Inaction

Dear Princess ‘Ishka,

Politically speaking, I am incredibly lazy. I like to read about politics and to shape my opinion about different political matters. I consider myself a socialist, even if some people I know might say that I am more of a radical chic, despite neither being much radical nor chic. I have ideals, but not a true ideology, meaning that I do not believe in their application whatsoever. I have never joined a political demonstration in my entire life that was not a gay pride. I have never registered to any party. I cheer at movements like Friday’s for Future, but I am also very skeptical that the growing environmental awareness they cause will prevail to the already ongoing capitalistic instrumentalization of their narrative. I am also unsure whether the optimism that drives these young folks is backed by a consciousness of the necessary steps that shall be taken to seriously contrast climate change. As far as I am concerned, I am pretty conscious of my own political weakness.

In this letter I would like to talk about this weakness, which seems to be a problem of many contemporary democratic socialists (CDSs). I think it is a weakness that finds a parallel in my individual incurable laziness, but with important differences. I come from a bourgeois background, that has shaped my view of the world. This has probably caused in me some kind of mental dissociation about politics: I vote and speak with a lurking bad conscience about coming from a privileged class, but at the same time I do not fight for actual change that could truly free me from guilt. I am a skeptic about my individual action and I prefer to observe the general picture and focus on more limited issues, like gay visibility in a still homophobic society.

On the other hand, CDSs do not share my skepticism. They try to act and are convinced that they will influence the course of history. However, they know that history has not changed just because of people’s good intentions. There were sacrifices to be made to change the world in the past, but in contemporary western societies, almost nobody and surely nobody of relevance, is willing to sacrifice anything for the sake of anything. This attitude might be even rational, given the costs of the sacrifices and the relatively little and unsure gain that might come from them. However, something more is needed, but what?

Let me list a few things that many CDSs believe will help them make the world a better place: Climate Change, Donald Trump, Covid-19. Yes, the CDSs I am talking about believe that the “panic” of climate change will alone change the world leaders’ concerns and compel them to build a more sustainable society. They believe that the degeneration of liberal democracy, based on capitalistic interest, into the dictatorship of Trump’s maverick populism and his equals’ will cause the people’s insurgence. They believe that a supersonically replicating particle, able to take down entire countries’ health care systems, will make the current world order capitulate in favor of red flags everywhere.

This kind of Messianic thought haunts the left and has always caused its ruin. Politics is difficult and based on compromises, sometimes ugly ones, just to avoid uglier scenarios. The most intransigent CDSs, who explicitly call for a violent political revolution, do not know what they are talking about and are either irrepressibly violent white straight males, or delusional idealists who would never lift one finger if put under the pressure of a risky situation.

I think that socialism has no future if it doesn’t follow the path of compromises, without giving up its goals and ideals. This is a difficult and delicate task, that most politicians fail at fulfilling. Part of the reason why they fail is the constant threat of a political division inside of their own parties if they do not show enough intransigence.

This is why we need to abandon he-male strategies of doing politics. Inflexible all-or-nothing strategies are a patriarchal cancer in politics, which always end up favoring those who explicitly sport it as a medal of honor: right-wing populists.

However, I also understand the need for the ugly compromise of populism that socialists themselves shall make with their own public in a polarized world of fanatic and irrelevant political bubbles, where complex messages do not obtain as many views and likes as oversimplified slogans. So here I am, not less skeptic than before.

Forever yours,

‘Miasha

Cover Image Credits: Pinterest

Populism

Dear Princess ‘Ishka,

I have recently re-read a wonderful article about populism on Jacobin Magazine by Anton Jäger, a doctoral student in history at the University of Cambridge. In this article, the term “populism” as it is understood in Europe and as I have referred to myself in the past, is challenged historically and opposed to the American notion of populism. Big-p populism refers to late 19^th century political movements in the US, which

…called for the nationalization of the American railroad system, the centralization of federal monetary policy, and the burial of post-bellum rivalries. It also advocated the “democratization” of the federal government, in which the state apparatus would be handed back to who Populists considered to be its legitimate owner — the people.

