Sometimes I seem like a combative person, and that bothers a lot of people sometimes. When they argue with me they can't get anywhere, even when agreement is reached I am compelled to go on arguing. I do not see this as a particularly bad thing, though. This is how progress is made, how consensus is reached, as Hegel said thesis and antithesis coming together to generate synthesis. I have realized recently that sometimes arguing with the people who annoy me the most can be one of the most rewarding things to do. However, there are other times when it just seems pointless, when I get angry and the act of further discussion would only serve to increase my anger. I had a moment like that today, I was arguing with a libertarian and something about his argument really got to me. When I thought about it, I realized why.
We were discussing population dynamics and I was talking about how development can destroy natural ecosystems, and how focusing on urban development instead can help in the area of over-development. Come to think of it, I'm not so sure we were arguing, I think we were agreeing. He responded, it seemed, fairly positively to this notion, which one might think would be a positive for me. Not so much so. It is coming to be quite a large part of my personal philosophy that the path taken to reach any particular goal is just as important as the goal itself. Not more important, mind you; if we take a benevolent path to a malicious goal it is worse than taking a faulty path towards a benevolent goal. However, arriving at a destination without an understanding of the journey is a fruitless endeavor. I believe this is what Dr. King was talking about in his World House speech, that our level of technological development has far outpaced our level of cultural development.
Anyways, this is what bothered me. They we were, two individuals agreeing in principle, and I felt nothing but animosity towards him. It was because of the way he looked at the issue that I felt this way. To him, the justification for urban development lay not in the tangible benefits such as conservation but in the prospect of development opportunities for large investors. Why does he care? Because development is typically regulated in cities, and as a libertarian that's against his agenda. This is not what I want to focus on, though. What I would like to do is analyze his position critically.
Many conservatives of all stripes hold Adam Smith's works up as defining truths of the world, but how true are they really? In this discussion, I was presenting a set of views focused on a goal, preserving nature. This individual looked at my argument, analyzed it, processed it in his own way, and re-posited it to be in line with his views. Now it was not an issue of ecology, it was an issue of economy. You might even say that ecology was an unintended consequence of economy here, as increasing certain individuals' investment opportunities could, and I say could purposefully, lead to an ecological benefit. This is my problem, the argument to me was about saving the environment while the issue to him was about making profits.
This is my problem with Adam Smith. No matter how many beneficial unintended consequences there are, they will always be unintended. Consequentially, the reverse of that also holds true in typical capitalist thought. Conservation does not increase profits, conservation can actually hinder profits, therefore it will neither be an intended consequence of capitalist thought. At best, conservation might happen as a freak result of the act of generating profits. However, more often than not conservation will be actively suppressed because of its tendency to hinder the pursuit of profits. Even if we disregard that last part, conservation without a drive for conservation is empty, a destination without an understanding of the journey. We arrive at the same destination, but all our journey has taught us is that we need to continue to pursue profits. now we embark once more on another journey, this time to a different destination, and because it is easier for us to actively hinder conservation efforts than take a different path we take the easy road. After all, that is what we were doing before, only the last time the road of conservation simply happened to be the less arduous path.
Because we have not learned from our journey, because the beneficial things we did were unintended, now we will turn around and take a path that causes harmful unintended consequences, such as drilling for oil in the ocean. You may say it is not "us" doing this but rather certain individuals, but it is us as a society. This path we have taken is ingrained in our collective unconscious, and now when those individuals come to Congress and ask to abolish environmental regulations we say sure, and why? Because we have simply accepted the universality of unintended consequences. The fact that unintended good occurs as the result of selfish action is not a justification for the free market, it is a condemnation of it. To do good as a result of happenstance, while better than doing no good at all, is still not as beneficial as doing good for the intended purpose of doing good.
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