Take any subject you can think of and you'll find people
arguing about it from every point along the spectrum of positions. Usually we
visualize the spectrum as extending from left to right, but that does not
necessarily mean the political Left or the political Right. In fact, we may as
well visualize the spectrum of debates in the same way that we do the spectrum
of the electromagnetic wave which extends from top to bottom; from the
super-energetic shortwave that is the gamma ray down to the long infrared heat
wave.
It is interesting to note that around the mid-portion of the
electromagnetic spectrum sits the part that is visible to the human eye; the
part we call light which can be broken up and spread into the colors of the
rainbow. Likewise, there is a mid-portion on the spectrum of positions we may
call the enlightened part precisely because it comprises the moderate
positions. These can be any number of positions serving each topic as they
develop to offer a rainbow of insights and useful ideas.
But the fact that there is a useful middle says also that
there can be an extreme at each end; one that may or may not be all that
useful. In fact, we encounter people in everyday life that harbor extreme
positions of one sort or another. We are exposed to their thoughts when they
leave a paper trail, or we read about them when they become so notorious as to
catch the attention of a historian. The interesting part is that some of these
people start at one extreme when they are young, then mellow with age and move
toward the middle. You can observe such people in real life situations, and you
can read about them in the books.
But there are people who never mellow and never budge from
an extreme position no matter how much they get on with age. We call these
people dogmatic or doctrinaire; and I must reveal that they fascinated me so much;
I made it a point to study them – something I have been doing for several
decades. I am convinced that these people get to be what they become because
they are incapable of producing ideas of their own. They cannot even modify the
ideas they have absorbed at a young age; ideas to which they continue to hang
on like a dog hangs around the territory it was trained to protect.
Throughout history, the ideas that lent themselves to big
debates have varied from time to time and from society to society. But it seems
at this time that the subject of economics is gaining so much interest, and
spreading so widely that we must regard it as becoming the universal subject of
conversation where the topics relating to the distribution of wealth are the
most popular. Also, since governance is a subject that is closely related to
economics, the two are discussed at the same time.
When you speak of governance you speak of the law, and speak
of the legislative process by which the laws of the land are formulated. In
fact, what is happening at this time throughout the planet is that the local
thinkers, pundits and legislators are wrestling with ideas they hope will help
create a legal system that will result in the fair distribution of the wealth
that is produced by their societies. All sorts of ideas are developed, and all
sorts of experiments are conducted but nothing that comes close to perfection
has yet been devised.
One of those societies is Switzerland
about which the American Wall Street Journal ran an editorial under the title:
“Class Warfare in Switzerland ”
and the subtitle: “The politics of envy in one of the richest countries in the
world.” It was published on November 19, 2013. It deals with the ratio between
the highest paid and lowest paid workers in a given enterprise, a debate that
is also taking place in Egypt
at this time.
If the title and subtitle of the article did not convince
you that the editors of the Journal are of the extreme dogmatic type, you will
be by the time you're finished reading the first few words: “Switzerland 's
referendums have been used to advance a populist agenda that put the nation's
prosperity at risk.” In other words, they are saying that the people of that
society do not know what is good for them; those who exploit them do.
And the editors explain why they made that determination:
“The country will vote on a measure that would cap the ratio of the
highest-paid and lowest-paid employees of a firm at 12:1 ... based on the idea
that no one should make more in a month than the lowest-paid makes in a year.” And
they argue that this will lead to the outsourcing of jobs, the break-up of
companies and the brain drain of the nation's talent. With that, they reject
not the 12:1 ratio as did the Swiss and Egyptian debaters that asked for a
higher ratio, but reject the very idea of placing a cap of any level on the
highest-paid employees.
To support their stance, the editors of the Wall Street
Journal explain that Switzerland
has become one of the richest countries in the world on a per capita basis
because it has a predictable legal regime, a good geographical location,
neutrality and a relatively hands-off corporate-law regime. The mystery they do
not explain relates to how the legal regime, the geographical location or the
neutrality of the country will change if a cap is place on someone's earnings –
or for that matter, to what relative extent the relative hands-off law regime will
be turned upside down.
The Journal editors are dogmatic, after all, and so they
should be allowed to keep the mystery to themselves. And they also maintain the
right to herald to the world the good news that in Switzerland “the most recent
polling shows 54% opposing the pay-equality measure.” They still have
trepidation, however, as to how the vote will go when held in a few days. And
for this reason, they remind the world of the dogma that powers their thinking:
“No one got rich by making the rich poorer.”