout history. Is it the strongest person who should decide? Is it the government itself that decides? Is it a group of culturally elite people or rich people? Is it famous celebrities that decide?

Well, a lot of what makes this debate confusing is still up in the air. And we’re not going to get to the bottom of it in this episode. But most commentators agree on one thing, that with the correct restrictions in place and operating within the correct conditions, it stands to reason that citizens will be able to come together, discuss priorities, and arrive at a set of laws that reflect the general will. Again—this is important—the laws are a reflection of the general will. When we’re on our island, the laws that we put in place are a representation of what we all collectively want from our government. And in that way, we can have a working knowledge of the general will by thinking of it as a consensus among the people—us—about what we should do when it comes to our political, economic, and social systems.

So, now that we know what it does, what is the government? The government is just an entity or a company that we’re commissioning to carry out this general will—the consensus among the people about what we should do when it comes to our political, economic, and social systems. Really try to think about it in that way, because it’s really easy for us born into this world to think about the government as, like, this secretive, powerful entity that’s kind of like our parents in a way, you know, this faceless enforcer that we really have no right to question. It’s our job to just fall in line with whatever rules it gives us or else.

But just for a second—let’s do a thought experiment—think about the government as, like, a company that we’re paying to do something for us. Just imagine that in the same way you pay Dairy Queen to make you delicious ice cream, in the same way that you pay Home Depot to give you home improvement supplies, you pay the government to enact the general will. The reason this is an important way to think about things is because, just how Dairy Queen has to compete with places like Burger King and McDonald’s and Wendy’s, the government has to compete with people too. Not internally. In fact, that may be the biggest criticism of government is that there isn’t another government down the street that we can go to if we don’t like how this one’s doing things.

But what I mean is, we exist in a world where every country is made up of a giant population of people that have basically commissioned a company to carry out their general will. Spain has a company carrying out their general will. England has a company carrying out theirs. Iran, Iraq, Russia, China, Zimbabwe, the United States—we all have a company. And sometimes the general will of these countries—these tasks that these companies are commissioned to carry out on our behalf—sometimes they don’t correspond with each other. Sometimes the consensus of the people of France, when it comes to their political, economic, and social systems, doesn’t mesh very well with what another country wants. Sometimes it creates tension. Sometimes difficult decisions need to be made. That’s the world that we live in.

In fact, just think about something for a second. Completely setting aside how difficult of a task it is to arrive at what the general will of a given society even is, and at that point understanding that you’re looking at a moving target really—I mean, the general will of a society is constantly changing—even if the government knew exactly what the general will was, they would still have to agree upon a plan on how to get there, right? For example, if part of the general will is to be as peaceful a nation as we can possibly be, there are many different ways that we can arrive at that exact same destination. You could create a climate of peace in the world because you’re bigger and stronger than everybody, and nobody wants to mess with you. That’s a very peaceful place to be. Alternatively, you could be just as peaceful if you just agree with anything that any country tries to do to you.

This is just one example, but you can see that defining the general will is only the first step in this concoction that we’re making. Once you get there, you have to agree upon what the path is to get there. But even that’s not the end of it. Because even if you could agree upon which path to take to get there, there are still dozens if not hundreds of options of exactly how you’re going to execute that path.

I’d compare it to taking a road trip, right? Imagine everybody in the United States is in a giant pickup truck, and the President’s in the driver’s seat. Even if they knew exactly on the map where we wanted to go—let’s say everyone in the country wants to go to Pittsburg; the general will is that we all go to Pittsburg—all the people in the front seat still have to argue with everyone about which road we’re going to take to get there. One guy says to take the interstate. Another guy says to take the surface streets. One guy says he knows a shortcut. Another guy says that’s a dumb shortcut; it goes through the mountains, and it’s really dangerous. Why would we ever do that?

Let’s say that we all decide that we’re going to take the interstate to Pittsburg. We still have a lot of decisions to make. We still have to decide what sort of travel schedule we’re on. When do we sleep? How fast do we drive? Are we even driving at all, or should we walk? This example is not to be obnoxious. It’s just to illustrate the mountain of choices and arguments that go into even executing one single thread in this tapestry that’s known as general will. It’s maddening.

I would never, ever want to be at the head of one of these companies whose job it is to execute the general will. Talk about the worst job ever. Just consider for a second the kinds of decisions that these people need to make on a daily basis, even stuff that seems incredibly easy. Take something like the Iraq War, right? Widely considered to be a massive political blunder. Even if you agree with everything that was done and you think it was fully justifiable, you have to at least acknowledge that there’s a large group of people that don’t agree with you, a group of people that say that history is eventually going to look back on the United States invading Iraq in 2003 and think that it was a horrendous mistake in foreign policy. It created this power vacuum, and now all this stuff’s happening on the news now.

Well, how about a quick thought experiment? What if 100 years from now something happens where it turns out that the Iraq War was the greatest political chess move that ever happened in the history of the world. George Bush decides to invade Iraq, and the dominoes that were set in motion because of the Iraq War eventually made possible something that ushered in 10,000 years of world peace, obviously corresponding perfectly with the general will of the United States. What then?

