Chapter 4 ll Democracy: Wellspring of the Good SocietySuch ideas [liberty and equality, for example] are the substance of ethics. Ethical thought consists of the systematic examination of the relations of human beings to each other, the conceptions, interests and ideals from which human ways of treating one another spring, and the systems of value on which such ends of life are based. These beliefs about how life should be lived, what men and women should be and do, are objects of moral inquiry; and when applied to groups and nations, and, indeed, mankind as a whole, are called political philosophy, which is but ethics applied to society. —ISAIAH BERLINThe four ideas we have examined—liberty, equality, efficiency and community—are the polar forces tugging at all modern polities. Indeed, the tensions among those values have pro- vided the drama to political life in the West since the time of Hobbes. In particular, the choice between liberty and equality is said to be the most fundamental, and inescapable, of all the trade-offs facing society. During this century, Marxist Egalitar- ianism’s manifest disdain for civil liberties has provided tragic empirical support for the commonly held premise that these two primary values are incompatible. Thus, in the writings of contemporary political economists and political philosophers, liberty and equality are often presented as polar alternatives: Liberty vs | Equality102 The Executive’s Compass The liberty versus equality trade-off is not the only difficult dilemma facing modern societies. Since the dawn of the indus- trial era, as the world has become increasingly complex, the choices faced by society have become concomitantly intricate. Some, like Hamilton, for the sake of economic growth and technological advance, have been willing to sacrifice other val- ued ends. Others, like Jefferson, have been concerned primar= ily with Communitarian values such as the quality of life, and have been just as willing to compromise other ends. In recent decades, economists have documented the consequences of pursuing both the Jeffersonian and Hamiltonian alternatives. Economists say that for every increment of environmental quality a society gains, a measure of efficiency is lost (as when a scrubber is placed on an industrial smokestack, or when any environmental, consumer, health, or safety regulation is en- forced). The opposite is said to be true, as well: gains in efficiency from power plants endanger the quality of life of host communities. In the modern industrial state, then, there is a constant, nagging tension between Corporatist and Commu- nitarian values: Community <———_ vs. ——— Efficiency Another domain of painful choice emerges whenever a modern society attempts to close the income gap between its haves and have-nots. Economists argue that highly progressive rates of taxation reduce incentives to work, welfare transfer payments create bureaucratic waste, that motivation is lost when financial rewards are separated from productive contri- bution, and entrepreneurial effort diminishes when the size of jackpots from capital gains gets too small. In such instances, society is faced with Arthur Okun’s great trade-off between equality and efficiency:Democracy 403 —' ye, Efficiency Equality As environmentalism has become of increasing concern in recent years, a new tradeoff has developed between the goals of conservationists and the needs of their occasional allies, the labor unions. Two examples: The prohibition of timber cut- ting to save virgin forests, and the closing of irremediably polluting industrial plants, have led to the loss of blue-collar jobs in America and Europe. Outside the capitalist West, the resultant drabness of life in those Marxist countries most dedi- cated to Egalitarian policies illustrates another kind of trade-off between the quality of life and equality. Today, all around the world, Egalitarian and Communitarian values are in tension, in one way or another: Community ———— ys. Equality Mill, as we have seen, called attention to the many trade- offs between individual desires and the collective good; bans on smoking in public and driving a hundred miles per hour, and zoning laws that prohibit such entrepreneurial activity as104 The Executive's Compass the freedom to build and operate mini-malls in residential neighborhoods, are instances of society’s infringements on per- sonal freedom in the name of the common good. Thus, trade- offs also exist between Libertarian and Communitarian values: Liberty Community ———— ys Moving completely around the quadrant, we come finally to the trade-offs Americans have been most willing to make, or most willing to deny exist! Taxation to support the military, and regulations promulgated by the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Federal Communications Commission, are examples of infringements on personal liberty that are jus- tified for purpose of efficiency. Hence, there are also trade-offs between Libertarian and Corporatist values: Liberty vs. ———— Efficiency In sum, the quadrant can illustrate most of the salient political and economic issues debated today in the capitals of the developed world in terms of trade-offs among those with differing values, objectives—or dreams. These differing val- ues—in effect, differing concepts of the good society—revolveDemocracy 405 around the very ideas debated for centuries by the great moral and political philosophers. This discovery illuminates the rele- vance of these writings to modern issues, but it doesn’t yet answer the central question of our enquiry: Can the good soci- ety be created in a world of conflicting values? The Power of Balance We began our enquiry with the broadly accepted proposition, the fundamental task of every legitimate government is to secure the good society for its citizenry. We soon found that each philos- opher who advanced this notion also offered a different defini- tion of such a society. We then discovered that current political conflicts reflect our own differing views of the good society, each view rooted in our personal dreams or values. In order to define the good society, we must now address the penultimate question: Whose values are right? The reader who has followed the argument to this point will doubtless have anticipated my conclusion: Objectively, none of the values of liberty, equality, efficiency, or community can be demonstrated to be better than the others. Values are, after all, matters of individual preference and, like questions of taste, are never to be disputed. This conclusion may give the appear- ance of begging the issue, but I suggest that it does exactly the opposite. If all four values are good, then it is incumbent on every government dedicated to the welfare of its citizenry to treat all four value sets (and their many permutations) as legiti- mate objectives. Reconciling tensions between these values is a matter of political process. All that can be said in describing the good society is that those governments who perform the process to the greatest satisfaction of their citizens are to be preferred to those in which the reconciliation is arbitrary, hence to the least satisfaction of the citizenry. We call the former societies just because they respond evenhandedly to the conflicting needs and desires of all their citizens.106 The Executive’s Compass One process is peculiarly capable of achieving reconcilia- tion among these conflicting values: democracy. The genius of a well-functioning democracy is to be responsive to all of a na- tion’s citizens, constituencies, and interest groups and to serve as a process for balancing their conflicting demands. In short, a democracy attempts to satisfy all competing interests. In doing so, it not only serves the ends of justice, it establishes its own legitimacy. Precision requires at least two clarifications of these assertions. First, there is no warrant that democracy invariably leads to the good society. Democracy is inherently an imperfect process, and the good society is no fixed thing. Second, the good society should not be viewed as a wishy-washy compro- mise represented by a single point at the very center of the quadrant: Liberty The Good Society? Community ———— @® ——— Efficiency Equality Such a point represents a variety of justice, but it is an extremely circumscribed one. The alternative is predicated on the assumption that, since liberty, equality, efficiency, and community are all good things, a well-functioning democracy would tend toward creating policies that provide as much of all four values as possible. Evidence of the citizenry’s nearly boundless desire for all these values is found in the fact that few ideologues would be satisfied, as Marx was, with absolute equality at the cost of all other objectives, or would want one hundred percent of liberty, as Sumner was at the expense of everything else. Most modern men and women want as much