Small-p populism refers instead to a totalitarian degeneration of democracy, thanks to a controversial reading of history by American historian Hofstadter, which gained popularity in Europe from the late 20^th century.

Now, this historically argued piece calls into question my rather ideological and ahistorical understanding of populism (click here for more). Thence, I shall either abandon my view or defend it. I choose this second option because I think that, at least in Europe, it is much more useful to prefer the small-p populism reading to the big-p one.

As Jäger himself writes

In the 1940s, this vision [big-p Populism] still reigned supreme. Marxist historians like Anne Rochester and Chester McArthur Destler, for example, found a distinct brand of American radicalism in populism: it was the socialist movement the United States never had.

I don’t know why American Populists (before McChartyism) didn’t like to call themselves socialists all the way. In Europe, socialists, not populists, call for nationalization of essential services for the people, defend workers’ rights and fight for a more equal society. But I have absolutely nothing against Populism understood as socialism. It just sounds superfluous and misleading in Europe, where we already have (had?) socialism.

Jäger’s article presents a peculiar turn when he focuses on the success of the term “populism” in France by the end of last century. The term was made popular by historian Pierre-André Tagueiff with probably unexpected consequences. In a 1991 interview, Jean-Marie Le Pen, leader of the extreme right-wing party Front National (now Rassemblement National) declared

… “a populist is someone who listens to the voice of the people.” “If that’s your definition,” Le Pen replied, “then indeed, I’m definitely populist.”

And Jäger’s comment leaves little doubt to what he thinks about “selling” the term to right-wing parties:

A term originally coined to discredit a neofascist party had become one of its most effective weapons. In the eyes of some, Taguieff had done the FN a costly favor, helping them in their transformation from Vichy fan club to socially acceptable opposition party — one that would eventually capture a considerable part of the French electorate.

Some things shall be noticed here:

• A party’s electoral success does not mean that it stands for people’s real needs and interests. If the term populism can be used to lure a big portion of the population, tired of politicians ignoring their interests, to vote for a neofascist party, that’s not a merit of a virtuous concept, but rather of a strong collective delusion (the delusion of being unified in one single will).

Banner at Trump’s rally. Source: Lake Side Theatre

• Populists do not only claim to listen to the voice of the people. They claim to represent the will of the people, as if it were unified and as if something like the will of the people could transparently determine what is good for the people. This is not true: there is an undeniable logical distinction between what one wills for oneself and what one truly needs, which becomes an actual distinction in times of distress. (This is the current socialist challenge: trying to make will and need converge, and not take the convergence for granted, as populists do).

• Jäger’s idea that an extreme right-wing party can so easily seize the term populism for its own interests, but can’t with a term like socialism, speaks in favour of the idea that populism is a much more confused term and far less established than socialism. Populism, lacking the strong intellectual tradition socialism has had, falls all too easily prey of right-wing parties.

In his otherwise very well argued and highly interesting article, the reading of which I strongly recommend, Jäger points out that Bernie Sanders is unashamedly called a “progressive populist” in the US. However, he does not mention that Bernie prefers to call himself a “democratic socialist”. And I guess ol’ Bernie has all the good reasons.

Forever yours,

‘Miasha

Cover Image Credits: Heinrich Böll Stiftung

Merit

Dear Princess ‘Ishka,

Today I am going to talk about merit. The thesis I want to defend is that merit is not a criterion to make good laws and that meritocracy is, against wide-spread intuitions, ruinous as a political methodology.

Let’s start by looking at the concept of merit in its general connotation. Merit is an attribution of positive value to an action a person has successfully performed with her own efforts. For merit, a person can receive praise, honors, prices, social status recognition, money or flowers. Merit is the somewhat more institutional sister of praiseworthiness, because it is often associated with formal responses, sometimes even legal ones, whereas praiseworthiness more often calls for informal responses.