Now, I’m not justifying these actions by saying that, hey, something good may happen down the line. I’m not saying that it would have been planned. I’m not saying that George Bush was like the Rain Man, and he was 25 steps ahead of everybody else when he made the decision to do it. What I’m saying is that the decisions that we make today on behalf of the general will don’t just affect us today or tomorrow or even a year from now, but centuries down the line.

If part of the general will is to protect the United States and its allies—because in modern times you need allies to win any sort of major world conflict—what happens when Britain is attacked? In that moment, what is it like to be at the top of one of these companies that we’ve commissioned to carry out the general will? At what point is stepping in militarily going to yield more peace in the long term than staying out of it would have yielded? Will it jeopardize our relationship with any other countries if we do this? What are the economic implications of this 10, 20, 100 years down the line?

Being one of these people, you can just imagine an endless decision tree that these people have to take into account, an endless number of scenarios. If this happens and they respond this way, we’re going to do this. If we do this but they don’t do that, then we’re going to do this. And they’re doing all of this with a single goal in mind, the common good. What is the absolute best decision that we can make that promotes the general will?

By the way, these problems that we’re talking about are not just on a global scale when we’re dealing with the threat of war. These things happen domestically all the time. For example, the illegal immigration debate—at least one small segment of it. On one hand you have the human side of it. How horrible is it that by no fault of this person—this person didn’t have a choice in the matter—simply by virtue of being born on one side of an arbitrary line that we drew in the sand 200 years ago, this person will live a completely different life than someone that was born 100 feet away on the other side of this line? Across the board, this person is going to have fewer and worse opportunities available to them simply because they were born 100 feet in the wrong direction. It’s terrible.

And this being true leads certain people out there to advocate an open borders policy. Who are we to tell somebody where they can or can’t live? Like, do we own the earth? No, we don’t. These people say if somebody wants to live here, they should be able to live here. Who are we to tell them that they can’t? We can totally see where these people are coming from. They’re compassionate people. How could you be mad at them for thinking this way? How could the government be mad at them for arguing this point?

But we can also see the government’s side of an open borders policy, right? When we think of the government as just a company that we’ve commissioned to do a job for us, and we’ve assigned them with the task of coming up with an immigration policy, what are they going to do to make sure the job gets done? If I asked you guys to come up with an immigration policy, what would you do to make sure that you were picking a good one?

If the government has ever actually considered a policy of completely open borders, it’s easy to imagine them, if you think of them as an entity commissioned to do a job, going back and looking at history, finding examples of governments that have been rich, and then in turn given out a lot of stuff for free to its citizens. Then they look to see if that combined with having a lax immigration policy has ever led to problems down the road. Can you give citizenship to every single person that wants it? They’d probably look around them and see that every developed country has a criterion that somebody has to meet before they’re granted citizenship. Why is that the case? Why should we be different than that? We can imagine them having these sorts of discussions with each other, saying, “Look, we have one job to execute. And our job isn’t to make everybody in the world happy. Ultimately, it’s the general will that we’re concerned with.”

Again, the point of all this is not to say that it’s impossible to make these decisions. It’s not to say that we shouldn’t be making these decisions. It’s just to help us understand the task at hand. The general will, whatever that thing is, is a tough thing to get ahold of. And even if you can grab ahold of it, you got to agree upon a path to get there. You have to choose from all the options and find the best strategy to execute that path and also consider a million different other factors that might make your decision ultimately bad for the general will in the long run.

Let’s all consider the monumental task that we ask of our government on a daily basis—this collection of people, this company that we’ve commissioned to do the job for us. Whether we like it or not, we live in a world of competing nation-states. Most of the time we get along, but sometimes the goals of one nation-state don’t correspond with another, and difficult decisions need to be made. This is just the reality that we live in. All I’m saying is that when it comes to being one of the people making the decisions on our island, I would never want to carry the burden that those people have to carry.

Make no mistake, to be at the top of this company that we’ve commissioned, if you’re doing your job properly, you have to be a pretty incredible person. On the island, we’re going to need to work endlessly. We’re going to have to work really hard to find the best collection of the most incredible people that we have. Because if we take that task lightly, if the wrong people are making the decisions, we could all easily end up dead.

Think of how much is at stake on the island. These people are going to be making the decisions while our lives hang in the balance. And the most terrifying part about all of this is that this isn’t just a thought experiment, is it? It’s so easy to be cavalier about the situation when we’re playing make believe on our island. Oh, what happens if, when we elect the people, they don’t do a very good job? What do we do then? But back in reality, are things really so different?

Think about the way that we elect leaders in today’s world. You look around you and you see so many single-issue voters, so many people voting based on about 30 minutes of actual research that they’ve done. You can look at the direct connection between campaign advertising dollars spent versus elections won. Your character doesn’t need to have any merit at all. As long as you can run one more ad than your opponent, that’s all it takes. All it takes is a commercial to influence who humans are going to vote for to make the decisions. You see people voting because of what letter is next to the person’s name or what gender they are or what ethnic background they came from.

That might be my favorite one of all. Your ancestors had sex in a similar geographic proximity to my ancestors. I like you. You must be the right kind of person to be making all of these massive decisions on behalf of the entire population. Here’s the keys to the entire civilization. Take them! There you go. Here's the keys to the wealth of our nation.

And on that note, I will leave you all until next time where we talk about a famous economist who would have a lot to say about this little island nation that we’re building that finally has a government.

Thank you for listening. I’ll talk to you next time.