ROUGH: Infrastructure Is the Issue

This essay pertains to the current political situation regarding relief funding to New York and New Jersey and the general issue of common ground infrastructure.  Politically, at the instant, this is a particular instance of "spending" which is supported by some republicans but not by others. Those the support it take it as a given, as the sort of exception to "no spending" that most, but not all republicans, support. Upon inspection we find come modern conservatives take themselves to have adopted a position which is universally "against spending". They have generalized their opposition to some joint spending into a principle, which technically includes opposition to things they actually support.

Personally I hold the view that construction and maintenance of common infrastructure is the only necessary office of what we call government. To explain my thinking process as I experience it I will now ascend to a level of rarified abstraction where I can find principles that can be used as construction cranes to move the heavy ideas on the surface below.

A study of philosophy gives one an idea of what sort of things have proved controversial over the ages, which have been debated for thousands of years, and which are therefore not the prime territory in which to find political agreements. They are rather where one ought expect to find long term controversy analogous to the ancient philosophical disputes to which they relate.  To be sure these ancient gems should be talked about, they must enter into political philosophy, for while there is no consensus from history yielding a single answer or attitude, there is in often a well known (if incomplete) general spectrum of attitudes about the given subject to which one ought to make reference. Through study of these ancient controversies we should construct and then study models of these spectra as maps of the public mind. Whenever possible we should admit credit to those positions that hail from parts of the spectrum most foreign to us.

In the political spectrum one encounters a most complex system of interoperation and conflict. The conflict may be potential, actual, or de facto. It is worth mentioning a civil society will desire to remove de facto conflict when the conflict is not truly necessary, but simply incidental, psychological, or historical, such as racial conflict.  For an individual there may be what turns out to be the most difficult of positions to admit validity too, and this is what must be learned.  We must all learn how to grant validity to some -- most -- positions with which we nevertheless differ. The validity of a position must be understood separate from "positions with which I agree".

For me, the most difficult has been to admit that there are well populated regions in the spectrum of public ideas in which the ways of thinking themselves seem to me to involve illogic.  These are cases where the same set of principles do not lead, for two different parties, to the same conclusions.

Where might we find, in such a spectrum, the common ground, where views overlap, and are held in common. In my vanity I think I have found such a mode and rather than be a subtle and unfamiliar thing, newly created, it is instead a common sense notion, so acceptable we survive even while ignoring our implicit agreement for various incidental reasons, against our common best interest.  We ignore it like one can ignore the air. This is the question, "what shall be build together and hold in common?".

Many now operate on a principle of non-cooperation which states in effect that one not cooperate with others on shared common ground except with those for who the entire ground is common, that is, unless one agrees fully and over all with another, one ought not co-operate, for this helps them as well as you, which does not help to make your personal philosophy the common one.

I interpret such a principle of non-cooperation as dogmatism pure and simple. In political philosophy I complain about little other than dogmatism. When asked what I would do as emperor of the world, I answer that I would install a democratic republic... if asked the details of its laws, I have to accept they do not understand democracy as a goal... how it works, that the point is that the people answer such questions for themselves by a process which can find and reduce to common ground their implicit and explicit agreements.

I accept that dogmatism exists in the public spectrum but I also identify it as the primary source of our systematic problems. I struggle in real time against the view that one should not cooperate even where one has agreement in order to protect one's sect.  In contrast it is my view one ought to cooperate where things are held in common, while trying as best one can to allow for separation, to protect the right of individual decision-making in all areas not held in common. Dogmatists stumble over the idea of accepting that there will, and should always be ideas not held in common.  From my lips "libertarianism" is the notion that indeed, there are many such ideas and they can, and are best to, be decided by the individual free person.

Using this perspective I believe we can reduce conflict to those of material consequence. I celebrate any difference that does not interfere with my freedom to be different. That is my version of individuality, and one ought be able to see it is not individuality as non-cooperation.

To move on to a related issue, it also seems clear to me that what we call government ought really pertain to a shared infrastructure.  Our disagreements should subsequently be, primarily  over what we can agree is really needed in a common infrastructure and the criteria by which we agree to judge when we are achieving it. Secondarily we should endeavor for what is widely desired and agree on means to measure its sustainability.

To me positive politics is all about the question, "what infrastructure are we going to build together?". A weakness in some modern conservatives is a belief that they are in general "against spending", implying there is nothing we want to build together since all joint action requires "spending". It is similarly a weakness in some modern liberals that they are in general "against development", but all "social justice" and liberal ideas require infrastructure which must be developed.  They may mistake their full goals, and in the same way most conservatives are not in fact against all joint spending. Even those conservatives most ardently claiming such a general opposition have generally merely taken for granted that the things they believe in funding jointly can be taken for granted as necessities, and excepted from the universal-sounding rule.