I don’t think this distinction is neat or can be made any neater, but it is enough for me to talk about merit as opposed to praiseworthiness. The point is this: praiseworthiness is not something you base a political organization upon, whereas merit can be the foundation stone of meritocracy. Practices of praising other people are spontaneous cultural products, to the extent that it would be difficult to criticize them without making a pedantic moralist of oneself. But merit, in my current usage, is something people would like to fix in the form of law, hence it is less spontaneous and can be criticized without further preliminary apologies on my side.

At a first glance, merit is a very good starting point to administrate a society in accordance with. The more talented and effortful one is at performing a certain task, the more social recognition one should obtain. This, I believe, is the plain and simple reason why many people believe that a meritocracy would be the best form of political administration of a society. However, this simple view faces following unsurmountable challenges: 1) Talent and effort are not innate capacities of individuals, but crucially depend on each person’s specific upbringing, economical background, and sociocultural environment; 2) Meritocracy focuses on talent and especially effort as unique criteria of valuing a person’s actions, without giving priority to the person’s own realization as a good citizen; 3) In a society based on merit, what is most praiseworthy should per definition be pursued more than what is less, hence everybody should be theoretically pushed to occupy the most prestigious positions in a society, meaning that those who fail at the task will be less praiseworthy, and those who succeed will be praised by default.

Let’s take a closer look at these points, for I had to face strong opposition to defend each of them (click here for more). Starting with point number 1), my opponent would be tempted to accuse me of being a social determinist. Why is this charge important? Because it would mean that I would not be valuing willpower as a source of social and political change but I would prefer to see society and history passively unfolding without people having any saying in it. This view would amount to skepticism about political influence on society, so I better defend myself if I want to propose a political alternative, rather than retreating into skepticism.

I am not a social determinist. Indeed, as I have already argued (especially here), it is precisely because of the social, cultural and economic limitations we face that willpower can make sense and can allow us to think optimistically about social change. Freedom in the sense of a state of being unconstrained is unintelligible. The only freedom that there can be is freedom of choice and choice needs criteria, hence constraints. This said, each one of us has different constraints and can be capable of different things therefore. Nevertheless, there are cases of impairment in one’s personal development due to poverty, oppression, trauma, disease, depression, systematic discrimination, etc. that can’t be approached simply by saying “with enough effort, everybody can make it”. That’s blind stupidity. For the conditions that can undermine a person’s flourishing are at least as many as those which can foster it.

One could always reply that meritocracy could at least work for “normal cases”. This again is to get things wrong. If you have the background allowing you to put effort into what you do, what you do should be the only thing that counts for your integration in a society, not that you do it better or by trying harder than the others. A society based on solidarity and on the healthy and fair contribution of each one of us is much better than a society, where killing yourself of hard work will provide you with barely enough recognition for you not to be killed by frustration beforehand.

Moving to point 2), meritocracy overlooks completely a person’s realization. “Why?” my opponent would be asking “If you strive for something you value greatly, then why shouldn’t you be realized with the social recognition of your efforts?”. Well, because in a society based on merit, what counts is for you to put as much effort as possible into anything that is valuable in general, not something that can be valuable for you to be doing insofar as it is you and not somebody else. Take a very intelligent person, Bob, who loves biology over anything else, medicine in particular. In a meritocracy, Bob has the intelligence to study both biology and medicine, but with medicine, he will receive more social recognition, because medical doctors are more useful than biologists when one considers the total amount of medical doctors a society needs as opposed to the number of biologists needed. So, Bob would have good reasons to opt for a career that will make him quite frustrated, instead of following his dream of becoming a biologist. Biology and medicine are radically different professional fields, and the best that meritocracy can say is that any of the two will do good, as long as practiced with effort. This is not true of people like Bob. What we should say instead is that any of the two will do good, as long as practiced by the right people, namely those who would be professionally realized in their practice.

