The Roles of Altruism and Indoctrination in International Trade
Why a Laissez-faire Capitalist Might Support Tariffs May Shock You
Conservative and liberal think tanks agree on one thing—America isn’t as free as it used to be. A chart from the forthcoming book “Post-socialist Capitalism: The Rise of Enlightened Individualism” shows how the United States’ rank on various freedom indices has plummeted over time. America was once renowned as a bastion of freedom because it was built on a bedrock of individualism–recognition of the unalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. For three-quarters of a century, all three of those rights have faced a collectivist assault, often championed by the forces of socialism and globalization.
To the credit of the researchers and journalists responsible for the various rankings, there was only a limited correlation between rankings and partisan politics. Although the sample of indices had a slight tilt towards liberal sources, most of the political bias was netted out by the inclusion of “right-wing” sources like the Cato Institute and the Heritage Foundation. Overall, America’s average freedom ranking dropped from 6th to 43rd this century.
Although the graph depicts a critical period when improvements in technology and capital growth from increasing international trade have been marred by eroding freedom and privacy, the trend began earlier than that. By the early 1960s, college students were already clamoring about limited intellectual freedom. After giving a lecture at MIT in March 1962, Ayn Rand received a letter from one of the students she met, detailing his observations on the pressure to accept the status quo, to imitate, and to adopt the institution’s predominant beliefs without question. Those espousing individualistic values were harassed or disregarded.
Today’s institutions, not only academic but also governmental, and even corporate, have become the all-seeing eyes of Big Brother, not only monitoring individuals’ speech in official capacities but also manipulating their thoughts and behaviors at home, after hours, and across all social contexts. From PRISM data to impromptu phone interviews of everyone you’ve ever met, socialist organizations and their town halls audit the beliefs and opinions of the individuals over whom they have leverage, intervening at will with practically unlimited social and financial pressure to correct any unapproved attitudes. Affected individuals are often told not to discuss their victimization and may face retaliation if they do.
Rand’s response to the letter she received from a student following her lecture at MIT, culminated in the 1966 essay “Altruism as Appeasement” wherein she wrote that acceptance of an altruistic moral code is an intellectual “sellout” that results in a loss of self-esteem. Rand described collectivists’ dogma as “altruism” because altruism is the subjugation of the individual and their self-serving motivations to the group and its well-being. The appeasement she described was giving in to altruistic morality from social or other pressures. The self-esteem allowed to the altruist is not from personal achievement, but the admiration from others for one’s humble self-sacrifice. Rand called this a “secondhanded” self-esteem.
In today’s world, appeasement is no longer enough to satisfy the collectivists. Institutions too often demand conformity under threat, which is to say that they indoctrinate, at least in some way (given whatever leverage they can muster and are willing to exploit, which is usually substantial).
“Indoctrination” is usually used to describe mindless, forcible acceptance of external direction, doctrine, and alleged facts. This term has been increasingly applied to the intellectual climate of American colleges and universities, but it is not limited to scholarly contexts. In cases ranging from the political and philosophical exploitation of mental hospitals in Soviet Russia to the “shops” of California, indoctrination is usually backed up by a threat of overwhelming force. American socialists credit themselves for sometimes including more minor and usually non-physical escalations of the force relative to their foreign predecessors, but the threat or use of force remains integral to indoctrination. Is there any justification for this? How did it come to be?
Emergency conditions are used as excuses to reduce the extent to which individuals’ rights are respected. Poverty and starvation in nations with fast-growing populations are excellent examples of such conditions. The population’s great need for economic success is the excuse used by international socialists to intervene with a centralized command-and-control approach. Since compliance of individuals and organizations with centralized plans can be enforced, productivity and certain levels of economic output, although not innovation or happiness, can be guaranteed. This is not a miracle or a brilliant innovation in workforce development. It's a cheap, shortcut path to economic success, at least along certain metrics, that comes with the cost of lessening the standing of individuals to that of serfs or peasants, with fewer rights and less freedom.
No one wants to have to live under such conditions, unless the alternatives are much worse. When living under them, the last thing you want is to be reminded of what you’ve lost (or never had) by those who are living more freely. That’s one of many reasons for the workers of predominantly socialist countries to immigrate, taking their global socialist brand of collectivism to comparatively more individualistic and free destinations. Starting in the mid-1990s, the US became that destination for many students and labor force participants.