For example, it is relatively easy to get most conservatives to admit they support spending on military.  Some will take a tack that they despise military spending on account of the waste, attempting to hold to their anti-spending rubric, but in such a case they are critizing waste, something that can be measured, and doing so on the basis that there is in principle a type of spending on military that is not wasteful.

A further example is that, at the moment, many conservatives advocate putting armed security in schools and that requires spending.  They arrive at this conclusion without even thinking of spending as such. Even minarchists and market anarchists can be pressed to contradict themselves on the issue as they support things such as gold standard currencies or other social policies which require material outlay to realize.

The question is not "should we spend together on common things", which most already accept, the question is "what do we spend it on?" and "by what criteria can we judge our spending really is spent in service to the agreed upon goal?".  This is the first question not in an abstract model of our political system but in a practical model,  where time and chronological order of events plays a key role.  One might analytically start by asking on what grounds a person can be compelled to spend money on common goals, and even if that can ever be justified, and we can ask foundationally by what grounds a person might be attributed membership in a group or if they have to self-recognize such memberships.  But in practicality, we already have a system of taxation and we already spend the money, so the first problem is what to spend the money on, and then arrises the question on how to pool the money in the first place.  

In general I advocate a tiered flat-fee-for-service revenue model (rather than toll-service or income tax model).  Note, however, as is often the case in modeling, an income tax can be modeled as an annual flat-fee-for-service.  The tax remains much the same, but there are some implications from thinking of the tax this way.  One is that taxes would be separated and in principle, one could opt out.  One's "Military Tax" becomes a fee that goes the the military. The principle that one can opt out is not a universal practicality, however, since for example one cannot opt-out of being protected by the US Military from foriegn invasion if one is in the territory of the US.

It seems current conservatives have been argued into a sort of corner where it is difficult for them to speak specifically about which spending they abhor in particular, and they seek to oppose it all, and hope that the spending they do support is so universally supported they don't have to recognize it as spending at all. This is a fool's approach, and they are already producing people that have bought the generality.  Now, from within their own ranks grows opposition to spending they'd like to pretend is not spending.  That conservatives must talk about "entitlements", meaning AFDC but not Public Education, Social Security, and Medicare, and must talk about "wasteful spending" meaning some of the following: Foriegn Aid, the NEA, Corrupt Public Works Projects, but not some of the subsequent: police departments, fire departments, public roads, or natural disaster relief, merely obfuscates the details of which is it that they really support or oppose.

I think most parties in the US support:

1. military spending of some amount
2. road and bridge funding
3. natural disaster relief
4. education
5. government standards for health, safety, commodification 
6. government involvement in police, fire, and medical emergency services
7. the printing or production of currency

In general, I think it fairly straight forward to argue for a social organizational role in any such case where natural individual ingenuity has not found a sustainable business, and the true debates should be how much is spent, by what criteria it is spend, and through what type of revenue system.  

I can fathom extreme positions on these sub issues, such as support only for a domesticly defensive military, or for public education only in the form of standard testing, or disaster relief only on a fee based public insurance revenu scheme, or private contracting of some emergency services, far more easilly than the easily said positions for the abolition of the DOD, the DEA, etc..

I will, in all cases, argue from a proposition that material progress, that worth working for together, can only be a subset of that which has measurable results, even if only by satisfaction polling. To reduce infant mortality, to extend life expentency, to reduce death from war, to reduce crime, to reduce costs, especially in infrastructure key to survival, such as transportation, commodity production, and public health is widely supported common ground.

Our "government" ought to endeavor to improve any such vital need deemed publicly insufficient in those cases where no wise merchant has yet devised a personally profitable way to improve it naturally with human ingenuity in a self-sustaining way.  That is not to say in such a case that there is no self sustaining way for the need to be provided for profitably and by private means, but merely that when a common need is presented, if there happens to be no such entrant at the time, that the government, so  called, must construct a system as self sustaining as possible. This government ought to also attempt to free the market, give entrance to innovators.

As an example, a postal service of some sort is a necessity in a society and when it cannot be provided at a profit by private parties, the government has stepped in from time immemorial.  Though this was true for centuries, it's clear that now in a modern urban environment, such communication can and should have private providers as well.  Participation in infrastructure should enable such private interoperation as soon as possible, even if that is centuries in coming.