The Golden Rule in Politics and Economics

The ethical underpinnings of economic thought and political systems warrants understanding.  At the root ,ethics is not that complicated.  Ethics, economics, philosophy, and psychology are in my opinion highly related and must be incorporated into any evaluation of political philosophy.  So in the words of Thoreau, simplify, simplfy, simplify.

Let's consider a simple foundational concept in ethics, the golden rule.  This idea is included in one way or another in almost every religion or spiritual teaching on the planet in both eastern and western thought.  This idea is expressed as: do unto others as you would have them do unto you, or variations like Karma, you get what you give, the law of attraction and other statements.  If this simple principal is incorporated into discussion of the world's society, many illusory philosophies of good become transparent.

Marxism socialism and  even perhaps fascism are sold as ethical political philosophies, yet they violate the idea of reciprocity contained in the golden rule.  The idea that one is justified in the interest of some nebulous poorly defined "collective good" to usurp property rights is based upon greed and envy, not ethics or compassion. 

There is a rational case to be made that the inherent illusions in plunder in the name of campassion, sacrifice for the sake of community, wealth and property ownership portrayed as evil, and the resultant redistributive efforts of self sanctified saints and sages is inherently dishonest.  The lie is disguised as virtue, but  when stripped of illusion, reality is that these "virtuous" philosophies advocate violence, theft, and are destruction of society.  These philosphies are based upon win/lose transactions of enforced kindness.

Force is not tool for freedom, it is a tool for slavery.  Under a slave system, natural human self determination is derailed.  Without natural guideposts of self interests, human effort falters.  There is no natural motivation toward collective betterment, particularly at ones own expense.  Motivation in such a system must be applied externally to initiate acts of  supposed virtue.  These acts when coerced further lead to reduction of civility in the world creating what is actually an anti-civilization.

Such philosophies penalize work, success, true kindness, and ethics.  They undermine motivation for productive effort by reducing rewards for work, and effort. Such philosopies reward failure, poor judgement, and incompetence.  By promoting action destructive to sustaining human life, and discouraging constructive focused effort, which sustains life, such systems or philosophies are actually proponents of death. 

Is it any surprise that the moral code is represented by the term sacrifice, and the focus of life diverted to a questionable reality of life after death.  The logical and moral inconsistencies of such systems reduce standards of living creating myriad immeasureable hardships and the need for even more sacrifice.  Until, in the end death is welcomed as a blessed respite from the twisted reality and inherent hatred of humanity such illogical approaches to community, ethics, and kindness create.

Forced kindness is an oxymoron. 


This is a repost of my comments inspired by a thread about Marxism in The Age of Turbulence Pod.