Private interests or public institutions – a non-moral dilemma when using political influence

As a thought experiment, let us assume that you had the privilege to allocate 50 million dollars of public funds. These funds were originally intended for the Department of Health but a magical twist of fate has let you spend the money as you see fit. With the decision on how to allocate it is all yours, would you spend it on your own betterment or on more socially minded purposes?

Putting aside the moral aspect of this dilemma you may have with buying yourself a financially secure and luxurious future using public funds, would it be worth it?

After all, you will be making your country, where you and your loved ones reside, a worse place by potentially disadvantaging valuable programs. These programs could one day help you or someone you care about. They could do this directly, by you being a recipient of one of them, or indirectly by allowing business and innovation to continue enriching your life in a safe and healthy environment. Whilst you will be cutting the branch on which you sit, 50 million is such a huge sum, and the damage to your environment so limited, that it’s probably worth it.

However, if, instead of 50 million dollar in one budget, you pocketed 90% of Australia’s tax revenue over 5 budgets, would it still be worth it? Probably not: functioning property rights, welfare, army, public service and investments in the future will all be damaged beyond repair. It simply wouldn’t be in your interest to take so much because the secure and pleasant environment you and your loved ones need to enjoy hundreds of billions of dollars wouldn’t exist anymore.

This fantastical situation is closer to your life than you may imagine. You are part of a number of voting demographics. Unsurprisingly, evidence exists that politicians allocate more funds to voting demographics then to nonvoting demographics. Politicians do this, in part, because they want to win favor with the demographic. Of course, that’s less likely to work if they think the long-term cost of allocating the funds or favor to them is not worth it for them

The real-life equivalent to the 50 million dollar question may be “a politician is running on the ticket of advocating for only my ethnic sect/ tax bracket, is it a good idea to vote for him on that basis?”

The reason deliberate deliberation on this non-moral dilemma is important is because the rewards may be more forthcoming then the costs. An election promise could come to fruition within a few months whereas the consequences of revenue problems or sectarian division can take years to come back to bite you – and when it does you might not even know why your buttocks is aching.

At this point you might have noticed how information poor you are. You don’t know exactly how much you will benefit from a given policy or politicians, or if you do you don’t know what will happen as a result in years to come. You don’t know what the alternative politician will do to the institutions or sect you are trying to advantage. Even worse, there is nobody to help you to quantify the costs because even in the rare cases where we do know how to measure the quality of institutions it is well beyond us to measure the effect of a specific policy on them and extrapolate from that the impact on you and your loved ones.

Much of the rational choice themed economic literature around rent seeking assumes that the conflict before the perpetrator is between accountability/ punishment mechanisms and the potential size of the reward. Maybe, in some cases, rent seeking has more to do with self-interested short term thinking winning over against self-interested long term thinking. Such a model would emphasize tools that combat hyperbolic discounting as opposed to accountability.

As for myself, my life is too good, I have too much to lose and am too aware of the horrors of the Middle East to take such risks by aligning my political power in the pursuit of self-interested short term personal gains. Perhaps if I was in direr need of firewood I would more readily collect wood from the branch on which I sit.

Guarding against the return of the tribes

Those of us born in the 90’s are too young to remember when there was such a thing in Australia as Protestant and Catholic public institutions. The Victorian Public sector, so I am assured by a former secretary, was an institution for smart catholic boys. This was because many other relevant places would simply not hire you if you were catholic. It’s certainly nice to be on the safe end of such a dangerous situation.

A lot of things can lead to the return of the tribes, although perhaps not these specific ones. An international incident between two groups which are both present in Australia (see Sunni vs Shia conflict in Sydney), a politician or business which profits by generating schisms along certain identity lines (I’m sure you don’t need an example from me here). Indeed, one doesn’t have to scan the news too hard to see little instances which assure us that tribalism is still alive and well in the hearts of many Australians.

Fear, in this context, works to focus the mind on one aspect of an identity. When Serbs (or Sunnis or homosexuals) are threatened I am a lot more focused on being a Serb than I am on any other, previously no less central, part of my identity.  Conflict makes identity simple and peace makes it complicated.

In this context, building up shock absorption capabilities is a priority. One way to do this is to make it harder to profit off of making identity simple. Another is reducing isolation with the aim of multiplying identities, with the ultimate aim of reducing passions through this division.

This is a technocratic task but a lot starting points are available to the policy maker:

• Undermine or remove tribe based schools, isolation aids fear
• Regulate marketing with a mind to removing adverts that play off tribal sentiments
• Make unwelcoming institutions more welcoming to reduce isolation
• Look at migration policy with a mind to avoid some of the actors from the second paragraph
• And my personal favourite; Pagovian taxes on place of living based on homogeneity indicators. Treating the comfort people get from living amongst people who are like them as a negative externality.

This damage mitigation approach will not gain universal endorsement.

Partially this is because it begins by accepting that a certain degree of tribalism is beyond eradication. Imperial, or communist, detribalisation can be achieved in relation towards particular tribes. However, new ones will replace them and the old task of total national unity is a pie in the sky which humanity lost a lot reaching for. This approach facilitates no national unified spirit. If successful, these policies will not create a unique monocultural nation where one people dominate one land. The nationalist dream will remain unattained, funnily enough, for the sake of national security.

Others will reject it because these measures grant no cultural security to their favoured minority groups. Not all cultures will maintain the large claim they hold on the identity of certain people. At the extreme end of this approach, Aboriginal, or Jew, will simply be one of the many things an average Australian may be. It will make as much sense to focus on one of them as it makes for you to focus on your star-sign or blood-type. They are all things that are a part of the person, but passions are too divided between the many coexisting forms of identity to warrant any unique attention to one of them. This goal may be rejected as assimilation and a destruction of heritage, and indeed some special dances and songs may be lost.

Hopefully, even in rejection, both these groups, will have gained an awareness of possible trade-offs in this area, or the simple enrichment that comes from a different perspective, by joining me for some contemplation.

At this point I feel it would be remiss to not acknowledge the impact Michael Walzer’s – Thick and Thin: Moral Argument at Home and Abroad, had on these thoughts.