"Common Good" - Whose Good, Exactly?
For Homo Sapiens on Planet Earth, "Common" must mean common to us all.
I’ve been reading this wonderful book by Michael Sandel called “The Tyranny of Merit”, subtitled “What’s Become of the Common Good?”, and I must say I am impressed by the insights contained in it. The author presents a fascinating window into the American psyche and its evolution, from the Lutheran-Calvinist-Puritan belief system and underlying precepts, through the doctrines of Manifest Destiny and American Exceptionalism, through Cold War politics and Reagonomics, right up to the genesis of Trumpism, the mindset of the diehard MAGA crowd and the source of their discontent.
Just the other day by coincidence I happened to come across another book called “The Common Good” by Robert Reich, who I follow on social media and also right here on Substack. I haven’t procured this one yet: Reich has been posting a summary of each chapter and that’s enough to give me a feel for what’s in his book. Many of the themes dealt with by both authors are almost identical - inequality, social mobility, jobs, labor, technology and automation, meritocracy, globalization, deregulation, financial capitalism, and such, and their treatment of these themes is strikingly similar. These issues are not specific to a country or a region. Like the pandemic, these are global issues, inasmuch as they have impacted socioeconomic equations and geopolitical dynamics across a broad swathe of countries - the Global North and the Global South, the East and the West - across the three worlds: first, second and third.
What struck me as odd is that both authors frame the idea of common good only in the context of America and Americans, and both identify globalization as the main enemy. Sandel specifically attributes the cause of the 2008 financial meltdown to globalization(!) when many analysts have pointed to the housing bubble and subprime mortgage crisis, in particular, and reckless financialization and unbridled deregulation (repeal of Glass-Steagall for example) in general, as the main causes of the crash. Reich’s criticism of Jack Welch in Chapter 5 of his book is, for the most part, a critique of financialization and globalization. (I’m no fan of Jack Welch myself, for different reasons.) It seems that both Sandel and Reich think of globalization as a zero-sum game; that the jobs lost by Americans are jobs won by cheaper laborers in other countries. That was probably true back when outsourcing first became a major trend, and may still be true now to a certain extent, but many other factors are now in play.
The world is changing as we speak. Enlightened businesses (if not all) are rethinking their accountability. We're witnessing the dawn (some may say rebirth) of multistakeholder capitalism, the very opposite of shareholder-centric capitalism à la Friedman Doctrine prescribed by Milton Friedman in 1970 and exemplarily practised by the aforementioned Jack Welch in the 1980s-90s. If we're talking about globalization and the common good in the same breath, we should also look at how the economies of underdeveloped/ developing countries in Asia, Latin America, Eastern Europe and Africa are benefitting from the outsourcing done by corporate America (and other high-cost countries). There is still considerable exploitation of cheap labor, and externalities are still not being factored in to product costs. But there is hope. The new wave of sustainability among progressive companies, if they effectively implement their ESG programs - in letter and in spirit - will change that. Workers in low-cost destinations will start getting a fair wage and improved working conditions. Some may dismiss this as Panglossian pan-globalism, but it is a fact that even as it is today, those workers and their families are better off than they were before globalization. Most - if not all - outsourcing strategies of corporations in high-cost locations were based on wage arbitrage. And like all arbitrage strategies, have exerted a leveling force.
Now, it is one thing to limit the scope of your book to a single country and its socioeconomic problems. It’s your book after all. But the moment you bring in globalization and say it like it’s a bad thing because it is eroding the common good, you need to answer a simple question - common to whom? Only those with American passports? No, that cannot be, because it goes against the very spirit of the commons, in a globalized world. Global warming doesn’t care which passport you hold. The pandemic certainly did not. No, a broader perspective is in order - one where the common good of all human beings is taken into consideration. Success and prosperity do not happen in a vacuum. America and Americans cannot prosper when the rest of the world isn’t doing so well. So it is in a way imperative that one takes a global perspective when talking about the common good in today’s world.
It is disappointing to see two very senior, learned intellectuals, both with highly progressive views, talk about weighty subjects in such a narrow nationalistic sense (as to focus on the prosperity - or lack thereof - of Americans alone). One would’ve thought that all that erudition and all those years of experience, and the wisdom and maturity they bring, would’ve encouraged these seasoned scholars to open out their horizons a bit and embrace a more global (literally) scope of “Common Good”. But alas, here we are, focused on just one country and its people. In 2023.
Postscriptum
I recently came upon this quote from Carl Sagan, which makes the same point about “Common Good” beautifully, even without using the words.
And the world impoverishes itself by spending a trillion dollars a year on preparations for war, and by employing perhaps half the scientists and high technologists on the planet in military endeavors. How would we explain all this to a dispassionate extraterrestrial observer? What account would we give of our stewardship of the planet Earth? We have heard the rationales offered by the superpowers. We know who speaks for the nations. But who speaks for the human species? Who speaks for Earth?
I agree with you, Hemant, blinkered economics lacks the depth of focus needed to find lasting solutions. We have evolved as a species in small bands of hunter gatherers. Recent history hasn't revised our basic approach to the co-dependence of "tribal" life". Natural selection has favoured the gene-pools of those who are prepared to be altruistic towards other tribe or family members with whom they are co-dependent.
"J.B.S. Haldane, a renowned British geneticist and evolutionary biologist, is known for his humorous yet insightful comment regarding kin selection. When asked if he would lay down his life for his brother, he responded, "No, but I would to save two brothers or eight cousins," highlighting the genetic relationship and the concept of inclusive fitness."
WK Clifford's concept of "Tribal Self", on the other hand, gives the key to Clifford's ethical view, which explains conscience and the moral law by the development in each individual of a 'self,' which prescribes the conduct conducive to the welfare of the 'tribe. We probably notice the tribal self most as conscience but it plays a major role in every ethical choice we make.
Society and humanity are now global and our local tribes are no longer the important target for our tribal instincts.
Patriotism, to my mind, is a vicious form of this human virtue.
Fascism perversely exemplifies this.
The topic also makes me think of the common-wealth that was squandered in the move to privatisation. The infrastructure of roads, hospitals, schools etc. created publicly owned public amenities. This was valuable to the poor in social and psychological fields and not just for its practical benefits. The "tragedy of the commons" took on a new form under "Hayek's bastards".
We need to somehow re-align our human instincts with our global humanity or let the instinctual drives that have brought us so far , reduce us to gangsters.