Point 3) is simply an immediate consequence of point 2). If meritocracy is not centered on the value that each citizen can provide to her wider community insofar as she is realized in what she does, but rather on her putting as much effort as possible into something that is valuable in general, the result is that citizens should strive for what is valuable in general and not for what they might best be suited for (given the socio-cultural, economic, personal constraints). If you are doing a job that involves less effort than another one, you should be considered less praiseworthy, no matter how equally needed both jobs are. Society is going to reward with much greater recognition professions that require higher academic degrees and that are very demanding in terms of hours of work. Physicians, engineers, CEOs, university professors, etc. are going to be more praiseworthy than cleaners, construction workers, artists, etc. unless those of the latter class become CEOs themselves. This is an unavoidable consequence of any meritocracy, which also goes under the name of classism.

As an alternative, I do not hope for either nepotism, or social stagnation in terms of people not being moved to aim at higher positions than those they already occupy. The alternative to meritocracy is a society that fights poverty, discrimination and all those factors that undermine the possibilities for a person to flourish. It is a society that values cooperative work over genius and individual success and a society that helps each one of its components to be praiseworthy and deserving of respect and recognition, but that does not institutionalize praiseworthiness as a reward for effort.  It is a society centered on genuine individual and collective realization, with less frustration and negativity and more happiness for each one of its members. And although this is very sketchy, it is a society where no one would have to feel like saying “I had to work ten times harder than anybody else to obtain my place”. The reason? Because the alternative to meritocracy would simply be a fair society.

Forever yours,

‘Miasha

PS. See also my ‘Dream‘ for a closely related discussion.

Directions

Dear Princess ‘Ishka,

I have been asked what I mean when I say that I am a leftist. I now take the chance to list some thoughts on the topic. The European political spectrum is usually divided between left-wing and right-wing parties, plus centrists and all sorts of in-betweens and more “purist” parties. If you believe in democracy, as I do, you must consider both left-wing and right-wing positions as legitimate, within certain limits. The limits are determined by one’s understanding of democracy.

Of course, it is not as simple as that. In recent years, many parties claim their neutrality with respect to the left-right distinction. The most relevant are populist parties and green parties. However, I deem these two very popular options to lack substance. On the one hand, populists try to defend a grab bag of conflicting and often incompatible interests by appealing to the (now more than ever) fictional ‘will of the people’. Green parties, on the other hand, adopt the opposite solution: they focus only on one single issue, the environment, that can be a trait d’union between all sorts of different interests, that are otherwise carefully left out of the political speech.

Why are populist and green proposals unsubstantial? Well, because they are both, however in very different ways, very simplistic. Politics, on the other hand, is very complex and needs to be based on articulated conceptions of economy, society, culture and, in particular, on a vision of the role of the state. A vision means a coherent asset of thoughts, that resists inconsistencies. Populists masterfully fail at this task, for they try to keep together plainly inconsistent political agendas like a general flat tax and basic income for all citizens, a lower taxation and the promise of more efficient public facilities, just to cite a few. How do they gain their success at polling stations then? I am not a political scientist, but I suspect that constantly spreading the fear of an invasion of Muslim immigrants and blaming the “elites” for every single problem in a country might help conceal the stupidity of their political programs.

I have not much to say about the greens because they have not much to say either.

So here I am, back to the old but gold distinction between left-wing and right-wing parties. What makes them appealing (contrarily to populism and ‘greenism’) is that they are grounded on general conceptions of how the human society looks like and should look like. The distinction I am going to make reflects my personal sensitivity to the topic and has no ambition to be an analytic definition or a distinction based on historical evidence (if ever there is such a thing). It simply answers the very simple question “why are you (am I) a leftist?”

