The Big Picture

I was reading an article published by Salon.com titled Looking for votes, finding America (Salon.com, October 7, 2004, by Jonathan Alford - subscription or day pass required) when I came accross this quote:

• Irma tells me her husband can't come to the phone as he has just gotten out of the hospital and is resting. She confides that she too had a stroke two years ago and they both are pretty much housebound. "I don't know what we are going to do. I thought that you were supposed to enjoy the older years -- you work your whole life for this?"

Empathy welled up, and I found myself thinking about an recurring idea. I keep comiing back to the queston, Which party's ideology is better?

I know, I know. The one seems unrelated to the other. But only at first glance.

The grand trend of History seems to be specialization. As population increases, first inside family groups and later in towns, regions & nations, civilization is repeatedly confronted with too many people available to perform a given task. At that nexus, every time, civilzation chooses to split the people into groups, each of which each then specializes. The people who engage in the new specialization can effectively do the same amount of work (reach the sme production level) as the formerly larger group because the smaller group is more efficient.

For example, a prehistoric family would have a hunter and a gatherer, each required in order to survive. As the family grows and becomes a tribe (2 or more families), they discover that sending 5 men out on a hunt is harder becuase the larger group tends to scare prey away, so they break the hunters into groups -- tool makers and hunters. Similarly, the gatherers will divide into hearth tenders and gatherers. As the population increases, these specialties will divide again into spear makers & hammer makers, trackers & slayers, root diggers & tree pickers, child rearers & fire tenders. Each time the new specialization frees the people in that group from some portion of work which allows them to spend more time at the main task. Some groups will grow faster than others, and so will split into more specializations. Each group of specialists as a correlary, has a responsibility to all the other groups -- and this shared cross-responsibility implies that each group can rely on the other groups.

Republicans, especially Libertarians, and their brethren believe that what is best for "Business" is best for the nation. Much of their argument is sensible. Without business there would be no jobs, etc. Indeed, commerce is a direct result of the specialization trend.

Today's "Business" however seems to be trying to buck the trend. Multinational corporations are large communities, but as they reach the specialization nexus, time after time they choose not to split. More wealth gets concentrated at the top, and the organization tries to trend to generalization.

A side effect of this anti-historical trend is the loss of the sense of responsibility to everyone else. This side effect will in the end prove lethal. And, it is the tie-in -- the sense of unease expressed by Irma above. She was implicitly promised somehitng by her participation in our civilization, but she sees the real possibilty that the promise will not be kept.

Republicans support and defend this anti-historical trend.