Ron Paul? Seriously?

Like a lot of people, I’ve started spending more time on facebook talking in groups instead of fully public feeds. Groups are basically smaller silos of friends gathered around a specific common interest. The bigger facebook gets and the more friends people get, the more relevant these smaller groups become (and “lists” for that matter, but I digress).

But, I’m not here to talk about facebook’s features (well, not really). Nope. I’m here to violate a basic principle of “business” blogging and dinner parties: never, ever talk about politics or religion. Unfortunately, I like to talk about both, and some of the facebook groups I’m privately a part of make it tantalizingly easy to get distracted in long-winded conversations on both subjects.

I, along with some dear friends of ours that I shan’t name, all spent far too much time discussing politics privately on Sunday. I felt so guilty about the 60+ minutes I spent responding to one comment (instead of working) that I had to turn it into the blog post you see below in order to generate windfall profits. My guilt is henceforth absolved, so don’t expect me to respond to any of your comments beyond “yes,” “no,” or complete silence…

I think we can agree on these 5 points:

1. Humans are social organisms that live and operate within concentric circles of interrelated “communities;” they are not perfectly rational automatons whose choices and actions only affect themselves, if/when left to their own devices (or vices).
2. The US is no longer a simple agrarian society comprised of 13 states.
3. In 1787 when our Constitution was ratified, there were no US corporations (until 1813), there were 4 million US citizens, and 250 million people on the entire planet (as compared to 300 million US / 7 billion global in 2012). Therefore, our economic activities and our collective behaviors/beliefs had far smaller impact on each other/our planet in 1787 than they do in 2012.
4. Due to our individual and communal connectivity, your “success” (which is built using a personal “toolkit” that includes, among other things, your educational attainment, exposure/awareness of career options, physical & psycho-emotional health, personal relationships, and resource-availability) ultimately helps improve MY opportunities for success, and vice versa. Therefore, we can assume that societies that produce higher percentages of people with the toolkits necessary to succeed, will enjoy higher levels of individual and aggregate success relative to societies who produce lower percentages of people with those toolkits.
5. A child born into poverty and/or a broken family is more likely to remain in poverty, not primarily due to the child’s “bad choice,” but because of the child’s lack of access to the toolkit necessary to make better/more informed, enlightened decisions throughout his/her life. *Side note: poverty rates in the US from 1787 through early 1900s averaged ~50% of total population when we had a more “laissez faire” form of capitalism (it’s hard to make money educating and keeping poor people healthy, and it’s hard as hell to make money when you’re poor and sick). Since the end of the Great Depression, poverty rates have held steady at 15% or under up until the recent economic crisis, primarily due to the federal government providing more equitable access to the “toolkit” necessary for wealth creation/success amongst a broader percentage of the population.

Ron Paul is very clearly advocating switching the US to a completely decentralized/granularized, for-profit, competition vs communal societal approach. Some components of that approach have merit. Sure the government will be less likely to criminalize/marginalize my gay friends’ bedroom activities, get us all into costly wars of choice, etc plus you’ll be able to grow all the marijuana you want on your front porch (or order high quality heroin in the mail)! Woo-hoo! But at what price?

The society RP is advocating will be beyond deficient in producing citizens capable of making enlightened choices that benefit themselves, their/our community, our country, or our planet. While US federal agencies may at times operate in ways that we view as stupid, wasteful or against our near-term financial interest, shutting the doors of the USDA, FDA, EPA, IRS, Department of Homeland Security, Department of Labor, Department of Health & Human Services, Department of Transportation, FCC, FTC, etc is an extreme and irresponsible way to address our perceived societal ills (this is not hyperbole, these are Ron Paul’s stated intentions if he is to become President of the entity he claims to abhor).

“Individual responsibility,” “freedom,” and “liberty” are lovely sounding axioms (especially to our generation which was raised to be individualistic coddled rockstars who can do whatever the hell we want to), but think about what those terms actually mean in the context of a massively complex, interconnected society where we rely much more on collaboration than competition for our survival and advancement (individually and collectively). As much as I like and understand the necessity of private sector profits and efficiency, I don’t want those two factors to be the sole purveyors of my so-called “choices.” I would rather pay a reasonable percentage of my income to be part of Club United States (not Competing States) and know that a relatively impartial third party entity endowed with sufficient power is there to ensure that my water is safe to drink; my air is safe to breath; someone will come to my house to help me (without leaving an invoice) when it’s on fire, being robbed, being flown into by jihadists; my parents don’t have to be Warren Buffett in order to retire comfortably; kids don’t have to be from rich families in order to get a globally competitive cost-effective education (that includes text books beyond the Bible); etc. This is not advocating a nanny state. It is advocating the need for a strong federal government that serves a role in our societal ecosystem that only it can serve due to its unique power, authority, and position.

A safety net is required to ensure that individuals can actually have the true freedom (including freedom from ignorance and illness) necessary to pursue the things that matter to them in life. Personally, I don’t want to have to invest all of my time and effort on water testing kits for my personal well, which contractor to hire to build my roads, doing cost-benefit analysis to select my kid’s teachers, hiring a host of attorneys needed to sue the companies who are no longer required to internalize their externalities, or looking at the myriad choices of which town/state/country I can pay to move to if the tax base and culture where I currently reside does not provide the level of government services I deem sufficient.

I think it’s perfectly justifiable and necessary to argue about how far the role of the federal government should extend and what reforms/additions are necessary for optimal societal output as our country looks to maintain its dwindling edge in the 21st century (which is the function of the collective might of its citizens, not the might of a small percentage of its citizens living in the best states). Things like O’Reilly’s Gov 2.0 movement are constructively helping towards that end. However, it strikes me as egregiously irresponsible for a Presidential candidate to actually suggest that we should tear down the entire framework of the federal system based upon on ideology that defies reason, has no historical precedent, and has no data to support it.

Throughout history, moments of economic crisis and uncertainty have lead to pandemic fears wherein democracies elect radically far right and far left candidates that ultimately lead to the very thing that was trying to be avoided. I sure hope we don’t let that happen to our country now.