In my view, right-wing politics is characterized by economic liberalism, low taxation, an emphasis on individual merit to acquire private property, and the consequent insistence on security and police to preserve it. Left-wing politics focuses instead on state interventions in the economy, better and widely spread public services, an emphasis on distributive justice and genuine attempts to raise the neediest from poverty to better living conditions.

This distinction doesn’t solve at least two problems. Why is fascism, which stresses so much the importance of state interventions, considered extreme right-wing? And why are liberal values and individual rights such as the right to abort and the one for homosexuals to merry, defended more vehemently by the left?

These questions are crucial. I think they unveil the true nature of right- and left-wing politics. Before ever being liberal (economically speaking), right-wingers ground their political vision on anthropology. They take as a datum that Man is such and such, and what Man is cannot be in principle changed. They then go on to pose little constraints to the “spontaneous” development of society, like a state that defends private property by means of police violence, but, at the same time, doesn’t intervene in the economy, in such a way as to allow for the greatest variety of unconstrained individual activity. Some right-wing ideologists go as far as claiming that the market is “self-regulating”, but to believe in right-wing politics doesn’t commit one to such a strong position: one might simply say that Man cannot be changed, and discussions about how he should be are a waste of time.

What does this have to do with fascism? I think that fascism celebrates the nature of men and women as if they were unchangeable facts. Man are tough, and potential soldiers; women should be bearers of children (hopefully male). The fascist ideology is inextricable from its anthropological assumptions, and so is the whole of right-wing politics. Fascism, however, is an antidemocratic degeneration of politics, that finds itself on the far-right side of the spectrum, no matter where it started.

On the other hand, the left-wing defense of individual rights can be linked partially to specific social and working-class vindications, like equal payment for men and women, rights connected to maternity, etc. but also to its current tendency to underline its liberalism and forget about its socialism. Beyond local political interests, I really do not see why abortion and gay marriage should be more of a left-wing topic rather than a right-wing one. They are just questions of decency.

The leftist vision of society is a socialist one, not an anthropological one. A socialist vision of society understands the state as the organ through which the citizens constitute themselves as a community and determine themselves. Socialism doesn’t make assumptions on human beings. It simply thinks that altruism, cooperation and social justice come before any description of Man as selfish, vulnerable, exploitative, good, bad, or else. If the right-wing vision is descriptive, the left-wing one is normative: it is not concerned with how things are, but on how things should be.

Given my skepticism about any anthropology (ontology, metaphysics, etc.) of the human kind, I am left with the left.

Forever yours,

‘Miasha

Cover Picture Credit: Robin Weiner through awolau.org

Fallacy

Dear Princess ‘Ishka,

Freedom of speech means also freedom to make mistakes while engaging in public discussions. If freedom of speech is a fundamental value in contemporary democracies, so is the pressure to correct and let oneself be corrected once mistaken.

I believe that one of the most common argumentative fallacies in contemporary discussions is the ad hominem argument, namely an argument that personally targets one’s interlocutor instead of focusing on the content of what she is saying. A recent example of this fallacious behavior emerged in the reaction to the environmentalist movement inspired by Swedish activist Greta Thunberg.

Last Friday, thousands of young students went on strike globally to ask for more restrictive laws on carbon emissions, to denounce the insufficiency and ineffectiveness of the measures already adopted, against the exploitation of natural resources, the private and public disrespect of nature and the pollutions of the lands and oceans caused by human activities. I know, it sounds like a potpourri of generic good intentions floating on limitless lack of concreteness and knowledge of what can be actually done to save the planet, but the intents and the extent of the movement are praiseworthy beyond doubt. Hence, kudos to Greta and her passionate followers.

However, not everybody has appreciated the commitment of these young ecologists. Some people invited to national TV talk-shows as well as various journalists have pointed out that the numbers of the demonstration betray the hypocrisy of the ecological movement. Many of Greta Thunberg’s supporters are suspected to go on strike in the morning and come back home by car in the afternoon, consume meat for dinner and travel next week by plane. Their actual behavior would be inconsistent with their political vindications and their hypocrisy would undermine the validity of their point.

