Republicans and Democrats

You hear a lot about the differences between Republican and Democrats. There are extreme points of view and exaggerated ones. People claim there are differences in everything from morality to intelligence level to their attitude toward life. It can seem like a mess. However, the differences can actually be boiled down to one simple belief.

From an economic standpoint, both of them are capitalistic. However, both of them favor a form of capitalism with restrictions. The part that makes them different is simply a different approach about how those restrictions are to be applied and under what circumstances. In a broad sense, Republicans believe in the individual. In their view, if every individual acts as freely as possible, we will end up with the best system. The Democrats, on the other hand, favor a collective approach—they lean on making decisions together as a group. Both parties believe in freedom, even though that is often the charge they level against each other.

People jump on their bandwagons and demonize the other side, but in reality we do use both approaches and that is probably why America has survived how it has. Both approaches have flaws and benefits.

The Soviet Union was an example of a nation that relied on collective decision making. A technocrat in Moscow would tell farmers who lived 10,000 miles away when to plant their crops. This generated some huge inefficiencies. No matter how smart the brain trust was in Moscow, there is no way they would be better able to respond to local weather changes nor would they have the intimate knowledge of local climate and land compared to the people who have been farming that land for thousands of years. They rarely did a good job--telling farmers to plant in the worst of conditions or farmers losing the best days waiting for approval from the central authorities. Even if the central authorities did a good job, though, they were simply an unnecessary step. There is no need for that to be a collective decision--farming on the Russian steppes works best when individuals make those decisions on their own.

The Soviet Union was not the best example of true collective decision making. What really ended up happening was that it was a totalitarian regime. Nevertheless, the example still does a good job of showing the flaws in appointing the government to manage more than it should.

Yet, pure individualism has some serious problems, as well. We tend to demonize businesspeople in America, but most of them would like to maintain strong ethics. The problem is that capitalism is competitive. You can maintain all the ethics you want, but all you need is one competitor who is willing to bend those rules and you will be out of business. That one competitor will make cheaper products (since they don't care about the people or environment they take advantage of) and end up out-competing everyone else. In unrestricted capitalism, the rotten apple spoils the barrel. That lowest common denominator sets the tone for everyone else. All the other businesses are either forced to water down their ethics or simply go out of business.

In the above scenario, a good solution is collective decision making: We all get together and legislate our morality. We make our ethics the law. As a result, all businesses have to pay a minimum wage, follow child labor laws and have safety standards. Businesses then don’t have to break their own code of ethics in order to keep their doors open. We have collectively decided to follow these principles and it works better than letting the one who plays the dirtiest set the rules of engagement for everyone else.

Take tax cuts, for example. The Republicans will tell you that lowering taxes is good for the economy, since individuals will have more of their money and will make the best use of it. The Democrats may argue for higher taxes so we can band together and pay for things we never could pay for as individuals--such as an alternative energy infrastructure. That way, we can try to plan so that we can realize our values rather than being isolated individuals making the best decisions for ourselves but not thinking of the larger context. People criticize the Democrats and say that they think that government knows how to run our lives the best. That is not the goal. The goal is that we the people are the government and there are some decisions best made collectively rather than as individuals. It may turn into a blubbering bureaucracy, and that may be a weakness of this approach, but it is not the goal.

The Wal-Mart Effect is an example of Republican principles in action. People shop at Wal- Mart because it is cheaper and convenient. However, we all know that Wal-Mart ruins good towns and cities, but it is hard to be the one person who refuses to shop there. As an individual, why should I pay higher prices just to shop somewhere else? My protest means little, and it is easier just to buy the cheapest items since I am unlikely to hurt Wal-Mart by not shopping there. This is how Wal-Mart takes over--it is the sum effect of individuals making decisions based on their own short-term interests. If everyone bands together and refuses to shop at Wal-Mart, then collectively this protest now carries more weight. Sometimes individuals acting in their own interests leads us all down a path we don't want to go, even if all the little decisions we made to get there seemed good. Sometimes, we need to just get together and put the brakes on.

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This is what I have gathered to be the biggest difference between the parties. Everything else stems from that (unless you want to talk about social issues, but that's another story). People can rant and rave about how "Republicans are selfish" or "Democrats want the government to take care of us." There may be some merit to those charges, but all too often people jump to those conclusions before knowing the full story about what is motivating these parties. Don't believe the hype--Democrats are not going to turn us into pure collectivists (like the socialists) any more than the Republican are going to try to turn us into an anarchy (pure individualism). They do lean those ways, respectively, but they are both firmly rooted in capitalism and aren't going anywhere.