Why I'm a Democrat

This post is in response to another blog-post written by a friend and sparring partner of mine.  In that inaugural post for her political blog, she explains why she is a libertarian.  The following offers what I consider to be a better alternative to libertarianism.

Just like Ms. Blair, I am a rational human being that responds to incentives like everyone else.

And that’s the problem.

When I leave for work in the morning, I don’t walk, ride my bike, or take the bus.  I drive, because that’s the quickest way to get to work.

Oh, and I don’t just drive to work.  I speed

 

When I get to work, I go straight to the copy room.  I could find a way to do my job without using so much paper, but it would require a lot of careful planning and effort.  It’s just easier to make the copies.

On my way back from work, I stop at the cheapest gas station to fill my tank.  After gassing up, I drive to a nearby department store to buy a new pair of jeans.  I buy the cheapest pair of jeans that fits, and a bottle of soda.  After finishing the soda, I throw the bottle in the trash, since I don’t want to be bothered with finding a recycling bin.

I weigh every decision I make according to the incentives of each option, and go with the choice that offers the greatest incentive.  I also, in my own small way, make the world a worse place to live.

By taking my own car, I contribute to the smog that’s choking the air in the city where I work.  By speeding, I not only make the journey more perilous for myself, but for the hundreds (thousands?) of cars I pass.  By using all that paper, I contribute to deforestation.  By buying the cheapest gas, I support oil-rich, authoritarian regimes.  By buying the cheapest clothes, I support clothing manufacturers that exploit workers in countries with lax labor laws.  I don’t even gain anything by throwing away the bottle instead of recycling it, but I toss it anyway because I’m too lazy to recycle.

And I have no intention to change.  Seriously.  I’m not trying to set up some devil’s advocate straw-man.  I genuinely do not plan to alter my behavior just because it might harm someone else in a distant, abstract way.  I care more about achieving all my goals with minimal amounts of time, money, and effort.  The personal incentives to maintain my behavior are just too strong, and I’m a rational human being, just like everyone else.

But rational doesn’t mean myopic.  I understand that my actions, along with everyone else’s, have unintended consequences, and I believe those should be mitigated.  To accomplish this, our society should maintain a system that enables us to look at economic and political activities on a large scale, detect any “tragedies of the commons,” and give us incentives to behave in ways that are less destructive.  Fortunately, we already have such a system:  It’s called government.  It doesn’t always work perfectly, but we are definitely better off because of it.

I probably won’t like all the solutions government comes up with.  Sometimes, they’ll be downright wrong, and I’ll do everything I can to get those policies rescinded.  If I feel strongly enough, I might even refuse to follow those policies, à la MLK, Gandhi, or Thoreau.  Mostly, however, I’ll probably just grumble about how personally inconvenient the policy is, even as I reach into my pocket to pay the speeding fine.