Three Components of Social Order

Economic, Political, and Moral

Society is orderly when people are mostly playing positive-sum games. Voluntary exchange is a positive-sum game. Both of us are better off. Taking someone else’s stuff is a negative-sum game. If I take your stuff, not only do you lose your stuff, but now you have to think about putting resources into protecting stuff instead of making stuff.

Our social order has three components, none of which should be taken for granted.

• Economic/technological

• Political/legal

• Moral/intellectual

Markets play an under-appreciated role in providing economic/technological order. The price system gathers the information required to allocate resources efficiently. The profit system governs the process of technological evolution, promoting useful innovations while discarding unwanted innovations and obsolete businesses.

Government plays a role in preserving the peace and protecting property rights. In contrast to markets, people are more likely to over-estimate than under-estimate government’s potential to solve social problems. But Americans should appreciate the quality of political order that we enjoy, compared with other nations, especially from a historical perspective.

The moral and intellectual order promotes civilized values. We steer away from beliefs that are false and/or dangerous to human flourishing.

As of 2024, I have worries about each of these components of order. I worry about centralization and concentration of power in the economic/technological order. I worry about escalation of conflict in the political/legal order. And I worry about social justice ideology undermining the moral/intellectual order.

Centralization

I see the market process as a way to sift through the ideas of producers in light of the preferences of individuals. It works in a decentralized way.

Government is one of the centralized forces that substitutes expert opinion for market information. Government faces the regulator's calculation problem.

As Ludwig von Mises and Friedrich Hayek pointed out during the socialist calculation debate, central planners lack the information that is produced by markets. By over-riding market prices and substituting their own judgment, regulators incur the same loss of information.

Another centralizing force comes from capital markets. In the United States, financial markets have given executives in charge of the “magnificent seven” (Microsoft, Alphabet/Google, Meta/Facebook, Nvidia, Amazon, Apple, and Tesla) enormous power to determine the path of innovation. These corporations represent vast sums of paper wealth. Will this create corresponding real wealth?

Maybe “the metaverse,” “spatial computing,” and “artificial intelligence” will turn out to be mirages. Maybe these companies are following whims or fads. We must keep our fingers crossed that they are betting correctly. To borrow a locution from Winston Churchill, it seems to me that never in the history of human innovation has the future of so many depended on the decisions of so few.

I am not in the camp that says “Break up big tech.” But I do wish that investors would diversify their portfolios.

Our government, through its policies favoring Green Tech, is also playing a big role in directing innovation. What if the effort required to get renewable energy from where it can be captured in the American Southwest to where it is needed in the Northeast ultimately proves to involve insurmountable costs?

Breakdown

Is our political order stable? I continue to dread the aftermath of this year’s election.

A victory by Mr. Biden would raise the prospect of an epic battle between older moderates and younger radicals for control of his second term. It is easy to envision the latter winning.

A victory by Mr. Trump, on the other hand, would likely send the radicals into the streets. Resistance and disruption could become widespread.

Even without these scenarios, things seem bad enough as it is. The political system is unable to do anything other than throw money at problems. Urban crime appears to be headed up, and I worry about police forces disintegrating and becoming demoralized. To me, the legal system seems to be maximizing the punishment of the transgressions coming from Mr. Trump and his supporters, while taking a permissive approach toward progressive allies who violate the law and engage in violence. Perhaps readers on the left will be able to convince me that I am exaggerating.

Degeneracy

Finally, and most worrisome of all, I see the moral/intellectual order in tatters. That is where I echo some of the most strident voices on the right. On Substack, I keep amplifying Aaron Renn, who wrestles with the challenges to traditional religion and moral conduct. I keep amplifying Lorenzo Warby, who rails against the intellectual bullying by radical progressives.

Niall Ferguson has resurrected the phrase Treason of the Intellectuals. Not in that essay, but on YouTube, Ferguson has been outspoken on the alliance between the progressive left and radical Islam, which share a common hatred of Jews in particular and western civilization in general. Frank Furedi complains about the way that this alliance censors critics by tossing around the term “Islamophobia.” Matt Goodwin offers similar warnings.

On issues related to personal morality, there could hardly be more distance between my view that grandparents are the winners of the game of life and the posture of transgender activists. I am willing to defend the rights of any transgender individual, but the trans movement seems to me to play very negative-sum games, against women, gays, and normal families.

Conclusion

I long for order. I think that many people share that longing. I don’t think that they want to re-elect a President Biden who cannot restrain the disorderly wing in his own party. I do not think that most people feel that Mr. Trump represents their idea of order.

Have a nice day.

substacks referenced above: @

The current hysteria about Islamophobia represents and attack on free speech and democratic debate.