This way of thinking is fallacious. The ecologist point would be valid even in case all its supporters were devilish polluting lobbyists. Why? Because arguments must be discussed in their own merit and independently of the moral status of the individuals proposing them. Hence, the movement “Friday for Future” can’t be attacked on the basis of the purported incoherence between its ideology and the private behavior of the hopeful young people who walked down the streets a couple of days ago.

Their behavior, if manifestly incoherent, could be judged in terms of the principles they hold important, but not the other way round. If a politician declares her aversion to corruption in politics and is caught bribing by the police afterwards, it’s not aversion to corruption that becomes invalid, but rather, her behavior should be considered in light of the correctness of her position.

The classist hypocrisy of liberalism is well known, and the trendy slogans to contribute privately to the planet’s salvation can sometimes be more of an obstacle rather than an incentive to tackle our unsustainable capitalist systems of production. Change must be structural and socialist, or it will be no change at all.

Still, these vital caveats constitute no reason to bully our good willed pupils with bigoted pessimism and cheap sophistries. This is the right time to help the young masses on strike avoid comfortable liberal positions and sustain them in changing the world, also by contributing ourselves in the first place.

Forever yours,

‘Miasha

Agreement

Dear Princess ‘Ishka,

The political arena in western countries has become increasingly polarized in recent years. We have experienced the rise to power of the far right, opposed without gradualism to an undistinguished blob of liberal feelings. The promising successes of socialists in the US midterm elections have not changed the overall picture of the great divide in today’s politics. This is nothing surprising, but, once more, we are confronted with one of the greatest problems of our time: How is communication possible when people recognize themselves in mutually exclusive political worldviews?

It would be crazy to demand an easy answer to this troubling question. Still, an argument that emerged in conversation with my current flat mate might give a little contribution to understanding the direction of improvement on the issue.

My flat mate and I have quite different political views: I am more of a socialist, he is more of a libertarian. I think that excessive individualism is a threat for equality and progress, whereas he thinks that excessive regulations are a threat to individual freedom. Of course, each of us holds quite different notions of freedom, equality and so on. But, surprisingly as it might sound, we end up voting more or less for the same parties in our respective countries. How is this possible?

Let’s start with a simplified version of this situation. In an ideal world, with an ideal party system, me and my flat mate would most probably vote for different if not opposed parties. In that ideal world, we could express our choices depending only on our political inclinations, on our personal value systems and on our subjective feelings. We would see all our interests to be accurately represented by the party we vote for and we would accept no compromise or least-of-two-evils solution. Because that would be an ideal world, which is an artificial world made up to show a point, not necessarily the best world possible.

The world we live in is thence not necessarily worse than the ideal one. It is just not ideal, i.e. not made up to show a point. That means that it is not dependent on our subjective feelings and its politics will hardly fulfill completely our desires. Our world is much more complicated than the ideal one and it often resists artificial simplifications. Those who believe in simplistic solutions are delusional from the start, just as those who believe that their idealized political interests can be defended ‘no matter what’.

Offering easy solutions, threatening retaliations or straightforward blackmailing have been employed as means to gain political consent or attack political adversaries. However, no-matter-what talks apply better when one is trying to show a point, rather than when we need to find practical solutions to concrete problems. To function properly, the political arena must be interested in the real world, not in abstractions, however useful they might be in disputes. And voters should make an effort to understand how complicated reality is, rather than abandon themselves to comfortable delusions.

In this sense, however biased and lacking our perspectives might be, my flat mate and I have recognized relevant problems in our societies and found (temporary) agreement in front of reality, not in front of our subjective interests. Putting reality at the core of political debates, as a complicated arena rather than a religious dogma, might help building bridges between apparently incompatible points of view. Reality can unite us, when ideologies divide us.

