America's One and Only Problem: Our Ruling Class

Today, New Years Day, is the day that writers write hopefully about the future. Or we worry about the gathering storm.

I'm a pretty simple-minded fellow, and I believe that the future is golden, but for one thing: the inability of our betters to think out of the box -- their box.

Our ruling class cannot think beyond its own moral benefit, its own advantage, its own "ambition, honor, and vanity," to quote Curtis Yarvin. We see this play out in the three major "issues" front and center at the moment.

The first issue is the COVID pandemic. Our ruling class instinctively assumes that the way to tackle the COVID crisis is the supervision of politicians advised by experts.

Well, we have seen that the experts don't know much, and the politicians less. They are quick to impose actions to "lock down" the populace, without really a clue about what such actions will do to the people.

Politics and government are peculiarly unsuitable for dealing with an uncertain problem because politicians and experts are very reluctant to admit they are wrong. A politician is the leader of his people, and must seem almost godlike; he must seem to enjoy the Mandate of Heaven. If things go wrong then it must be because he has lost the Mandate of Heaven, and no politician wants that. Experts are similar: they live and die by their credentials. But the truth is that life is uncertain; we advance by correcting our mistakes.

We see this play out in the difference between NASA and Elon Musk's SpaceX. NASA hates to have accidents and mistakes; Elon Musk is unafraid and just learns from each mistake.

The second issue is Climate Change. Our ruling class has bought into the Climate Change Prophecy, hook, line and sinker, and you can see why. The Climate Change Prophecy is a classic end-of-the-world play, and appeals to politicians because it is an existential peril, and as I say, "the only warrant for government power is existential peril." But is the warming all it is cracked up to be? Maybe not, but suppose it is true! Better safe than sorry! Only, the great skill of humans -- and of Nature in general -- is adaptation. If the climate really does change, then we humans are in a position to adapt, and how! Anyway, the most likely effect of climate change will be the movement of climatic regions towards the poles. Thus, for example, the wheat-growing regions of North America will move northwards into Canada. Will the oceans rise? Maybe, but we humans are, I think, up to the challenge of either moving our cities inland or protecting them with dykes, like the Dutch.

The third issue is Systemic Racism. Ruling classes have always been eager to be the military saviors of their people, to save us from the invaders. But running a close second has always been the temptation to be moral saviors as well, to save people from a fate worse than death. The temptation has grown particularly in the last few centuries as rulers have stopped being warriors and become administrators. Even military leaders now are more administrator than warrior. Since a leader must distinguish himself somehow, it makes sense to celebrate the moral virtues if the opportunity to vaunt martial virtues diminishes over time.

In my view, the folks most tempted by moral leadership are rich kids, the scions of wealthy or powerful families that lack, perhaps, the warrior personality. Thus we had the rich kid William Wilberforce that wanted us to repent of our slavery sins, rich kid Marx that wanted us to repent of our class sins. And now we have veritable armies of children from notable families eager to moralize over us on the "activism" front and demand that we repent of our racism sins.

The thing is that anyone can gussie up a moral narrative. The Systemic Racism narrative proposes a Three Layer moral universe of "oppressed peoples, allies, and white oppressors." Lucky is he or she that gets to be an "ally!" I prefer a slightly different narrative, using "human rubble, liberal oppressors, and ordinary commoners," because I think our Big Problem is liberals and their gubmint programs that have reduced the lower classes to demoralized victims dying of despair.

But the bigger issue, I think, is the recognition that there are at least three kinds of people that live in modern society, and they have the right to live their lives each according to his lights; it is the world view of my reductive Three Peoples theory. There are the Subordinates that just want someone to take care of them; there are Responsibles that want to be left alone to work, marry and have children without having some liberal interfering all the time, and there are Creatives, the educated Gentry, that live for "ambition, honor, and vanity" in making a better world. Our problem is to figure out how these three rather different kinds of people can all live their lives according to their lights.

I say that our religions, our culture, and our politics should start from the knowledge that different people want and need different things, and the beginning of wisdom is to understand that.

But when your are a ruling class it is easy to assume that it's your way or the highway. That works fine, of course, unless some folks find that the ruling class way is not their way.