1. The Politics of Parts and Good Government
Lincoln’s definition of the goal of good government doesn’t say “for your part of the people”—it says “for the people.” A nation must be more than the sum of the interests of its parts. And no politics of parts can work if the parts pursue only their narrow self-interests. All parts must recognize the role of a healthy whole. Tragically, our politicians too often make the error of benefiting powerful parts at the expense of the “public good.”
Medicare provides an excellent, enormously expensive example of a politics of parts error. It has been widely reported that the pharmaceutical industry successfully lobbied to deny Medicare the power to negotiate prescription drug prices. Having this power enabled the Department of Veterans Affairs to reduce the prices it paid for drugs by up to 50%. Joseph Stiglitz, Nobel Prize–winning economist, has called this “a gift of some $50 billion to…pharmaceutical companies.” That works out to about $600 per federal income tax payer. Reversing this legal private plunder of the public purse would yield two-thirds of the savings that President Obama and Representative Ryan seek in their respective Medicare reform plans. This would be a much healthier defense of the Founders’ “public good” than the present prioritization of the politics of powerful parts.
The ban on drug price negotiations is the result of an addiction to the seductive drug of narrow, self-interested thinking. So common is this type of error that it has its own name: the tragedy of the commons. But that is a misnomer. It’s really a tragedy of self-undermining, self-interested, shallow thinking. And we have learned the wrong lesson from it. The normal interpretation is that each rational user of a common public resource has incentives to take more than a sustainable share, which leads to overuse and tragedy for all. But if users were truly rational, they would choose to sustain the health of the common resource and logically limit the ways in which narrow self-interest can be allowed to be maximized.
In the 1830s, Alexis de Tocqueville reported observing Americans who seemed to have a commonsense understanding of what was needed. Chapter 8 of Democracy in America is titled “How the Americans Combat Individualism by the Principle of Self-Interest Rightly Understood.” In it, Tocqueville says that “an enlightened regard for themselves constantly prompts [Americans] to assist one another and inclines them willingly to sacrifice a portion of their time and property to the welfare of the state.” The logic of enlightened self-interest and management of resources for the “public good” easily overcomes the barrier of the so called tragedy of the commons. Applied to the politics of parts, such broader thinking would prevent dereliction of the constitutional duty to protect and promote the “general welfare.” It is a tragedy of rationality that we have been using our collective reason so badly. And it’s a tragedy that our political elites cling to ideas of a narrow self-interest that can work against their own self-preservation.
To understand your real interests you should ask: Does a proposed policy strengthen or weaken both my direct interests and my indirect interests? Does it protect the interests of everything that my success depends on, especially the interests of the nation as a whole?
Good government must rule according to the real meaning of the words “for the people,” and prioritize policies that sustain the robust health of the “public good.” Otherwise, it risks creating a machinery of powerful parts pitted against each other and working against the health of the whole. The Founders sought to prevent this, and understood, to paraphrase Tocqueville, that we must never lose sight of the close connection between the private fortune of each and the prosperity of all.
Medicare provides an excellent, enormously expensive example of a politics of parts error. It has been widely reported that the pharmaceutical industry successfully lobbied to deny Medicare the power to negotiate prescription drug prices. Having this power enabled the Department of Veterans Affairs to reduce the prices it paid for drugs by up to 50%. Joseph Stiglitz, Nobel Prize–winning economist, has called this “a gift of some $50 billion to…pharmaceutical companies.” That works out to about $600 per federal income tax payer. Reversing this legal private plunder of the public purse would yield two-thirds of the savings that President Obama and Representative Ryan seek in their respective Medicare reform plans. This would be a much healthier defense of the Founders’ “public good” than the present prioritization of the politics of powerful parts.
The ban on drug price negotiations is the result of an addiction to the seductive drug of narrow, self-interested thinking. So common is this type of error that it has its own name: the tragedy of the commons. But that is a misnomer. It’s really a tragedy of self-undermining, self-interested, shallow thinking. And we have learned the wrong lesson from it. The normal interpretation is that each rational user of a common public resource has incentives to take more than a sustainable share, which leads to overuse and tragedy for all. But if users were truly rational, they would choose to sustain the health of the common resource and logically limit the ways in which narrow self-interest can be allowed to be maximized.
In the 1830s, Alexis de Tocqueville reported observing Americans who seemed to have a commonsense understanding of what was needed. Chapter 8 of Democracy in America is titled “How the Americans Combat Individualism by the Principle of Self-Interest Rightly Understood.” In it, Tocqueville says that “an enlightened regard for themselves constantly prompts [Americans] to assist one another and inclines them willingly to sacrifice a portion of their time and property to the welfare of the state.” The logic of enlightened self-interest and management of resources for the “public good” easily overcomes the barrier of the so called tragedy of the commons. Applied to the politics of parts, such broader thinking would prevent dereliction of the constitutional duty to protect and promote the “general welfare.” It is a tragedy of rationality that we have been using our collective reason so badly. And it’s a tragedy that our political elites cling to ideas of a narrow self-interest that can work against their own self-preservation.
To understand your real interests you should ask: Does a proposed policy strengthen or weaken both my direct interests and my indirect interests? Does it protect the interests of everything that my success depends on, especially the interests of the nation as a whole?
Good government must rule according to the real meaning of the words “for the people,” and prioritize policies that sustain the robust health of the “public good.” Otherwise, it risks creating a machinery of powerful parts pitted against each other and working against the health of the whole. The Founders sought to prevent this, and understood, to paraphrase Tocqueville, that we must never lose sight of the close connection between the private fortune of each and the prosperity of all.