{"id":1969,"date":"2017-12-20T09:43:29","date_gmt":"2017-12-20T14:43:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lisa.rushworth.us\/?p=1969"},"modified":"2017-12-21T09:47:55","modified_gmt":"2017-12-21T14:47:55","slug":"capitalism-is-not-democracy-the-inverse-is-true-too","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rushworth.us\/lisa\/?p=1969","title":{"rendered":"Capitalism Is Not Democracy (the inverse is true too)"},"content":{"rendered":"

A descendant of Walt Disney — one whose family has a load of cash and stands to inherit a load of cash herself — has a\u00a0video on the Facebook page of NowThis<\/a> … it is generally similar to their\u00a0other<\/em> videos with rich people saying “this tax bill gives me a HUGE percentage gain, might give you a little bit until\u00a0your<\/em> provisions sunset, and generally is a bad idea and you’re about to be screwed over with ‘needed to reduce the deficit’ cuts to social safety nets, education, infrastructure, research funding, small business funding, farm assistance programs, etc”. She, however, says that individuals voting for their own interest over a common good isn’t democracy. It’s anarchy. That’s an interesting distinction. And it made me think of how people often conflate free market capitalism and democratic governance.<\/p>\n

The “invisible hand” principal of free market capitalism — not the phrase as it was actually used by Adam Smith but the generalized colloquial usage — is that the whole is optimized by each individual seeking to assure their own self-interest. A bit like maximum\u00a0k<\/em> sums in set theory – the largest possible sum of\u00a0k<\/em> numbers from a set is the sum of the largest\u00a0k<\/em> numbers in the set. While a specific individual may suffer misfortune, this assertion of optimization is microscopically reasonable. The economy grows when most\u00a0<\/i>individuals increases their value simultaneously.<\/p>\n

Can the same be true of democracy? Does advocating for one’s self-interest promote societal optimizations as well? Or does looking only at one’s self-interest delve into anarchy? I believe the answer depends on how narrowly one defines one’s own self-interest. Abigail Disney offers a ironic example of this in her video – fuck over enough of the middle class and there won’t\u00a0be<\/em>\u00a0Disney customers anymore. Maybe they’re rich enough to not care\u00a0financially<\/em>, but family members’ social standing is diminished by losing the company. The family legacy is lost. How does the individual weigh “keeping the fortune in the family” against “sustaining the company my grandfather helped create”? One problem in American politics is an incredibly narrow view — don’t believe in climate change, whatever. But you do<\/em> breathe air and drink water, right? Why would you want companies to dump mining sludge into rivers and spew petrochemicals into the air? (Answer: Because you are thinking\u00a0so<\/em> narrowly that you concern yourself only with the natural resources within a few miles of your house … neglecting to consider how these things move around the globe.).<\/p>\n

Unfortunately, “self-interest” is defined narrowly (e.g. a single issue voter), ignores long term consequences (e.g. anti-environmentalism),\u00a0and<\/em> fails to consider the realistic complex multi-variable picture (e.g. the interconnectedness of all things means Disney lady saves a couple hundred thousand on her taxes, but their company goes through reorg bankruptcy as disposable incomes drop in a few years).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A descendant of Walt Disney — one whose family has a load of cash and stands to inherit a load of cash herself — has a\u00a0video on the Facebook page of NowThis … it is generally similar to their\u00a0other videos with rich people saying “this tax bill gives me a HUGE percentage gain, might give …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[41],"tags":[463,464,211,465],"class_list":["post-1969","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","tag-capitalism","tag-democracy","tag-maga","tag-republican-tax-bill"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rushworth.us\/lisa\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1969","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rushworth.us\/lisa\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rushworth.us\/lisa\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rushworth.us\/lisa\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rushworth.us\/lisa\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1969"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.rushworth.us\/lisa\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1969\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1974,"href":"https:\/\/www.rushworth.us\/lisa\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1969\/revisions\/1974"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rushworth.us\/lisa\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1969"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rushworth.us\/lisa\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1969"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rushworth.us\/lisa\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1969"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}