Donald Trump has shattered the myth that low growth is the \u2018new normal\u2019<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\nReaganism, which is simply the modern name for an enduring current in conservative thought, is built on a few key observations about human beings. Namely: That they generally respond to whatever incentives they face. That their dealings with each other are subtle and complex and, when undertaken voluntarily, usually mutually beneficial. That they have very limited ability, if any, to foresee the future, still less to control it. That when they do try to rule over each other\u2019s behaviour, the consequences are often unexpected and involve changes that are not mutually beneficial. That it\u2019s generally good for people \u2014 and also helps develop them as people, and as a people \u2014 when they have to do important things for themselves. <\/p>\n
The policy outlook these observations lead to (and have since Smith, Hume, Mill and even earlier thinkers) is that we need to limit what we ask governments to do for us. In general, \u201cgovernment should only do what only government can do.\u201d Reaganism doesn\u2019t say there should be no government. No serious philosophy would. It says we should be ever skeptical of turning new responsibilities over to a social mechanism that is based on control rather than voluntary exchange and that relies on the wisdom of the relatively few humans in charge of it. <\/p>\n
It\u2019s true the world has changed a lot in the three decades since the 1980s, although perhaps not as much as in the three decades before them or the three decades before that. It has also changed since the Crash of 2008, as it changed after the Crash of 1929. But is the essential character of human beings and their interactions with one another different now? More of that interaction does take place electronically, to be sure, but behind the tweets, emails, posts, Xboxes, electronic purchases and so on, are people. <\/p>\n
Do those people now not<\/em> respond to incentives? Are their interactions no longer complex, subtle and, when undertaken voluntarily, mutually beneficial? Have human beings recently developed a greater ability to foretell the future? (We have much more data now, but does all that new data render prescience easier or harder?) Are the consequences of our or our governments\u2019 actions now, because it\u2019s 2018, only the ones we expect and only positive for all concerned? <\/p>\nIf the human condition has not fundamentally changed, if, to put it less grandly, people haven\u2019t fundamentally changed \u2014 and aren\u2019t likely to soon \u2014 should our fundamental view of government change? Should we really grant it control over more and more of our lives with every passing year, as we have been doing since the (in retrospect, rather limited) downsizing and privatizing of the 1980s? <\/p>\n
It\u2019s not true that the only good idea is an old idea. But it\u2019s also not true that old ideas, because they are old, are necessarily inferior to whatever the latest notions trending on Twitter are. <\/p>\n
The essence of Reaganism is modesty about our ability to effectively organize life collectively. Look around the world today and there\u2019s ample justification for such modesty. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The essence of Reaganism is modesty about our ability to effectively organize life collectively. Look around the world and there’s ample justification for it<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":578,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[],"tags":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.lifeinsurance-orleans.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8483"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.lifeinsurance-orleans.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.lifeinsurance-orleans.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.lifeinsurance-orleans.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/578"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.lifeinsurance-orleans.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8483"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blog.lifeinsurance-orleans.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8483\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8484,"href":"https:\/\/blog.lifeinsurance-orleans.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8483\/revisions\/8484"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.lifeinsurance-orleans.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8483"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.lifeinsurance-orleans.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8483"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.lifeinsurance-orleans.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8483"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}