Some interests in the United States benefit equally from both “conservative” and “liberal” policies.
With Republicans, they get deregulation and, some, tax benefits that are not distributed uniformly. What gets deregulated, we can assume to benefit disproportionately those who pushed for the deregulation.
With Democrats, they get policies enacted which damage some businesses, but at the benefit of their own. Democrats don’t really go after large corporations, their rhetoric to the contrary notwithstanding. What their policies do is hurt small business, which helps large business. The very people whose careers rest on their alleged anti-corporatism enact laws which act, in aggregate, to strengthen the multinationals they claim to oppose. Since leftists never bother to compare the effects of their policies with their stated aims, they don’t notice. Of course, if they stay in office, many don’t care. They get all the perks of office.
A clear example of this is Obamacare. It won’t hurt the GE’s of the world, or the AT&T’s. It will hurt Ted’s Diner, and Ann’s Wine Shop. That’s why so many small businesses in Nancy Pelosi’s home district moved so quickly to get waivers. This will be enormously damaging to them.
In all realms of endeavor it is important to think clearly, and it is nowhere more important than in evaluating policies which have the potential both to build wealth and to destroy it, to facilitate job creation or–as is plainly the case with this health insurance mandate–to put many people out of work.
The net point is that if you are thinking in unanchored abstractions, if you “oppose war”, or oppose corporatism, or want to end poverty, or want to increase freedom, you must think in terms of details. Almost everything which helps one person hurts someone else. The task politicians set themselves is to focus your attention on the first, and keep it away from the second. Prudent people, however, do not let this happen.
When you tax a business out of existence, you do not hurt most the business owner. You hurt the janitor, and the line worker, and the clerk. Failure to grasp this basic point has enabled the development and continuation of horrifically destructive polices the world over for the better part of a century.
Supposedly we are going to see mass protests on Wall Street in the next few weeks. These people think in cartoons. They love the idea of themselves as heroic crusaders, but are not at all equipped to take the time to understand that the world is a complex place, and that damage to the economy will hurt big business not at all.
Thus even if they are successful, they will fail. This is the policy of fools.
Morality in action NECESSARILY requires sustained efforts at building understanding, since moral people care primarily about the outcome of their actions, and not at all about how best to generate emotional satisfaction from romantic narcissism. They are invisible, to the extent possible, and neither ask for nor expect thanks. That is my view.