One of the first large-scale unofficial messages sent to the people of the United States from the incoming migrants related to a reduction in freedoms of the press and speech. Rand wrote that no dictatorship has ever survived without censorship and the same is true when the dictating authority is an unelected, shadowy network of collectivists. Emergency conditions that once existed abroad were used as excuses to reduce freedom and assert more control, and that reduction in freedom federated itself to America, where so-called “liberal” domestic socialists were all too eager to take advantage, so that indoctrination is not limited strictly to the practices of the international labor force, but to the left’s political philosophy as well.
America then witnessed the most outrageous series of events in economic history. American socialists hoped to take advantage of rapid technological advances to secure control of American business, news, and culture. The political left, advocates of big government and high taxes, roping in foolish or cowardly Republicans, managed to pass the most monumental tax loophole in America’s history, granting blanket exemptions to sales taxes for online retailers. This is as close as we could’ve come to a law that says “high taxes for everyone except socialists, who are exempt”. Although it highlights one of the many incredible unfairnesses of the so-called ‘business war’, it did not prevent the disastrous impacts of the collectivists’ dot-com bubble, which soon burst, paralyzing the economy.
That moment could’ve been a turning point. It could’ve been a point when America realized its expectations of a globalized workforce didn’t match reality. America could’ve allowed many traditional companies to survive and flourish by giving them equal tax exemptions to their internet competitors’ or by eliminating the exemptions. Instead, they looked to greater partnership with the government and collusion across competitors as a means to recover the broken economy. Then, on September 11, 2001, the unthinkable happened.
In response to the terrorist events, the emergency conditions were, of course, used as an excuse to reduce the extent to which individuals’ rights are respected and liberties granted. Enter PRISM. Enter ubiquitous mass surveillance and the casual hacking of American citizens’ computers and accounts by their government, without significant oversight, rights afforded to the affected, or limitations on the scope of how or by whom spying on citizens can be used to manipulate their lives.
Greater productivity can be extracted from individuals (short term, at least) through greater harassment, violations of their rights, and by allowing their leaders or “stakeholders” to hijack their decision-making. It results in a lower, less enlightened, less just, and less actualized level of existence but in at least some areas, greater productivity can be extracted than under freer alternatives (or so they’d like us to believe – the reality is more complex and variable). With near-perfect surveillance, compliance with limitations on speech, espousal of only permitted opinions, and consistency with prescribed altruistic principles can be enforced nearly perfectly. By disallowing significant privacy, collectivists are able to replace self-determination with social-determination. You are what your group makes you, according to their tastes and needs. The side effects of this approach include a loss of identity, less creativity and innovation, a monoculture, and groupthink. A common collectivist practice is to identify and attack the sources of an individual’s ego so that they might be “broken” with their only self-worth being secondhand self-esteem derived from the approval of one’s socialist master or from those who admire them for their self-sacrifice, as Rand wrote. Instead, individuals should be encouraged to take pride in their accomplishments, embracing their egos, and building their egos up by living according to their values.
What has not been done to any significant extent, is to cleanly extract the value realized by the international workforce from their approach, without politicizing it or using it to conduct a wider assault on individual rights and freedom. In the short term, for example during an authentic emergency, efficiency may benefit from top-down, unquestioned acceptance of information or adaptation of practices from trusted sources. Individuals would give up their rational capacity, yes, but only during short, well-defined periods, with transparency and accountability around the rationale of the intervention and clear limits to its extent and duration. In the wake of an event like September 11th, even short-term reductions in privacy could be warranted. However, the value is only cleanly extracted without its nightmarish correlates if the intervention is truly temporary. In the case of college classrooms, this could mean, for example, that students are encouraged to soak up their professors’ knowledge and even subjective opinions, imitating them without question, but only during a certain period each term to accelerate their learning, with the unabridged right to question or dissent outside of the classroom and within it by the end of each course.
It’s understandable if other nations have had to give up more to attain an acceptable level of living in their home countries. Individual international migrants certainly cannot be blamed for trying to federate their system. However, it is the responsibility of businesses, citizens, and the government to limit these incursions into personal freedom and self-determination. Differing human rights conditions have a complicating effect on international trade policy. On one hand, free trade – international capitalism – can benefit all involved parties, growing the size of the “economic pies” in both the home nation and for trading partners abroad. On the other hand, if there are worse human rights conditions in nations with whom we trade openly, then each trade increases the momentum of the system with reduced rights. History has shown that it will directly impact rights in the home country, through aforementioned pathways and others. For this reason, a capitalist whose ideal political scenario involves universally respected individual rights and completely free international trade might still support tariffs levied on trade partners whose production is generated from the sweat of workers living under conditions that we ourselves do not wish to endure.