We struggle to understand politics, and no political choice of ours can be taken lightheartedly. Still, late-night conversations with a flat mate belonging to the opposite side of the political spectrum, in front of a cup of tea, might help develop that sense of reality that is much needed.

Forever yours,

‘Miasha

Dream

Dear Princess ‘Ishka,

I have recently read on a leftist facebook page the following argument against anti-immigration US voters:

If you are scared of being deprived of your job by people having less contacts in the country, less mastery of the language, less rights and less money, than it is you, who shall leave the country, not immigrants.

Despite its irony, you still can spot in this argument a big issue of contemporary political rhetoric. The issue can be summarized by the “myth of struggle for status”, better known as “American dream”. According to this myth, the harder you work, the more deserving you are to obtain a higher social status. Vice versa, the social position you have is supposed to depend on how hard you have been working. You are completely accountable for what place in society you have: it’s your merit if you become president, it’s your fault if you become a beggar.

I choose to talk about the US just for simplicity’s sake, because the myth I am talking about is usually associated to the US and because many Americans, independently of their political orientation, display a certain pride in defending the “dream-philosophy”. Of course, this is a much wider spread problem of capitalistic societies, not at all limited to the US.

What is this problem? Just think about our anti-immigration US voter. She is maybe struggling to keep her workplace and she sees that other people are struggling too. She shouldn’t be struggling that much. Having a damn place in society for a social being shouldn’t be a battle for one’s survival. She is angry. Here, populism kicks in: what if your efforts were caused simply by “too much competition”? What if immigrants are stealing your opportunities just because they exist and create a more hostile environment for your success?

Any person in a condition of social vulnerability could be tempted by the populist. However, the populist is wrong: it is not immigrants, who force you to struggle that much; it is the myth pervading your society that forces you to be that frustrated. Telling the anti-immigration voter that she is an unnecessary, easily replaceable piece of society is the climax of the nightmare of struggling for one’s survival.

This is just the surface of the deeper consequences of the dream-philosophy. In a society where you are responsible for everything you can achieve and where social status is valued the most, it becomes rational to strive for the highest place you can reach. At the same time, there is no limit to how high you can get – that is the fundamental assumption of the American dream. Thus, everyone is rationally compelled to strive for the highest spot in society. Can you achieve this aim? Yes, but at a great cost: being a winner when most become the losers.

Consider a simplified version of the game of lotto. One in a hundred participants will receive a cash price of 100$, given that the participants pay the lotto card 10$ each. The winner will eventually obtain 90$, given that he has paid the initial card. But how much are the participants going to pay for the dream of the 90$? It is easy: a hundred times 10$ minus the 100$ of the winner. That is 900$. Now, is it rational that ninety-nine people give up 900$ for one single person to get 90$? It is crazy, isn’t it?

Even if you are the actual winner, can you bear the responsibility of having won at such a great cost for the others? It will be replied that society is not like the game of lotto. People are better or less skilled, are more or less determined. Those are the factors that determine a win, not sheer chance.

But look, if this is true, it means that every participant to the “game of society” must assume that she is better skilled or more determined than the others to give it a try, even if it were delusional of her. Otherwise, she is already doomed to the bottom of society. This settles the conditions back to the starting point: sheer chance. If you add to this fact that people start from unequal initial conditions (e.g. financial), the “game of society” becomes even more arbitrary than the game of lotto! Plus, the amount of deluded and frustrated people rises to the stars.

In line with socialist thinkers, I think that the only way to get out of this puzzle is to give up the first assumption: that individuals are completely accountable for their success. The state must reduce the initial disparities between citizens with a good system of taxation, supporting in particular the most needy, and all citizens should value solidarity the most, rather than social status. In a more socialist society, there wouldn’t be any need for the anti-immigration voter to be that angry, not because otherwise she would be expelled, but because her right to work would be protected by the state, not by any dreamy ideology.

Forever yours,

‘Miasha